OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD101

Contributed by sean on from the yet another site for newbs dept.

I came across this site while searching for a few things and it caught my attention. The site exists to walk one through various operations on an OpenBSD system such as installing, updating, etc. The walkthroughs include 'screen' shots for those who need the visualizations but regardless, the site 'looks neat' and could be useful to people who've never even thought of UNIX before let alone installing OpenBSD.

These of course are not replacements for the FAQ and original documentation but the effort put into the site is worth the mention.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (207.234.208.245) on

    Yeah. This is a good site. I know users to OBSD are normally put off by a "beginners site" but I really would hope the OpenBSD project would support this site. *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org

    It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.

    Comments
    1. By Jeremy Huiskamp (kamper) on

      > Yeah. This is a good site. I know users to OBSD are normally put off by a "beginners site" but I really would hope the OpenBSD project would support this site. *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org

      I don't see it happening. To link to it would imply that the project endorses all the advice given there. To do that, openbsd people would have to read the entire thing and keep monitoring it for changes and the administrator of the site would have to agree to co-operate immediately with any requests for changes. This doesn't make sense when the project can just write its own documentation. Oh wait, it already does.

      >
      > It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.

      Please supply some premises to support this conclusion.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (198.200.132.70) on

        > > Yeah. This is a good site. I know users to OBSD are normally put off by a "beginners site" but I really would hope the OpenBSD project would support this site. *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org
        >
        > I don't see it happening. To link to it would imply that the project endorses all the advice given there. To do that, openbsd people would have to read the entire thing and keep monitoring it for changes and the administrator of the site would have to agree to co-operate immediately with any requests for changes. This doesn't make sense when the project can just write its own documentation. Oh wait, it already does.
        >
        > >
        > > It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.
        >
        > Please supply some premises to support this conclusion.

        I've never seen so many people miss the entire idea
        of openbsd101. It IS FOR THE BEGINNER. Just read the
        front page of the site.

        "Monitoring" and "co-operate"? What? openbsd.org doesn't
        have third party web sites on it? Yes. Yes they do.


        Comments
        1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

          > I've never seen so many people miss the entire idea
          > of openbsd101. It IS FOR THE BEGINNER. Just read the
          > front page of the site.

          The beginner is the person who most needs accurate and relevant information so they can learn good techniques from the start.

          Quite a few things suggest a FreeBSD knowledge translated to OpenBSD here. Not to say that's wrong, but if you're trying to teach people about OpenBSD, well... it saves trouble if you show people the 'native' way of doing things.

        2. By Jeremy Huiskamp (kamper) on


          >
          > "Monitoring" and "co-operate"? What? openbsd.org doesn't
          > have third party web sites on it? Yes. Yes they do.

          Go take a look at the main page. The only links off of openbsd.org are to a) mirrors, b) undeadly, c) OpenFoo which are directly affiliated and d) google.

    2. By tedu (tedu) on

      > Yeah. This is a good site. I know users to OBSD are normally put off by a "beginners site" but I really would hope the OpenBSD project would support this site. *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org

      maybe you can explain how the 101 installation instructions are better than the openbsd instructions.

    3. By Lars Hansson (203.65.245.7) lars@unet.net.ph on

      > *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org

      Considering the amount of bad advice on that site I'm pretty happy that it is not linked from openbsd.org.
      cvsup for upgrades? Building the system? installing lsof and bash? disable inetd? WTF?

      > It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.

      Says you.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (198.200.132.70) on

        > > *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org
        >
        > Considering the amount of bad advice on that site I'm pretty happy that it is not linked from openbsd.org.
        > cvsup for upgrades? Building the system? installing lsof and bash? disable inetd? WTF?
        >
        > > It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.
        >
        > Says you.
        >

        Nice to see the negative head of OBSD users shown.

        It's a good site ... so easy to be a critic ... so
        hard to contribute.

        Your post is exactly why OBSD will never make it
        in the main stream, and will die.

        Comments
        1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

          > Your post is exactly why OBSD will never make it in the main stream

          So what?

          > and will die.

          If people don't feel the need to make any improvements, then it must be working pretty damn well already :-)

        2. By Dunceor (Dunceor) on

          > > > *cough *cough like placing a simple link to OpenBSD101 on the main site, http://www.openbsd.org
          > >
          > > Considering the amount of bad advice on that site I'm pretty happy that it is not linked from openbsd.org.
          > > cvsup for upgrades? Building the system? installing lsof and bash? disable inetd? WTF?
          > >
          > > > It's time that OBSD reached out to more people/users.
          > >
          > > Says you.
          > >
          >
          > Nice to see the negative head of OBSD users shown.
          >
          > It's a good site ... so easy to be a critic ... so
          > hard to contribute.
          >
          > Your post is exactly why OBSD will never make it
          > in the main stream, and will die.

          So just because it wont be mainstream it will die? Nice conclusion.

          I like the guide but the offical guide is good enough. I will rather see this author trying to improve the official guide than writing his own.

        3. By Lars Hansson (203.65.246.12) lars@unet.net.ph on

          > Nice to see the negative head of OBSD users shown.

          Nice to see that people visit sites solely for whining about it's userbase.

          > It's a good site ... so easy to be a critic ... so
          > hard to contribute.

          I didnt say it was a bad site, I said I didn't want openbsd.org to link to it since it has some bad advice. Reading comprehension isn't your strongpoint, is it?


          > Your post is exactly why OBSD will never make it
          > in the main stream, and will die.

          Whatever.

      2. By RC (71.105.35.36) on

        > cvsup for upgrades?

        Sure, you don't NEED it, but it has some advantages.

        > Building the system?

        How do *you* get updates?

        > installing lsof and bash?

        Okay, those are... unfortunate... but not major errors. They will, of course, still work.

        > disable inetd? WTF?

        Why not? By default, it's just a waste.

        Comments
        1. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

          > > cvsup for upgrades?
          >
          > Sure, you don't NEED it, but it has some advantages.

          Beginners aren't generally advised to build ports from source unless there's no choice (e.g. the license doesn't permit packages to be distributed, or the arch doesn't provide a full package set).

  2. By Anonymous Coward (75.126.48.148) on

    i've been using this site for a few months now. good stuff.

  3. By Anonymous Coward (66.90.73.113) on

    "could be useful to people who've never even thought of UNIX before let alone installing OpenBSD."

    You got that right. I always wanted to try out openbsd but wasn't sure of the installation until I found openbsd 101. I got things up and running about a year ago and have never looked back to using Windows or Linux.

    I'm now working on some openbsd ports and I have donated $ to the project.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (82.253.134.39) on

    I think the official documentation on OpenBSD website is really nice and usefull when you take the time to read it.
    Nevertheless, it's a good thing to have an alternative site where you can find more docs.

  5. By Charles C. Hocker (216.66.109.58) on

    I checked out the site and am impressed with it. Nice and clean layout and the information is useful. Keep up the good work.

  6. By IanSVT (216.162.91.131) on

    I just got my first set of OpenBSD disks yesterday and I've already made good use of that site doing my partitioning. Big ups.

    Comments
    1. By Chris (194.193.52.249) on

      > I just got my first set of OpenBSD disks yesterday and I've already made good use of that site doing my partitioning. Big ups.

      Lucky you, I've only got a small UPS.

      Comments
      1. By jb (jb) on

        > > I just got my first set of OpenBSD disks yesterday and I've already made good use of that site doing my partitioning. Big ups.
        >
        > Lucky you, I've only got a small UPS.
        >

        Guess you've got UPS envy, eh?

  7. By sthen (85.158.44.149) on

    Mixed reactions... The installation guide looks nice with those black backgrounds, but some of the advice is debatable - 'install bash': why? why set it as root's login shell? OpenBSD has a good ksh... updating packages: via cvsup, out-of-date and source builds? that's ports developer stuff, not new-user stuff - yet nothing about setting PKG_PATH and use of pkg_add.

    I can't help thinking that the amount of effort involved in writing this type of guide might be better directed towards working on any areas of the official documentation which seem unclear or lacking.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.236.100) on

      > Mixed reactions... The installation guide looks nice with those black backgrounds, but some of the advice is debatable - 'install bash': why? why set it as root's login shell? OpenBSD has a good ksh... updating packages: via cvsup, out-of-date and source builds? that's ports developer stuff, not new-user stuff - yet nothing about setting PKG_PATH and use of pkg_add.
      >
      > I can't help thinking that the amount of effort involved in writing this type of guide might be better directed towards working on any areas of the official documentation which seem unclear or lacking.

      I agree with ksh for root; why use bash, especially for root? root should rarely be used though IMO, sudo should be a made a habbit.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (70.179.123.124) on

        habbit == hobbit with a drug problem

    2. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.153.171) on

      It seems that they advocating using a non-statically linked bash. That could really byte you in the ass sometime.

  8. By Frederick Yanos (ntmyd8) on

    Good Site... Ive been using it and always recommending it to my friends new to OBSD. Big help. cheers!

  9. By Rico (85.233.229.74) coolzone@it.dk on

    I have been using OpenBSD since 3.6. I came from GNU/Linux and had been using FreeBSD for a while on servers.

    The first thing I discovered, and had to get use to, was the OpenBSD documentation. It is the greatest documentation I have yet seen. Just about everything are in the 'man pages'. I didn't look there at first because on GNU/Linux, and to some extend FreeBSD, one doesn't normally find that kind of information in the man pages.

    On OpenBSD installation and setup instructions are included in the man pages.

    Furthermore the FAQ on OpenBSD's website covers almost everything else in detail and to the point.

    The only reason why someone would want other tutorials or documentation is because:

    1. They haven't discovered the quality of OpenBSD documentation.

    OR

    2. They just want point-to-point do-this-do-that instructions WITHOUT understanding whats really going on.

    On the website OpenBSD101, there are a lot of really bad advice. First time people go there, find the do-this-do-that instructions, things work, and like one dude wrote "never looked back". Well thats just great! How much of the installation did you really understand then!? How much information did you study about the processes that you are now running!? Do you just want things to work or do you want things to work and at the same time actually understand why they work the way they do?

    OpenBSD isn't about making things easy, or making things like everything else. OpenBSD is about correctness, deeb understanding of the system and the running processes, very high quality and security, and all of those things demand that the USER really knows and understands the system.

    On GNU/Linux and most other systems, the first step one does, when one needs to install some service, is to look on the net for some tutorial on how to do-this-do-that, on OpenBSD all you need for the most part is to look in the man page.

    The other day I needed to set up an OpenBSD box as a wireless access point and router. On dmesg I saw that my card was supported by the ath driver. At first I was looking at some tutorials and other stuff, but as someone kindly reminded to me on the OpenBSD IRC channel (not official) on Freenode, "you need to read the ath man page". So I did, and absolutely everything I needed was just one command away: 'man ath'. I got my access point up and running and no tutorial could have done it better! Furthermore I completely understands how the ath driver works, and how it is setup with details about each and every single option.

    People - newcomers - look at the official documentation, take the time! There are important lessons and information to learn! When you do, you will find that you start to really understand the system of Unix, and not just the do-this-do-that!

    Best regards,
    Rico

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (161.97.4.149) on

      > On the website OpenBSD101, there are a lot of really bad advice. First time people go there, find the do-this-do-that instructions, things work, and like one dude wrote "never looked back". Well thats just great! How much of the installation did you really understand then!? How much information did you study about the processes that you are now running!? Do you just want things to work or do you want things to work and at the same time actually understand why they work the way they do?
      >
      > OpenBSD isn't about making things easy, or making things like everything else. OpenBSD is about correctness, deep understanding of the system and the running processes, very high quality and security, and all of those things demand that the USER really knows and understands the system.
      OpenBSD is about security. If you follow point-and-click instruction for lusers, you will never know what goes on. You either follow blindly what a site tells you, not understanding, and put a security risk, or you can take the time to *understand* the REAL DOCS, those written by the people who wrote the code. Installing OpenBSD will not solve all your security problems. You need to configure everything correctly.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (74.238.123.249) on

      > Furthermore I completely understands how the ath driver works, and how it is setup with details about each and every single option.

      Spoke like a true zealot. Have you considered maybe some people don't really care about the details about each and every single operation? OpenBSD, like anything in life, is what you make of it. It sounds like someone made using it a little simpler, and you just can't accept it.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (208.53.138.209) on

        > > Furthermore I completely understands how the ath driver works, and how it is setup with details about each and every single option.
        >
        > Spoke like a true zealot. Have you considered maybe some people don't really care about the details about each and every single operation? OpenBSD, like anything in life, is what you make of it. It sounds like someone made using it a little simpler, and you just can't accept it.
        >

        I couldn't agree with you more. It's really embarrassing reading some of these posts. The site clearly says it is for beginners of OpenBSD and yet people want to point out it's at a low level of understanding.

        The site is a good site and will help the beginner get started with OpenBSD.

        And any site (and they are rare) that promotes OpenBSD is ok in my book.

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