In: Categories » Computers and technology » Linux » A FEW QUICK TIPS FOR OPENBSD
|
The purpose of this article is to give a few useful tips for OpenBSD including information on how to make a bootable CD from the OpenBSD files downloadable on the Internet. The BSD systems differ from Linux in several aspects. They are incredibly stable and also have a different history. These systems thrive on an isolated island in the ocean where neighboring bigger parts of habitable surface owns Linux and Microsoft. The isolation of BSD has several causes, but BSD advocates generally say that commercial companies support Linux, not BSD. The famous TCP/IP, upon which the Internet has developed, is the invention of BSD. This family of systems has a legendary history and three forks of the original BSD code are quite famous today: NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. The history of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) started in the 1970's. The US military agency ARPA supported its development too. The presently known family of BSD systems originated early in the 1990's. These systems developed partially from an unofficial patch of 386/BSD. The NetBSD team snapped up the chance of the released code as the first BSD Open Source project (1993) and a few months later another group of enthusiasts formed the FreeBSD Project (1993). OpenBSD is the latest continuation of these. Theo de Raadt founded it in December 1994, soon after he separated from the NetBSD team in order to employ his own courageous visions. The key difference between these three systems is as follows: The above systems have also their clones such as PC-BSD, a clone of FreeBSD. In user interactivity, BSD and Linux are similar. The most noteworthy difference between Linux and BSD lies in the kernel and the license. A BSD license, for example, allows developers to take the code, change it and afterwards keep it for themselves. GPL or General Public License does not allow this. BSD systems are available with the so called „core system“, where many binaries are actually part of such a BSD OS. In the Linux world, terminologically only the kernel is Linux. In the BSD world, the „core system“ is installed separately from applications or packages. It is also separately archived in FTP servers. Packages are under the license of programmers who develop them. The BSD kernel and the core system are under the BSD license. How to make an installation CD of OpenBSD? After you downloaded the system files to your local directory (for example, to /usr/opbsd41), issue the following command to make the ISO image of it: Type “man afterboot” to see an overview of most important things that you can do after the first complete boot. How to switch between console screens? As a Linux user you surely know that in Unix you can switch between the text console screens with the combination of Alt+F1 keyboard keys. Replacing F1 with F2 (or F3, etc.) brings you to another virtual console. In OpenBSD, you do this in the same way, but you must always press Ctrl+Alt+F1. If you want to go back to the X environment, you use Ctrl+Alt+F5 key combination. How to stop my cooler from crying out? If you have problems to activate your motherboard's „cool 'n' quite“ ability and you have an AMD64 processor like me and feel that your CPU fan is too noisy, a very simple way to go around this is to use the sysctl command: Your 2 GHz processor will then slow down to 1 GHz, which you can check out with the How to use a Linux terminal? A behavior of some predefined terminals in OpenBSD can change the distribution of keyboard keys (as you remember them from Linux) in some console applications. For example, immediately after you log in, OpenBSD always asks you: Terminal type? [vt220]. If you pres [Enter] for the predefined „vt220“, OpenBSD maps some keycodes differently in console programs like Midnight Commander (but not in X). If you type „nxterm“ for the terminal (instead of vt220), you will see a blue Midnight Commander instead of the ugly black one, and you can use the same keys like in Linux (F5 for copying of files, etc.). How to localize OpenBSD? You can install many national keyboards from within KDE, but dead keys may not work. With the present version OpenBSD 4.1 you just edit the /etc/profile and add the following text there (an example for Slovak): LC_CTYPE=sk_SK.ISO8859-2; export LC_CTYPE It is up to you to decide whether you want „LC_CTYPE“ or any other option. This is a quick guide and the localization works. The various types of locales can be found in the /usr/share/locale directory. Peep there to see the correct syntax for a particular locale. If you see, for example, ru_RU.ISO8859-5 („RU“ for Russian, „PL“ for Polish, „ZH“ for Chinese, etc.), just type the desired locale's name to your /etc/profile file as in the above example (for example, replace sk_SK.ISO8859-2 with ru_RU.ISO8859-5) and restart your computer. Then, if you use KDE, from the Start menu choose Start > Control Center > Regional and Accessibility > Keyboard Layout and choose the national keyboard of your choice. A flag of the chosen country will appear at the bottom of your KDE desktop and you can write dead keys and any other special characters with a particular national keyboard. BIO: I live in Europe and I developed 1FCDBSD, which is a One Floppy CD Audio and MP3 Player based upon FreeBSD; my website is specifically dedicated to FreeBSD.
|
legal disclaimer
1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.
related articles
Problem: Automated scripts and file transfers cannot decrypt password-protected public keys. It is possible to use public key authentication to automatically transfer files from one machine to another. While this is usually not recommended, it may be desirable for batch scripts. However, this involves setting a blank passphrase which clearly leads to some risks. Therefore this mechanism should only be used for a one-way connection between two specific, non-privileged user IDs on different hosts. STEP1: Decide wh...
2. Install OpenSSH to Replace the Remote Access Protocols with Encrypted Versions
Problem: The common UNIX remote access protocols - telnet, FTP and the Berkeley r-commands -- are unencrypted. Account and password information can easily be sniffed by unauthorized intruders and others who have been granted access to the same network. OpenSSH can be used to encrypt all remote sessions, thereby eliminating this vulnerability. OpenSSH is free and runs on virtually all of the different UNIX and Linux variants. Zlib, a compression library and OpenSSL, the secure sockets layer software, are required by Op...
3. Port Forwarding with SSH
Problem: Since many programs use services that send clear-text data over the network, it is desirable to find something that can be used to encrypt the network traffic for these services while minimizing any change to end users. SSH provides this functionality with port forwarding. Port forwarding allows a user to create an encrypted session from a client to a remote server for any TCP-based service by tunneling the service through SSH. Of course, this requires that the user have an account on the remote server and tha...
4. How to use PuTTY Passphrase Agents
STEP1: Use Pageant to store your private keys in memory To make public key authentication more convenient, the developers of PuTTY created Pageant. Pageant is a program included with PuTTY that will keep your decrypted private keys in memory so you only have to enter your passphrase once rather than every time you authenticate to a server using public key authentication. While this will make your day-to-day use more convenient, please keep in mind that it also poses a slight risk, since other applications (inc...
One method to transfer files from the Windows command line is to use PSFTP. PSFTP creates an interactive SFTP file transfer session where you can use many of the commands available within a normal FTP session. Since PSFTP uses the SFTP protocol, which is only available with servers running protocol SSHv2, you may not be able to run it on every server. PSFTP is run from the command line and provides numerous options. To see the options available run PSFTP with the –h option: ...
6. Using Plink to initiate an SSH session from the command line or a script
Using PuTTY from the command line will create an SSH interactive session. This may not be what we want if for example we need to remain at the Windows command line or we want to issue an SSH command from within a script. In order to satisfy these types of needs, PuTTY provides a tool called Plink. Plink is a command line tool that will allow you to log in to a remote machine using SSH and either create an SSH session or execute a command, all from the command line and without opening another window. Plink comes with many comma...
7. How to Generate a Key Pair Using OpenSSH
Problem: How can a key-pair be created in OpenSSH?STEP1: Generating your public/private key-pairThe ssh-keygen command is utilized to generate your public and private keys. OpenSSH provides authentication methods via a choice of three public key "cryptosystems": RSA1, RSA, and DSA. RSA1 works with SSHv1 while RSA and DSA are for SSHv2. RSA and DSA use different techniques for authenticating and have different capabilities, but for purposes of this guide, either will suffice.To create a key-pair, r...
8. Transfer files from the command line with PSCP
A second method to transfer files from a Windows command line prompt is to use PSCP. Unlike PSFTP, PSCP is not interactive and is designed to transfer files "in one shot" and then exit, much like OpenSSH's scp command. PSCP also allows you to specify wildcards within filenames (PSFTP does not). Additionally, PSCP will work with any SSH server as it is not dependent on SSHv2 being present. Note PSCP will blindly copy files to the remote server, overwriting any files with the same name, without prompting for veri...
9. Create an SSH session from the command line using PuTTY
There are multiple ways to create an SSH session from the command line using PuTTY. The first way involves using the PuTTY program itself. PuTTY comes with a number of options that can be used to invoke the graphical PuTTY terminal from the command line. A description of these options is available within the PuTTY help file. To run PuTTY from the command line: Note ...
10. Install SSH Windows Clients to Access Remote Machines Securely
Problem: Many times administrators will find themselves on a Windows machine with no way to access a remote server securely since Microsoft does not yet package an SSH client. There are a number of excellent tools available that provide SSH client connectivity from a Windows platform. A list of these tools is available at http://www.openSSH.com/windows.html. ...