On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 04:43:08PM -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On Thu December 6 2007, David Brodbeck wrote:
> > > The installer acts as a weed-eater: it weeds out users who don't read
> > > the docs. ?If you don't read, the partioner will kill you.
> >
> > At least it doesn't require a pocket calculator anymore. ?When I ?
> > first installed it you had to manually calculate cylinder boundaries!
> >
> > OpenBSD is fun, secure, and interesting, but they don't make a secret ?
> > of being newbie-hostile
>
> I don't know about newbie hostile, but I would say it is definitely a UNIX
> guru environment.. just trying to download was a frustrating 30 minutes.
> there was no "*.iso" like 99.999% of the other distros use. Then it took me a
> while to figure out if it was even going to install/run an X environment.
> Don't even ask about a LiveCD..:)
> and I've installed UNIX from 36 floppy disks!
They want you to spend the $50 and buy the CDs. You _can_ just download
the what you need via ftp, put it all in a directory, and burn it to a
CD. Then burn the boot .iso, or make the boot floppy, and away you go.
Now, with 4.2, they have one install42.iso that has all the install sets
on it. You'll need that install42.iso and the MD5 to verify it.
If you're doing something different, you may need something else. I
haven't check, for example, to see if the floppy boot image is on
install42.iso.
I don't know about a LiveCD but it comes with Xorg and a basic window
manager. Durring install you must say yes to the question that asks if
you intend to run X.
A couple of differences between a base Debian install and OpenBSD:
Comes with sendmail set up for internet mail. You can install
other MTAs from packages but you'll have to configure it as if
you had installed from the tarball (no debian hand-holding).
It is BSD not Linux. Linux is a bit of SysV and a bit of BSD.
Permission of files inherit a bit of the directory they're in (I
forget the details). Initscrips are rc NOT SysV. If you add a
package you have to write the initscript snippet.
network setup is different.
The good news is that all of these basics are in the faq. The
absolute definitive documentation is in the man pages available
when you install and on the openbsd web site.
I am not a unix guru. Everything I learned, I learned in Debian and
from two books on unix: Unix System Administration Handbook and
Absolute OpenBSD; mostly from working with debian CLI. The concepts are
all the same. The internal workings of the kernels are different but
you don't see that. Unix is Unix. Each unix-like OS and distribution
layers different initscripts and config programs over top of this.
I'd say go for it. If you get really stuck, mail me directly. Troubles
with OpenBSD would be OT on Debian and the people on misc@ openbsd
aren't nice and friendly to anyone especially newbies.
Good luck.
Doug.
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