Post-install setup on OpenBSD 7.4

After installing OpenBSD 7.4, here are customizations to make it more usable.

$ uname -a
OpenBSD obsd.dev.obsd 7.4 GENERIC.MP#2 amd

Install wireless driver

Run ifconfig and see interface names.

$ ifconfig | grep flags | grep -o .*:
lo0:
re0:
iwx0:
enc0:
pflog0:

In this case, the interface named iwx0. Find details about it in dmesg:

$ dmesg | grep iwx0 
iwx0: could not read firmware iwx-cc-a0-77 (error 2)

Download the driver from http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/, choose the version you using, in this case is 7.4: http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/7.4/iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz

copy the file to an USB formatted as vfat filesystem so all OSes can read from it.

Mount USB

Find the partition to mount: run as root

If the device is sd1, use sd1c as man disklabel explained:

disklabel supports 15 configurable partitions, a through p excluding c. The c partition describes the entire physical disk, is automatically created by the kernel, and cannot be modified or deleted by disklabel.

# disklabel -h /dev/sd1c
# /dev/sd1c:                                                            
type: SCSI                                                              
disk: SCSI disk                                                         
label: DataTraveler 3.0                                                 
duid: 0000000000000000
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 1884
total sectors: 30277632 # total bytes: 15138816.0K
boundstart: 0
boundend: 30277632 

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize   cpg]
  c:      15138816.0K                0  unused                    
  i:           480.0K               64   MSDOS                    
  j:        679424.0K             1024   MSDOS    

Here the partition we want to mount is j.

obsd# mount /dev/sd1j /mnt/                                            
obsd# ls /mnt
iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz

Run as root: fw_update /mnt/iwx-firmware-20230629.tgz to install the driver.

Turn on wifi

Run as root:

# ifconfig iwx0 nwid WIFI_NAME wpakey PASSWORD
# ifconfig iwx0 up
# dhclient iwx0

To auto-connect to the wifi on startup, add a file named: /etc/hostname.iwx0 with content:

nwid WIFI_NAME wpakey PASSWORD
inet autoconf

Note: change iwx0 in filename to your real interface name.

Install packages

# pkg_add firefox git tmux redshift

Update firmware

# fw_update

Change window manager

Default window manager is fwwm, right click choose cwm.

To set it permanently, write a file at $HOME/.xsession

# use UTF-8 everywhere
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

# load Xresources file
xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources

xsetroot -solid slategrey &
xterm &
redshift &
exec cwm

Read man cwm for default key bindings.

Enable power management to suspend

rcctl start apmd

Then type zzz to suspend.

Append a line to /etc/rc.conf.local

apmd_flags=

To start apmd with system.

Conclusion

Hello OpenBSD once again in 2024!