The main OpenBSD FTP site is at the University of Alberta, in Calgary, Canada. You can expect that the students are using all the bandwidth they can get for educational purposes, without sparing a thought for your OpenBSD needs. This makes the main FTP site slower that you might like. Fortunately, OpenBSD is mirrored all over the world.

Go to the OpenBSD website and check the “FTP” link. This will bring up a whole list of mirror sites in a variety of formats — FTP, HTTP, AFS, and so on. The list includes mirrors on every continent, including places such as Peru, Thailand, and Lithuania. There’s almost certainly one closer to you than the University of Alberta.

You can install OpenBSD directly from the Internet, over HTTP or FTP. Every bit of OpenBSD is available this way, from programs to source code to add-on packages. You can download the entirety of OpenBSD piecemeal or just grab the entire software distribution from the FTP site. Installing via FTP or HTTP is one of the most popular ways to get OpenBSD.

What you will not find on the Internet is a set of official OpenBSD ISO images of any release. The OpenBSD Project uses CD-ROM sales to fund OpenBSD development, and it would really prefer that if you want a CD-ROM, you purchase one. The disk images of the official install CD-ROMs is copyrighted by Theo de Raadt. The OpenBSD team adds some extras to the CD-ROM package, such as stickers and artwork, to make it more appealing.

With a bit of searching, you will find OpenBSD ISO images on various Internet sites. Some of these are duplicates of the official ISO images, and are distributed in violation of Theo’s copyright. This is not only illegal in most parts of the world, it’s also just plain rude. Other ISO images on the Net are releases built by third parties who are not OpenBSD team members. While the release process is well documented, it still isn’t a very simple operation. You’re welcome to grab one of these ISO images and try to use it, but you should be warned that they have not been through the usual OpenBSD quality assurance process. Also, any joker can put up an ISO image, but you have no way to really know that such an image doesn’t contain a Trojan, backdoor, or other booby trap unless you thoroughly audit the image and compare it against an official OpenBSD install. If you’re going to go to that amount of trouble, you might as well shell out a few dollars and purchase an official CD-ROM anyway, or just try a FTP install!

Each of the CD-ROMs contain the software for a few hardware platforms. For example, in the OpenBSD 3.2 CD-ROM set, disk 1 contains the i386 and Alpha software, disk 2 contains the VAX and MacPPC software, and disk 3 contains the Sparc and Sparc64 software. You’ll find some extra tidbits scattered throughout all the CD-ROMs, however, so you can’t just get by with one disk. For example, the operating system source code is kept on disk 3 in this particular release. Here’s a look at the contents of the first CD-ROM.

3.2/
HARDWARE
PACKAGES
PORTS
README
TRANS.TBL
song32.mp3

The 3.2 directory contains the actual software of OpenBSD 3.2. Almost anything you want to install your software is in this directory.

The HARDWARE file gives a brief overview of the hardware this release of OpenBSD supports. It makes an excellent quick reference if you’re wondering about hardware support for your particular machine or architecture.

The PACKAGES file gives instructions for installing precompiled software packages on OpenBSD.

The PORTS file gives instruction for compiling your own software from the ports collection.

The README file gives valuable pointers to information elsewhere on the CD-ROM. While I’ve made every effort to be complete in this book, if you have any trouble at all always refer to the documentation for the release of OpenBSD you’re working with!

Finally, the song32.mp3 file contains a song written to celebrate this OpenBSD release. (It might not be technically necessary, but it’s certainly fun.)

You can purchase OpenBSD CD-ROMs direct from the OpenBSD Project or from any number of online vendors. Just go to the OpenBSD website and look for the “Getting OpenBSD” link. The OpenBSD Project will be happy to sell you CD-ROMs and assorted other OpenBSD merchandise, such as T-shirts and posters.

The main OpenBSD distribution point is in Canada, which may be a problem for those of you in other countries. You can get OpenBSD from a variety of resellers, many of which are listed on the OpenBSD ordering page. Pick a vendor in your country and you can save on customs duties — or, at least, you can pick a vendor on your same continent and save on shipping charges!

OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware architectures: i386, Alpha, 32- and 64-bit Sparc, both the 68000 and PowerPC varieties of Macintosh, and a variety of less well-known platforms. Take a look at http://www.OpenBSD.org/plat.html for a full list of supported platforms. This page contains links to a page for each hardware platform, in which the state of hardware support is discussed in full detail. For example, the i386 page gives a full list of all i386-compatible hardware supported in the latest development version of OpenBSD, -current.

This chapter covers the i386 platform, (aka “80386-compatible” or “Standard PC”), which includes the 386, 486, and Pentium lines and their descendants. They’re the most common machines, and you probably have one sitting around you could use to learn on. In fact, even old systems can run OpenBSD; you probably have something in a back closet that would do nicely. Many of the examples in this book were performed on a Pentium 166 with 48MB RAM and a stack of 2GB hard disks. (The extra hard disks weren’t necessary, but I had them, and a computer can always use more disk space.) We’re going to cover installing OpenBSD on both a dedicated machine and on a few varieties of dual-boot systems.

Although OpenBSD will work on ancient hardware, that hardware needs to be in good shape. If your old Pentium box kept crashing because it has bad RAM, it won’t behave any better with OpenBSD than it does with its current OS. Also, OpenBSD will be most useful with certain minimum hardware configurations. Here are some basic recommendations, based on my own experiences. These are all i386-based; if you have some other hardware platform, you can draw on these and make your own comparisons.

Memory is good, and the more memory you have the happier you will be. In fact, adding RAM will do more than anything else to accelerate your system. You should have at least 16MB of RAM at a bare minimum, and preferably at least 32. Mind you, if you can get a couple of gigs of RAM in your system, OpenBSD will take full advantage of it.

Most weird crashes and unexplainable problems can be traced back to bad memory, so be certain that the memory you are using is good. Memory is the most likely failure point in an old machine.

A successful OpenBSD installation requires the OpenBSD software, supported hardware, and a bit of thought about how you want your installed machine to look and behave. A developer’s multiboot laptop will have very different requirements than a dedicated firewall, which will look completely different than a Web server. Proper preparations will make your OpenBSD installation quick and easy.

We’re going to spend a great deal of time on the requirements, considerations, and decisions you need to make before installing OpenBSD. Once you know what you have to do, the actual install process is quite simple. Many of the problems people have installing OpenBSD come from not understanding their many choices.