This guide will explain how I installed and setup OpenBSD on my Thinkpad T480 with full
disk encryption, and how I improved the slowness I was experiencing out of the box.
My specs:
dd command can be dangerous):
sudo dd bs=4M if=Downloads/openbsd.img of=/dev/sdb conv=fdatasyncNow, reboot your laptop, and press "Enter" on the splash screen and enter your BIOS settings. Navigate to the boot section and select your USB device as your boot device. Save and exit.
sd# that it chooses for you might be different than the sd1 in the
guide, and that's okay (for example, I believe sd1 was my USB drive when I did
my installation, so the installer defaulted to sd3, which worked fine). Once you go
through that guide, you should already be back at the main installer and have chosen your new
device
for installation.
em0 for now, as that is the ethernet interface which will work out of the box.
We will setup wifi later. I also used dhcp for the IP address. I chose to install
the X Window System and create a user account. For disk partitioning, you can confirm you are
installing
to the right disk by pressing the '?' key and seeing your list of devices, confirming which one
you
set as your root partition earlier. Use whole disk GPT Partitioning if you chose GPT earlier
when
setting up disk encryption.
sd0> a b offset: [128] size: [xxx] 8G FS type: [swap] sd0*> a partition: [a] offset: [xxx] size: [xxx] FS type: [4.2BSD] mount point: [none] / sd0*> w sd0> qAfter this, you can simply select
http for the location of sets, and select a close
mirror.
Then, you should be done. Just restart to boot into your new OS (make sure to remove your USB
drive).
doas command to work with your normal user makes life a lot easier
because you
can perform operations with root level privilege. First switch to your root user:
su root.
Then, edit the doas conf file: vi /etc/doas.conf. Put this line in the conf file:
permit :wheel. This will allow users in the wheel group to use the
doas command
(your user should already be in that group). You can now use doas to run commands
requiring
root level permissions, like installing packages: doas pkg_add vim.
doas fw_update.
Run the command ifconfig to see your list of network interfaces. Your wifi
interface should
be iwm0, so you should create the following file for this interface:
doas vim /etc/hostname.iwm0. Inside the file, setup your wifi credentials like this
(replacing "MyWifiNetwork" and "MyWifiPassword" with their actual values):
nwid MyWifiNetwork wpakey MyWifiPassword dhcpConnect to your wifi network by running:
doas dhclient iwm0. You shoud now have
your wifi setup.
doas vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf and
add the
following:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
EndSection
doas usermod -L staff user doas usermod -G staff user
doas rcctl enable apmd.
Then add this line to /etc/rc.conf.local:
apmd_flags=-AThis sets the daemon to "automatic performance adjustment mode."
/etc/login.conf
file,
and change the "staff" section to this:
# # Staff have fewer restrictions and can login even when nologins are set. # staff:\ :datasize-cur=16384M:\ :datasize-max=infinity:\ :maxproc-max=1024:\ :maxproc-cur=1024:\ :stacksize-cur=8M:\ :ignorenologin:\ :requirehome@:\ :tc=default:
/etc/sysctl.conf
file and add these lines:
kern.maxproc=32768 kern.maxthread=4096I believe you can also enable hyperthreading in this file (OpenBSD has it disabled by default for security reasons), however, I choose to keep it off.
/etc/fstab file, and make sure the
softdep
flag is added to your root partition. For example:
26bfefb4e47ee753.a / ffs rw,wxallowed,softdep 1 1
~/.xsession to disable home directory core dumps:
ulimit -Sc 0
/etc/fstab file:
swap /home/kevin/.cache mfs rw,nodev,nosuid,-s=300m 0 0