OpenBSD - Episode 2 - Getting up and running
I’ve heard that getting OpenBSD installed and running can be intense.
I reserve judgment until I am able to actually try the installation a few times on bare metal.
For now, I want to set this puppy up in a virtual machine.
Here’s my rig:
- HP Pavilion DV5224nr Laptop with AMD Turion 64 Mobile, 2 GHz processor with 1 GB Ram.
- Microsoft Windows XP (32bit) Professional, fully patched.
- VMWare Server 1.0.5 build 80187
Ok, so I’m ready to go.
Doing some quick Googling, I came across a very good, short OpenBSD on VMWare how-to by Jan Exß.
I downloaded the latest OpenBSD (4.3) installer ISO from one of the many mirrors. There were many iso images, the file I nabbed was openbsd-install43.iso.
Then I got down to work using Jan’s recommended settings.
I followed the instructions pretty much 100% with a few exceptions. Notably, I didn’t install all the packages he described on the Installation page. I also set up the NIC a little differently.
I wanted the install to be relatively thin, and I also wanted to reserve some packages out so that I can get experience with installing them later, when the excitement wears off.
In the end, I completed all the tasks up to the top of the Applications page.
Reboot, and presto! OpenBSD 4.3.
Sweet.
I banged around in the terminal a bit, just enough to realize that things weren’t as different as I thought they’d be.
I know the machine isn’t doing much at the moment, but I’m surprised how fast it responds considering it’s only allocated 512 MB ram, and is running in a VM…
Current impression: Sweet! This hasn’t been as challenging as I though it would be. Let’s see how things go from here.
Stay tuned for the next episode - Installing Applications…