The OpenBSD project involves continuing development of a multiplatform 4.4BSD-based Unix-like operating system.
OpenBSD looks a lot like NetBSD (which it is derived from, following the 4.4BSD roots), but is now being developed seperately. Good changes from other free operating systems will be merged in (of course, depending on various factors like developer time for example.) OpenBSD tracks NetBSD changes very closely; say anywhere between 2 days to 10 days behind the state of NetBSD-current all the time. Hence you can truly say that OpenBSD is NetBSD PLUS MORE STUFF.
Various additions have been made. This is only a small partial list of the major machine independent changes (ie. it is the most interesting changes or what people ask about most often). Check the specific port you are interested in for further details of that port -- many of them have been extended too.
Note: for some of these platforms, the platform-dependent code may be identical to that found in NetBSD because there isn't a specific OpenBSD developer. For other ports the differences are significant. If you find an empty page that means nothing of consequence that is directly port-specific has changed from NetBSD. (Of course there are differences, but they just aren't in the /sys/arch/XXXX directory).
NOTE: please do not fetch binaries directly from cvs.openbsd.org but instead use one of the mirror sites.
The file structure of each FTP server is as follows:
If you add a new FTP mirror site, please contact the FTP maintainer.
These are the mailing lists:
For further assistance, send a message body of "help" to majordomo@OpenBSD.org and you will receive a reply outlining all your options.
Furthermore, a mailing list archive is available.
Most importantly, the anoncvs service does NOT delete the changes you make in your local copy of the source tree -- read on for more details!
The latest version of CVS is available at Cyclic. Versions earlier than 1.6 are not recommended, and may not work. If you already have OpenBSD installed, CVS is included.
There are two levels of source tree access:
You may want to use `traceroute' to find out which server is nearest you.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are a few issues relating to cryptographic software that everyone should be aware of:
A sample use of an anoncvs CVS server would be:
% setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.usa.openbsd.org:/cvs % cd /tmp % cvs get src/sys/arch/sparc [copies the files from the repository to your machine] % cvs log src/sys/arch/sparc/sparc/locore.s [shows the commit log for the chosen file ] % cvs diff -bc -r1.1 -r1.5 src/sys/arch/sparc/sparc/locore.s [shows the changes between revisions 1.1 and rev 1.5]
Here is how someone using anoncvs regularily would update his source tree:
# setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.usa.openbsd.org:/cvs # cd /usr # cvs -q get -PA srcor similarily later on he might try
# cd /usr/src # cvs -q up -PAdEverytime you ran this it would syncronize your /usr/src tree. It would not destroy any of your local changes, rather it would attempt to merge changes in. If you use obj directories (not obj symbolic links) you may wish to append "-I obj" to the cvs command line, this will keep cvs from spitting out a warning about all the obj directories it is going to encounter which are not in the repository.
The CVS man page (included with the CVS sources) has much more information about how CVS can be used.
The anoncvs service gives fledgling developers a chance to learn CVS operation and get thoroughly involved in the development process before getting "commit" access -- as a result of showing useful skills and high quality results they will naturally later be given developer access. As well, people providing patches can create their "diff"s relative to the CVS tree, which will ease integration.
The CVS client uses rsh to talk to the CVS server. If some local security measure like a firewall (or imperfect protocol emulators like slirp) prevents you from using rsh, you may be able to use ssh instead. In this case, one sets the environment variable CVS_RSH to point to ssh (typically /usr/local/bin/ssh). To reduce the performance hit the anoncvs server would take it is recommended (and requested) that you disable encryption. If your local site prevents you from connecting out to port 22 (which ssh defaults to using) use port 2022.
Do not be tempted to turn on compression since CVS already compresses. Use something like the following in your $HOME/.ssh/config file.
Host anoncvs.usa.openbsd.org Cipher none Port 2022
CVS is a little noisy starting up; to quiet it a bit you may want to do this:
setenv CVS_CLIENT_PORT -1
If you wish to be a new anoncvs mirror site, please contact the anoncvs maintainer. Anoncvs mirrors require about 300MB of disk, and use up to 4MB of swap per anoncvs user (assuming the user does a large operation; while smaller operations use fewer resources, anoncvs still makes much more of an impact than ftp or sup). Such anoncvs machines should have excellent network connectivity for the area they are expected to serve. A document which describes the setup of anoncvs servers is available.