8 bits per pixel is not enough

As I just moved in my new apartment, I still have not all my machines, and thus it is about time to use the ones I use less than wanted because of role duplication.

In this case I'm speaking about laptops, and more specifically my PowerBook's (PowerBook3,4 and PowerBook6,8).

So, when I booted my "old" PowerBook (yeah, the G4 800 DVI - Ti) I felt somehow disgusted about the way the resolution looked in 8bit using the wsfb driver.
Nonetheless, as always, you can expect good documentation about nearly anything in the OpenBSD project, and thus, I found what I wanted in the dis tribution notes of the XF4 for macppc

Knowing my PowerBook had an ATI graphic card, this was so easy that I just had to follow what was explained in /usr/X11R6/README. Here is the relevant line in the dmesg about the graphics card:

vgafb0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0 "ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW" rev 0x00, mmio

Now I wonder why I never took the time to do that when back in the days I used to use this laptop quite often. Lazyness I believe ;-)

Of course, this now brings us to another debate about the X Aperture and the security concerns around it.

SPARCbook 3GX donation

Robert Bagnall kindly donated three SPARCbook's by Tadpole: one 3GS and two 3GX to the OpenBSD project.
After picking them up in Brussels, one will be shipped to Martin Reindl (martin@) and another one to Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd (a long time OpenBSD activist) while I'll keep a 3GX.

First project on my TODO list is to add support for the DBRI (Dual Basic Rate ISDN) chip used in the SPARCbook for both ISDN and audio.
NetBSD already has support for it but we cannot just import it 'as is', the code there is just too close to the GPL code used in the Linux version of the driver.

That said, I'm off to read the data sheets -- cu.

Apple Sudden Motion Sensor

I just committed a work-in-progress on the Apple Sudden Motion Sensor (asms(4)) found in my PowerBook6,8:

asms0 at iic0 addr 0x58, rev 1.34, version 0.1

Currently, the sensors exposed via the sysctl(8) interface are:

hw.sensors.12=asms0, X_ACCEL, -1 raw
hw.sensors.13=asms0, Y_ACCEL, -1 raw
hw.sensors.14=asms0, Z_ACCEL, -57 raw

Some work is still needed but it's already in a usable state.

OpenBSD or firewall software?

First of all, the tipical 'hello world' message from the bsdz0rs blog. I've a little question to you, cows; it's about *BSD firewall software. I've to upgrade my OpenBSD box and I'm thinking about install m0n0wall, pfsense or 4.1 and let my hands be root other time. What about that? any experience with this kind of software?.

m200 and openbsd

y0 c0wz! i've been messing around with my toshiba m200 and openbsd.
so far i had to rebuild generic with acpi support to get it to shutdown. it also fixed this problem i had when display went to sleep in X the image would come back in half of the screen.
searching for a xbatt similar app, maybe i'll give gkrellm a try.
ahh and fluxbox r0x!!

moO!

Easy firewall generator

I've been using OpenBSD for firewalls since the time of ipf (ipfilter,from Darren Reed), and it is the perfect solution for me. PF is incredible powerful and it has the easiest configuration approach i've ever seen.

But, from time to time, i always find someone that tells me the benefits of some systems like Astaro Secure Linux or Smoothwall among others. This kind of systems provide administrators with an easy-to-use, shiny-for-the-eyes web interface, where they can set up firewall rules, check logs, generate some graphics, etc.

Just some days ago, r0sk posted here about that, and if there is some alternative to that, on top of OpenBSD and PF. Now I would like to ask if anyone have see the easy firewall generator for iptables and if it is there anything similar for PF.

Personally, I do not like such things, because they limit what you will be able to do with your firewall, and if they do not limit you, they are a completely mess. I mean, in a very complete firewall web interface, finding what you need to create a binat rule, or to set up a transparent bridging firewall could be a seriously difficult job.

With PF, it is as easy as add a little bunch of lines to a single file, and you are done.

Anyway, I think that something like the efg could be very interesting for newbies. It is easy, it allows you to set the most basic options for a firewall, and then it generates for you a basic script (all the basic an iptables script could be) to get your firewall up and running.

That could be helpful in the case of PF, as i've said before, to newbies, because they could create pf.conf files to check them later and learn, for example, how to create single filter rules.

Of course, having such a thing in the PF users guide would be nice too, letting users to generate a pf.conf that could be used as a base to build the pf.conf file they need.

So, finally, anybody knows if there is something similar for PF? and, if not, anybody could be interested in helping create a simple script to do it? (seems like a perfect project for my new ZopeCode site!) (SPANX!) ;D

macpro, imac and openbsd

First the Mac Pro, 2 x quad.core monster:

Then an iMac 20":

why use windows for my desktop

i'm using windows for my desktop atm and after reading some posts on misc@ talking about the lack of support of flash in openbsd, i thought to myself why i don't run openbsd for deskstopping.
everyone has different meanings and needs/desires for personal desktop. lemme enumerate some of mine:

• flash: mostly youtube but also all those podcasts/vidcasts webpages
• itunes: love the way that it organizes my music, smart playlists, sync ipod, podcasts
• games

i missing having virtual desktops, although i've tried some virtual dimension and the microsoft powertoy but in the end had some issues with windows appearing where they shouldn't
i think my ideal desktop would be a intel mac, i just have ppc mac mini which by the way any webpage with flash content can put the machine to a crawl, starting the fan whine!!
with an intel one i could have games on windows and all the other desktop on the mac. the mac feels more natural to me in many ways but still drives me crazy on others.
but hey, i'll just keep dreaming on ... like always ;-)

ksh startup files

Tonight I spent some time to clean up my ksh setup. I had a huge .profile, which was just a copy of /etc/ksh.kshrc. No good. Now I have the stock .profile (that comes for new users in OpenBSD) with this line added:

export ENV=$HOME/.kshrc

and then I have put in a shiny new ~/.kshrc with something like this in it:

if [ -o interactive ]; then
    . /etc/ksh.kshrc
fi

spwd () {
  ( IFS=/
    set $PWD
    if test $# -le 3 ; then
        echo "$PWD"
    else
        eval echo \"..\${$(($#-1))}/\${$#}\"
    fi ) ; }

HOST=`hostname| cut -d. -f1`
# PS1='${HOST} ${PWD##$HOME?(/)}$ '
PS1='${HOST} $(spwd)$ '

export EXINIT='set ai sw=4'

if [ -o interactive ]; then
    echo coming up:
    /usr/bin/calendar -A 14
fi

This keeps my prompt pretty short (it displays only the last 2 directories) and gives me otherwise and nice, clear prompt. I played around with using vi key bindings for shell line editing again, but again moved back.

It also displays my calendar contents for the next 14 days. Neato. Read man calendar for how to feed that calendar!

On a related side note, in OS X you can now remap the Caps Lock key to act as a Control key without any hax0ring around: Can be changed from the System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys. Nice.

Q (as in "qemu for running OpenBSD on Mac OS X")

For those too lazy to dual boot OpenBSD on their Intel Mac hardware, I found another solution to run OpenBSD in emulation: Q (as in "qemu on Mac OS X") will boot OpenBSD just fine. Previously I had tried VirtualBox, which shows problems in disk access from OpenBSD as guest OS. Since Q is another open source alternative, there's no need to spend large amounts of playmoney for this software, and you can still go and test your favorite ports to make wiwi happy!

Speed seemed reasonable. I didn't do anything heavy yet - actually I didn't do much at all - but there did not seem to be any of the slight lag you sometimes get with emulation / virtual machines.

I didn't have to do anything special to get Q to run OpenBSD. Booted from the 4.2 installer CD disk image (leeched off wiwi's mirror, ofcoz). After playing around a bit with xorgconfig I got X to work almost reasonably. I say "almost", because it does not want to give me the macbook's native resolution of 1280x800, so fullscreen mode looks warped. I haven't completely figured out what I can and can't do with networking either. We'll see.

Oh, yeah, here is a dmesg too, scp'ed directly from the virtual machine.