OpenBSD Tutorials

Start enjoying the benefits of IPv6

With an ever shrinking pool of IPv4 addresses, we really need IPv6. There are not just many more available IP addresses with IPv6, but a number of great benefits that come with using IPv6. In this tutorial, I will telll you about the benefits of using IPv6. I will also show you how to obtain an IPv6 address if you are not already using one. I will also show you how to automatically recieve an IPv6 address when you boot up. Finally, I will show you how to disable your IPv4 address and start using IPv6 today!

OpenBSD httpd tips and tricks

httpd is OpenBSD's own webserver and is installed on every OpenBSD installation, all one has to do is configure it and start it up. While many of us already know the options and capabilities of httpd, newcomers might benefit from this tutorial. In this tutorial I cover setting up password protected directories, how to set up custom error pages - 404's for example and I also cover how to enable compression on your webserver to allow for smaller file sizes and faster loading pages using less bandwidth.

Installing OpenBSD on a Raspberry Pi

Raspberry pi's have gotten very popular with the Linux crowd, and for good reason. While raspberry pi's generally run Linux, such as the raspberry pi OS, it is possible to install other operating systems on the raspberry pi, such as OpenBSD. In this short, to the point tutorial, I will show you what you need to get started and just how easy it actually is to install OpenBSD on a raspberry pi.

OpenBSD NFS Server

If you ever get tired of having to copy files from one source to another or after every install, then an NFS server would be ideal for you. Using software included with OpenBSD you can set up an NFS server very easily and have one centralized computer to share resources with other computers on the network. Remote folders on the NFS file server can be mounted into other computers folder on your network and the files will be in your directory just as if they were on your computer.

Setting up a virtual machine on OpenBSD

If you're a developer and you'd like to develop your application in a virtual machine environment, this tutorial will walk you through installing and setting up a virtual machine and establishing an internet connection from your virtual machine environment. If you would just like to try out a new command line based operating system or if you would just like to try out OpenBSD's new 7.3 installer with Full Disk Encryption, this tutorial will get you set up with a virtual machine.

OpenSSH port forwarding - SSH Tunnels

Although OpenSSH is used on virtually every *nix distribution, it was developed on and for OpenBSD, so I still consider this to be an OpenBSD tutorial. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can setup encrypted SSH tunnels to a remote SSH server to use networking tools over these encrypted tunnels and even to surf the web anonymously through an encrypted tunnel. I cover local port forwarding, remote port forwarding and dynamic port forwarding.

Blocking brute force attacks with pf

If you have ever setup SSH over the internet using password authentication, then you know how often brute force attacks occur. Another common issue is password protected websites. In addition to SSH and password protected websites, directory enumeration and other automated attacks are common. OpenBSD's pf packet filter firewall is a powerful firewall that among other things is able to block brute force attacks, locking attackers out of your system.

Wireless networking on OpenBSD

Setting up wireless on OpenBSD is once again, incredibly simple and straight forward. Before having migrated to OpenBSD, I have tried setting up wireless networking on Linux via the command line on a couple different distros with absolutely no luck. You won't believe how easy it is to setup wireless networking on the command line with OpenBSD. Also, I will cover how to automatically connect to wireless networking on boot.

SFTP only SSH server on OpenBSD

If you need to have secure FTP access to your webserver for yourself or your users, then it's time to ditch the insecure plain text FTP protocol. With OpenSSH, you can provide secure, encrypted access via sftp only in chrooted directories. I will show you in this tutorial, how easy it is to setup sftp only webserver access with chrooted directories for your users.

Enable hotplugging on OpenBSD

Tired of manually mounting USB drives and typing doas every time you want to copy something? Me too! In this tutorial, I will show you with a couple simple scripts how to enable hotplugging USB drives. Incorporating a magic file that can be used if you want to hotplug so that only you know the magic file. Without the presence of the magic file, manual password based mounting is still mandatory, keeping some degree of security while making it simple for you to automount and easily copy files. You'll find the tutorial and scripts.

OpenBSD's httpd with PHP support

In this tutorial, I will show you how to setup OpenBSD's httpd webserver with PHP support. I think you will find that as usual, setting this up in OpenBSD is very simple and straight forward.

Enable SSL/TLS on httpd

Here, I talk about TLS and it's predecessor SSL. This tutorial covers setting up OpenBSD's acme-client to generate our free 90 day SSL certificate, what to do with the certs once they are generated and also how to confiugure httpd to use those certs for your secure webserver. Also, I will show you how to force the use of HTTPS on your secure webserver.

Get the latest OpenBSD release

While not a tutorial, I thought I would post this simple bash script that can be run to check for new releases of OpenBSD. New releases can be downloaded with either IPv4 or IPv6. Options include downloading with the img image for writing to bootable USB drives or the iso image for burning to CD. Other options include the ability to specify what architecture to use in fetching your install image. Also you can specify if you want to download a different version other than the most recent release. Support for mirrors is also included. Also automatically checks signatures and verifies download integrity. Meant to be used on an up to date OpenBSD installation.

HTTP response status codes cheat sheet

Header says it all. If you need to know what a particular response code is, see the cheat sheet,