Welcome

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Welcome to the home of Scott MacCallum and my business S C M Guru LLC. I'm a technologist with over twenty years of information and communications technology experience in the nonprofit sector. Through S C M Guru LLC I contribute to free and open source software by writing documentation, producing videos, submitting bug reports/fixes, and developing projects of my own which I make freely available.

Due to a late diagnosis of autism, and my chosen path of people over profit, I'm not independently wealthy. If you too value free and open source software, or if you find my work useful to you, please consider becoming a member. It really does help and it is appreciated.

Keeping A Stable Build Of OpenBSD Updated

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November 30, 2020

As a user that is part of wsrc group do these steps to keep a stable build of OpenBSD updated.

  1. cd /usr/src
  2. cvs -q up -P -d -r OPENBSD_version_number
  3. cd /usr/xenocara
  4. cvs -q up -P -d -r OPENBSD_version_number
  5. cd /usr/ports
  6. cvs -q up -P -d -r OPENBSD_version_number

Upgrading OpenBSD Release To Stable From Source

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November 17, 2020
Prepare The Environment
  1. Add a user to the wsrc group. user mod -G wsrc user where user is the user that you would like to add to the wsrc group.
  2. Change to the user directory cd /usr
  3. Change the group on the source directory to wsrc chgrp wsrc src
  4. Change the mode on the source directory to 0775 chmod 0775 src
  5. Make the ports directory mkdir ports
  6. Change the ports directory group to wsrc chgrp wsrc ports
  7. Change the mode on the ports directory to 0775 chmod 0775 ports
  8. Make the xenocara directory mkdir xenocara
  9. Change the xenocara directory group to wsrc chgrp wsrc xenocara
  10. Change the mode on the xenocara directory to 0775 chmod 0775 xenocara
Download The Source

As the user that you added to the wsrc group, download the base system, Xorg and ports. Where host is the closest host to you e.g. anoncvs4.usa.openbsd.org and the release_number is the version of the OpenBSD that you have installed e.g. 6_8.

  1. cd /usr
  2. Base System cvs -q -d anoncvs@host:/cvs checkout -r OPENBSD_release_number -P src
  3. Xorg cvs -q -d anoncvs@host:/cvs checkout -r OPENBSD_release_number -P xenocara
  4. Ports cvs -q -d anoncvs@host:/cvs checkout -r OPENBSD_release_number -P ports
Build The Generic Kernel
  1. Change to the system architecture directory where the generic kernel configuration file is cd /sys/arch/$(machine)/compile/GENERIC.MP
  2. make obj
  3. make config
  4. make
  5. make install
  6. make clean
Build The Base System
  1. cd /usr/src
  2. make obj
  3. make build
Make Changes To Etcetera, Variable And Devices
  1. sysmerge
  2. cd /dev
  3. ./MAKEDEV all

Configuring Autoboot After The Installation Of OpenBSD

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November 17, 2020

Here's how to configure autoboot after installing OpenBSD on an aluminum Apple PowerBook G4 and likely other Apple PowerPC computers.

  1. Enter Open Firmware by booting the computer while pressing the Option, Command, O, and F keys together.
  2. Set the boot device and kernel setenv boot-device hd:,ofwboot /bsd
  3. Set automatic booting setenv auto-boot? true
  4. Write changes to NVRAM and reboot reset-all

Adding A User To A Group On OpenBSD

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November 17, 2020

The command to perform tasks on a users account is user. As a super user, add a user to a group by doing user mod -G group user where group is the group that you would like to add a user to and user is the user that you would like to add to this group.

Installing Software On FreeBSD From Package

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November 13, 2020

The command to install a package is pkg. Install a package by doing pkg install package where package is the name of the package that you would like to install.

First Post

November 9, 2020

Today marks the day that I've returned to a simpler way of writing on the web. What you see is modern standards compliant HTML, which I've edited by hand with my favorite text editor. It's been nearly 30 years since I created my first website in a similar fashion. I'm excited to do it again!

May The Source Be With You

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The template for this site, Skeleton was kindly made freely available by Dave Gamache.

This site aims to be valid HTML5 and have no broken links. If you find a bug, please report it.

Copyright © Scott MacCallum 2020. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.