path: root/www/text.causal.agency/016-using-openbsd.7

.Dd February 14, 2021
.Dt USING-OPENBSD 7
.Os "Causal Agency"
.
.Sh NAME
.Nm Using OpenBSD
.Nd for real
.
.Sh DESCRIPTION
Hello from
.Ox !
After wishing one too many times
that I had a real BSD
on a physical machine,
I finally got around to
just installing one on my
mid-2014 MacBook Pro.
I hadn't done it sooner
because I didn't realize
how easy it would be.
It helped that I already had a
.Dq Boot Camp
partition with a disused Windows 8 install
that I could replace.
.
.Pp
I roughly followed an old jcs gist
along with the
.Ox
Disk Setup guide.
I'm once again happy
that I bought a printer\(em
they're very useful for instructions
to install an operating system
on your only usable computer.
I set up encrypted softraid
and the operating system
installed smoothly.
.
.Pp
Next I had to install rEFInd,
since the default Mac boot manager
is really not keen on booting much.
Installing it requires using the
macOS recovery partition these days.
But there was a problem
with my new boot menu:
I was promised a picture of Puffy,
and instead I just got some abstract coloured circles!
Turns out a bunch of OS icons
got removed from rEFInd at some point,
and I had to rescue Puffy
from the git history.
.
.Pp
So I could happily boot
.Ox
by selecting Puffy,
but I had no networking.
I thought the wifi chip might be supported by
.Xr bwfm 4 ,
but I got unlucky and it's a BCM4360,
which everything hates.
Based on the jcs gist,
I checked the list of hardware
supported by the
.Xr urtwn 4
driver for a wifi dongle to order.
Just having a clear list
in the driver manual is wonderful.
I went with the Edimax EW-7811Un v2,
which I could get for around $20.
It's nice and tiny,
though it has a piercing blue LED
(destroy all blue LEDs)
which I had to cover with electrical tape.
.
.Pp
I had to do one other thing
before I could get it all working, though.
When I had checked the
.Xr urtwn 4
hardware list,
I had been looking at
.Ox Ns -current ,
but I had installed
.Ox 6.8 ,
and support for the v2 hardware
I had bought was added after that release.
So I downloaded a snapshot
.Pa bsd.rd
along with the
.Xr urtwn 4
firmware file
to a USB drive
and upgraded the system.
.
.Pp
Connecting to wifi with
.Xr ifconfig 8
is a breeze, by the way,
and then you just write the same thing to a
.Xr hostname.if 5
file to make it automatic.
I wanted to use
.Ox
for exactly this reason:
simple, consistent, cohesive, well-documented tools.
.
.Pp
Finally, I got to configuring.
The console is configured with
.Xr wsconsctl 8 ,
and similarly you can put the commands in
.Xr wsconsctl.conf 5
to have them run at boot.
I added
.Li display.brightness=50%
to tone down the brightness,
which is initially 100%,
and
.Li keyboard.backlight=0%
to turn off those annoying lights.
.Xr wsconsctl.conf 5
is also where you can set
trackpad settings if you're not using
.Xr synaptics 4 .
I ended up using:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
mouse1.tp.tapping=1
mouse1.tp.scaling=0.2
mouse1.reverse_scrolling=1
.Ed
.Pp
This enables tapping with several fingers
to simulate different mouse buttons,
makes the cursor move at a reasonable speed
and scrolling move in the right direction.
I also set up my usual modified QWERTY layout.
.
.Pp
For
.Xr X 7
I had enabled
.Xr xenodm 1 ,
which seems quite nice.
It automatically prompts you to add your
.Xr ssh 1
keys to
.Xr ssh-agent 1
when you log in.
One of the reasons I had not wanted
to set up another graphical system
is that I thought
I would have to make too many choices,
and that I would have to choose least bad options
rather than actually good options,
but
.Ox
already includes reasonable choices.
I wanted to use
.Xr cwm 1 ,
so I started a basic
.Pa .xsession
file:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
\&. ~/.profile
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
xset r rate 175 m 5/4 0
xmodmap ~/.config/X/modmap
xrdb -load ~/.config/X/resources
exec cwm -c ~/.config/cwm/cwmrc
.Ed
.
.Pp
The
.Xr xset 1
command sets keyboard repeat rate
and mouse acceleration.
I spent some time going through
.Xr cwm 1 Ap s
functions and writing up bindings
that would get me something close enough
to what I'm used to in macOS.
Most importantly,
putting everything on the 4 modifier (command key).
.
.Pp
I also added key bindings on F1 and F2
to adjust the brightness with
.Xr xbacklight 1 ,
and on F10, F11 and F12
to adjust volume with
.Xr sndioctl 1 .
I'm not sure why the F keys
just send regular F1, F2, etc.\&
regardless of the Fn key.
I don't use F keys for anything else though,
so I'm not too concerned.
Once again,
.Xr sndioctl 1
is such an easy straightforward tool:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
bind-key F10 "sndioctl output.mute=!"
bind-key F11 "sndioctl output.level=-0.05"
bind-key F12 "sndioctl output.level=+0.05"
.Ed
.
.Pp
For aesthetic configuration,
I added a new output to my
.Xr scheme 1
colour scheme tool for
.Xr X 7 Ns -style
RGB and
.Xr xterm 1
resources.
Normally I use the
.Em Go Mono
font,
but since
.Ox
already includes
.Em Luxi Mono ,
which
.Em Go Mono
is based on,
I used that.
The most important configuration
to make anything readable on a high-DPI display is:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
Xft.dpi: 144
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: false
.Ed
.
.Pp
I'm annoyed that I haven't found
where these resources are actually documented.
I would hope they'd be in
.Xr Xft 3
or something,
but they're not.
Anyway,
turning off hinting
seems absolutely necessary
to prevent text from looking like garbage.
.
.Pp
It seems that to get a reasonably sized cursor
I need to install
.Sy xcursor-dmz .
I'd prefer if there wasn't this one
extra package that I needed
for a reasonable setup.
Tangentially,
I've never understood why
the black versions of dmz cursors
are called
.Dq aa
when it seems like that
would stand for antialiasing
or something.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
Xcursor.size: 64
Xcursor.theme: dmz-aa
.Ed
.
.Pp
For a desktop background,
I found a cute bitmap (little picture)
of snowflakes already in the system
and used colours from my usual scheme:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
xsetroot -bitmap /usr/X11R6/include/X11/bitmaps/xsnow \e
	-bg rgb:14/13/0E -fg rgb:7A/49/55
.Ed
.
.Pp
Since I'd rather not install anything
I don't have to,
I went with the default
.Xr xterm 1 .
It seems more than adequate, honestly.
I read through its RESOURCES
section to configure it how I like.
The important settings are
.Sy XTerm*utf8
and
.Sy XTerm*metaSendsEscape .
Since I'm used to copying and pasting on macOS,
I added equivalent
.Dq translations :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
XTerm*VT100*translations: #override \en\e
	Super <Key>C: copy-selection(CLIPBOARD) \en\e
	Super <Key>V: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD)
.Ed
.
.Pp
The next thing I needed
was a clock and battery indicator.
I actually had my battery die on me
while I was doing all this,
which reminded me.
.Xr xclock 1
would be perfect,
but then I'd need something else
for battery.
There are a couple basic battery indicators
for X in ports,
but they're terribly ugly.
I wanted something as simple as
.Xr xclock 1 ,
but that I could add some other text to.
Then I realized I could just use
.Xr xterm 1
for that.
To my
.Pa xsession
I added:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
xterm -name clock -geometry 14x1-0+0 -sl 0 -e clock &
.Ed
.Pp
This places a little terminal
in the top-right corner of the screen
with no scrollback lines,
running a script called
.Pa clock .
To have
.Xr cwm 1
treat it like a
.Dq panel
and show it on every desktop,
I added this to my
.Pa cwmrc :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
ignore clock
autogroup 0 clock,XTerm
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Pa clock
script simply uses
.Xr date 1
and
.Xr apm 8
to print the time and battery charge
every minute:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
tput civis
sleep=$(( 60 - $(date +'%S' | sed 's/^0//') ))
while :; do
	if [ $(apm -a) -eq 1 ]; then
		printf '%3s%%' "$(apm -l)"
	else
		test $(apm -b) -eq 2 && tput setaf 1 bold
		printf '%3.3sm' "$(apm -m)"
		tput sgr0
	fi
	printf ' %s\r' "$(date +'%a %H:%M')"
	sleep $sleep
	sleep=60
done
.Ed
.Pp
The initial setting of
.Va sleep
is to align the updates
with the minute ticking over.
I made the battery output
a bit fancier by showing
percentage while charging,
minutes left while discharging,
and highlighting in red
when the battery is
.Dq critical .
.
.Pp
Now is a good time to mention adding
.Ql apmd_flags=-A
to
.Pa /etc/rc.conf.local
to enable
.Dq automatic performance adjustment ,
or not running your battery flat
as fast as possible mode.
It seems like I can get up to 3 hours
of battery life depending on the screen brightness,
but this is quite an old battery by now.
.
.Pp
The other thing I needed
was something to tone down
that awful, evil blue light from the screen.
I asked around and someone told me about
.Xr sct 1 ,
originally written by tedu.
The package also includes a little
.Xr sctd 1
script that you can add to your
.Pa .xsession
to have it automatically adjust
the colour temperature throughout the day.
My eyes are no longer being assaulted.
.
.Pp
While I was doing all this,
I of course needed to talk about it on IRC,
and it was very nice to be able to
install my own IRC client with:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
doas pkg_add catgirl
.Ed
.Pp
I don't plan to do
general Web Browsing on
.Ox ,
and there is definitely
no good choice for browser,
so I just installed
.Xr imv 1 ,
.Xr mpv 1 ,
.Xr youtube-dl 1
and
.Xr w3m 1 .
I wrote a script
to open images by piping
.Xr curl 1
into
.Xr imv 1 ,
videos with
.Xr mpv 1 ,
and everything else with
.Xr w3m 1
in a new
.Xr xterm 1 .
Annoyingly,
.Xr mpv 1
seems incapable of exiting
without segfaulting.
That's quality.
.
.Pp
One thing I am still missing
is automatic brightness adjustment
based on ambient light
like macOS can do.
I can read the sensor with
.Xr sysctl 8
.Cm hw.sensors.asmc0.illuminance0 ,
which is measured in lux.
I tried doing something with it in a script,
but it seems tricky to map its value
to brightness adjustments
and to play nice with manual brightness changes,
so I'll just keep doing it manually for now.
.
.Pp
Update:
prx sent mail to let me know about
.Aq Lk https://github.com/jcs/xdimmer .
I should've guessed jcs had written something.
.
.Pp
And that's my current
.Ox
setup after a week of using it.
I'm quite enjoying it,
and still being pleasantly surprised
by the quality-of-life from
.Ox
tools and documentation.
For a small example,
I can jump to sections
or flag definitions in
.Xr man 1
using
.Ic :t .
Systems without basic usability like that
should be ashamed.
.
.Pp
I would post a screenshot,
but this is
.Li text.causal.agency
;)
.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Lk https://gist.github.com/jcs/5573685
.Pp
My full configurations are in
.Aq Lk https://git.causal.agency/src .
.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An june Aq Mt june@causal.agency
.
.Sh BUGS
There's a red LED
inside the headphone jack
that is always on
and I have no idea how to turn off.
If anyone knows
please send me an email.