7 Tips For Answering Your Tech Questions

We all come across problems in our computer ventures at some time or another. I have a number of tips that may help you find answers to your problems:

1. Search: Searching google, or any other search engine, will often yield results, and it's always a good place to start.
2. Search using your Error: If your problem is in relation to an error, and you have an error displayed on your screen try a search for that exact error. If someone has asked about it in a forum, or talked about it on there blog, then you will likely find your answer much more quickly.
3. Documentation: Search the Handbook/Documentation relating to your operating system.
4. Read the Manual: Read the manual pages relating to your problem.
5. Mailing Lists: Search through the mailing list archives relating to your topic. You can also sign up for a number of list, and often you find solutions to problems that you haven't had yet ;-)
6. Forums: Search the forums, relating to your distribution to see if someone else has answered your question.
7. Ask: After exhausting all other options ask your question on a forum. Make sure that no one has asked your question before, and that you have searched every where else first. Also make sure that you place your question in an appropriate forum, in an appropriate place.

Have Fun!!!

7 Must Read OpenBSD man pages

In OpenBSD the manual pages are very important, well written documents. They comprise most of the written documentation for OpenBSD. Countless hours of work has gone into making them easy to read, and follow.

If you are new OpenBSD there a number of man pages which are a must read. These man pages can can explain much of the way that OpenBSD works, and many things that you can achieve using the system. Giving you a clearer perspective on your system.

1. man(1): To view the manual pages you will need to use: man(1). The man(1) program displays a manual page in your terminal for you to read. For more information see: man(1).
2. apropos(1): When your new to a system it can be difficult to know what manual page you need to read to achieve a task, enter: apropos(1). The apropos(1) program will locate and display all the commands containing a user specified keyword.
3. hier(7): If your new to OpenBSD, or *nix systems make sure to check out the hier(7) manual page. This page details how the filesystem works, and gives you a good understanding of how the system is laid out.
4. afterboot(8): When you first install an OpenBSD system you should check out the afterboot(8) man page. This well written man page, will tell you all the things that you should check/do after installing your system.
5. packages(7): Once you have your system installed and configured you may want to add some software. If you would like to install binary packages check out the packages(7) man page.
6. ports(7): If you would prefer to install software from source here is an overview of the ports(7) system.
7. intro: If you would like to know what the numbers after the commands are, there is an explanation in the man(1) manual page, also you can read an introduction to each section here: intro(1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9).

Have fun Using OpenBSD :-)

Learning Networking, OpenBSD style

I have only been learning OpenBSD for the past couple of weeks, so I am still eagerly learning how the Networking side of things works.
Until today I have never looked much into pf. I have used IPFW2 and IPF many times, and iptables a bit, but never pf. I started out with the information in the OpenBSD FAQ. I always find that this is a good place to start. Then the man pages available on the subject

Reading: I started out with the OpenBSD FAQ Networking section:
http://openbsd.org/faq/faq6.html
As well as investigating the following pages:
lo(4);
The loop interface is a software loopback mechanism which may be used for performance analysis, software testing, and/or local communication.
pflog(4);
The pflog interface is a pseudo-device which makes visible all packets logged by the packet filter, pf(4). Logged packets can easily be monitored in real time by invoking tcpdump(8) on the pflog interface, or stored to disk using pflogd(8).
sl(4);
The sl interface allows serial lines to be used as network interfaces using the slip protocol
ppp(4);
The ppp interface allows serial lines to be used as network interfaces using the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).
tun(4);
The tun driver provides a network interface pseudo-device. Packets sent to this interface can be read by a userland process and processed as desired.
enc(4);
The enc interface is a software loopback mechanism that allows hosts or firewalls to filter ipsec(4) traffic using pf(4).
bridge(4);
The bridge device creates a logical link between two or more Ethernet interfaces or encapsulation interfaces
vlan(4);
The vlan Ethernet interface allows construction of virtual LANs when used in conjunction with IEEE 802.1Q-compliant Ethernet devices.
gre(4);
The gre network interface allows tunnel construction using the Cisco GRE or the Mobile-IP (RFC 2004) encapsulation protocols.
gif(4);
The gif interface is a generic tunnelling pseudo-device for IPv4 and IPv6.
carp(4);
The carp interface is a pseudo-device which implements and controls the CARP protocol. carp allows multiple hosts on the same local network to share a set of IP addresses.
tcpdump(8);
tcpdump prints out the headers of packets on a network interface that match the boolean expression.
pflogd(8);
pflogd is a background daemon which reads packets logged by pf(4) to a pflog(4) interface, normally pflog0, and writes the packets to a logfile (normally /var/log/pflog) in tcpdump(8) binary format.
pf(4);
Packet filtering takes place in the kernel. A pseudo-device, /dev/pf, allows userland processes to control the behaviour of the packet filter through an ioctl(2) interface.
ioctl(2);
The ioctl() function manipulates the underlying device parameters of special files. In particular, many operating characteristics of character special files (e.g., terminals) may be controlled with ioctl() requests.
pf.conf(5);
The pf(4) packet filter modifies, drops or passes packets according to rules or definitions specified in pf.conf.
altp(9);
altq - kernel interfaces for manipulating output queues on network interfaces

The things that I have learnt today

As the day is drawing to a close, I like to look over the things that I have read about and learned through out the day. This helps to clarify these things in my mind and also to have a reference for further study.

RFC exploration, I read through the following RFC, a couple of times to gain a good understanding of it:
RFC0001 : Host Software, S. Crocker [ April 1969 ] (TXT = 21088 bytes)

Man Pages, I had a bit of a re-read of the following man pages:
netstat(1), ifconfig(8), carp(4)

Wikipedia, I read the following wikipedia pages:
IMP, IP address, IPX, AppleTalk, RPC

I also started to read: Understanding IP Addressing

Overall I am trying to gain a better understanding of my area of interest. I have recently completed my Network Engineering and Systems Administration diplomas and I don't feel that I know my subjects as well as possible. I think in the school environment you get way to caught up in the format of the work (i.e. layout of assignments, and documents), in project management and other matters, which are not necessarily important in gaining knowledge in the area. Therefore I believe that I now need to make sure that my knowledge is sufficient. I will admit that I possibly have way higher expectations on myself than is sometimes necessary. :)

OpenBSD4.0

OpenBSD 4.0 was released yesterday, I was quick to get my hands on it to try it out. I installed it into my testing environment.

There are many new features in OpenBSD 4.0, Including:
Improved hardware support, especially for wireless devices. Increased functionality in many tools, including:
ftp(1) which now supports https,
IPsec, which has been improved in many ways,
carp(4) now has improved failover handling,
cdio(1) can now blank a re-writable disk and preform track-at-once burning,
pf(4) supports uRPF checks for simplified ingress filtering.
As well as improvements in many other tools.

For a complete list of what is new please see: http://openbsd.org/40.html#new. And for a detailed log of changes between the 3.9 and 4.0 releases see: http://openbsd.org/plus40.html
The official OpenBSD 4.0 CD set is available from OpenBSD's online store.
I downloaded the Network install of OpenBSD 4.0 from: http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html. The i386/cd40.iso is available here: ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.0/i386/cd40.iso (4.88MB, MD5)

The Install
The install procedure has not changed since 3.9, anyone who has ever installed OpenBSD will find it very easy to follow. Install instructions can be found at: OpenBSD 4.0 Installation Guide. I completed a standard install. I was not interested in the X windows system or anything like that at this stage, as I am building a firewall.
Once I had completed the install I ended up with a root login, from there I added another user, and locked down the root account.
Then I started playing around with all of the new features, and seeing how they work and the options and switches that make them do so. So far all of the things that I have tried have worked perfectly, and it has not been difficult to set them up or to workout there command structure.
I have personally never read more helpful man pages than those produced by the OpenBSD team, they are clear, concise and easy to follow. So before you get stuck try them out, I hope you find them as informative as I do.
Overall I have found OpenBSD 4.0 to be a very fine system, congratulations to the OpenBSD team, once again you have produced an outstanding Operating System which you should be Very proud of. I know that I will be honoured to run this system.