Strange things happening with my OpenBSD box, but excellent documentation saves the day
I haven't hooked up my OpenBSD 4.2 drive and booted it for about a week. The last time I left the box, I was playing around with Apache, and I thought all was well.
Today I hook up the drive and boot OpenBSD.
First of all, instead of a console login, I get an XDM login. That's strange. I don't remember XDM ever showing up before.
Then Internet networking doesn't work. I check all the networking settings. Everything is correct.
I can ping IP addresses on the local network, but nothing is working outside of that. Pinging google.com yields nothing. Since I can get local machines, I know it's not a bad cable.
Back to the OpenBSD FAQ. Instead of doing ifconfig, I check all the files that hold network configuration info. Nothing.
To start networking manually, the FAQ says to do this:
# sh /etc/netstart
An error message comes up. There's an error of some kind in /etc/rc.conf.
Now I know what happened. To start Apache automatically at boot, a line must be edited in /etc/rc.conf. I was trying it, and I must've screwed something up. As root, I edit the file. Sure enough, I had erroneously dropped a linefeed in the middle of the comment line to turn Apache on at boot.
I fixed the line, saved /etc/rc.conf and tried to start networking again from the command line.
It didn't work.
I rebooted.
This time, I got my usual console login. I started X manually. And Internet networking worked.
I also configured an anonymous FTP server. I had to manually change the permissions of the directory and files to root, but everything worked as advertised.
That's the strength of OpenBSD, as well as FreeBSD and NetBSD: the documentation is readable, comprehensive and up to date.
Over the past two days, I did a Debian Etch install in order to compare how all of this server configuration goes in Linux as opposed to OpenBSD.
And this is where the lack of documentation (even the man pages aren't all that up-to-date). At least the apache2 man page for Debian told me about the apache2 command. When httpd and apachectl start did nothing, I was in a bit of a quandary. Luckily I figured out that apache2 start and apache2ctl start would both work. Oh yeah, and the config files aren't where the Debian man page says they are. Instead of being in /usr/local/apache2/conf, they're in /etc/apache2.
I did figure out how to change the default directory for Apache in Debian (editing /etc/apache2/sites-available/default does it).
Part of the problem was that I started with Apache version 1.3 in OpenBSD (which doesn't include Apache 2 for licensing reasons) and had Apache 2.3 in Debian. And sure I don't know quite what I'm doing, but this is all on a local network, not the wide-open Internet, so I'm a bit more free to experiment.
All this underscores the value of good documentation. And when it comes to some distros -- Ubuntu, Red Hat and Suse -- there are doorstop-thick books available. And the good ones are worth their weight in any precious metal you care to name. Luckily the BSDs have great online FAQs to help get you started. And since integration between the kernel, userland and other packages is so tight in the BSDs, and the need for documentation is that much greater, I'm damn glad it's there.
Not that Linux doesn't need something similar, but I don't see any Linux distribution short of Gentoo providing documentation this comprehensive and finely tuned to its users.
Can anybody prove me wrong? I truly, sincerely hope so.
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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
apache 2 is in ports if you need it on OpenBSD, but it's really there to help porters work on getting apache 2 modules working on apache 1.
Nothing anywhere compares to the Handbook from FreeBSD in the Linux world, and the NetBSD Guide and OpenBSD FAQ both hold more important data than nearly anything I've seen from any Linux project, the biggest problem is the lack of cohesion. No Linux is near so complete in it's implementation as the BSDs, I use BSD documentation when dealing with other operating systems.
Just a minor note: don't edit /etc/rc.conf directly. Put any additions and changes into /etc/rc.conf.local instead. rc.conf holds all the default values, and should be kept as-is for reference. Also, at upgrade time you can update rc.conf to get any changes made in new version without losing your modifications. Further, keeping changes in rc.conf.local makes it trivial to see what you've changed, what you've activated, etc.
I have no problem with Apache 1.3 in OpenBSD rather than Apache 2. This isn't a production server, but an experimental one. I'm just getting confused about the way Apache is controlled and implemented in the various systems -- different commands to control the Web server, different locations for configuration files, etc.
But everything is working in OpenBSD, and I've been very happy with it.
I'm ready to try out FreeBSD soon. That Handbook is excellent, and there are quite a few good books on it, too. I will be reviewing Dru Lavigne's "The Best of FreeBSD Basics," in which she took all of her BSD columns over the years and updated them for the more recent versions of the OS. There are a lot of great tips in there. And Michael Lukas' "Absolute FreeBSD" is also very good (I've given it a cursory look over). Having all that great documentation is a huge plus.
You'd think that Ubuntu, being such a huge project, would be paying a lot more attention to documentation. But they seem focused only on the very basics in their handbooks. Luckily for Ubuntu users, there are quite a few comprehensive books out there, and I imagine most of that applies to Debian, which is lucky. Why there's not a "Debian Unleashed" book, or a Debian-specific book by Mark Sobell, I don't know. I'd like to see the same for Slackware. It's not like nobody is using these two major distros, and it's also not like all the people using Ubuntu couldn't or wouldn't benefit from using Debian or Slackware, too.
One of the major "selling" points for Red Hat (and the free versions from CentOS and Scientific Linux), as well as Ubuntu and Suse are the availability of great third-party documentation in the form of huge books.
I'd love for Michael Lukas to update his OpenBSD book. It's out of print now, but I'm getting a copy via interlibrary loan.
When reading the manual -- the man pages, the FAQ/Handbook -- yields such positive results, it really spurs you on to continue using whatever OS it is.
Hm how would you run apache if you had two versions installed?
Apache 1 and apache 2
For second one is obvious apache2 ;)
I of course agree nothing beets BSD (cause of its development nature - centralization of developing) documentation. Its simply great. But I miss more "howtos" which are really popular in GNU/Linux "world"
Why do the OpenBSD folks not include Apache 2, when just about every major Linux distro can do so? BSD like to claim their licence is more "free" than the GPL, yet they seem to have problems reconciling it with something that the Linux folks are happy to accept.
Funny, they sicken me. Howtos don't force users to actually learn anything.
Apache 2 has the apache 2 licence. It is not acceptable in the base system, just like the GPL, no new restrictive licences in base, only more liberal ones.
Not only that, apache 2 has nothing but Windows-centric performance improvements, nothing good for anyone using a Unix.