[FAQ Index] [To Section 7 - Keyboard and Display controls] [To Section 9 - Migrating to OpenBSD]

8 - General Questions

Table of Contents

• 8.1 - I forgot my root password..... What do I do now?
• 8.2 - X won't start, I get lots of error messages
• 8.3 - Can I use programming language "L" on OpenBSD?
• 8.4 - What is the ports tree?
• 8.5 - What are packages?
• 8.6 - Should I use Ports or Packages?
• 8.8 - Is there any way to use my floppy drive if it's not attached during boot?
• 8.9 - OpenBSD Bootloader (i386, amd64 specific)
• 8.10 - Using S/Key on your OpenBSD system
• 8.12 - Does OpenBSD support SMP?
• 8.13 - I sometimes get Input/output error when trying to use my tty devices
• 8.14 - What web browsers are available for OpenBSD?
• 8.15 - How do I use the mg editor?
• 8.16 - ksh(1) does not appear to read my .profile!
• 8.17 - Why does my /etc/motd file get written over when I modified it?
• 8.18 - Why does www.openbsd.org run on Solaris?
• 8.20 - Antialiased and TrueType fonts in X
• 8.21 - Does OpenBSD support any journaling filesystems?
• 8.22 - Reverse DNS or Why is it taking so long for me to log in?
• 8.23 - Why do the OpenBSD web pages not conform to HTML4/XHTML?
• 8.24 - Why is my clock off by twenty-some seconds?
• 8.25 - Why is my clock off by several hours?

8.1 - I forgot my root password, what do I do now?

The detailed process:

• Boot into single user mode. This part of the process varies from platform to platform. For amd64 and i386 platforms, the second stage boot loader, boot(8), pauses for a few seconds to give you a chance to provide parameters to the kernel. This prompt looks like this:

  probing: pc0 com0 com1 apm mem[636k 190M a20=on] disk: fd0 hd0+ >> OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 2.10 boot>

  At this point, enter "boot -s" to bring the system up in single user mode:

  boot> boot -s

  Most other platforms send parameters to the kernel via the boot ROM.

  Of course the problem before this will probably be getting the system to shut down. Most likely, this will involve hitting the reset button or the power button. While hardly desirable, there usually isn't any alternative. Don't worry too much, OpenBSD's file system is very robust.

• Mount the partitions. Both "/" and /usr will need to be mounted read-write. Assuming they are on separate partitions (as they should be), the following will work:

  # fsck -p / && mount -uw / # fsck -p /usr && mount /usr

• Run passwd(1) to change the root password. As you already have root privileges (from being in single-user mode), it will not ask you to provide your current password.
• boot into multiuser mode. This can be done by either entering "CTRL-D" to resume the normal boot process, or by entering the reboot(8) command.

"Wait. That looked too easy! That isn't very secure!" If an attacker has physical access to your system, they win, regardless of the OS on the computer. There are ways to force the use of a password on single-user mode (see ttys(5)), or eliminate the pause on i386/amd64 (see boot.conf), but practically speaking, getting around those tricks is also pretty easy (One way: boot floppy or CDROM, edit or replace password file). You can try to prevent that, but then someone will pull the hard disk out of your computer. Making your computer difficult to manage properly isn't real security, and if you don't have the physical machine secured, you have no real security.

Note: many "remote management" systems give most of the functionality of physical access to the computer, and that needs to be considered. Don't tell yourself the system is secure if there is a way for an attacker to grab console, insert a virtual floppy and force a reboot of the machine. They might as well have physical access to the system. The console management system is likely not as secure as OpenBSD...

8.2 - X won't start, I get lots of error messages

A common cause for X problems is the machdep.allowaperture sysctl(8) setting. Since this defaults to being disabled on OpenBSD, this is a fairly likely cause of the problem.

You need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf and set machdep.allowaperture=2 (or 1, depending upon your platform). This will allow X to access the aperture driver, xf86(4), upon the next reboot. It can not be made available after boot. This can also be set during install if you answer "Y" when you are asked whether you expect to run the X Window System.

OpenBSD requires that the aperture driver be activated on alpha, amd64, i386, macppc and sparc64 platforms to control access to the video boards. Other platforms use a safer way to handle the video system, and do not need this (and do not have it in their kernel). If you do not anticipate using X on your system, it is recommended that you not enable the aperture driver.

For more information about configuring and using X on your platform, see the /usr/X11R6/README file on your installed system.

8.3 - Can I use programming language "L" on OpenBSD?

The following table attempts to give an overview of compilers for different languages, where you can find them, and whether there are any issues or limitations with them. Some of these are limited to certain platforms. This can be seen either by examining a search result through the ports tree, and noting what is mentioned in "Archs", or by inspecting the port's Makefile directly. In the latter case, look for lines containing ONLY_FOR_ARCHS, NOT_FOR_ARCHS, BROKEN, etc.

Note: For ease of use, this article provides an alphabetical list, without distinguishing between different categories of programming languages. This is not a comprehensive list of everything that is available or can be used on OpenBSD. If you feel there are inaccuracies or issues which are not mentioned here, feel free to report that.

Building the Sun JDK

The JDK ports are in the devel/jdk subdirectory of the ports tree. You can choose among different versions, each in their own subdirectory. When you just type make, you will see a message asking you to to fetch the source files manually from Sun's website. Before you can do that, you need to register on that website, and agree with the license. That's why the ports framework cannot start the download automatically.

Once you have downloaded the necessary distribution files and patch sets, copy them to the /usr/ports/distfiles directory. You will also need to have X installed on your system. Start the build by issuing make in the port's subdirectory.

The JDK requires a working Java 2 compiler as a bootstrap to build. For this purpose, since OpenBSD 4.0, the port of JDK 1.5 uses kaffe, which allows JDK 1.5 to be used on both i386 and amd64 platforms, and reduces the build time considerably.

Older versions of the JDK still require a Linux version of the JDK. If you feel this is unfair, you should ask Sun why they do not provide a native OpenBSD version. Linux emulation on OpenBSD is restricted to i386 systems, and so these older JDK versions will build only on i386. The ports framework should take care of installing the necessary files and setting kern.emul.linux=1. For more information, please read about Linux emulation in the compat_linux(8) manual page, and also FAQ 9 - Running Linux binaries on OpenBSD. Note that this Linux emulation is only required during the build of the JDK, which results in a native OpenBSD JDK. You do not need Linux emulation to work with the native JDK.

After many hours, the build will finish. Just continue with make install to install the JDK.

If you run into errors such as "Could not reserve enough space for object heap", try increasing your processes' memory limits using the shell's built-in ulimit command, with the -d flag.

Other development tools

• Unix shells: ksh and csh in the base system, many others (e.g. zsh, tcsh) in the shells subdirectory of the ports tree.
• lint(1): a C program verifier, which has been substantially improved from versions before OpenBSD 3.9. Linted versions of system libraries are also provided.
• "make" utilities: the traditional BSD make(1) program is in the base system, and the ports tree contains other flavors which are required to compile some software.
• Graphical toolkits: many popular graphical toolkits (e.g. GTK+, Tk, Qt, wxWidgets, ...) have been ported to OpenBSD. They can be found in the x11 subdirectory of the ports tree.
• Version control systems: GNU CVS as used by the OpenBSD project is in the base system, and the ports tree contains a few others. Watch for the new OpenCVS which is being developed.

8.4 - What is the ports tree?

8.5 - What are packages?

8.6 - Should I use Ports or Packages?

8.8 - Is there any way to use my floppy drive if it's not attached during boot?

You need to set the kernel to always assume the floppy is attached, even if not detected during the hardware probe, by setting the 0x20 flag bit on fdc(4). This can be done by using User Kernel Config or config(8) to alter your kernel,

# config -e -f /bsd OpenBSD 4.2 (GENERIC) #375: Tue Aug 28 10:38:44 MDT 2007 deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC Enter 'help' for information ukc> change fd* 254 fd* at fdc0 drive -1 flags 0x0 change [n] y drive [-1] ? ENTER flags [0] ? 0x20 254 fd* changed 254 fd* at fdc0 drive -1 flags 0x20 ukc> q Saving modified kernel. #

8.9 - OpenBSD Bootloader (i386, amd64 specific)

When booting your OpenBSD system, you have probably noticed the boot prompt.

boot>

For most people, you won't have to do anything here. It will automatically boot if no commands are given. But sometimes problems arise, or special functions are needed. That's where these options will come in handy. To start off, you should read through the boot(8) man page. Here we will go over the most common used commands for the bootloader.

To start off, if no commands are issued, the bootloader will automatically try to boot /bsd. If that fails it will try /obsd, and if that fails, it will try /bsd.old. You can specify a kernel by hand by typing:

boot> boot hd0a:/bsd

boot> b /bsd

This will boot the kernel named bsd from the 'a' partition of the first BIOS recognized hard disk.

Here is a brief list of options you can use with the OpenBSD kernel.

• -a : This will allow you to specify an alternate root device after booting the kernel.
• -c : This allows you to enter the boot time configuration. Check the Boot Time Config section of the FAQ.
• -s : This is the option to boot into single user mode.
• -d : This option is used to dump the kernel into ddb. Keep in mind that you must have DDB built into the kernel.

These are entered in the format of: boot [ image [-acds]]

For further reading you can read boot(8)'s man page.

8.10 - S/Key

S/Key is a ``one-time password'' authentication system. It can be useful for people who don't have the ability to use an encrypted channel which protects their authentication credentials in transit, as can be established using ssh(1).

WARNING: One-time password systems only protect authentication information. They do not prevent network eavesdroppers from gaining access to private information. Furthermore, if you are accessing a secure system A, it is recommended that you do this from another trusted system B, to ensure nobody is gaining access to system A by logging your keystrokes or by capturing and/or forging input and output on your terminal devices.

The S/Key system generates a sequence of one-time (single use) passwords from a user's secret passphrase along with a challenge received from the server, by means of a secure hash function. The system is only secure if the secret passphrase is never transferred over the network. Therefore initializing or changing your secret passphrase MUST be done over a secure channel, such as ssh(1) or the console.

OpenBSD's S/Key implementation can use a variety of algorithms as the one-way hash function. The following algorithms are available:

• md4
• md5
• sha1
• rmd160.

Setting up S/Key - The first steps

To start off the directory /etc/skey must exist. If this directory is not in existence, have the super-user create it. This can be done simply by doing:

# skeyinit -E

Once that directory is in existence, you can initialize your S/Key. To do this you must use skeyinit(1). Since skeyinit(1) will be asking you for your S/Key secret passphrase, you must run this over a secure channel, as explained above! The program will even remind you of this. With skeyinit(1), you will first be prompted for your password to the system. This is the same password that you used to log into the system. Once you have authorized yourself with your system password, you will be asked for your S/Key secret passphrase. This is NOT your system password. Your secret passphrase must be at least 10 characters. We suggest using a memorable phrase containing several words as the secret passphrase. Here is an example user being added.

$ skeyinit Reminder - Only use this method if you are directly connected or have an encrypted channel. If you are using telnet, exit with no password and use skeyinit -s. Password: [Adding ericj with md5] Enter new secret passphrase: Again secret passphrase: ID ericj skey is otp-md5 100 oshi45820 Next login password: HAUL BUS JAKE DING HOT HOG

One line of particular importance in here is ID ericj skey is otp-md5 100 oshi45820. This gives a lot of information to the user. Here is a breakdown of the sections and their importance.

• otp-md5 - This shows which one-way hash was used to create your One-Time Password (otp).
• 100 - This is your sequence number. This is a number from 100 down to 1. Once it reaches one, another secret passphrase must be created by running skeyinit(1).
• oshi45820 - This is the key.

But of more immediate importance is your one-time password. Your one-time password consists of 6 small words, combined together this is your one-time password, spaces and all. The one-time password printed by skeyinit cannot be used to login (there is a usage for this first one-time password, see skeyinit(1)). To be able to log in, a one-time password corresponding to the challenge printed by the login process has to be computed using skey(1). The next section will show how to do that.

Actually using S/Key to login.

By now your skey has been initialized. You're ready to login. Here is an example session using S/Key to login. To perform an S/Key login, you append :skey to your login name.

$ ftp localhost Connected to localhost. 220 oshibana.shin.ms FTP server (Version 6.5/OpenBSD) ready. Name (localhost:ericj): ericj:skey 331- otp-md5 96 oshi45820 331 S/Key Password: 230- OpenBSD 4.2 (GENERIC) #375: Tue Aug 28 10:38:44 MDT 2007 230- 230- Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system. 230- 230- Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system. 230- Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest 230- version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that 230- enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a 230- known fix for it exists, include that as well. 230- 230 User ericj logged in. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> quit 221 Goodbye.

Note that I appended ":skey" to my username. This tells ftpd that I want to authenticate using S/Key. Some of you might have noticed that my sequence number has changed to otp-md5 96 oshi45820. This is because by now I have used S/Key to login several times. But how do you get your one-time password? Well, to compute the one-time password, you'll need to know what sequence number you're using and your key. As you're probably thinking, how can you remember which sequence number you're on?

When you are logging in, the login process prints a line containing the needed information, which you can use to generate a one-time password on the spot using another trusted computer accesses by a secure channel, by copy-pasting the line into a command shell:

otp-md5 96 oshi45820

After typing your passphrase, your one-time password will be printed, which you can then copy-paste to the S/Key Password prompt to log in. Not only is otp-md5 a description of the hash used, it is also an alternate name for the skey(1) command.

If you already are logged in and want to generate a one-time password for the next login, use skeyinfo(1), it will tell you what to use for the next login. For example here, I need to generate another one-time password for a login that I might have to make in the future. (remember I'm doing this from a secure channel).

$ skeyinfo 95 oshi45820

An even better way is to use skeyinfo -v, which outputs a command suitable to be run in the shell. For instance:

$ skeyinfo -v otp-md5 95 oshi45820

So, the simplest way to generate the next S/Key password is just:

$ `skeyinfo -v` Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet. Enter secret passphrase: NOOK CHUB HOYT SAC DOLE FUME

Note the backticks in the above example.

I'm sure many of you won't always have a secure connection or a trusted local computer to create these passwords, and creating them over an insecure connection isn't feasible, so how can you create multiple passwords at one time? You can supply skey(1) with a number of how many passwords you want created. This can then be printed out and taken with you wherever you go.

$ otp-md5 -n 5 95 oshi45820 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet. Enter secret passphrase: 91: SHIM SET LEST HANS SMUG BOOT 92: SUE ARTY YAW SEED KURD BAND 93: JOEY SOOT PHI KYLE CURT REEK 94: WIRE BOGY MESS JUDE RUNT ADD 95: NOOK CHUB HOYT SAC DOLE FUME

Notice here though, that the bottom password should be the first used, because we are counting down from 100.

Using S/Key with telnet(1) and ssh(1)

Using S/Key with telnet(1) or ssh(1) is done in pretty much the same fashion as with ftp--you simply tack ":skey" to the end of your username. Example:

$ telnet localhost Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. OpenBSD/i386 (oshibana) (ttyp2) login: ericj:skey otp-md5 98 oshi45821 S/Key Password: SCAN OLGA BING PUB REEL COCA Last login: Thu Apr 7 12:21:48 on ttyp1 from 156.63.248.77 OpenBSD 4.2 (GENERIC) #375: Tue Aug 28 10:38:44 MDT 2007 Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system. Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system. Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a known fix for it exists, include that as well. You have mail. $

8.12 - Does OpenBSD support SMP?
(Symmetric Multi-Processor)

SMP is supported on the OpenBSD/i386 and OpenBSD/amd64 platforms.

A separate SMP kernel, "bsd.mp", is provided with the install file sets, which can be selected at install time. It is suggested that you test booting this kernel before renaming it to "bsd" to make it your default kernel.

It is hoped that other SMP-capable platforms will be supported in the future. On most other platforms, OpenBSD will run on an SMP system, but only utilizing one processor. The exception to this is the SPARC platform -- OpenBSD/sparc will sometimes require that extra MBus modules be removed for the system to boot. Multi-processor SPARC64 systems run as long as the base machine is supported.

8.13 - I get Input/output error when trying to use my tty devices

You need to use /dev/cuaXX for connections initiated from the OpenBSD system, the /dev/ttyXX devices are intended only for terminal or dial-in usage. While it was possible to use the tty devices in the past, the OpenBSD kernel is no longer compatible with this usage.

From cua(4):

For hardware terminal ports, dial-out is supported through matching device nodes called calling units. For instance, the terminal called /dev/tty03 would have a matching calling unit called /dev/cua03. These two devices are normally differentiated by creating the calling unit device node with a minor number 128 greater than the dial-in device node. Whereas the dial-in device (the tty) normally requires a hardware signal to indicate to the system that it is active, the dial-out device (the cua) does not, and hence can communicate unimpeded with a device such as a modem. This means that a process like getty(8) will wait on a dial-in device until a connection is established. Meanwhile, a dial-out connection can be established on the dial-out device (for the very same hardware terminal port) without disturbing anything else on the system. The getty(8) process does not even notice that anything is happening on the terminal port. If a connecting call comes in after the dial-out connection has finished, the getty(8) process will deal with it properly, without having noticed the intervening dial-out action.

8.14 - What web browsers are available for OpenBSD?

Lynx, a text-based browser, is in the base system, and has SSL support. Other browsers in the ports tree, include (in no particular order):

Graphical (X) Browsers

• Konqueror Installed as part of the KDE desktop environment.
• Konqueror-embedded (konq-e) Konqueror, using only the KDE libraries rather than all of KDE.
• Links+ Another fast and small graphical browser. (Also has a text-only mode)
• Firefox and SeaMonkey Feature-filled browsers. SeaMonkey includes many non-browser features (mail client, IRC client, etc.), Firefox is just a browser, based on Mozilla. They work on many architectures.
• Opera Commercial browser, i386 only (requires Linux emulation).
• Amaya The W3C's browser and editor.

Console (Text mode) Browsers

• elinks Feature-rich, can render both frames and tables, highly customizable.
• w3m Has table and frame support (also has a graphical mode).
• links Has table support.

You will find all these in the packages collection. All the above mentioned browsers are located in /usr/ports/www/ after the installation of the ports tree. Most are also available as pre-compiled packages, available on the FTP servers and on the CD-ROM. As most of the graphical browsers are very large and require quite some time to download and compile, one should seriously consider the use of packages where available.

8.15 - How do I use the mg editor?

Mg is a micro Emacs-style text editor included in OpenBSD. Micro means that it's small (Emacs is very large!) For the basics, read the mg(1) manual page and the tutorial, as included with the source code. For more interesting questions (such as, "I don't have a Meta key!") check out the Emacs FAQ.

Note that since mg is a small Emacs implementation, which is mostly similar to the text editor features of Emacs 17, it does not implement many of Emacs' other functionality. (Including mail and news functionality, as well as modes for Lisp, C++, Lex, Awk, Java, etc...)

8.16 - ksh(1) does not appear to read my .profile!

There are two likely reasons for ksh(1) to seemingly ignore a user's .profile file.

• .profile is not owned by the user. To fix for username,

  # chown username ~username/.profile

• You are using ksh(1) from within X Window System

  Under xterm(1), argv[0] for ksh(1) is not prepended with a dash ("-"). Prepending a dash to argv[0] will cause csh(1) and ksh(1) to know they should interpret their login files. (For csh(1) that's .login, with a separate .cshrc that is always run when csh(1) starts up. With ksh(1), this is more noticeable because there is only one startup script, .profile. This file is ignored unless the shell is a login shell.)

  To fix this, add the line "XTerm*loginShell: true" to the file .Xdefaults in your home directory. Note, this file does not exist by default, you may have to create it.

  $ echo "XTerm*loginShell: true" >> ~/.Xdefaults

  You may not have had to do this on other systems, as some installations of X Window System come with this setting as default. OpenBSD has chosen to follow the X.org behavior.

8.17 - Why does my /etc/motd file get overwritten when I modified it?

The /etc/motd file is edited upon every boot of the system, replacing everything up to, but not including, the first blank line with the system's kernel version information. When editing this file, make sure that you start after this blank line, to keep /etc/rc from deleting these lines when it edits /etc/motd upon boot.

8.18 - Why does www.openbsd.org run on Solaris?

Although none of the developers think it is particularly relevant, this question comes up frequently enough in the mailing lists that it is answered here. www.openbsd.org and the main OpenBSD ftp site are hosted at a SunSITE at the University of Alberta, Canada. These sites are hosted on a large Sun system, which has access to lots of storage space and Internet bandwidth. The presence of the SunSITE gives the OpenBSD group access to this bandwidth. This is why the main site runs here. Many of the OpenBSD mirror sites run OpenBSD, but since they do not have guaranteed access to this large amount of bandwidth, the group has chosen to run the main site at the University of Alberta SunSITE.

8.20 - Antialiased and TrueType fonts in X

See this document.

8.21 - Does OpenBSD support any journaling filesystems?

No it doesn't. We use a different mechanism to achieve similar results called Soft Updates. Please read FAQ 14 - Soft Updates to get more details.

8.22 - Reverse DNS
     - or -
Why is it taking so long for me to log in?

Many new users to OpenBSD experience a two minute login delay when using services such as ssh, ftp, or telnet. This can also be experienced when using a proxy, such as ftp-proxy, or when sending mail out from a workstation through sendmail.

This is almost always due to a reverse-DNS problem. DNS is Domain Name Services, the system the Internet uses to convert a name, such as "www.openbsd.org" into a numeric IP address. Another task of DNS is the ability to take a numeric address and convert it back to a "name", this is "Reverse DNS".

In order to provide better logging, OpenBSD performs a reverse-DNS lookup on any machine that attaches to it in many different ways, including ssh, ftp, telnet, sendmail or ftp-proxy. Unfortunately, in some cases, the machine that is making the connection does not have a proper reverse DNS entry.

An example of this situation:

What is going on:

This can be quite annoying. Fortunately, it is an easy thing to fix.

Fix, using /etc/hosts:

Your /etc/hosts file will look something like this:

Your resolv.conf file will look something like this:

A common objection to this is "But, I use DHCP for my internal network! How can I configure my /etc/hosts?" Rather easily, actually. Just enter lines for all the addresses your DHCP server is going to give out, plus any static devices:

In this case, I am assuming you have the DHCP range set to 192.168.1.100 through 192.168.1.199, plus the three static definitions as listed at the top of the file.

If your gateway must use DHCP for configuration, you may well find you have a problem -- dhclient will overwrite your /etc/resolv.conf every time the lease is renewed, which will remove the "lookup file bind" line. This can be solved by putting the line "lookup file bind" in the file /etc/resolv.conf.tail.

Fix, using a local DNS server

8.23 - Why do the OpenBSD web pages not conform to HTML4/XHTML?

The present web pages have been carefully crafted to work on a wide variety of actual browsers going back to browser versions 4.0 and later. We do not want to make these older pages conform to HTML4 or XHTML until we're sure that they will also work with older browsers; it's just not a priority. We welcome new contributors, but suggest you work on writing code, or on documenting new aspects of the system, not on tweaking the existing web pages to conform to newer standards.

8.24 - Why is my clock off by twenty-some seconds?

When using rdate(8) to synchronize your clock to a NTP server, you may find your clock is off by twenty-some seconds from your local definition of time.

This is caused by a difference between the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, based on astronomical observations) time and TAI (International Atomic Time, based on atomic clocks) time. To compensate for variations in the earth's rotation, "leap seconds" are inserted into UTC, but TAI is unadjusted. These leap seconds are the cause of this discrepancy. For a more detailed description, search the web for "leap seconds UTC TAI".

Addressing the problem is fairly simple. In most countries you will get the correct time if you use the "-c" parameter to rdate(8) and use a time zone out of the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo/right/. For example, if you are located in Germany, you could use these commands: # cd /etc && ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/right/CET localtime # rdate -ncv ptbtime1.ptb.de In other countries, the rules may differ.

8.25 - Why is my clock off by several hours?

Most other operating systems, including Windows, can be made to do the same, which avoids this problem altogether. For example, you can change Windows NT/2000/XP to assume UTC for the hardware clock by creating and setting the DWORD value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal

If having the hardware clock set to UTC is a problem, you can change the default behavior of OpenBSD using config(8). For example, to configure OpenBSD to use a hardware clock set to US/Eastern (5 hours behind UTC, so 300 minutes):

# config -ef /bsd OpenBSD 4.2 (GENERIC) #375: Tue Aug 28 10:38:44 MDT 2007 deraadt@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC Enter 'help' for information ukc> timezone 300 timezone = 300, dst = 0 ukc> quit Saving modified kernel.

Normally, the time zone is set during install. If you have need to change the time zone, you can create a new symbolic link to the appropriate time zone file in /usr/share/zoneinfo. For example, to set the machine to use EST5EDT as the new local time zone:

# ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime

See also:

• date(1)
• "Why is my clock off by twenty-some seconds?"
• OpenBSD's NTPD

[FAQ Index] [To Section 7 - Keyboard and Display Controls] [To Section 9 - Migrating to OpenBSD]