About This Book

This book is written for experienced Unix users or system administrators who want to add OpenBSD to their repertoire. I assume you’re familiar with basic commands, such as tail(1), chmod(1), ping(8), and so on, and that you know why each command in this list includes a number in parentheses after the name. We’ll discuss many programs that you might already be familiar with, but that might be slightly different in OpenBSD.

For maximum benefit, you should install OpenBSD on a dedicated machine. OpenBSD can coexist with other operating systems or run in a virtual machine, but if you’re going to use OpenBSD in a production environment, you should run it on its own.

Many people believe that OpenBSD is not the easiest Unix-like operating system, or the easiest version of BSD, or even the easiest open source BSD. OpenBSD doesn’t have handy wizards that walk you through each stage of the configuration process, although it does has a few menu-driven front ends. Once you’re familiar with how the system works, though, such wizards would only get in the way.

To truly understand OpenBSD, you must be willing to learn, experiment, and spend time accumulating understanding. Much of this knowledge can be directly applied to other versions of BSD, other Unix-like operating systems, and even completely foreign operating systems, such as Microsoft’s Windows.