This a place for me to keep track of what's working, what's not, and any workarounds I'm using.
- A urtwn based wireless networking adapter and/or an axe based wired adapter. OpenBSD does not support the builtin wireless chipset, so you'll need something for internet access.
- A thumb drive to use for installation. I rather like this USB adapter combined with this SDHC card, myself.
- A USB hard drive for backups between upgrades.
- A spare Mac running OS X and VMware Fusion for creating the USB installer. Alternatively you could burn CDs and boot off a CD drive.
- Download the OpenBSD 5.5-beta 2014-01-17 amd64 snapshot CD iso image.
- Download the matching ports source.
- Download the matching kernel source.
- Download the matching userland source.
- Download the urtwn firmware.
- Running OSX on a spare Mac, create a new virtual machine and configure VMware Fusion to boot off your USB drive
- configure your virtual machine to use the OpenBSD iso as a CD drive and your USB drive as the hard drive and then boot the virtual machine.
- Install OpenBSD on your USB drive using the virtual machine you configured.
- Copy the additional installation files you'll need onto the USB drive. You can do this at the end of OpenBSD installtion onto the USB drive, when you get a shell prompt right before reboot. Or you could do this after you reboot.
$ mount /dev/cd0a /mnt$ cp -R /mnt/5.5/ /- source code
- firmware
- OR using a BSD box, follow these instructions for creating a USB installer.
- boot to usb
- enable full disk encryption
- overcome obstacle 1: the screen goes blank after a while
- finish install, reboot, and login
- copy sources and untar them in the right places
- install the wireless firmware
- configure the wireless adapter
- disable acpivout to avoid hangs when running X-Windows
- disable apmd to avoid hangs when running X-Windows
- OpenBSD 5.5-beta 2014-01-17
- Gnome 3, with some exceptions noted below
- sound
- adjust display brightness
- manually adjust cpu speed from the command line
- wireless networking adapters overheat and disconnect themselves
- Seahorse, the Gnome default password manager, crashes all the time
- adjusting volume level in Gnome too quickly leads to the volume set vs displayed to get out of sync
- built-in wireless
- automatic cpu speed adjustments based on usage
- suspend and resume in general, suspend and resume on lid close in particular
- keyboard backlight
- adjusting display brightness using the built-in function keys
- This guide will soon be out of date. OpenBSD is a moving target. Sorry.
- The OpenBSD devs do not come here. This is not an official anything. You (the reader) and I are probably the only ones looking at this. That is to say, don't file bugs here in the hope someone will notice and/or do something about them. In fact, probably best not to file bugs here in general, let me do it. ;)
- I am an OpenBSD newb. I'm just stumbling along, piecing together what I can through trial, error, Googling, and asking questions. I don't know the OpenBSD innards at all. Take all this with a grain of salt.
- Different Macbook Air models require different steps. Starting with the MacbookAir6,1 or later you shoudln't even try unless you're an OpenBSD developer trying to hack on the kernel.
- I started thinking about the value of open source after the Snowden revelations. I concluded that I would like more open source in my diet.
- Apple makes the best laptops. Open source hardware would be better, but we're not there yet. Plus, I already own Apple hardware.
- OpenBSD makes the best OS. Its open source and the developers care about code quality the way Apple cares about chamfered edges on their hardware. You haven't lived until you've used an OpenBSD man page.
- donate to OpenBSD
- Joshua Stein's notes on getting OpenBSD and Macbook Airs living together nicely.
- Post by Joshua Stein about his work on the multitouch driver.
- MacBook Air 5.1 specs