Neat! I didn't know OpenBSD had any Raspberry Pi support, anyone around with any experience? I have an extra 4 or to and "do stuff with OpenBSD" has been on my list for a while.
Yes. I run my mail server on a Raspberry Pi 4 on OpenBSD. Aside from having to flash an SD card (and having the install program install the sets to… itself) everythhing works exactly as you expect on any other OpenBSD install. You can’t really stray far outside the list of supported hardware unless you plan to roll things yourself, however. Eg, I’ve discovered that Waveshare carrier boards for the CM4 are hit or miss. NetBSD has much more comprehensive support for Raspberry Pis and the various accoutrements.
I have used OpenBSD on first a Raspberry Pi 3 and then 4. I liked it, until one day the system stopped responding on either SSH and the serial port, so I had to cut the power to reboot. That's fine, these things happen, but I lost several system files in the process and I couldn't figure out which ones. I only noticed because some things no longer worked and there were some files in /usr's lost+found.
OpenBSD's file system does not have journalling. Their closest equivalent, soft updates, was removed some versions ago, so that they can add journalling later. Until that happens, I will install OpenBSD anywhere again.
That's a shame because apart from that, it really is a good operating system. The documentation is excellent and there are some great services in base. I much prefer OpenSMTPD over Postfix, for example, because it's just a lot simpler and I don't feel unsure if I've missed some option that I really needed to change for the system to be secure.
Heads-up: OpenBSD does not yet support power-saving on anything Arm64. The CPU will be running at full throttle the entire time, which will be a showstopper in some cases.
Not true, CPU frequency scaling (apmd, cpu.setperf/perfpolicy) is supported on many ARM machines, including the ThinkPad X13s, Apple M1/M2 Silicon, Raspberry Pi 4 (but may depend on whether using EDK2 or U-Boot firmware).
Support for Snapdragon X Elite machines was added as recently as last month, even..
1. Last I tried about 9mo. ago on a Pi 4, you still need 3rd party firmware to make use of >3gb RAM. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that to work.
2. Even though the full image has the complete software set, the installer can't see it; you have to either use the network (I have a datacap, it's a pain point with FOSS sometimes), or load another drive with the sets.
Current release (7.7) and previous (7.6) worked great on my Pi 4. There were a few extra setup steps due to the unique firmware boot setup, but after it works exactly like any other OpenBSD system. I rarely think about it being ARM64.
Runs great even in a passive enclosure. It's gotten it quite hot before when left it running in a backpack by mistake... but it remained perfectly stable and I could SSH into it (though I didn't dare touch it).
