User:Paul/sandbox/OpenBSD Basic Server
OpenBSD has earned its reputation as a BSD descendant focused on security. With the increased development of OpenBSD's httpd and OpenSMTPD, plus most of the components commonly used in a basic web server, OpenBSD provides a highly secure and efficient choice for building servers.
Finding online support for OpenBSD can be much more difficult when compared to Linux. While the OpenBSD project requires its man pages to be very complete, support beyond man pages such as tutorials or sample configurations can be much harder to find. This has largely been due to the project being targeted at use primarily by professional systems administrators.
This tutorial will establish a basic web server that includes a functioning mail server with local maildir accessed through mutt.
Notable differences from Ubuntu Linux
Shell
Ubuntu default shell uses Bash (BASH) while OpenBSD uses KornShell (ksh).
ll (ls -alF)
Ubuntu has a convenient command, ll, for viewing directory contents that is a shortcut for ls -alF.
To add ll to the OpenBSD command line:
$ nano .profile
Add the following line:
alias ll="ls -alF"
Default editor
The default text editor in OpenBSD is vi. To change to a different default text editor:
$ nano .profile
Add the following line:
export EDITOR=nano
OpenBSD in its default configuration comes with `opensmtpd` in a very secure configuration that supports outgoing mail. This is primarily useful for transactional email, most especially administrative messages.
Administrative message recipients can be configured in the aliases file and are default configured to be sent to the local root user local mailbox. To configure additional recipients:
$ doas nano /etc/mail/aliases
Change and add:
# Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present MAILER-DAEMON: postmaster postmaster: root root: username@example.com, anotherusername@example.net