VirtualBox, OpenBSD and VT-x extensions

So OpenBSD requires VT-x extensions, which VirtualBox can happily pass through to it, so long as the underlying CPU has such extensions. My desktop doesn't, so on booting the VM, it segfaults everywhere. Someone here had a neato solution:


# get the UID of the OpenBSD VM
VBoxManage list vms
# now start that with no raw IO
VBoxSDL -norawr0 -vm UID


For me, problem solved!

Making an OpenBSD Bridge

There's no shortage of documentation showing how to set up a bridge on OpenBSD, but it all assumes you're using a full-blown OpenBSD, where you edit some files in /etc/rc.* and the rc.conf automagically takes care of it for you. When you're using the cut-down environment on a flashdist OpenBSD, none of this magic is done for you - all config is done in a simple /etc/rc file, which is just a shell script. So: what are the *manual* commands to summon a bridge into existence?

The answer is:

# create the bridge interface
ifconfig bridge0 create
# add the network interfaces that are part of the bridge
# these interfaces were already configured to be UP
brconfig bridge0 add vr1
brconfig bridge0 add vr2
# most important: bring the bridge interface up too
# it took me a while to figure this out
ifconfig bridge0 up


Net5501 serial console settings

It's been a while since I poked around the net5501 serial console. Setting up a new one today, I realised I'd forgotten the settings, which are: 19200 8N1, all flow control off