OpenBSD 4.8 Install on CTFROUTER-2

CTFROUTER-2 is an intel atom based system providing 5 Gigabit LAN Interface, a Wifi N network card (that can be used as an access point with OpenBSD), 4 USB ports, VGA, PS/2, And 1 Serial Port.

Being searching for a long time about such a device, the Price/Quality Ratio is really good !

More information on CarTFT.com

This hardware is a really cool solution for replacing any proprietary Modem/Router provided by ISPs.

CTFROUTER series devices come preinstalled with ClearOS , a CentOS linux based gateway/firewall/proxy operating system.

ClearOS seems to be the perfect OS for such platform, but doesn't fit my needs .

So after contacting CarTFT about Warranty issues (about installing such an OS on this device), I decided to install OpenBSD 4.8 (Latest version while I'm writing this article) on this device (thanks to Oliver Aigner from CarTFT for his answers ! ;) )

My Home network is … special : 2 OpenVPN server instances (bridged themselves for accessing home network), 1 OpenVPN Client instance (for accessing my job network), 2 Wan Accesses (routed by 2 Cisco 877 routers with Advanced IP Services IOS), multiple internal VLANs, and IPv6 enabled network.

Yes ! OpenBSD, Because I think it is the Best OS for a gateway device. This Operating System incorporates many routing and network protocols, without installing any additional package. I use it for 2 years, and it impressed me everyday, as linux can also do ;) .

For the Key Features :

• Native Link aggregation using LACP
• Native VLAN tagging management
• Native bridge management
• Native Load balancing on TCP services
• Native IPv6 stack and stateless adressing tools (using rtadvd)
• Native Conditional routing for ipv4 and ipv6 (using PF)
• Native Layer 2 to 4 statefull firewall (using PF)
• Up to Layer 7 firewall (with limitations).

It is possible to fetch a OpenBSD USB Install Image from SourceForge.net

Download the “USB Install” image : approx 235 MB.

We need a 512 MB Usb Key (at least) to copy the image (The uncompressed image file size is 500000 kBytes).

Binary copy using dd : (in this case, using Ubuntu Linux 10.04 : /dev/sdc is the USB key device : Take guard to unmount it, before using dd command)

dd if=/path/to/install48.bin of=/dev/sdc

It can take some time (In French , sorry ;) ) :

Gigabit Network interfaces are handled by “re” native OpenBSD driver , so the interfaces are named re0 to re4. wifi interface (Atheros AR9281) is handled by “athn” driver : it is named athn0.

OpenBSD can natively handle these interfaces types :

• “trunk” : LACP trunking (Link aggregation)
• “vlan” : VLAN tagging
• “gif” : 4to6 tunneling
• “tun” : VPN tunelling

Plug a screen and a keyboard on CTFROUTER : switch on , and press F11 during boot process to select the USB Key as boot device.

OpenBSD starts install process : during this step , hard disk drive will be detected as 'sd0', and USB Key as 'sd1'.

Select your keyboard layout : type “list” to get a full list of available layouts .

Hostname configuration : put the hostname of your router device. IP Configuration follows .

We don't need X Server on our router device ! so answer no to this question ;)

Disk partitioning : we want to use the whole disk.

Auto Layout for “OpenBSD slices” suits our need, except /usr/X11R6 …

Install OpenBSD sets : As said before, USB Key is recognized as 'sd1'

Several sets are available from USB key.

But we don't want all : remove :

• all X11 sets by typing : -x*
• games by typing : -g*
• all developpement languages tools by typing : -c*

but we want multi-processor kernel, since hardware provides dual-core processor.

• +bsd.mp

Install finished …