{"id":9195,"date":"2008-01-26T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-26T22:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2008\/01\/26\/openbsd-on-ppc\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:36:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:36:27","slug":"openbsd-on-ppc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2008\/01\/26\/openbsd-on-ppc\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenBSD on PPC"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>OpenBSD 4.2 (macppc) on a Powermac G4 AGP<\/center><\/p>\n

OpenBSD on PPC, specifically ‘s old Powermac G4 AGP, is weird. I axed the i<\/tt> partition thinking the MSDOS-ness of it was something left over from the disk’s old use, but it seems that it is actually needed for booting. OpenFirmware will look there, since it can understand FAT filesystems.<\/p>\n

Well, at least it’s now booting…<\/p>\n

It might be nice to shove a bunch of four-port NICs in here and use it as a firewall \/ hub \/ bridge \/ switch thing. Then I could do what is essentially per-port \/ per-device monitoring and firewalling. I think it would work well to have the Airport Extreme on one port, my Mac Pro on another, the workbench on one, the Xbox 360 on yet another.<\/p>\n

I wonder if this thing can run without a video card…<\/p>\n

This would be good for ACK prioritization which would really help me out when loads of photos are uploading. Hmm…<\/p>\n

Oh, also, the nifty real framebuffer, high-res, serif font is kinda neat.<\/p>\n

I think next I’ll try and clean it out (it’s full of cat dander), get it booting from flash, and get the noisy fans sorted out. Right now it’s only pulling 54 watts, but I’d love to get that even lower if it’s going to be a firewall.<\/p>\n

Hmm, if I got an Airport card for it (anyone have one of these — the old, original one?) I could also have an open AP, with monitoring, which only has access to the public internet. That’d be handy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OpenBSD 4.2 (macppc) on a Powermac G4 AGP OpenBSD on PPC, specifically ‘s old Powermac G4 AGP, is weird. I axed the i partition thinking the MSDOS-ness of it was something left over from the disk’s old use, but it seems that it is actually needed for booting. OpenFirmware will look there, since it can\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-making-things","category-moved-from-livejournal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24689,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195\/revisions\/24689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}