NetBSD - A little guide for newcomers

joany

nia Thank a million.. 😄😄😄 Ive been googling many hours about thinkpad stuff.. Fantastic forum thanks @pin and @nia

mrkrisprolls

@pin Thanks a lot for putting these guidelines together.
I have an HP EliteBook 840 G1 that might turn orange soon 😇 My only concern being the wireless adapter, an infamous Broadcom BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n,....

mrkrisprolls My only concern being the wireless adapter, an infamous Broadcom BCM43228

Mine also had a broadcom chip but, as I got it from a dump, I looked for an Intel chip on another machine and swapped the cards 😁

Now, I do have access to an HP with a broadcom card. It runs Windows 10 and it's not mine but, I've booted NetBSD on it ~~and wifi works fine.~~ I'll check the model when I get my hands on it and let you know.

Else, swapping chips is damn easy and, since you have the same model as me, you know already that the BIOS will accept the Intel card.
You can buy one online for $30 - $40.
I'll also let you know exactly which one I have.

Check back in a few hours 😉

mrkrisprolls
My chip,

$ pcictl pci0 list | grep network
000:25:0: Intel I218-LM Ethernet Connection (ethernet network, revision 0x04)
002:00:0: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 WiFi (miscellaneous network, revision 0x34)

From the HP with the broadcom card,

$ pcictl pci0 list | grep network
000:25:0: Intel I218-LM Ethernet Connection (ethernet network, revision 0x04)
002:00:0: Broadcom BCM43228 Dualband 802.11 (miscellaneous network)

This is the same card as you have but, ifconfig only shows the ethernet connection and the loopback device, no wifi driver 🙁
I must have tried it on another machine and not on this one, sorry.

The good news is, the Intel chip is cheeper then when I last looked at it. I don't know where in the world you are located but, I've found used cards starting at $3.
Just search for it locally 😉

mrkrisprolls

@pin Thanks for having taking the time to check things out!
I did not know that one could swap wifi chip, that's good news! It seems that we are living in the same country, so that should not cost me a fortune to find such a component 😉
In the mean time I can always use a trusty generic usb wifi adapter !

mrkrisprolls It seems that we are living in the same country

In that case... Have a look here

mrkrisprolls

Tack så mycket !
Thanks a bunch!

mrkrisprolls varsågod 😁

Guide updated 😉

pfr

snufkin There is a big chance that I will install NetBSD on my main laptop (Thinkpad x230)

I just read some of your posts and I wanted to say that I was in the same place you were 2 years ago. I found this forum and was immediately attracted to the excellent content and the friendly and helpful users. Especially @pin for his easy to follow install guide and his willingness answer questions and to help new users get into NetBSD. He helped me alot (still does).

I quoted the above text because I initially purchased an X230 for the purpose of installing NetBSD and I currently use Spectrwm. It's a great wm and easily configured. Good luck with it!

nortonham

Thanks @pin for writing this, it was a big help to me getting started on netbsd.

I've found net to be a good balance between free and open if that makes any sense.

Edit: Just to add, I'll be on here often looking for help lol

nortonham thanks 🙂

chrisfromgreece

Tried netbsd on my pc with nvidia it has very good performance i like that compared to openbsd performance(even with supported amd gpu) but i have some problems on my ryzen/vega laptop touchpad doesn't seem to work tried getting some help but they couldn't help me with this problem. On OpenBSD touchpad works out of the box.
Is ryzen vega gpu supported i mean can i watch youtube videos etc etc ?
Drm says its not configured. I have installed amdgpu xorg and triee to do x configure but it cant create config file because it says the number of screens are not the same as those detected.
If there is anyone that can help i would gladly have a second look on netbsd.

rvp

chrisfromgreece Drm says its not configured.

amdgpu DRM is not enabled in the GENERIC kernel. Compile a new kernel with that enabled. (You may also have to disable all the radeon drivers. And maybe also copy the binary firmware blobs over from Linux.)

nia

rvp It's not included in GENERIC because it doesn't work yet. Actual working radeon support goes up to GCN 1 or so.

rvp

nia It's not included in GENERIC because it doesn't work yet.

Ah! That's why it's commented out. Thanks.

Refreshed.

bsduck

pin Add these to /etc/rc.conf with the following:

rpcbind=YES
dbus=YES
famd=YES

What are rpcbind and famd needed for? I've never had to enable them on other systems.

bsduck Needed and needed...

pin When I installed NetBSD for the first time, I remember I'd to collect bits and pieces of information from different places, some of which were rather old and outdated. So, I've decided to write this stuff down and publish it here.

Honestly, this was among the bits and pieces. That said to have famd running you need rcpbind, from /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/famd REQUIRE: DAEMON rcpbind.

If you don't need fam or to have access to NFS, than probably you won't need rcpbind either.
Other things from the bits and pieces that I have already removed were hal and avahi, which might be needed in some user cases as well.

I've now removed fam from my system and disabled rcpbind. If, I run into any issues what so ever, I'll report them back here.

JuvenalUrbino

bsduck What are rpcbind and famd needed for? I've never had to enable them on other systems.

If memory serves me right, GNOME2 (for gnome-vfs) and KDE4 would pull FAM on NetBSD. Nowadays I doubt the daemon elicits any crucial function for anything in the package tree and is probably just a leftover.

nia

pin For DNS-SD you can use mdnsd in base instead of avahi, it's quite a lot simpler. I can't really remember what avahi does that mdnsd doesn't... avahi has a GUI, but mdnsd has no configuration options and is mostly automatic.

nia Thanks for the hint. The only use case I previously had for avahi was discovery of network printers when using cupsd. But, since I've basically stopped printing stuff and just save documents as pdf locally, I no longer have a need for avahi or, cups.

Maybe something to revisit if needed, thanks once again.

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