I am running 3 OpenBSD computers in a home (labotary) environment network. I learn as a go (no pressure) and I am having fun. I have time on my hands, so my objective is to build confidence in solving the issues I encounter. My setup looks like this. One "Supermicro" gateway with 3 nics, one going Internet, one going Intranet and one for the DMZ server. This gateway offers DHCP services for all my Intranet (24 ports) as well as providing rudimentary PF for now. One "D510M" light server having a memory stick (8G) for the whole operating system and a very small hard disk drive (40G) on the side for the data I want to save. This server offers NFS, exports a directory for back-up purposes and allows mounting CDROM. At less than 5$, I can afford to buy 2 memory sticks (gateway + server) every 6 months and load a freshly OpenBSD release from a purchased CD. I never recycle memory sticks. I can always fall back one version in case I make an installation mistake. Usually a finger configurong problem files, like typing "flag" instead of "flags". The third machine is a portable Sony VAIO Notebook VPCM111AX with a dual boot (OpenBSD and Macrohard). It is a gift from my wife and I am compelled to use it. I did the OpenBSD installation on the portable via DHCP gateway pxeboot, mounting the CD from the server. Piece of cake when you read and re-read FAQ. All 3 machines always run with latest release (version 5.0 amd64) and applicable patches (only one so far). The trio works marval allowing me to experiment on a daily basis. >From time to time, I bring my portable to the local library where I load data I find interesting. I take pleasure to confuse people with my OpenBSD text mode solving sudoku and crosswords. They always give me this bizarre look as if I was hacking something. Back home I dump whatever I find of importance on the server. One day I will VPN directly from the library, but I am not there yet. I did not re-read the man pages often enough. The days I am in the library, I notice at boot time an unusual message right after the network deamon starts. Because I have no internet connections in the library, I suspect the nic gets confuse when the dhclient kicks in with a dead connection. Anyway the message is as follow:
"splassert: assertwaitok want -1 have 1" If I may ask a question: would going -current on the portable going to solve the issue when a nic is configured DHCP with a dead connection? All I need as an answer is a simple "yes" or "no". I will survive until the next release. My data is not corrupted and everything is under control as far as I can tell. Keep the good work. I am counting for the OpenBSD project to live forever. Cheers. Pix
