On Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 10:16:34PM -0000, Stuart Henderson wrote: > > Currently using a HAM specific Linux distro but I'd like to return to > > OpenBSD. > > I don't have one but I believe hackrf has a bit of support. There > are a couple of other relevant things in ports, however in general > you're probably better off sticking to Linux for this. SDRs usually > want userland support for USB devices and that doesn't work well in > OpenBSD.
I have a bucket of SDRs i've tried on OpenBSD. The rtl-sdr does work under OpenBSD, but the USB stack is particularly fiddly which is a recurring source of weird hard-to-debug issues. I've tried a rtl, hackrf, usrp (b210, b200), airspyhf, and a few others, and the only which I had any meaningful luck with was the rtl. I wouldn't suggest this route except in so far as you're looking to improve the codebase of the SDR libraries or brave enough to work on the OpenBSD USB stack. I sent a patch to USRP upstream that fixed building from source a while back, so the USRP library *can* work well enough to get metadata back from the radios, but it won't actually work because (I think?) of the usb transfer code. I posted a while back[1] after digging in a bit to what was causing the USB issues. I did not isolate the cause, nevermind fix it. I still process some RF data on an OpenBSD (mostly for fun/sport) -- but the only reliable way is to run the radio on a Linux box, and serve IQ over the network. OpenBSD's network handling code compared to the USB handling code is a lot more ... robust. Fondly, paultag K3XEC [1]: <ZCHKm9h7YYQiE4Uc@nysos> -- :wq
