GANEŠ ŠIVA ATLANTIS ANARCHY

1FCD-OpBSD aka Karma BSD, Copyright (c) George Sipos, March 2008

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Installation

The diskette image is in the Zip format; it must be unpacked and written to a floppy using this command (FreeBSD, Linux = /dev/fd0; OpenBSD = /dev/fd0a):

dd if=karmabsd.img of=/dev/fd0a

or you can use the rawrite.exe utility, which can be found on many Unix sites; it is also included in the 1FCDBSD package (One Floppy CD Audio and MP3 Player). You can also use utilities like Winimage.

As I found some incompatibilities between DOS, Windows 98 and Windows XP, try rawwritewin.exe if you use Windows XP/W2K/W3K and rawrite.exe for Windows 98 only. Winimage should work everywhere.

How to use 1FCD-OpBSD-1.0 or WHAT IS KARMA BSD?

One Floppy OpenBSD MP3 Player or 1FCD-OpBSD aka Karma BSD is a small system that fits on one floppy and plays MP3 files over network (NFS), or in mounted drives. This is a quickstart howto - tips how to use this software. If you are looking for a comprehensive help, this is not the right place to start.

Exactly four years ago I started 1FCDBSD-1.0, which is the same thing as Karma BSD; however, 1FCDBSD is a FreeBSD 4.5 system and thus a bit old. 1FCDBSD supports playing Audio CD's, Karma BSD does not. But Karma BSD is built upon a newer version of OpenBSD and it has therefore a better support for audio cards. Karma BSD is a simple One Floppy MP3 player which can be parallelly used with more purposes - as it has a network support, you can mount a NFS volume of a remote computer and play MP3 files there, or execute a binary there (if the remote machine is OpenBSD and the binary is compiled statically). Of course, you can create such a static binary (of cdplayer, mp3blaster, etc.) yourself and copy it to another diskette, network or memory file system - a preformatted diskette (DOS, FFS, etc.) can be created with use of /mybin/floppy script (/mybin is in the PATH, just type "floppy"); memory file system (MFS) can be adjusted with /mybin/resizetmp script, just type: more /mybin/resizetmp to see the syntax.

MINIMAL REQUIREMENTS

386 Processor and 8 MB RAM, no hard disk is necessary. However, this configuration may have many problems and this is not the issue of Karma BSD when such an old computer will not work. MP3 is a unique compression that requires a good processor, usually Pentium 133 is absolutely the best choice to use as the minimum. I tested this BSD on Toshiba 220 CS notebook (48 MB RAM, 133 MHz Pentium), Compaq notebook (200 MHz Pentium, 64 MB RAM), IBM T23 notebook (1 GHz Pentium III and 256 MB RAM) and several desktop computers where it worked.

HOW IT WORKS

1FCD-OpBSD uses mpg123-059r version, which is compiled statically. mpg123 has many options, but look elsewhere for tips and tricks. All you need to do with Karma BSD is to mount a disk (USB; UDF: CDROM/DVD, ISO9660: CDROM/DVD; NTFS; EXT2FS; FAT MSDOS file systems; NFS file system), and type "mpg" (or "1" or "2"), which is a script in /mybin directory; it creates a playlist in /tmp from anything mounted in /mnt2 ("1" mounts a CD to /cdrom and "2" to /cdrom2). There are also /mnt3 and /mnt4 directories. With such a unique mounting ability, this floppy can also be used as an installation tool for notebooks with broken CDROMs - even very old notebooks have USB ports but they often appear without a functional or with a broken CDROM drive. How to install a system to such a notebook? OpenBSD installation floppy does not support NTFS or EXT2FS filesystems, so 1FCD-OpBSD is the best solution to copy anything from a USB stick to a hard disk (use the "cp -R" command for this, example is at the bottom).

Do not use newfs, disklabel or fdisk commands if you are not an experienced Unix user. This system is intended for use with older computers and inappropriate behavior may result in data loss. First backup and then study documentation for the above commands. After the computer starts, you may take the floppy out and mount another one.

On the picture above you see Karma BSD playing Hindu mantras through serial console in the Windows environment by means of Putty - thus anybody may also have access to any second computer (notebook preferably) with broken display or keyboard (keyboard should allow at least typing of set tty com0).

TIPS

TIP 1: Making an MSDOS filesystem
In case you have an old notebook and want to use this thing for data copying and the notebook's disk is corrupted, you can create an MSDOS file system with the newfs_msdos command. Examples:
newfs_msdos /dev/rwd0i
-F is FAT type, example: -F 16, or -F 32: newfs_msdos -F 32 /dev/rwd0i
or you can format a floppy:
newfs_msdos -f 1440 -L label fd0c (or fd0a, it depends on your system)

TIP 2: How to configure NFS
Put the following to your /etc/rc.conf (or rc.local) on your desktop OpenBSD machine (not where this floppy runs) and reboot:
portmap=YES
nfs_server=YES
To mount a NFS volume, you must have your REMOTE (server) computer configured as a NFS server. On the SERVER part (OpenBSD in this case, but not the computer where this floppy runs) put the following in the /etc/exports file:
/mnt -alldirs -ro network 192.168.0
Remember: If you make changes to /etc/exports while NFS is already running, you need to make mountd aware of this! Just HUP mountd on the SERVER and the changes will take affect (kill -HUP `cat /var/run/mountd.pid`).

On the CLIENT computer - 1FCD-OpBSD in our case, just type:
mount -t nfs 192.168.0.1:/ /mnt
and that's it.

Look into documentation of systems other than OpenBSD - they may have their own NFS configuration different from the one described above.

TIP 3: How to mount a drive
To mount any drive (NTFS drive, for example), first type: disklabel wd0, or disklabel sd0 (USB disk); you will see partitions marked with letters like j:, k:, l:, m:, never use c:; unfortunately, disklabel may see NTFS drives as unknown, but it does not matter - if you type: mount_ntfs /dev/wd0j /mnt, your NTFS drive will sit up in /mnt (read only); the same applies to EXT2FS (writable), MSDOS FAT (writable), etc.

TIP 4: What you should not do
Do not type "umount -a", as all MFS directories will disappear and a playlist cannot be created in the /tmp directory anymore (/tmp will not be writable). No damage will occur, but you will have a read-only system. Look into /mybin/resizetmp script to learn how to repair this.

TIP 5: Booting with kernel configuration
This system has a boot config (kernel configuration). Just type boot -c at the boot prompt.

TIP 6: Using FDISK
This system has OpenBSD fdisk utility (disklabel too). To prepare an MSDOS style partition, type: fdisk -e wd0, then: print (or help to learn more); then: edit 0 (if 0 is the partition you want to edit); then: 04 (for DOS FAT16), or 0B or 0C (both for FAT32), or A6 (for OpenBSD), A5 (for FreeBSD), A9 (for NetBSD), 83 (for Linux), 82 (for Linux swap). Then type "quit" to save changes.

TIP 7: How to use this thing with serial console
This mini BSD also supports the serial console (capturing output of a remote computer's screen to the screen of the local computer over a serial cable). What you have to do is to write the following: set tty com0 at the boot prompt when this floppy starts and then type: tip tty00 on your desktop computer (not the one where this floppy runs). You can thus control the computer that has a broken keyboard or display (notebook). "set tty com0" may be written to the boot.conf and started automatically, but this is not implemented here. You can use fdisk, disklabel, or you can play MP3 files over the serial console.

TIP 8: Playlist and umount
After a CD was mounted, the mounting script ("1" or "2") will make a playlist of tracks in the /tmp directory - you may view it with the "pl" command. If you stopped the MP3 player by pressing Ctrl+C twice, the CD will be still mounted (/cdrom or /cdrom2). The "1" ("2") script, when run again, will umount /cdrom (/cdrom2).

TIP 9: DVD's and CD's
This little BSD also works with USB CDROM/DVD external devices. Just use the mount command - 1FCD-OpBSD does not differentiate between CDROM/DVD devices, just type: mount -t udf (DVD or CD with UDF format); for example, "mount -t udf /dev/cd0a /cdrom" OR "mount -t 9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom", and if you have a DVD-RAM disk in your DVD drive, it will be mounted too (UDF).

TIP 10: Do not type the same commands again
You may use the arrow up (keyboard) - the shell remembers all commands that you executed and you do not have to type them all over again.

TIP 11: Diagnostic
This system has the dmesg command which is good for debugging. You can make a copy of everything dmesg shows by typing: dmesg > /mnt2/dmesg.txt

TIP 12: This floppy in a CD
You can make a CD from this floppy by using the mkisofs command (on another system, of course) with option -b for booting from a floppy.

Other tips
Type: "cp -R /mnt2/myNTFSdrive /mnt3/myDOSdrive" to copy files from mounted disks with all subdirectories.
Type: "more /etc/allcommands" to see all commands this BSD supports.
Type: "floppy" to format a diskette; or to backup or restore configurations. You must use a preformatted diskette.
Type: "more /mybin/resizetmp" to see how to reconfigure RAM.
Type: "more /etc/license" to see the license.
Type: "more /etc/cards" to see the network cards (NIC's) and sound cards this Mini BSD supports.
Type: "ifconfig" to find out supported network cards; if dc0 was found, then type: "ifconfig dc0 192.168.0.2".
Type: "more /etc/TODO" to see how you can help.

Look into the SONaFR introduction to learn more on how to configure the network.

Enjoy!