Recent changes to OpenBSDBuild

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

bellidore — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:55:54 -0000

CDE is now available as an OpenBSD package. I have not tried it yet, but there is more information at https://openports.pl/path/x11/cde.

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

Roger Brown — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 09:21:59 -0000

I have been publishing built packages for OpenBSD, the last I did was for CDE 2.5.0
https://sourceforge.net/projects/rhubarb-pi/files/OpenBSD/7.1/amd64/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/rhubarb-pi/files/OpenBSD/7.1/aarch64/
and have a script to perform the whole procedure documented at https://sourceforge.net/p/rhubarb-pi/wiki/pkg-cdesktopenv/

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

Fredrik Ludl — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 13:20:43 -0000

Any OpenBSD packages?
This is the pure desktop :)

OpenBSDBuild modified by Jon Trulson

Jon Trulson — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 01:58:40 -0000

--- v50
+++ v51
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
     pkg_add ksh93         # OpenBSD ksh is still _not_ sufficient
     pkg_add motif         # OpenBSD 6.0+
     pkg_add tcl-8.6.6p0   # or whatever tcl v8.6 version is available
-    pkg_add gmake autoconf automake libtool bison
+    pkg_add gmake autoconf automake libtool bison opensp

 # Download and build CDE
 OpenBSD support is broken in release 2.2.4, but fixed in git 2.2.4a and later versions.

OpenBSDBuild modified by Jon Trulson

Jon Trulson — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 23:53:40 -0000

--- v49
+++ v50
@@ -23,14 +23,14 @@
 # Build
 **Version 2.4.0a and newer (autoconf)**

-For the BSD's, you must use gmake, and you must specify the location of the TCL install directory (the below example assumes TCL v8.6). On OpenBSD specifically, you must set some environment variables and add some C/CXXFLAGS to the configure step:
+For the BSD's, you must use gmake, and you must specify the location of the TCL install directory (the below example assumes TCL v8.6).  This should be the directory that contains the *tclConfig.sh* file.  On OpenBSD specifically, you must set some environment variables and add some C/CXXFLAGS to the configure step:

 ~~~
 $ export AUTOMAKE_VERSION=x.xx # whatever versions you have installed
 $ export AUTOCONF_VERSION=x.xx
 $ export LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
 $ ./autogen.sh
-$ ./configure --with-tcl=/usr/local/lib/tcl8.6 MAKE="gmake" \
+$ ./configure --with-tcl=/usr/local/lib/tcl/tcl8.6 MAKE="gmake" \
         CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" CXXFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include"
 $ gmake
 $ doas gmake install

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

Roger Brown — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 10:16:52 -0000

Hi, I have a build of 2.4.0 on ARM64 for both 6.8 and 7.0.
I do have a question about groups, on most platforms /usr/dt/bin/dtmail and /usr/dt/bin/dtmainpr are assigned to the mail group and have the setgid bit set, what is the equivalent for OpenBSD? I see no equivalent of mail in /etc/group

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

David Gartner — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 21:05:15 -0000

Awesome :)

I made the changes you suggested above in your comments and farther up in the instructions and things seem to now work.

Oh, the nostalgia. In a previous job I used to work with HP-UX daily and of course the desktop was CDE.

Just have to install the documentation now. We had the manuals at work but they were kind of light on some details.

Thanks again

OpenBSDBuild modified by vmlinuz719

vmlinuz719 — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 20:02:50 -0000

--- v48
+++ v49
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@

     shlib_dirs="/usr/dt/lib"

-If you want to be able to exchange calendar data with other users, you will need to add entries for your hostname (NOT just localhost) in /etc/hosts
+You will need to add entries for your hostname (NOT just localhost) in /etc/hosts

 ~~~
 127.0.0.1    myname    myname.my.domain
@@ -78,6 +78,8 @@

 ~~~
 doas rcctl enable cmsd
+doas rcctl enable inetd # not sure this does anything but might be needed
+doas rcctl enable portmap # needed to get past dthello
 ~~~

 Reboot

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

vmlinuz719 — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 19:52:06 -0000

If you're comfortable, post the contents of your hosts file. Make sure it contains an entry like:

127.0.0.1 hostname hostname.domainname

so if your fully qualified hostname (see uname -a) is openbsd.localdomain, you want

127.0.0.1 openbsd openbsd.localdomain

Otherwise it could be any number of issues related to running on a big endian platform. I will investigate as soon as my POWER9 hardware shows up.

Discussion for OpenBSDBuild page

David Gartner — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 18:06:54 -0000

First off thanks for this guide on how to setup CDE for OpenBSD. I downloaded the source and after a couple of changes I was apple to compile it on my old iBook G4 (which should be a lot more powerful than the Gecko that I used to have at work :)

Anyhow, I am having issues with the Desktop starting up. After logging in via xenodm I get the familiar blue screen giving the copyright information with the hourglass present. After a couple of minutes the blue screen dissappears and a blank screen appears. The mouse pointer is present but that is all that appears. The .xsession file is a symbolic link to the one provided by CDE (as described in the instructions above)

The logs that I know of /var/log and ~./dt/dterrors etc don't indicate any issues. I tried switching to dtlogin but it failed because it couldn't start an Xserver.

I know that X is setup on the machine because I can login via xenodm into the stock fvwm environment.

Any suggestions as to where I can look to get more information on what's happenning during startup? Elsewhere in these forums a user indicated that they changed the /etc/hosts file. I tried ammending mine but I'm not sure if I did it correctly since I'm not sure what this is trying to achieve. My system is connected to a home router and gets its' IP address via DHCP

Thanks