https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/tags/openbsd/index.htmlHugoen-usAll text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:09:36 +0200https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/essays/openbsdzen/index.htmlSat, 28 Jun 2025 12:48:00 +0200https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/essays/openbsdzen/index.htmlOpenBSD and Zen I’ve been using OpenBSD for a long time. I’ve been sitting Zen for about two years, in the tradition of Seungsahn, with Ryōkan as a guide. Nobody asked me to connect these two things. But they kept connecting themselves. This is me trying to say why. Less is not a compromise OpenBSD ships without a lot of things other systems include by default. That’s a choice. Every piece of code that isn’t there is a piece of code that can’t have a vulnerability.https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/openbsdmalloc/index.htmlMon, 20 Apr 2026 17:09:00 +0200https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/openbsdmalloc/index.htmlThe unseen hero of OpenBSD: otto’s malloc What this is about This is me learning about OpenBSD’s malloc. I want to understand the internals better, the data structures, the design decisions, and why those decisions make heap exploitation so much harder. No deep dive but enough to get better understanding. What malloc actually does Every C program that needs memory at runtime calls malloc. malloc is a library function. It’s not a syscall – it’s a layer between your code and the kernel.https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/monitmon/index.htmlMon, 08 Dec 2025 11:40:00 +0100https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/monitmon/index.htmlIntroduction Requirements Installing Monit on OpenBSD Monit – Essential System and Router Services System monitoring runs every 45 seconds. The first check is delayed by 120 seconds to avoid overloading the system immediately after boot. set daemon 45 with start delay 120 Monit logs to syslog. `idfile` and `statefile` store Monit’s persistent state and identity across restarts. set log syslog set idfile /var/monit/id set statefile /var/monit/state Limits control buffer sizes and timeouts for program outputs, network I/O, and service start/stop/restart operations. This prevents Monit from hanging or processing excessive data.https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/rescuetotheraid/index.htmlWed, 15 Oct 2025 19:03:00 +0200https://polymathmonkey.github.io/weblog/artifacts/rescuetotheraid/index.htmlIntroduction So I had this USB Disk attached to my OpenBSD Router used as storage, one saturday when I was walking by I noticed the weird clicking sounds from the disk. So I knew my time was running before the disc would fail. Curiously, when I plugged the same drive into a Linux box, it was detected and even showed a valid OpenBSD partition table. That gave me a glimmer of hope: maybe the hardware wasn’t completely dead yet.