Follow-up: OpenBSD routers on AliExpress mini PCs

Oliver Lowe@hachyderm.io to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 178 points –

Follow-up: OpenBSD routers on AliExpress mini PCs

I got lots of replies to the last post showing the little OpenBSD internet gateway setup (super interesting; thanks!). Here's more info and pictures:
https://www.srcbeat.com/2024/02/aliexpress-openbsd-router/

Something I've been meaning to share for years now.

@selfhosted #openbsd #selfhosted #selfhosting

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Is this a qotom? When I bought mine the description on Amazon said it could be turned on via power restore from bios but I have 0 power settings in bios. No wake on lan, nothing.

I've searched for how to update the bios (or if this would even help) but it's hard to find clear information.

It might be a jumper on the board. Mine (Q770G4) boots on power, if I can organise some downtime with the family I'll take a look at it (set it up ages ago so can't remember).

Edit: CAB approval was easier than I expected! Mine is in the BIOS, under Chipset > PCH-IO Configuration, set State After G3 to Power On.

"EVALUATION COPY BIOS" was the best bit

Do you know what it's idle power usage is? I'm guessing below 10W?

Well written article. Could you point to the instructions you followed to set up OpenBSD as your router + Firewall?

This is really cool. I've been interested in running something like this. Does it make sense to have this as a dedicated firewall in front of my Unifi lan?

That's how I've got mine set up, with OPNsense.

I've been using it a few years and I only know about half the stuff that pfSense/OPNsense can do. So I would advise newbies to just make small changes at a time because there's a whole lot of stuff you can change. It's worth learning, though. I wouldn't use anything else for my main firewall/router nowadays.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
AP WiFi Access Point
NAS Network-Attached Storage
Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand

[Thread #572 for this sub, first seen 4th Mar 2024, 20:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

What would be the difference of running this as opposed to pf/opnsense? I know they use FreeBSD but I am not that versed in BSD based networking

pf/opnsense essentially provide web interfaces to the underlying
FreeBSD OS tooling. In this case I'm running plain OpenBSD. That means
configuring the system is mainly done by reading and writing text
files and doing stuff at the command line. There's a whole bunch of
reasons why some people prefer one way or the other or even mix things
up a bit. My recommendation is, if you're interested, have a go
administering a system without a web interface and see how you feel!
@Edgarallenpwn @selfhosted

I personally would stick to *sense. I personally used OPNSense there's a huge community backing, well documented, and actively maintained. I like to use the CLI, but using the Web GUI was a breeze and I mainly wanted to set it and forget it.

Really cool! I never touched *BSD, I have a mini PC/NAS home that ended with a minimal Arch install. This is something I can do at some point.

And what about Wireless networks?

Normally you use a separate AP to do that. BSDs don't normally have good support for WiFi cards. Consumer WiFi cards aren't really meant for use as APs anyway.

Been thinking about buying a similar setup, and you just pushed me into buying a "Chinabox"

Let's see how this goes, if It explodes you owe me a beer, and a pair of hands, and another chinabox (I'm not a quitter)