Category: Someday you will need this

For better or worse, there’s different browser options out there, especially for non-mainstream platforms.  You know what I mean.  DragonFly developer tuxillo has put together a helpful page listing options and how to get them to build.

If you happen to be using DragonFly from a network location that only allows http/https as outbound traffic, you won’t be able to update /usr/src using defaults.  /usr/Makefile pulls DragonFly source using a git:// URL.

The fix is to use the read-only Github mirror.  You can set origin manually or just change GITHOST in /usr/Makefile (or GITURL_SRC if you are on DragonFly-master) to “https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD”.

(Guess what I did today?  Updated to note it’s different on -master.  Thanks tuxillo for reminding me of this whole thing.)

DragonFly has an automated installer, called PFI, for “pre-flight installer”.  It’s not well-known, and there isn’t a man page to link to for it that I can find.  Because of that, I jump at any chance I can get to link documentation or example configs.

To add to my ongoing slow fiddle with DragonFly: I’ve noted how to install in Hyper-V, and how to use Cygwin to connect to run X.  Here’s another step: if you are using PuTTY/Pageant, as I am, and want to connect, Cygwin/X needs to be told to listen on TCP.  Find your /usr/bin/startxwin file in Cygwin and change serverargs to:

serverargs=”-listen tcp”

And then in PuTTY, under Connection -> Session -> X11, check “Enable X11 forwarding”, set X display location to “:0.0”, and locate your .Xauthority file.  It will be in your user’s Cygwin home directory.  (tips found here)

plink can be used to create shortcuts – open an xterm directly into your DragonFly VM from your Windows desktop, for instance, with a shortcut that runs ‘plink <sessionname> xterm’.

If you are running a slightly newer version of Windows and aren’t trying to accommodate a ‘legacy’ PuTTY install, using Windows Subsystem for Linux may work better; I have not yet tried.

For the future edification of others: I mentioned I installed DragonFly under Hyper-V on a Windows 10 laptop.  I wanted to be able to open a terminal on DragonFly while in my Windows environment.  I have that now; here’s what I did:

• Installed DragonFly in Hyper-V (see my prior install notes)
• Installed xorg on DragonFly.  (pkg install xorg)
• Installed Cygwin/X on Windows 10 – specifically, the xauth, xorg, xterm, xclock, cygutils-x11, and openssh packages.
• In DragonFly, set these items in /etc/ssh/sshd_config :
  • X11Forwarding Yes
  • X11DisplayOffset 0
  • XAuthLocation /usr/local/bin/xauth
• Run XWin Server on Windows 10.
• Run CygWin64 Terminal on Windows 10
  • export DISPLAY=:0.0
  • ssh -Y (address of DragonFly host)
  • Once logged in, type ‘xterm’.

At this point, a terminal window should pop up on your Windows machine, showing your DragonFly username@hostname as the prompt.  You are set!

Next steps – getting this working with PuTTY, Pageant, and Plink.

I tried Hyper-V, and of course, I had to install a virtual DragonFly system.  Sascha Wildner very helpfully pointed out that DragonFly on Hyper-V requires a legacy network adapter and a gen-1 image type; both changes you can make during initial setup.  I’m noting it here for the benefit of future people walking down the same path.

Note: pick ‘legacy BIOS’ during the actual DragonFly install, too.