Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

8.2 - X won't start, I get lots of error messages
A common cause for X problems is the machdep.allowaperture 
sysctl(8)
 setting. Since this defaults to 
being disabled on OpenBSD, this is a fairly likely cause of the problem. 
You need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf and set machdep.allowaperture=2 (or 1, depending upon your 
platform). This will allow X to access the aperture driver, 
xf86(4)
, upon the next reboot. It can not be 
made available after boot. This can also be set during install if you answer "Y" when you are asked 
whether you expect to run the X Window System. 
OpenBSD requires that the aperture driver be activated on alpha, amd64, i386, macppc and sparc64 
platforms to control access to the video boards. Other platforms use a safer way to handle the video 
system, and do not need this (and do not have it in their kernel). If you do not anticipate using X on your 
system, it is recommended that you not enable the aperture driver. 
For more information about configuring and using X on your platform, see the 
/usr/X11R6/README
file on your installed system. 
8.3 - Can I use programming language "L" on OpenBSD?
You will find support for many common programming languages either in the base system (more 
specifically in the 
baseXX.tgz
and 
compXX.tgz
 file sets), or in the 
packages and ports system
. It is 
recommended that you install the required file set or package containing the specific compiler you want 
to use, instead of building it from source. For some compilers, building from source requires a lot of 
system resources and is often unneeded unless you have specific needs or there is 
no package available
. 
The following table attempts to give an overview of compilers for different languages, where you can 
find them, and whether there are any issues or limitations with them. Some of these are limited to certain 
platforms. This can be seen either by examining a 
search result
 through the ports tree, and noting what is 
mentioned in "Archs", or by inspecting the port's Makefile directly. In the latter case, look for lines 
containing 
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS
, 
NOT_FOR_ARCHS
, 
BROKEN
, etc. 
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8 - General Questions
Note: For ease of use, this article provides an alphabetical list, without distinguishing between different 
categories of programming languages. This is not a comprehensive list of everything that is available or 
can be used on OpenBSD. If you feel there are inaccuracies or issues which are not mentioned here, feel 
free to 
report
 that. 
Language Where?
Notes
Awk
base49.tgz
, 
awk
(1)
 
lang/gawk
 
GNU awk
C, C++
comp49.tgz
, 
gcc(1)
The C/C++ compilers in the base system have been audited and 
they have several security enhancements (e.g. ProPolice) enabled 
by default. Please see 
gcc-local(1)
 for details. They will also emit 
warnings when using unsafe functions such as sprintf(), strcpy(), 
strcat(), tmpnam(), etc. Most platforms use gcc 4.2.1. 
lang/gcc
lang/llvm
These compilers have not gone through the security audit and do 
not contain security enhancements like those in the base system. 
The gcc binaries are renamed 
egcc
, 
eg++
, etc. to avoid confusion 
with their counterparts in the base system. 
Caml
lang/ocaml
 
Objective Caml
COBOL
lang/open-cobol
 
Erlang
lang/erlang
 
Fortran
lang/g77
 
Only Fortran 77 support.
lang/gcc
Fortran 95 is also supported by 
egfortran
in gcc 4.0 and above. 
This new compiler is available as a subpackage (f95) of gcc. 
Haskell
lang/ghc
 
lang/nhc98
 
Java
devel/jdk
Sun JDK - only 1.7 as a package; for older version see build 
instructions below.
lang/classpath
essential core class libraries for Java
lang/kaffe
lang/jikes
 
Fast compiler, works well. This needs a "run-time jar", the 
bytecode version of all the standard API. 
devel/eclipse
 
Large IDE; works with Sun JDK
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html (4 of 20)9/4/2011 10:02:10 AM

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8 - General Questions
Lisp
lang/clisp
 
Lua
lang/lua
 
Additional Lua libraries and auxiliary utilities are available in the 
ports tree.
Perl
base49.tgz
, 
perl
(1)
 
Many Perl modules are available in the ports tree, so search there 
first before installing modules from CPAN.
PHP
lang/php
 
Plenty of subpackages are available for different PHP modules. 
Prolog
lang/gprolog
 
GNU Prolog compiler.
lang/swi-prolog
SWI-Prolog environment.
Python
lang/python
 
Other ports are using Python 2.7 by default.
Ruby
lang/ruby
 
Scheme
lang/chicken
 
lang/scheme48
lang/scm
shells/scsh
Smalltalk
lang/squeak
 
Tcl
lang/tcl