Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

I don't want to install the compilers
Ok, don't, but please don't tell yourself this is for "security reasons". By the time someone is far enough into your system 
that the presence or absence of the compiler matters, they are far enough in they can install a compiler themselves. 
However, the compXX.tgz file set is relatively big and has a lot of files in it, so it can take a while to install and upgrade, 
and on slow or small systems, this can matter. 
If you do decide to not install the compiler, you will probably need another system to maintain and build updated 
software on. There are far more systems that have been compromised because of improper maintenance than there have 
been because a compiler was installed. 
4.8 - How should I partition my disk?
Obviously, the answer to this question varies tremendously based on your use of the system. OpenBSD can be installed 
in as little as 512M, but installing to that small of a device is something for advanced users. Until you have some 
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html (29 of 43)9/4/2011 10:01:58 AM

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4 - OpenBSD 4.9 Installation Guide
experience, a 4G to 8G HD is recommended to start with. 
Unlike many other OSs, OpenBSD encourages users to partition their disk into a number of partitions, rather than having 
just one or two big partitions. There are a number of reasons to partition your disk: 
●
Security: You can mark some filesystems as 'nosuid', 'nodev', 'noexec', 'readonly', etc. This is done for you by the 
install process, if you use the recommended partitions. 
●
Stability: A user, or a misbehaved program, can fill a filesystem with garbage if they have write permissions for 
it. Your critical programs, which hopefully run on a different filesystem, do not get interrupted. 
●
Speed: A filesystem which gets written to frequently may get somewhat fragmented. (Luckily, the ffs filesystem 
that OpenBSD uses is not prone to heavy fragmentation.) 
●