Teaching OpenBSD 2.7 ISDN


Table of Content


1 - Introduction

ISDN support for various BSD flavours was done by Hellmuth Michaelis and is called isdn4bsd or short i4b. Isdn4bsd is integrated part of FreeBSD since FreeBSD 3.0 and is to be integrated into NetBSD soon. Sadly the isdn4bsd package does not support OpenBSD 2.6 or newer -- Hellmuth had to drop OpenBSD support due to lack of time. Thats the point this page kicks in: here you'll find a patched i4b packet which applies cleanly to OpenBSD 2.7 and enables full ISDN support on OpenBSD.

2 - Supported hardware

ISA-Karten:
- Teles S0/8 or Niccy 1008
- Teles S0/16 or Creatix ISDN-S0 or Niccy 1016    (tested)
- Teles S0/16.3                                   (tested)
- AVM A1 or AVM Fritz!Card                        (tested)
- USRobotics Sportster ISDN TA intern
- Teles S0/16.3 PnP
- Creatix ISDN-S0 P&P

PCI-Karten:
- ELSA QuickStep 1000
- AVM Fritz!Card PCI                              (tested)
    

Kernel PPP does not work right now, but uerlevel PPP offers much more features (channel-bundling, dialin support, etc.) and works fine for me. You'll need to compile your own userlevel ppp daemon since the version OpenBSD is shipping does not support HDLC or isdnd-signaling.

3 - Downloading files

This stuff applies against OpenBSD 2.7 (actually OpenBSD-20000720) and Isdn4BSD-00.90.00-beta-111299.
As stated earlier you need to compile a new version of the userlevel ppp daemon since the one OpenBSD is shipping does not support HDLC and isdnd signaling.

4 - Step by step installation

# cd /usr/src
# tar -xzf ~/i4b-0.90.0-OpenBSD-20000720.tar.gz      # unpack patched i4b sources
# cd i4b/OpenBSD
# more INSTALL                                       # READ !
# sh ./install-openbsd.sh
# cd /dev; sh /usr/src/i4b/OpenBSD/MAKEDEV.i4b all
# [EDIT YOUR KERNEL CONFIG] && [BUILD KERNEL] && [INSTALL KERNEL]
# cd /usr/src/i4b
# cp -Rp machine /usr/include/i4b                    # IMPORTANT !
# cd /root
# tar -xzf ppp-20000608-OpenBSD.tar.gz               # unpack patched ppp sources
# cd ppp-OpenBSD
# make && make install

Reboot, read 'man ppp', 'man isdnd', 'man isdnd.rc' etc.
    
Setting up a PPP link over ISDN is just like setting up a PPP link over a modem execep two entries in your /etc/ppp/ppp.conf:
set device /dev/i4brbch0
set speed sync
    

5 - Example configuration

You may have a look at my running example configuration -- it proofed to be very stable:

6 - Special features

[ToDo]
[ToDo] Write some stuff about dialin configuration, setup of a answering machine etc...
[ToDo]
    

7 - Troubleshooting

8 - Feedback / Other resources

You may reach me at joerg@zilium.de
Please drop me a line if managed to get a not yet tested card running and report any unforeseen difficulties you encountered while installing -- doing so may help making future versions more userfriendly.

Some links you may find helpfull:

[1] http://www.unrest.de -- Alex Hoffmanns page about setting up ISDN on OpenBSD
[2] http://www.freebsd-support.de/i4b -- Isdn4bsd homepage
[3] http://www.awfulhak.org/ppp.html -- PPP daemons home



Joerg Bornschein
Last modified: Sun Aug 20 14:44:02 CEST 2000