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by crehn 2618 days ago
I know it's often mentioned, but I love the simplicity of OpenBSD. Thank you all for the great work.
1 comments

Well, simplicity is one thing, but I was shocked to learn that it doesn't even come with the complete POSIX toolbox (e.g. out of the box awk is missing). And finding out that `ftp` also handles http and https was a bit weird too.

To some extent, I like that simplicity too (especially security wise) but I wonder if they are taking it too far.

How did you manage to get an OpenBSD install that didn't include awk?
I downloaded install64.iso started it and entered the shell. Next, I entered 'awk' and got the response:

sh: awk: not found

Maybe their live cd doesn't include the whole 'base' set?

The installer is not a live CD. It's only enough tooling to install openbsd.
Okay thanks, unexpected but good to know (at >340MB I would have expected a complete base system at least). Do you know if there is some up to date OpenBSD live CD somewhere?
At >340MB it does indeed have a complete base system. You just have to install it somewhere first :)

I don't know of any up-to-date prebuilt live CD/USB images, but I do know of guides to create them from another OpenBSD install (e.g. one in a VM): https://www.alti.at/knowhow/obsdlivecd/

The project isn't really interested in a live CD. If you just want to test openbsd, install it on a test machine.
If you just want to try it out, probably downloading a VM with vagrant is the easiest.
You're holding it wrong.

https://man.openbsd.org/awk

awk is there in base. Did you try to invoke it as 'gawk' or something?