I don't often write my articles in English (yeah, there are some in English), but as this time some people concerned don't speak French, it makes more sense to write it in English.
Why this internship?
To graduate my engineering school, I have to do a two-month internship abroad (so anywhere but not in France).
Why THIS internship?
Because as you may be aware, I really like OpenBSD so what's better than doing it with OpenBSD developpers?
OpenBSD developpers?
I did the internship at vantronix/Compumatica where mpi@, mikeb@ and (former) mickey@ work. (I can't say if a first name beginning with the letter "m" is mandatory or not :p).
Where?
So it was in Aachen (or known as Aix la Chapelle for French people) in Germany. The city is really nice. A huge and nice park was at only ten minutes on foot with a bunch of cute squirrels and it was really cool to go there when the run shone (yeah, it happened sometimes).
What did you do?
Working on a OpenBSD computer <3
The first thing I did was installing OpenBSD on the laptop they provided me (which was a x201, as the one I own). I copied my ~/.config on the freshly installed laptop (and it just worked, I was amazed) so it was configured exactly as I like.
I really appreciated to work on an OpenBSD computer with the settings I want. I'm so fed up to use windows as well in school that in my apprenticeship.
Showing some love to the documentation
I then fixed and updated the documentation they provide to customers for the products the company sells. The patchs related to OpenBSD (like for man pages) were merged upstream, of course.
Establishing IPSEC tunnels
Mike asked me to set up some ipsec tunnels (both with isakmpd and iked) because he wanted to see something. I was scared because I know how complicate ipsec standards are, but it just worked. Quite astonished.
xkeyboard
At first I thought there was a bug laying in OpenBSD xkeyboard because when I used Debian on my laptop I saw a difference. It was just because they don't have the same layout by default.
I mailed the Xorg maintener to know why the difference and why not choose a better default for every one. I try to argue why fr-oss would be better but after being answered a couple of times "we should do as Windows do", I stop replying to not to be rude.
I finally did the change on my computers. I noticed that there was a bug which was fixed upstream, so I looked for the git repo then looked for the patch and then tried it on OpenBSD xenocara, it was a great experience.
sikrit project
I begin to work on a project but as long it's not finished, I don't want to talk about it. :)
Preview of mpi's talk to EuroBSDcon
He did a talk to show his slides and have feedback, mainly from mikeb@ and mickey@, for the talk he's doing at EuroBSDcon in Sofia. It was interesting to attend.
Sum up
I learnt a lot of things, had a couple of really interesting discussions (about OpenBSD, private stuff (aka life), free software and so on). I also had a lot of fun because they're funny guys like when mpi@ did his pre-talk or in various occasion.
One time I remember is when mikeb unlinked crypto(4). He said "oh, it wasn't present on Vax, I know, I'll call that the vaxination" :D
I think how much I'm sad right now is pretty meaningful about how much I loved it.
Thanks
This internship wouldn't have happened without the help of Lucile and stsp@. I'm really grateful for their help.
Obviously, I'd like to thank mikeb@, mpi@ and mickey@ for their reception, their support, all the things they taught me and making me go ahead. And also, mikeb for his advice to what to order for lunch, I usually followed it blindly even I didn't know what I would get, but I've never been disappointed :D
And in broader way, to all the staff of Compumatica for all their welcome, their tries to talk with me in French (that was funny).
Some links
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140725646723662&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140725660023766&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140746716804227&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=140952023712487&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141043410332344&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141097034506575&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141091440819059&w=2
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=141091837920339&w=2
(they may not all be there).
