vnode.ch virtual home of a Unix developer

About one year ago, I wrote about how we used OpenBSD at the point of sale at the Basel Zoo. Well, the good news first: We replaced OpenBSD by NetBSD for our POS applications, both in development, but also for deployment.

Every now and then someone asks on the OpenBSD public mailing list if it is possible to have a graphical application start at system boot time, circumventing the usual xdm login screen.

I had to do exactly this for info kiosks in public libraries, where a web browser is to be started for visitors to browse the online catalogue. Another application are point of sale systems where the POS application handles the login.

Basel has one of Europe's most beautiful zoological gardens, called the Zolli by the locals. It has a breathtaking aquarium with an enormous variety of rare fish, corals and lower animals. Pufferfish and Xenocara can be watched in their natural habitat. Starting january 1st, 2009, those two fish no longer only swim around in their aquariums but every visitor to the zoo must pass them...