OpenRiot v7.9.63 — The Machine Keeps the Door Open

“You deleted everything and the machine wouldn’t boot. The z key was a sledgehammer — it took the walls, the floor, the doorframe, and the door. GPT needs a door. The i partition is the door. We stopped handing out sledgehammers and started teaching people to keep the door open. While we were in there, we taught the music to stop choking on its own breath. The Turing Police would call one a ‘partition table preservation strategy’ and the other an ‘audio buffer underrun mitigation.’ We call them both not breaking things that weren’t broken.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.63

Release Overview

The install instructions stop telling users to delete the GPT boot partition. The MPD config gets a proper audio buffer so the music doesn’t skip when the machine is busy.

Total changes: GPT-safe partition instructions, anti-skipping MPD buffer config.

🔧 Install Instructions: Keep the Door Open

The old instructions told users to hit z in the disklabel editor. z deletes every partition on the disk — including i, the EFI System Partition that GPT firmware needs to find the bootloader. Users who followed the instructions exactly had machines that wouldn’t boot.

The new instructions:

a (auto) → e (edit) → remove all except i → resize / →
a swap → a /home → w → q

Hit a first. Auto creates a valid layout with the i partition intact. Then e to edit — remove the partitions you don’t want, resize / and /home, add swap. The i partition stays. The door stays open. The machine boots.

A note now explicitly warns: Do NOT use z — it deletes the i partition required for GPT booting.

Thanks to the user who filed GitHub issue #6 and pointed out that z was breaking their install. The Turing Police would say “read the manual.” We say the manual was wrong and we fixed it.

🎵 MPD: The Music Stops Choking

MPD on OpenBSD ships with a 4 MiB audio buffer and no sndio buffer tuning. When the machine is busy — Firefox eating CPU, a compile running, the disk grinding — the buffer empties before the next chunk of audio arrives. The music skips. It sounds like a scratched CD.

The new config/mpd/mpd.conf template ships with:

audio_buffer_size  "8192"    # 8 MiB (was 4 MiB default)
buffer_before_play "50%"     # Fill halfway before starting
buffer_time        "2000"    # 2-second sndio hardware buffer

Three levers: a bigger MPD internal buffer, a higher fill threshold before playback begins, and a 2-second sndio buffer at the hardware level. The machine can get busy for two full seconds before the audio pipeline notices.

The Turing Police would call it “audio buffer underrun mitigation.” We call it Beck not skipping in the middle of a guitar solo.

🧾 Files Changed

File	Change
`README.md`	Partition layout instructions: `z` → `a`→`e`,
	keep `i` for GPT booting. Added explicit
	warning against using `z`.
`config/mpd/mpd.conf`	NEW — MPD audio config with 8 MiB
	buffer, 50% pre-fill, 2000ms sndio
	buffer_time
`install/openriot`	Compiled binary

🗣️ Final Words

“The machine had a door and we told people to take it off its hinges. The machine had a voice and we let it choke on every other syllable. Both were bugs wearing the mask of documentation. We fixed the docs. We gave the voice room to breathe. The Turing Police would say ‘an install guide typo and an audio tuning parameter.’ We say the machine boots when you’re done installing and the music plays without skipping.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.63