rewrite FreeBSD and OpenBSD install tabs for modern Chia

[BrandtH22]

Replace outdated instructions (Chia 1.1.4, FreeBSD 11, OpenBSD 6.8, Python 3.7/3.8, manual clvm_rs/chiavdf builds) with modern Poetry-based install.sh workflow for FreeBSD 13/14 and OpenBSD 7.x with Python >=3.10. Add community-supported disclaimers, known-limitations sections, and legacy HTML anchor elements to preserve external fragment links.

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Note

Low Risk
Documentation-only rewrite; low risk aside from potentially misleading users if OS/package versions or install.sh behavior differ from reality.

Overview
Updates the FreeBSD and OpenBSD tabs in installation.md to replace legacy, manual build steps (ports-built cryptography, clvm_rs/chiavdf hacks, keychain edits) with the current sh install.sh + Poetry workflow targeting FreeBSD 13/14 and OpenBSD 7.x with Python >=3.10.

Adds community-supported disclaimers, preserves old section fragment links via legacy HTML anchors, and documents OS-specific limitations and troubleshooting (notably BUILD_VDF_CLIENT=N timelord unavailability, no GUI, UPnP disable command, FreeBSD miniupnpc build workaround, and a note about compressed plots on FreeBSD).

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 22ad0b1. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

[BrandtH22]

pending review and confirmation of accuracy. I have asked the community to help with this here:
Chia-Network/chia-blockchain#8763 (reply in thread)

[danieljperry]

I don't have a way to test FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but I think you've included sufficient disclaimers for them.

[BrandtH22]

I don't have a way to test FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but I think you've included sufficient disclaimers for them.

I have reached out to a community dev who is going through to test the instructions and help update 💯

[cross]

Hey there. So, I tried these out. They didn't work straight away for me on FreeBSD 14.3/amd64.
First, there is no reason anyone would need to chsh to bash. If it needs bash, the invocation of install.sh should be "bash install.sh" not "sh install.sh", but I found that FreeBSD 14's sh is able to handle install.sh just fine, unless it's running bash on itself internally. (sh install.sh worked. I don't think FreeBSD's sh will use the shebang automatically in some way, so I think it's just sh, but.) I did install bash, but didn't run it.

Anyway. Most of install.sh runs fine. However, I found that it would fail to build/install miniupnpc. There were errors from that package, and not others. install.sh eventually exits unsuccessfully due to this.

I even went ahead and installed that package onto the system (pkg install py311-miniupnpc) and that installed 2.3.3, so the expected version. (may change later, but for FreeBSD 14.3 in May 2026). But poetry isn't able to use that installed that way I think. I don't know poetry.
After that failure in/from install.sh, I was able to:

. ./.venv/bin/activate
pip3 install miniupnpc
deactivate
sh install.sh

and it worked. pip is able to take the one from the system and present it in the venv, but I guess poetry doesn't do that?

Thanks.

[BrandtH22]

Hey there. So, I tried these out. They didn't work straight away for me on FreeBSD 14.3/amd64. First, there is no reason anyone would need to chsh to bash. If it needs bash, the invocation of install.sh should be "bash install.sh" not "sh install.sh", but I found that FreeBSD 14's sh is able to handle install.sh just fine, unless it's running bash on itself internally. (sh install.sh worked. I don't think FreeBSD's sh will use the shebang automatically in some way, so I think it's just sh, but.) I did install bash, but didn't run it.

Anyway. Most of install.sh runs fine. However, I found that it would fail to build/install miniupnpc. There were errors from that package, and not others. install.sh eventually exits unsuccessfully due to this.

I even went ahead and installed that package onto the system (pkg install py311-miniupnpc) and that installed 2.3.3, so the expected version. (may change later, but for FreeBSD 14.3 in May 2026). But poetry isn't able to use that installed that way I think. I don't know poetry. After that failure in/from install.sh, I was able to:

. ./.venv/bin/activate
pip3 install miniupnpc
deactivate
sh install.sh

and it worked. pip is able to take the one from the system and present it in the venv, but I guess poetry doesn't do that?

Thanks.

Hey @cross thank you very much for testing and the feedback.

I made some updates to the docs based on your feedback but can you check to make sure I captured everything correctly?
https://994.docs.chia.net/

Main changes are:

• removing the portion indicating bash is required
• adding a note about manually installing miniupc

Out of curiosity I know previous instances in FreeBSD had more difficulty supporting compressed plots, do you have compressed plots which you have tested this installation with?