haha thanks this seems so oddly familiar. setting up openbsd on a vps slowly. each problem as you write, stumped, searching frustratedly. only to find the answer staring me in the face in the docs i definitely tried to read the first time round :')... getting slowly more into the 'read it slowly and take notes'. litterally every issue :D. they say these man pages / docs are the best. they really are. maybe there is some learning curve to transition from bad documentation to good documentation...

either way, thanks for writeup, definitely going to reread it better and maybe it will save me some fallingonmyface soon!