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Embedded OpenBSD Running the Stallion ePipe
Louis Bertrand noted that in another win for free software, OpenBSD can now be found in the
guts of the Stallion
ePipe, a dial-up network gateway, a little like the IBM InterJet we mentioned a few days ago. Playing to OpenBSD's strengths,
the core processor is a Motorola ColdFire 5307 VL-RISC chip, and the
encryption is provided by OpenBSD's built-in encryption code. They've even written a cooperative press release about it, complete with OpenBSD's very cool blowfish.
Its quite usable.
You have vi, mail, apache, Bind4.7, etc...
Some weak ass linux users who need X, and have to have their mommies wipe their ass for them might find it unusable.
Any BSD user finds it a fortune that the kiddie down the street how only knows how to use gcc (to compile "reet sploits" so they can take down yahoo because they have a small penis) doesn't use their graceful and powerfull OS.
I guess all I have to say to that is "thank whatever gods exist that you are not in charge of /." Despite never having met you, I am rapidly deriving the conclusion that you are a pompous prick. (See my earlier response to one of your postings today.)
Why you post some of those by name Niekze so we can all benefit fronm your 'leetness?
...file journaling system
we/OpenBSD needs that too.
Good lord your whiny :P.
Yeah, I totally can't remember when that happened last. Certainly not today.
Why are the *BSD script kids so sensitive about Linux? Perhaps *BSD isn't so cool after all, but they aren't ready to concede that?
Is it just me, or does anyone else think the name "Stallion ePipe" sounds like something really dirty?
What's the link to that Moreton Bay nettel? Aren't Moreton Bay the guys that did the original PPTP VPN stuff (poptop or something)? I heard they had a development platform or something using Linux but didn't know they had or sold router hardware. Sounds really cool. Go Linux and free source.. patents SUCK!
Looks similar to moreton bay's NETtel (same kind of thing.. VPN router) which runs on a coldfire 5307.. except the guys at moreton bay use Linux :-)
but does it use cable or DSL?? who cares about hooking together 8 modems.. i long since trashed my unreliable phone line connection. and they're a bit Xpensive too! sheesh!
I thought Europeans had timed local calls.. what use would this be over there dialup modem wise? I know they have ISDN though. Who cares about europe anyway :)
Vive la texas
It's been noted a number of times now that the majority of patents by companies AREN'T for the purpose of screwing others out of the technology. Rather, it's to prevent themselves from losing the right to use it when someone ELSE patents it.
Now isn't that acceptable?
No, it isn't. "They'll do it if I don't" is no reason for you to do it.
After all, even Linus has a copyright on the name Linux.
Um, no. He has a trademark, which is a different critter entirely.
So I told him "Why not? I use it, don't I? So why shouldn't I pay for it?"
Doh, He/She must be a real looker!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Amen, brother !!!
i tried the obvious (some people are just damn lazy): http://www.moretonbay.com/ After a quick comparison: Moreton bay: Linux embedded coldfire base.. Plus the NETtel supports cable/dsl AND 2 simultaneous modem conections for dial out.. they didn't mention being able to bundle 8 modems on the same connection though.. but after a bit more exploring i noticed they had that eLIA thing.. Oh and also its flash upgradable.. all the code is on their site.. they mention u can customise your routers software (anyone wanna add SSH instead of crappy telnet).. lets see a CISCO do that. Looks like the ePipe is a bit behind the guys at Moreton.. don't get me wrong I'm for BSD and all against NT.. but i prefer the linux option.. And yes PoPToP was released under the GPL by moreton (don't quote me)
That is an untrue statement. Try it for yourself and find out.
Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
FWIW, that's a quote by Seymour Benzer, not Seymour Cray.
"Guys, this is immoral. We highly salaried, wealthy individuals are exploiting the free-or-fixed local telephony charging regime to leave our data connections nailed up for weeks at a time."
Ummm, WTF does this have to do with morality?
"Who really pays for this? It's the moms, pops and ordinary businesses who make their three minute voice calls and then get the hell out of the PSTN. "
Ummm, HTF does leaving a line nailed up cause mom and pop to spend more money on their three minute calls?
"The ePipe would not exist if there was a fair telephony charging regime."
Pure speculation.
Now crawl back to your central office
Linuxworld is talking about a $100 busybox proposed by Samsung called the Yupo or Yuppie or Wapo or something like that.
Runs linux. Color LCD screen about 3" sq. Does MP3s, web browsing, email, hook it to a camera, prolly has a cell phone, too. Maybe even a phone book and PIM.
Lots of tech for the bucks. I'd buy it on impulse, if it worked.
It got labelled flamebait because you changed the subject of the discussion and starting preaching about Linux, when Linux has NOTHING to do with this article and any mention of it here will only start a retarded Linux vs. BSD flame war. Don't be a jackass. Go evangelize your Linux in a different discussion that actually has something to do with Linux. Why is the discussion of any non-Linux related article on this site taken as a personal attack on Linux?
>What's the link to that Moreton Bay nettel?
here's that Moreton Bay link i think: NETtel
Yeah, but is it any better? Let's not get into the trap of thinking all things Linux == gold.
I like many Linux distros, but the developers had a very good reason for picking OpenBSD over a Linux distro.
Bullet proof VPN, and not a fast IPO, I think was the goal here. Check out the article, it's neat.
-- The unsig...
Ya gotta get up pretty early in the morning to find a first post that actually says something worthwhile instead of "First Post".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Then execute kill -9 in the lord's name.
So safer but slightly slower disk I/O means less usable to to you?
Okay to be faster than the nitpickers...
:P
I obviously didn't proofread my post in dispite of the warnings etcetctec yadda yadda
and "him" should be "her"
and i won't proofread this one either
Yeah, I think you're right.
;)
Personally I live in the Netherlands. We pay per minute for local phonecalls. My american girlfriend asked me once "why?"
So I told him "Why not? I use it, don't I? So why shouldn't I pay for it?" She saw my point
If you cherish your free local phone calls, don't screw it by using ePipe.
Well, first my post was intended to be slightly humorous.
Second, I have no idea about the non-obviousness E2B. I know next to nothing about security, and thus am a very bad source for this information. I was just trying to point out that Stallion had applied for a software patent, something generally considered to be not such a good idea.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
thats the point dough-head. it doesnt install a whole bunch of hole filled 3rd party apps. its part of the security first approach. it also (iirc) doesnt start anything from within the inetd unless you turn it on by hand. the logic is if something is needed the admin will add it, as opposed to installing everything and letting some clueless shit configure it after. personally i like a nice small minimal install to work from, adding what i want, beats the shit out of removing the junk after.
Its less usable at first. ... Unless you add NOTHING from the base install. Which is pretty useless anyway ...
Once you actually start installing packages, its just another distro - Just more secure.
Having the extra security isn't a bad thing
I need a sig.
Hrm. Patents aren't necessarily evil. E2B didn't immediately strike me as obvious, although this may be due to a general lack of information -- this was after all a press release, so as little information as possible is included to avoid confusing the media.
Could you perhaps provide some links to, or details about, what E2B really is, so that I can evaluate your claim that this is obvious technology?
TIA
Johan
Is it really data costs you pay for with ISDN, FR, etc, or scarcity? I think economies of scale result in dirt cheap telco lines, whereas the (comparatively) limited markets and the business centric nature for data lines cause their prices to be very high.
Anyhow, in any decent urban market, DSL at 128k (at the minimum) is cheaper than two bonded telephone lines (for 112k max) plus ISP fees or point to point fees. It might even be safe to make that statement for 324k DSL. ISDN FR and ATM carry a business premium resulting from target market and perceived ability to pay.
matt
Is that the ePipe is useful because it "potentially saves up to 80% in telco charges".
This is because it uses bonded dialup connections instead of ATM, FR, ISDN, etc.
Guys, this is immoral. We highly salaried, wealthy individuals are exploiting the free-or-fixed local telephony charging regime to leave our data connections nailed up for weeks at a time.
Who really pays for this? It's the moms, pops and ordinary businesses who make their three minute voice calls and then get the hell out of the PSTN.
The ePipe would not exist if there was a fair telephony charging regime.
hrmmmmm....
just wondering how 'usable' my system would be when back orfice and netbus are competing for processor cycles...
or how usable my data is when it is gone...
...
or how usable when I am staring at another bsod...
just a thought.
I've heard from some people that OpenBSD is so secure it's less useable than other OSes. What sort of effect might this have?
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Remember when "Truth, Justice, & the American Way" wasn't contradictory?
Another reason to have a patent is that (certain people think) it looks good in the glossy marketing blurb.
-- veni vidi nuclei deceri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core.
In Linux, you will find that most Daemons are started by different script files, usually contained in the /etc directory. Look for commands that run files named *d, such as pppd, smbd, etc.
Delete all commands that start such programs and you'll find yourself completely free of those pesky Daemons that cause all the trouble you mentioned.
The only Daemon you don't need to worry about is Maxwell's Daemon, because that one does not exist. He was the fruit of James Clerk Maxwell's gin-fogged imagination (Maxwell was British, you know...).
How does me using 8 phone lines at once at a fixed cost affect someone who makes a 3 minute call?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Exactly, the purpose of the source code audit is to be proactive. If you want to minimize the number of firmware updates for security, OpenBSD is one of your best choices. If you look at the number of security alerts for OpenBSD in the past, it's much less than Linux or the commercial Unix's. The main problem has been all the notoriously buggy (security-wise) open-source software (e.g. sendmail, bind, wu-ftpd), and they shouldn't be running those services on an embedded router anyway.
It's good to see OpenBSD get the recognition...
"Have you eaten your
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-- Slashdot sucks.
It's been noted a number of times now that the majority of patents by companies AREN'T for the purpose of screwing others out of the technology. Rather, it's to prevent themselves from losing the right to use it when someone ELSE patents it.
Now isn't that acceptable? After all, even Linus has a copyright on the name Linux.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
I mean, the whole point of a security audit is so that you fix the stuff that's (become) broken, right?
Being no OpenBSD expert, I guess what the OpenBSD guys try to do is more proactive -- they want to find and fix all the holes before they get found out about by others.
They don't want to fix it after someone else has found the hole and it has been widely publicised. I believe they have a number of techniques in place to make the OS overall less vulnerable to certain types of problems.
To enhance stability, OpenBSD takes a more cautious disk write approach, which might slow down disk accesses some.
Specific information about tuning the disk subsystem for speed (and to eliminate above delay) can be found here.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
While can't Slashdot give each of the handful BSDs their own icon, given that every Linux distribution on earth have them (and I imagine quite a few can't compare with the userbase the BSD distributions have).
(8-DCS)
Since they use OpenBSD, there goes any chances of messing internally with the machine. If it were running RedHat, i could just find the Root-Exploit-Of-The-Day-Advisory warning and be on my way. Damn I love OpenBSD. Once SMP support is released, Its all over for everything else.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
I'm one of the coders on the ePipe project.
:-)
Upgrading the OS is as simple as downloading a new
OS image and rebooting. Last time I checked
you need to reboot a PC to upgrade the BSD kernel
too.
-- veni vidi nuclei deceri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core.
The parent comment here has been posted at 6:46 EDT, and was initially labelled "funny", which it was in a somewhat mild and inoffensive way. Then some asshole re-labelled it "flamebait". In about 12 hours, the comment got 3 (three) responses, none of them flames. WHY is it flamebait? If I was in charge of /., I would perpetually ban that moderator for terminal stupidity.
I suppose that downtime's not going to be that critical to the epipe, since it's only a dialup gateway. (Security being less of an issue, too -- they can't reach you all that easily when your line keeps crapping out on you, right? ;) ) This looks kinda similar to a RAQ3, but for dialup. Is that right?
Can anybody tell me where I'm wrong here?
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Unfortunately, it seems like our good poster failed to notice that Stallion has committed the ultimate sin - they have applied for a software patent.
To quote the press release
"Stallion has applied for a patent for E2B."
E2B appears to be simply a method for hardening the connection to the ISP. I don't know nearly enough about security, and they don't tell nearly enough about their technology, to have a reasonable opinion about this patent, but my knee-jerk reaction to it would be opposition, as it is a software patent.
Sam TH
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer