Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

OpenBSD 2.7 Beta Out

Posted by Nik on from the NP:-The-Company dept.

vrkid writes: "Found this on OpenBSD Journal: OpenBSD just moved up a notch in its minor number and is now at 7. The first beta release of 2.7 is out. For people with strong stomachs, a habit of banging the head against the wall and a love for testing other's software: Download, install and send bug reports. "

17 comments

  1. Re:Theo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    And its probably part of the reason that Linux is popular and *BSD is not.

    Heh heh, you need to be a bit more specific. That's why Linux is popular with NEWBIES. True, there are a great deal less BSD users, but we have a lot less script kiddies, l337 wannabes, gamers, Windoze lusers, and other riffraff. BSD users want an awesome Unix system. Linux users are just attracted to the rebellious attitude and think that Linux will make them look smart.

    I hope I've managed to offend a many people as possible with this post. Thank God that I won't be moderated down, since only fifteen people read this section, and none of us are moderators. Part of that is just statistics, and part of it is our negative karmas, earned by posting pro-BSD in other dicussions.

    I guess in this life, I can only trust myself.

    Myself and Willikins Bear, of course.

  2. FYI by dalraun · · Score: 1
    In the article, the link to the OpenBSD journal should be http://www.deadly.org, not deadly.com.

    I have upgraded to 2.7-beta and I'm glad to see that ethernet bridging seems to be performing better.

  3. can anyone tell me the story... by Raleel · · Score: 1

    Can anyone tell me what the story is behind the political divisions in the *BSD's? In particular, why do I keep hearing that Theo DeRaadt (the main guy(?) for OpenBSD) is ....um...interesting? Purely curious. If you can point me to a site, that'd be good to

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
    1. Re:can anyone tell me the story... by Zach+Garner · · Score: 2

      You can read Theo's archive of emails during that time. NetBSD has mailling list archives that might provide some interesting info too.

      Of what i remember (hopefully i remember correctly) from his archive (i.e. primarily his side of the story) he was kicked out fairly abruptly for "personality problems". I think the primary complaint was "abusing users and other developers" or something similar. I dont know any of the specifics of the "abuses". I've seen a couple (very funny) replies of his (such as "Well, i guess you're just stupid then.") that could be considered as sarcasm or as a flame, depending.

      What everything came down to was some other guy with influence in NetBSD (i think his name was Charles) was causing some problems and wouldnt work out a deal with Theo to give him cvs write access and everyone wanted to impose rules on theo that didnt apply to others. NetBSD-CORE was a bit fucked and in a state of disorder. A lot of feelings got hurt. A half a year or so went buy, nothing changed and Theo started OpenBSD.

      I'm sure that's not entirely right. But its close, i hope.

      :wq

  4. Re:Theo by Raleel · · Score: 1

    Actually, I moderate ;) Thanks for the comments everyone. I would hold off on the poking at linux users. I did not know about the *BSD's when I started, and have spent so much time learning all I know about linux, I have not stepped over to that yet. One could say that *BSD users are just people who feel the the need to be rebellious for the sake of being rebellious, but I really don't think that is the case.

    And I have never seen anyone get moderated down just because they like a BSD.

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
  5. IO speed by PapaZit · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know why it takes an OpenBSD machine 20 minutes to copy a disk image to floppy disk when other OSs take 2 or 3 minutes? I'm guessing that there's a valid reason related to caching or verification, but maybe the driver's just lousy.

    I know, sort of offtopic, but you can see the tumbleweeds blowing through here (first post 17 hours after the original article?), and I'm curious.

    --
    Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
    1. Re:IO speed by lw54 · · Score: 1

      7

    2. Re:IO speed by Freedent · · Score: 1

      hello

    3. Re:IO speed by Nonesuch · · Score: 1
      I've never seen OpenBSD take an unreasonable time to 'dd' a disk image under Sparc nor Intel.

      Perhaps your floppy has multiple bad sectors?

      Usually I do a network install off a boot floppy, so I've made a lot of OpenBSD floppies in the last couple of years.

      I do buy the CD, but mainly just for the distfiles and to support the project.

      --

      I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
    4. Re:IO speed by BeerBaron · · Score: 1

      I run a Thinkpad 560 (P133) with OpenBSD 2.6. I have had no problems dd'ing an image. I can only guess one of two things: your particular floppy drive had some dirt/corrosion/bad hardware that caused a lot of low level write errors that the driver attempts to correct (if it attempts at all). Or the floppy disk(s) you are using are bad. I have personally run into the situation where floppies I've had for 1-2 years just don't work under Unix floppy writing, but work for Win98 or something like that. I'm starting to think that my entire disk supply (about 400 over the past 7 years) are now at their decay period and I need new ones. Kinda sucks if you ask me. Once I figure out how to build El Torrito bootable CD's, I'll ditch this floppy crap.

      The BeerBaron

    5. Re:IO speed by hubertf · · Score: 1

      soft updates have nothing to do with sync/async writing of data, it's rather a method to prevent writing meta data. Please check the mount(1) manpage for more information, before posting. - Hubert

    6. Re:IO speed by hubertf · · Score: 1

      11 (and not even running OpenBSD :)

      - Hubert

    7. Re:IO speed by asmodous · · Score: 1

      I read the BSD section, make it 9!

    8. Re:IO speed by natenate · · Score: 1

      >I bet you'd get a better response than just the 5 of us who read the BSD section.

      6
    9. Re:IO speed by logicTrAp · · Score: 2

      I don't run BSD, but a typical problem with writing disk images is that dd writes in 512 byte chunks by default which is decidedly non-optimal. Try something like

      dd if=foo.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k

      18kb is the size of one track on a 1.44MB floppy, so writing one track at a time should keep the drive busy and reduce the number of seeks etc it has to do. (Of course you probably have to adjust the device name etc etc)

  6. Re:Theo by Zach+Garner · · Score: 1

    I agree with that, entirely. And its probably part of the reason that Linux is popular and *BSD is not.

    As a side note, you mentioning IRC reminded me of the fact that #freebsd on efnet will kick/ban anyone asking a help question. (Use #freebsdhelp)

    Definitely a bit too hostile on occasions.

    *shrug* I'm still happy with my half dozen BSD boxen and still would rather work with OpenBSD than any other OS i've used so far.

  7. Theo by BeerBaron · · Score: 1

    Nothing's changed. Theo is as abrasive as they come in terms of developer communication. If you're the sensitive type, you better be damned sure that a bug you're reporting hasn't been mentioned or fixed at anytime, or Theo will be the first to remind you. Humorous? Yeah, if you take it that way. Good way to run a dev project? I don't think so, but it's no worse than the kernel threads of Linux. I've seen instances of "Yeah, I thought about that for about 10 seconds then realized how stupid it was. Of course we're not gonna put X in!" when submissions are made to OpenBSD.

    The BSD crew as a whole, from my experience, are a more ornery bunch. They prefer mailing lists to IRC and want bug reports backed up with code checking, and preferrably a proposed fix. Linux guys, on the other hand, seem to be more "newbie" friendly.

    Still, it hasn't changed my preference in OS. I run BSD.

    The BeerBaorn