OpenBSD 3.0 Release, Interview with Theo

mvw writes: "Here is an interview with OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt. Interesting is his comment on Soft Updates and the comparison to the rivaling Journaling file systems technology. Further he links to a very interesting paper by some Soft Updates researchers." And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already. Lots of changes since 2.9.

Comments

As much as I

[nll8802]

As much as I accidently hit the stupid reset button on the front of my computer a Journaling file system would be great. I dont have any exp. with Bsd and was wondering How is the selection of applications for BSD? I dont need alot, A console text editor (Preferably with syntax highlighting), a Graphical Web Browser, an Mp3 player. That is about all I really use on a regular basis.

Re:As much as I

[cmowire]

Most things that compile for Linux will work under BSD.

So vim and emacs work, mozilla works, and whatever MP3 player you want will work.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find the FreeBSD ports collection far superior to any package management system used by Linux. Further, the FreeBSD filesystem with softupdates blows away both Linux's journaling filesystems and the unsafe ext2 in terms of performance, reliability, and safety.

Re:As much as I

[gazbo]

So who'd you choose? Brittney Cleary or the Mary-Kate/Ashley tag-team?

Re:As much as I

[^chuck^]

sigh, its been well explained that you don't need a journaling filesystem to be safe with transfering data to the harddrive. In fact, if you're clever enough, you can even get away safely writing without having to hold the entire system up (hence, softupdates). If you actually look through the interview, you'll find Theo actually pointing you to resources that quite seriously make this point (journaling not needed).
take a look at this
it can be frustrating being right, all journaling really seems to do is attempt to fix the problems ext2fs has by laying another piece of code on top of it, instead of fixing the primary problem, that is that ext2 is broken as far as the BSD hackers are concerned.
Is waiting for fsck to finish really that much of a problem for you?

Re:As much as I

[bluGill]

There is very little that linux runs that won't run on *BSD. Those that won't run are most likely baddly written programs that you don't want on your comptuer anyway, if you need those features write a new program without all the bugs. The exceptions are there might be a few closed soruce apps which don't work right in linux emulation (most of them work), programs which deal directly with the kernel on a low level (which should not be portable, though there should be an equivelent for your OS), and programs that reqire hardware or hardware access. (Wine for instance requires user access to LDT, whatever that is, which isn't enabled, in this case easy to enable, though there might be others)

By and large though a program that runs on linux that won't compile and run for *bsd is not a program you should allow on linux. Any programer who can't write portable code, has probably made a lot of other stupid errors what will bite you. Be careful to seperate unportable code from portable code that hasn't been ported yet. A program that only runs on one OS is likely the former and you shouldn't touch it, while a program that runs on several OSes but hasn't been ported to yours could be well written and just in need of minor adjustments to work right.

Re:As much as I

[ckuhtz]

You might want to look into the /usr/ports tree for starters. It's all there. It's a no brainer. Start your reading at one of the BSD portals and you'll find all you're looking for.

It's really a non-issue.

PS: Plus, FreeBSD has a really decent Linux emulation which works around all cases where you can't find the native stuff for some reason (proprietary vendor binaries etc).

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I think filesystems are overrated. I have absolutely no need for 'em. Then again, I'm from an advanced civilization 300 light years from your planet. Eventually you'll understand why text editors, web browsers, mp3 players and, yes, filesystems are completely worthless.

Oh, and you'll love the optical nerve implants.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Mary-Kate's ultraseksi, but Ashley looks like her face got kicked in by an elephant.

Re:As much as I

[greygent]

> Is waiting for fsck to finish really that much of a problem for you?

Yes, actually, when you're dealing with servers with 100's of gigs.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

come now, they both look the same. tell me you wouldn't want to doggystyle one of them while getting a 'job from the other.

Re:As much as I

[^chuck^]

Once again, easily solvable. Partition. Partition well. No, I do not run servers of that magnitude, as you can probably tell perusing my own site. But... I have crashed openbsd due to my own eniptude (would rather call it curiosity), and fsck will not spend time on partitions that are clean (ie partitions that were not having data being written to at the time of the crash).

Or at least thats how I remember it... Please correct me if im wrong (it was so long ago ;-) ).

Re:As much as I

[Arandir]

But this topic is about *OpenBSD*.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

I understood the article that part of the repair work can be done after mounting the soft updates fs.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD sucks. It's always two steps behind FreeBSD in reliability, scalability, and bugfixes. Hence, don't use it.

Re:As much as I

[Luyseyal]

The expert opinion: http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20000814_80.ht ml#1

I've been excited about the TUX2 filesystem ever since I heard of this. I hope this is the default for 2.5 - 2.6 barring some unforeseen problem.

-l

Re:As much as I

[blakestah]

it can be frustrating being right, all journaling really seems to do is attempt to fix the problems ext2fs has by laying another piece of code on top of it, instead of fixing the primary problem, that is that ext2 is broken as far as the BSD hackers are concerned.

Journalling is one solution to the problem, and soft updates is another. Each is worthwhile within its own contexts.

A solution analogous to soft updates is coming with the tux2 file system from Daniel Phillips, which uses ordered writes to ensure the integrity of a file system, as soft updates does. BTW, I'd find it REALLY interesting if a BSD filesystem hacker ACTUALLY said ext3 was broken because it used journalling and not ordered writes. I think you are just creating controversy where none exists.

Journalling keeps a near synchronous log of inconsistencies between the file system on disk and the one in the VM. This allows crashes to be reconstructed to a consistent state. Soft updates simply groups the inconsistencies and writes them in a particular order that ensures the consistent state can be restored after a crash. Each is faster under sets of circumstances, each can be slower under others. Linux will have both fairly soon. I personally think ordered writes is a more elegant solution, but either seems to solve the problem reasonably.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

By Kathie Kelleher
Television Viewer

Mary-Kate Olsen. I don't even know where to begin.

Can Mary-Kate really be the incomparable Ashley Olsen's twin sister? They may have the same genetic code, but Mary-Kate certainly does not have her sister's prodigious dramatic gifts. For eight years on Full House, the pint-sized duo shared the role of Michelle Tanner. But, despite their identical outward appearance, it was easy to tell which sister was Michelle at any given moment. I cringed whenever Mary-Kate would appear on my TV screen, her clumsy, ham-fisted portrayal of the littlest Tanner devoid of all nuance and depth. And her incompetence was laid all the more bare by her sister's mastery of the role.

The twins' post-House work only widened the gap. Over the course of countless children's sing-along videos, TV movies, and such sitcoms as Two Of A Kind and So Little Time, it's been made painfully obvious who's got the chops and who doesn't. Ashley is George Michael to Mary-Kate's Andrew Ridgeley. She's Daryl Hall to her sister's John Oates.

Yes, it's clear that Ashley Olsen is the one with the true talent and personality. She is the majestic airship hovering in the sky, while Mary-Kate is the oppressively heavy, rust-encrusted anchor to which that airship is cruelly tethered, preventing it from ascending high into the firmament. Ashley could be another Hepburn, another Streep, if not for the cumbersome ballast that is Mary-Kate.

Examples of Mary-Kate's incompetence are as abundant as blades of grass. Space limitations force me to restrict my examples, yet the handful I have selected are nevertheless damning:

Mary-Kate lacks charisma. That elusive quality is vital to a performer, yet Mary-Kate is almost completely devoid of it. With her vanilla features and expressionless, fish-eyed gaze, one must wonder why this singularly untalented waif was ever placed before a camera. Case in point: In 1995's "The Case Of The Sea World Adventure," from the direct-to-video children's mystery series The Adventures Of Mary-Kate And Ashley, Mary-Kate delivers such lively and toothsome lines as, "The pearl necklace must be in that bucket of bait... yecch!" with about as much élan as a TV agribusiness reporter delivering the day's livestock quotes. If she required guidance or inspiration, she need only have turned to Ashley, whose unmasking of the jewel thief was as suspenseful as the climax to any classic 1940s film noir. "Trenchcoat Twins," indeed.

Mary-Kate's diction is poor. Another acting skill so vital, yet so utterly lacking in Mary-Kate, is clear enunciation. Her high-pitched, reedy, mealy monotone seems oddly out of place coming from her ponderous maw. Yet, like the call of the shrike, it pierces the eardrums and inspires profound irritation. This paucity of resonance applies to her singing voice, as well, and is readily apparent in the girls' 1994 recording, "Brother For Sale." No amount of studio wizardry could conceal the cracks in her off-key, phoned-in "singing." It was clear she didn't believe in the song. Meanwhile, Ashley's hearty vocals and peerless phrasing were reminiscent of a brilliant prodigy of yesteryear, Judy Garland. Whereas Ashley sang from her diaphragm, Mary-Kate's voice seemed to emanate from a tinny transistor radio with a dying battery.

Mary-Kate is not as good-looking as Ashley. Mary-Kate's disheveled rat's-nest hairdo looks as though it has never experienced a comb or shampoo. She never seems to have a straight part, and the fussy little barrettes stuck randomly throughout her hair only accentuate its unruliness. Her wardrobe, from To Grandmother's House We Go to Billboard Dad, has always been tacky and dowdy, inspired by some bizarre Schoolmarm Chic trend that exists only in her head. By contrast, Ashley is a heavenly apparition. Her strawberry-blonde mane falls in glossy ringlets, her well-scrubbed skin radiates a golden, healthy glow, and her erect bearing exudes a sylph-like grace, giving her a larger-than-life appearance despite her diminutive frame. Her fashion instincts are as unerring as Mary-Kate's are clueless.

Mary-Kate could also stand to lose a few pounds.

I say these things not to humiliate Mary-Kate. It is altogether likely that the girl possesses talent--just not in an entertainment-industry capacity. Perhaps, after extensive training and a long probationary period, Mary-Kate could make a serviceable cashier, nursing-home orderly, or cafeteria worker. Or maybe she could serve as an assistant to Ashley--a star of her sister's magnitude surely needs someone to answer her fan mail, clean her trailer, and fetch her bottled water.

I fear that if Mary-Kate is not forced to relinquish her partnership with Ashley, the duo will eventually go down in a blaze of mediocrity. Their careers will become mired in a bog of formulaic sitcoms, forgettable TV movies, and mindless, mercenary merchandising peddled to the lowest common denominator. And that will be a real shame, because the girls have so much to offer. Well, Ashley does.

Mary-Kate, please do your twin a favor: Set her free to soar like the eagle she is. Only when she is loosed of the sisterly bonds that hold her down can Ashley assume her rightful place in the pantheon of greats.

This full house must be divided, or it will not stand.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I guess I'd get a job from Mary-Kate then, since Ashley would make me vomit on her face. I'm still not sure how you'd doggystyle one while getting a job from another at the same time though. You some kinda two-dicked wunderkind?

Re:As much as I

[Reikk]

If the main reason you need a journalled filesystem is because you hit the reset button too much, you have problems. You shouldn't even be allowed to use a computer. I once knew a retard like you who kept hitting reset button and the only way he could get avoid it was by placing scotch tape over it.

Reikk,
Member of the AARWR (association against retards with root)

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's Andrew Ridgeley? Is that the other guy in Wham?

Re:As much as I

[gmack]

Breaking things into partitions is beond useless for anything that inviolves large files. And for anything else it's just annoying. One of my servers has a 140 gb partition and it _NEEDS_ to be that large. Breaking it up simply will not work.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? TUX2 doesn't exist. It was a nice idea that fell apart and no work has been implemented. This is what we in the industry call "vaporware." Stick with one of the four existing journaling filesystems if you insist on using Linux.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

So boot an OS that doesnt crash, on quality hardware connected to an uninterruptible power supply. Fsck is a sign that something went horribly, out of the ordinary wrong, not something that should with any degree of expected regularity.

Re:As much as I

[IcePic]

>Journalling is one solution to the problem, and soft updates is another.
>Each is worthwhile within its own contexts.

Still, there are differences. Using a JFS might
require you to actually change to a new FS (except ext3)
whereas softupdates doesn't change anything at all
on the filesystem at all. It's just a new way
for the OS to order the "same old" writes so that
you gain performance without giving fsck a hard
time.

Re:As much as I

[Luyseyal]

Where in my post did I say "Linux has this right now, go and download it you BSD whore"? Did I not take care to mention that I hoped this would happen in 2.5?

^chuck^ writes:
all journaling really seems to do is attempt to fix the problems ext2fs has by laying another piece of code on top of it, instead of fixing the primary problem, that is that ext2 is broken as far as the BSD hackers are concerned.

The point of my post was to respond that problems with ext2 have been understood and taken into account and are not being ignored. Duh.

-l

Re:As much as I

[doorbot.com]

So this server with 100's of gigs...

You just pull the plug when you need to reboot? Or this "vital" server doesn't have a UPS?

If you're running OpenBSD, is it safe to assume you know to shut the machine down cleanly and to have UPSes on servers?

Isn't this whole discussion related to the fact that power suddely dies or the like? If only the drive fails you're screwed anyways (but this server does have a fault-tolerant RAID card right?).

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

HEY MODERATORS this is just as insighful as the post its replying to.

*IF* you actually read the interview you'll see that they're working towards fsck'ing of a live fs. This solves your fsck time problem.

... we really need a "if you werent such a dumbass and actually read the article" reply comment instead of insightful...

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you didn't read the original comment.

He accidently hit the reset button. With extfs, that means enduring fsck, because the os/fs suck ass.

On linux/extfs, fsck is a sign that you just booted.

Of course, using linux is a sign that something went horribly wrong...

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a production server with around 600 Gigs of data on one of it's shares.

One day a CPU failed. The machine came down hard.

It took 22 hours to clean the filesystem.

The point is that even if you have a UPS, even if you have redundant power supplies, ECC memory, RAID-5, and a whole slew of other protections. Something can still go wrong, and it's a bitch if it takes a full day to clean up after that.

A couple months after that occured we moved all of our data to an EMC storage cluster, which provided many other advantages beyond just the one problem we solved.

Re:As much as I

[Billly Gates]

I had to reformat my disk and lose some data when my linux box froze and I had to reboot. The filesystem was so corrupted that fsck couldn't fix it. Thats some serious stuff. Thank god it wasn't a server. A journaling filesystem maes sense in situations like this. Also fsck can take many hours on a huge file server in a raid configuration. I have seen Novel and NT take as long as 4 to 5 hours to do a disk scan on a large volume. As an admin your job would be on the line for a downtime that long. For servers a journaling filesystem is a must have. I bet its the reason why Windows2000 sales are so big. Sure it may not be as rock solid as unix but downtime can be fixed by a reboot. yes, mission critical Microsoft servers are actually rebooted on purpose to prevent downtime. :-)

But with clustering and a journaling filesystem its not a big deal.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Your filesystem would be consistent, but yer data probably gone. See http://yarchive.net/comp/synchronous_metadata.html

Re:As much as I

[mirabilos]

You suck.
You are biased.
We aren't behind in bugfixes.

How often comes that, on bugtraq for example,
an exploit is published, hitting any major Linux
distro and FreeBSD?
NetBSD - we aren't hit because we don't have this new functionality.
OpenBSD - yes we knew of that two years ago but fixed it while removing buffer overflow vulnerability there (points at the source, where, the bugfix applied, it still exists) and converting to KNF.

For the outsider:
(K)ernel (N)ormal (F)orm.
man 9 style

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

> NetBSD - we aren't hit because we don't have this new functionality.
>
> OpenBSD - yes we knew of that two years ago but fixed it while
> removing buffer overflow vulnerability there (points at the source,
> where, the bugfix applied, it still exists) and converting to KNF.

It seems you are missing something.
For example,
- compare NetBSD's ftpd and OpenBSD' ftpd
- compare when new feature is added to ftp command
- compare when UVM appeared
- compare when UBC appeared
- compare which is the OS that fixed sshd crc security hole first

In general, NetBSD implements new functionality one or few years
earlier than OpenBSD, and even sometimes fixes security holes before
OpenBSD (you can see this for sshd remote root hole).
All we know that almost all kernel stuff is first implemented in
FreeBSD or NetBSD, and OpenBSD just imports it later.
Ffs dirpref and bridge stuff are only two exceptions, though.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

This vital server is in a room where air conditioning just failed, and the outsourced company that the corporate drones hired to do that part of the work aren't paying attention to their alarms... totally outside the bounds of what a tech can control. Shit happens, and you can't plan for everything. UPSes are not a cure all. Maybe a circut blew and that was the one the UPSes were on.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly. Our RAID-5 array with 500 gigs of data lost power because multiple tornadoes blew through the area. Shit happens.

Re:As much as I

[Anonymous Coward]

the emulation is more than "decent." basically, you install a bunch of redhat base libraries and run a klm that uses them when a linux elf binary gets loaded. the only stuff it doesn't work for, really, is things like kernel modules. really amazing. Hell, Oracle runs; I've had trouble making Oracle run on Solaris.

well duh!

[ozzmosis]

Sure the CD's are ready!
They have to make them before they can ship them on December 1st.

This is a very good thing!

[InterruptDescriptorT]

SECURITY FIX: fix buffer overflow reading queue file in lpd

For those running OpenBSD, especially as a gateway/firewall/NAT box, this is an important fix. I am running 2.9 with this patch added, and my snort logs tell me (judging from the number of attempts) that this exploit is a fairly commonly tried one. In November alone, there were at least 30 lpd overflow attempts on my machine. Granted, not most people have lpd open to the world, but I can imagine a few people might want to do remote printing from work, etc.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[smack.addict]

Why in the name of all that is holy would anyone have lpd running on a firewall?

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Syberghost]

They're still saying "Four years without a remote hole in the default install!"

Isn't it a bit disingenuous to say this? Yes, it's true that the default install doesn't start lpd, but it certainly installs it.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Anonymous DWord]

How are you going to exploit it if it's not started, genius? And even if you do start it, it's a local hole.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Syberghost]

How are you going to exploit it if it's not started, genius?

Hence why I said "a bit disingenuous", not "incorrect".

And even if you do start it, it's a local hole.

No, it's not.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[IcePic]

I'm into the thoughts of:
"If I want a cvs server, and install free*nix X to
run it" and I haven't decided yet which *nix that
would be and I had to choose between equally well
working OS:es, I'd go for the "no remote hole in
4 years" just because I'd have a better chance of
that one not being remotely compromised over some
jack-ass imapd/ntp/statd-exploit that had nothing
at all to do with my machine in the first place.

Of course, my goal might have been to run a public
lpd-server, but still not having everything on
makes you one bit safer and lets each activated
service be secure on its own merits instead of
being at the mercy of hoping that noone finds
another bug in a gazillion other daemons that for
some reason are turned on.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

For people on the outside who want to print stuff and all that.

My school had all the printers configurable to the world so that anyone could configure the printers the way they wanted and then print. Doesn't matter if they were in Mexico or whatever... They could still configure and print stuff.

But they changed that... :( I guess nothing good can stand in the way of progress.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Autonomous Cow]

yum. sorry, I can't resist.

1) logging to paper; so the cracker can't totally erase his trail

2) backup to paper; so you have some recourse if your system config is massively hosed AND your magnetic media is toast

and, wait for it...
3) SWAPPING to paper; because you can! (just point your swapfile at /dev/ocr ) and more importantly, to score extra points on the C purity test.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

> They're still saying "Four years without a remote hole in the default
> install!"

> Isn't it a bit disingenuous to say this? Yes, it's true that the
> default install doesn't start lpd, but it certainly installs it.

Yes, it's disingenuous, but isn't the disingenuousness well known fact?

There was more serious remote root exploit on OpenBSD.
OpenSSH daemon shiped with OpenBSD-2.7 had a remote root hole (CRC one),
and the sshd was enabled by default.
But they didn't change their marketing propaganda, when the hole was
discovered.

More interesting thing is that they haven't warned the remote root
hole on their security page (http://www.openbsd.org/security.html).
Note that the hole was publically reported at the beginning of 2001,
and two secuirty advisories which are newer than the report are
listed on the OpenBSD-2.7 section of the page.

This is one of the reasons why I use other BSDs (FreeBSD and NetBSD)
for my firewall, rather than OpenBSD.

Re:This is a very good thing!

[Greg W.]

1) logging to paper; so the cracker can't totally erase his trail

That doesn't require lpd. Just add the line printer's device name as an additional target in syslog.conf.

Or run a teletype console, and log everything important to the console. (I've actually seen a setup that used that. In production. In 1996.)

Even if you do use the Unix print spooling subsystem on your firewall, you should not have the lpd port (515/tcp) open on the public network interface(s).

Fixes

[jeriqo]

Actually, OpenBSD 3.0 was available for download since nov 25th, and a few patches (security fixes) are already available.
Here is the list: http://www.openbsd.org/errata.html

Don't forget to update to OpenSSH 3.0.1

-J

Release Date

[Accipiter]

And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already.

Probably because they want to avoid a fiasco like the last tremendous release mess that michael caused.

It's not uncommon for "official" releases to be after the initial release. It's like when a large department store has a "GRAND OPENING". In many cases, the GRAND OPENING is about a week after the store actually opens. Or if the store opens during the week, the GRAND OPENING will be on that weekend.

Re:Release Date

[gmhowell]

Does anyone have a mirror of the GET-A-CLUE-SLASHDOT.TXT?

And I see that yet again, criticism of slashdot is modded into oblivion.

The origin of OpenBSD

[Gopher]

As I sit here waiting for my copy of OpenBSD 3.0 to arrive, I've been reading the exchange of emails between Theo and the NetBSD core team, which is a history of how OpenBSD came to be.

If you haven't read them before, it's quite a read, and a good lesson of how personal politics can fragment a collaborative project.

Here's the link: http://zeus.theos.com/deraadt/coremail

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Syberghost]

What was amazing to me about them is the fact that Theo proudly links to them as proof that he was being entirely reasonable and they were being discriminatory, but the emails show quite clearly that he was completely unwilling to make a simple promise not to be an asshole after having demonstrated a history of pissing people off.

He's got a right to be an asshole, and god knows I'm the pot calling the kettle black, but to link to those emails and think they provide vindication is heavily disconnected from reality.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[rho]

I think Theo's abrasive nature is just that--his nature. He isn't willing to change his way of dealing with people.

Often I'll wish people would just simply way what they think, with no prevarication; and when somebody (like Theo) does exactly that, I get squeamish all of a sudden. "Ooh, I can't believe he said that..."

Theo has a habit of speaking his mind. Dealing with him is probably a chore, but a worthwhile one.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Oztun]

Well I guess it's lucky for him he came up with OpenBSD. Otherwise it sounds like he would just be another asshole to hate.

I run OpenBSD and I'm not trying to put Theo down in any way. I'm only making an observation off of what I have been reading.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Theo's abrasive nature is just that--his nature. He isn't willing to change his way of dealing with people

This "willing to change our way of dealing with people" is normally called growing up or maturing which is usually seen as a good thing in a human.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[dghcasp]

Notably absent from the email exchange are any of the emails, ICB logs, or anything that show the basis for the whole problem.

Basically, Theo had a history of being abusive and petty to anyone who didn't meet his standards of cluefulness. He pretty much admits this himself in the interview. This was alienating a large number of NetBSD developers who ended up leaving the project (I was one of them.)

The Core team repeatedly asked him to tone it down; their feeling seemed more of a "anyone who wants to help with NetBSD will be welcome," instead of "You must be this elite to code NetBSD." Theo maintained that he was doing nothing wrong.

Eventually, they shut Theo down, which is where the email thread starts. A large part of the thread deals with Theo's requests to regain CVS access. The Core group was willing to submit his code as patches themselves, but Theo would only submit code if he could have CVS write access. Core was worried that Theo might decide to get "revenge" by damaging the CVS tree; This might seem worry-warting, except they all knew that Theo had been previously fired from a SysAdmin job at the U of C for doing something like that.

Eventually, Theo started OpenBSD and now has his own sandbox where nobody can tell him what to do. In the end, I guess that's good, because both OpenBSD and NetBSD regularly crib from each other's trees anyways and people now get the choice of whether they want to deal with Theo or not.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Arandir]

People are like that. Remember that recent article about the open source OSX developer who was calling it quits? He linked to a bunch of emails trying to show that he was being reasonable when in fact it showed him to be a complete ass.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a small excerpt from an OpenBSD mailing list posting to point out why NetBSD core acted like that:

--- snip ---
[...]
From: Theo de Raadt
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 13:30:59 -0700
[...]
First off, are you sure you are running real 3.0?

Secondly, your bug report stinks. That is insufficient information.
You suck. Is there a particular special reason that we are not aware
of, as to why you consider yourself exempt from the standard rules for
bug reporting, which so many other people seem perfectly comfortable
with following on a daily basis, and thus getting the problems they
find resolved quickly?
[...]
--- snip ---

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[aussersterne]

I read them and got exactly the opposite view. It sounded to me like he was a regular guy getting the shaft and not wanting to take it lying down. And that little clip from IRC where he said:

Then I guess you are just stupid.

That made me laugh like mad. I love it. Sounds like me. Sounds like my friends. Hey, he cycles. He caves. He founds OpenBSD. He speaks his mind. He has a sense of humor. He sounds cool, not like an asshole at all.

Some of the other people I was reading... Like the guy who kept on about professionalism and representing your organization, even in private e-mail... sound like pricks/assholes to me. I've had to deal with people like that -- people who feel like the dollars and the "drive to succeed" are all that matter and that individuality and honesty have no place in America.

But then, I will never sell me soul to my employer or anyone else, no matter how much cash or recognition it would get me. Guess that makes me a commie. ;) Of course, the whole open-source world has been accused of being nothing more than a communist plot...

Rant, rant, yaddah, yadda...

I dig Theo. OpenBSD just scored personality points in my book.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[rho]

Well, an asshole with a good gift for programming (at least to my uneducated eye). The work Theo and the other OpenBSD team members have done is good stuff. I, too, am an OpenBSD user.

I went back and re-read the whole mail archive again, and I don't see from where you derived this label as an asshole. A significant portion of the archive were messages from Theo exclaiming or proclaiming some bit of hackery he had done to further the sparc port. These were interspersed with messages from core members asking again and again, "will you promise to do items 1, 2, and 3", with Theo replying again and again, "yes, I will, can I have cvs access again?" to, apparently deaf ears. There were plenty of dirty sphincters to go around; I wouldn't be so quick as to fling one on Theo's back.

Actually, I'll give Theo some credit here: I would have left in much less time and found other diversions. I have less patience (if more tact) than Theo does.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a drill instructor or the captain from the Bounty. :)

However don't we (developers) wish sometimes to give such an answer to our customers? :)

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[stantron77]

I have to say that while Theo can be a real prick sometimes I see where he is coming from. He said in the interview that he loves to code. He didn't say he loved dealing with people or their questions, and while I would say that most people have more tact I would say that all of us feel the same way at least sometimes. I think that NetBSD had a good reason for not wanting him as a core member, because it speaks for the group and it's my understanding core deals with more of the politics/coordination of things. I think it is fair to say that this area is not Theo's strong point, however it did seem rediculous how reluctant they were to let him have CVS. Several of the e-mails were people from core saying that they would at least give him that if he promised to communicate and not to flame, which he did with the exception of in his own personal e-mails. I thought that sounded reasonable, but the way it dragged on wasn't IMHO. Either way things have worked out, Theo has his own BSD to do with as he pleases, and many people have very secure boxes because of it. I think sometimes people forget that people writing this software do it just for themselves and their feelings of accomplishment, not so much for other people.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Satai]

I dig Theo. OpenBSD just scored personality points in my book.

You know, I agree completely. I'd been wary of Theo, for a lot of the reasons that most everybody else is - he seemed like a jerk, uncompromising, and so on, all because of the attitude the community [Slashdot] takes toward him.

But that article, and interview, really puts him in a new light. He doesn't take any crap, but he seems like a nice guy, he seems like he's got a sense of humor, and he certainly does live the coding life he wants to. I especially liked the Rock-Star Operating System lifestyle comment.

This was a great interview to post.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

However don't we (developers) wish sometimes to give such an answer to our customers?

Yeah, so do we sysadmins. We point and laugh and sometimes whine (alt.sysadmin.recovery) about lusers who can't write down a freaking error message, but we don't do it to their face. Or in writing.

At least most don't. The guy I replaced was like that. Everyone was afraid of him and didn't want to call for help because he might bite their head off or call them stupid. After a few years at this job, I see his point, but you just can't treat people like they are morons simply because you understand something they don't. Theo ought to acknowledge that a very small percentage of the population is even capable of doing what he does, take some pride in that, and let that pride sustain him awhile when he has to explain in reasonable terms why someone's report is useless. Just my $.02

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

reason that we are not aware of

Good selection - notice how he is abusive at the same time as including himself in the core group. "We" indeed.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing is that it was the second message I read from him while searching for stuff like that in the archives *g*.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Eric Seppanen]

Not having read the argument before, I'd have to agree that Theo's "evidence" seems to support the argument that he doesn't play well with others.

There is a part right in the middle of his "evidence" (search for "holiday") where he receives a message saying "I'll be away for 16 days" email from one of his adversaries and for no obvious reason Theo writes a crazy ranting reply as if this harmless vacation message were some sort of personal attack.

Bizarre...

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Since that "theos.com" URL has everything prior to his removal cut out, we don't know what really happened. I think the truth was that he was probably being an asshole to someone(s), and refused to apologize because his ego would be bruised.

Maybe if we had a copy of the emails that actually caused his dismissal, we could make judgements on whether he is right or not, but since the archive starts after that point who knows..... I for one don't trust him. He seems like an angry child, not a mature adult.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[oobeleck]

Uhhhh...... Theo is "regular" guy?

Passionate, Demanding, Strong Willed, Intelligent,
Not Politically Correct, etc....
But regular?

Don't get me wrong I like the guy. (and I haven't even met him)

I don't think the point of the original post was
"Theo's politics suck"
But that the inner politics of the NetBSD core team made them lose one of the best BSD coders around.

The best quote is by far one of the emails by
Herb Peyerl

--snip--
I agree that Theo is not the kind of person to manage OpenBSD as much as he wants to, to show the world that he is capable. Unfortunately, I feel that this would not only reflect poorly on NetBSD, it would make the whole *BSD effort look worse than it presently does and will just cause more people to use Linux. I feel that with the existance of OpenBSD, everyone will lose in the end. The end that I hope is not as inevitable as all the evidence shows.
--snip--

LOL.... So according to Herb back then:
Theo can't run a project.
OpenBSD will reflect poorly on the BSD movement.
OpenBSD will cause more people to use linux.
OpenBSD causes everyone to lose out in the end.

Thanks for hanging in there Theo.

Now according to O'Reilly:
OpenBSD is "the most secure operating system on earth". (http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2000/08/08/OpenBS D.html)

Hope we have more failures like Theo in the Open Source community....

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I hear MS-DOS is secure too.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that he was mostly right (except for the 'in the end' part) -- BSD's politics (both with 386BSD and the Net/Open split) DID reflect poorly on the BSD movement and cause more people to use Linux.

It's only now, some years later, that wounds have healed and people have gotten over this stuff. You should have read slashdot 3 years ago -- the general opinion was that BSDers were all assholes and nobody wanted anything to do with them as an outside user.

(Furthermore, sure OpenBSD is secure, but only at the cost of forking the standard freenix install. Politically Very Shitty. Having a super-secure, but stagnent, versions of Bind, Sendmail, and Perl doesn't help anyone except for OpenBSD cronies who want to chuckle at other OS users. If security was Job #1, the effort could have been much better spent working with maintainers.)

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Trepidity]

I wonder if there's a particular reason Theo considers himself exempt from the standard rules for English grammar...

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[scrytch]

Then I guess you are just stupid.

That made me laugh like mad. I love it. Sounds like me. Sounds like my friends. Hey, he cycles. He caves. He founds OpenBSD. He speaks his mind. He has a sense of humor. He sounds cool, not like an asshole at all.


This sort of social stuntedness is what you find novel, fresh, and daring? Cripes, it's just the typical petulance one normally comes to expect from this guy. Churchill could be quite an asshole, but he had style (e.g. "when I wake up, I'll be sober") Theo's an organizational genius, not a half bad coder, he's probably even nice to his own team ... but he is not only utterly intolerant, he is vindictive, and it's precisely why NetBSD gave him the boot.

There are a lot of stupid people out there. Most of them aren't even worth dealing with. But it certainly doesn't make one an iconoclast to throwing around petty insults to prop up one's feelings of superiority. It makes for a pathetic maladjusted loner ... or for those who have to witness this behavior day after day, just an asshole.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he's from Canada, not America.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[lightfoot jim]

This exchange, and the general reputation TdR has garnered for himself actually cause me to have a greater respect for the project. Sure, Theo can be a bully, etc. But when I look at all the times I've given someone some verbal brutality, it was because it was something I really cared about. Harsh words never go along with complacency. As harsh as Theo has proven himself to be, I have no doubt believing he's thoroughly committed to the stated goals of the OpenBSD project. Notice, no one ever criticises his knowledge or coding skills. (I am disregarding those who complain that OpenBSD is only secure because it disables programs known to introduce touchy security issues. They may as well be complaining that OpenBSD is only secure because it's designed not to be insecure.)

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

3 years ago?

The BSDers were all assholes back in 1994.

What people have learned since then is that they were right to be assholes.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[evilviper]

Theo had a history of being abusive and petty to anyone who didn't meet his standards of cluefulness. He pretty much admits this himself in the interview. This was alienating a large number of NetBSD developers who ended up leaving the project (I was one of them.)

So YOU were the one that took your toys and went home, and HE was the one you consider PETTY. I think that was a very telling statement on your part.

Core was worried that Theo might decide to get "revenge" by damaging the CVS tree; This might seem worry-warting, except they all knew that Theo had been previously fired from a SysAdmin job at the U of C for doing something like that.

If they were worried about him destroying the CVS tree, then why were they all very willing to give his CVS access back? It's all in the archives, there was not a single objection to giving him full CVS access after it had once been revoked.

Secondly, if you wish to claim that Theo had done something similiar, I would expect proof to back it up.

If you want my oppinion on the matter, after Theo had be thrown out, he was being told to jump through hoops, several of which he did, only to be told to jump through more. If I was in his situation, I would have gotten fed-up with the political crap as well.

Finally, I believe his story completely because he has documentation of it, publicly available evidence (discussions on NetBSD mailing lists) supported it, and personal experiences of mine have shown him to be perhaps blunt (this report will be ignored until you learn how to properly report a bug, etc) but never abusive. Of course, reality has a tendency to bruise gigantic egos.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

And Canada is not in America?

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I never saw any of his mails doing what the Core requested.

Instead it seemed like he tried to get public support to back up his demand for CVS-access, without accepting the Core's requests that he should be a nice guy.

The decision that Core took to shut down his access is probably not a hasty one.
To shut down someone that has made/are making significant contributions to the project is something you don't do without good reason.

I would like to see those occasions where he was considered nasty to people.

The impression I got of Theo is that he is a darn good programmer, but lacks feelings and is very socially incompetent.
And If I met him, I guess my IRL-impression would be the same as I've got over the net reading about him.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they learned that supporting more than 6 pieces of hardware is actually good idea and might encourage people to try your shit.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Crag]

Theo himself is happy to admit how abusive he is (see the interview). This is petty. He's says, "I'm abusive, and other people just have to put up with me or go away." This is uncalled for. This kind of behavior is destructive, wasteful, hurtful, and in the case we're talking about, it was divisive.

The poster was not out of line calling him petty for these things.

Further, there is nothing petty about refusing to interact with someone who is destructive.

From m-w.com: "3 : marked by or reflective of narrow interests and sympathies : SMALL-MINDED"

It's true that we choose our own reactions to other people's words, but even in that context, there is no reason why anyone should tolerate an individual who has no tact.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[evilviper]

Linus also loves to put himself down one way or another... That doesn't mean that what he says is completely objective.

As far a Theo's comment, I wish all the idiots that don't know how to read a FAQ or a manual would all go away too. When dealing with a dumb question that is in the FAQ, Theo will say something like if you read the FAQ you wouldn't be wasting my time (yadda yadda yadda). While that's very much paraphrased, he shows a good deal of tact. That's a far cry from what such a question deserves, and is humane enough that anyone should be able to endure.

No matter how nice anyone is, people will be ofended and go home. That's the only downside to being honest, people's imaginary worlds tend to get crushed. If all developers were so honest, they would spend much more time developing, and much less answering stupid questions.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Syberghost]

So YOU were the one that took your toys and went home, and HE was the one you consider PETTY.


That's like calling an abused wife who leaves her husband a quitter.

He got tired of being abused, and he left. Theo was asked to do something pretty damn simple; promise not to abuse people anymore. If you can't promise not to do that, there's something wrong with you.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Glytch]

Dealing with him is probably a chore, but a worthwhile one.

Are you volunteering?

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Glytch]

Hope we have more failures like Theo in the Open Source community....

Amen to that. OpenBSD is the very reason I'm got interested in BSD in the first place. 'Course, I'm a proud back-bacon-and-poutine-eating canuck with a paranoid crypto fetish, too.

Thanks, Theo!

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Were?

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Was his name Simon?

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[evilviper]

He got tired of being abused, and he left.

I have never run into a developer (or core member) that seeks out other developers to abuse them. If that developer thought Theo was abusive, then he simply should have avoided contact with Theo.

Interestingly enough, it is mentioned in the article that it wasn't until recently that Theo discovered the 'real' reason he was kicked out. I would a) be interested in knowing what he believes the reasons are, and b) how he found out this supposedly secret motivation.

Theo was asked to do something pretty damn simple; promise not to abuse people anymore.

If I ever had secrative action taken against me (access instantly revoked without warning, punished based on charges that I could not challenge, made by an accuser I was not allowed to face) I wouldn't even do as much as Theo did... So I suggest you get off your 'Theo is evil' kick unless you really want to discuss who was really being the ass.

Re:The origin of OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there is a particular reason you consider yourself exempt from the standard rules of English punctuation?

Sounds like Linux

[Zog]

Poof! the old vm disappears

Why 1st December ...

[makapuf]

I think it is an established habits that releases happen on 1st Dec and 1 June every year.

On the plus side, you don't have to answer to the question "when will be the next release" ...

Re:Why 1st December ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't work with same people I work with! You could send e-mails and post banners until the cows came home ("Releases on June 1 and Dec 1"). And there would still be a flock of idiot developers that would be confused.

Honestly, don't they teach these kids anything in college these days? They all seem to think that the IDE is supposed to do all the thinking for them.

MandrakeBSD?

[timothy]

a) Theo and company (good company) don't need or seek new users just to be popular. They like doing what they do -- I know that. Don't take what I'm about to say as marketing advice to them, so much as a pleasant wish. It doesn't impose an obligation or demand on the OpenBSD guys, and I know it. Still ...

b) I'm surprised (not to say hurt, disappointed and disconsolate) that no one (am I wrong?) has come out with the equivalent of Mandrake to at least one of the BSDs -- and by equivalent I mean in a certain superficial but important way: user-friendly, pretty install, emphasis on user experience, intelligibility.

c) Really, I'm just talking about the install. Something with some graphical flair, built-in help system for new users, and a game or two, or a little slideshow, or some interesting history text files, *something* built in to play while slow parts of the install proceed. No accounting for taste, but I think there are a lot of good graphic artists (all the Ximian stuff, for instance, and many great KDE examples) working in the world of free software. (Hey, I also like the BSD art, so obviously I am open for attack by the art critics;)).

I name Mandrake as my prototype here, just because I happen to like their stuff -- RH also makes a pretty install, not quite as cute, and so do several other distros. But Mandrake is in Walmart, which suits my example ("Walmart: making things accessable to the masses")

Cheers,

Tim

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[FatRatBastard]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

I think if the unix trend continues and Microsoft (/.'s favorite punchingbag) wants to dip their toe into the market they may do exactly as you say.

They have a BSD licenced code base to build off, can claim it's "Linux compatible" and would be able to say its one of the safest OS cores around. Make it a little pretty, make some changes to intergrate their products and they're in business.

Pie in the sky thinking of course, but I wouldn't doubt if there's a skunkworks somewhere in Redmond playing around with one of the BSDs in such a fashion, just in (the one in a billion) case.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised (not to say hurt, disappointed and disconsolate) that no one (am I wrong?) has come out with the equivalent of Mandrake to at least one of the BSDs

What about Apple's Mac OS X?

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Junta]

But Windows NT is *kinda* that deal. Granted it is not OpenBSD based, but the NT kinda rose from the ashes of VMS. Not linux compatible, but still a sort of *nix aimed directly at competitors.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[dragonfly_blue]

"Something with some graphical flair, built-in help system for new users, and a game or two, or a little slideshow, or some interesting history text files, *something* built in to play while slow parts of the install proceed. "

Maybe that's the problem; it takes less than ten minutes to install OpenBSD on a new system off CD-ROM. Not even enough time for a quick game of Tetris, a la certain versions of Linux *cough caldera *. Or did you mean during an ftp install?

Honestly, if you think that BSD's biggest "problem" is a lack of fancy graphics during the installation, well... er, all right; I can't argue a matter of taste I guess. :-)

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[wiredog]

Why? Mandrake is aimed straight at the Desktop. RedHat aims at Windows NT users. The BSD's aim at unix sysadmins who Know What They Are Doing. Open/Free/Net don't need a User Friendly graphical install interface because their current interface is friendly to the users they aim at.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Syberghost]

Open/Free/Net don't need a User Friendly graphical install interface because their current interface is friendly to the users they aim at.

And yet, the other OSes that aim at those same users, such as Solaris, AIX, and HP/UX, do have GUI installs.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

That only runs on Apple's branded hardware.

I hope I answered the questions sufficently.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[DrXym]

That's a funny attitude to take. An install with an graphics mode would do much to dispell the image of BSD as a niche OS. And seeing as both FreeBSD and OpenBSD are commercial products, one would think that their repective owners would be keen to broaden their appeal.

Besides, adding GUI doesn't necessarily represent a "dumbing down" of the product. The installer can still ask the same questions, but in a more user friendly manner.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[WasterDave]

OMG. Is it a troll? I really cannot tell.

Errrr, FreeBSD is dead easy to install. It's dead easy to get KDE2 going on it too. But not pretty. Just ncurses, sorry.

something built in to play while slow parts of the install proceed

What slow parts of the install? Get a faster computer :) Go make a cup of coffee.

How bizarre.

Dave

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

That wouldn't make much sense (make security friendly to the end user), since they just don't care about it they'll break it up in just one click...

I think the best is just keep using OpenBSD in the firewall/NAT/whatever_sitting_in_front machine and educate the end users on how to make their mac/win/whatever boxes not so vulnerable (good password choices, deactivete activeX controls, javascript, etc.)

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Arandir]

The installer can still ask the same questions, but in a more user friendly manner.

Why does a "more user friendly" installer have to be a GUI? What is there about a GUI that makes things easier? I've asked this question before in other forums, but I've never gotten a straight answer.

To be sure, there are many advantages to a GUI, but I don't see where "user friendly" has anything to do with it.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Pope Slackman]

Besides, adding GUI doesn't necessarily represent a "dumbing down" of the product. The installer can still ask the same questions, but in a more user friendly manner.

I see that as being a pointless waste of effort.
Why would it be good to work on a graphical installer (which entails difficult and failure-prone things such as video device detection) that does exactly the same think as a console installer?
The only benefit is that it would look prettier - installation would still remain just as "difficult"[1].
The utilitarian console installer works fine, and I see no reason waste man-hours on changing it, when that same time could be spent improving important things.
Cute graphical installers are just frippery.

C-X C-S
[1] Difficult in quotes because I've done several OpenBSD installs and never found it to be any more difficult to install than Linux or NT.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The big advantage I see is that it's easier to browse a list of a thousand packages when it's in a nice 9 pt proportional font, rather than 80x25 textmode. It also gives you more room for onscreen instructions and help and so on.

The big problem with (FreeBSD|Linux) textmode installs that I've seen is not that they are text, but that they are crappy applications -- inconsistant key strokes, bad navigation, hard to get instructions, inevitably drop you into some disk partition tool (etc) with entirely different keystroke bindings, etc etc.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows NT is that deal -- and the underlying kernel is a hellava lot more scalable and flexible than BSD (it scales to 64 CPUs, BSD scales to 2?)

There's two big reasons that there's NO WAY this would happen

1) All of the problematic stuff about Windows is in userspace anyway (Win32). BSD/Linux doesn't solve that. Meaning, you still get a registry.

2) MS makes $$$ selling apps like SQL Server that are tuned very specifically for WNT. Moving to Unix means they lose that advantage and Oracle/IBM kicks their ass on their own platform.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Syberghost]

I see that as being a pointless waste of effort.

And that is why the *BSDs are an "also-ran".

Cute graphical installers are just frippery.

The same can be said of cute ncurses-based installers. Why not just make everybody edit a text file on the boot floppy?

Or of EMACS; why not just use ed? All that extra functionality is just frippery.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[domc]

Yes, the handwriting is on the wall -- FreeBSD is dead...dead easy to install even though it is doesn't have a gooey installer.

domc

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[DrXym]

User friendly can be little things such as being able to mouse around dialogs instead of tabbing, or providing help in a more readable font, or visual hints such as grouping related options together, or the liberal use of colour and graphics to denote progress, and just generally being less intimidating than a text only console. It's also gives early reassurance that the OS actually recognizes your mouse and graphics card.

To be sure you can royally screw up a GUI and make it as nasty as you want, but if done sensibly it does make installation more pleasant.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Pope Slackman]

And that is why the *BSDs are an "also-ran".

Believe what you like.
I'm not even sure the OS race has started yet, let alone ended.
Besides, not everyone is after "world domination", some people just want a secure, reliable OS.

The same can be said of cute ncurses-based installers. Why not just make everybody edit a text file on the boot floppy?

Some things (NIC detection, for example) are better when interactive, and a console-based installer provides that capability with a minimum of work on the coder's end, and maximum compatibility for the user.
(But in some cases (like setting up a bunch of identical boxes) a text install config file can be /really nice/ for automation.)

Or of EMACS; why not just use ed? All that extra functionality is just frippery.

Where'd that come from? The original post was talking about making a GUI installer
that had no more inherent functionality than the console installer.
Your analogy is bogus, as it misses my original point.

C-X C-S

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the problematic stuff about Windows is in userspace anyway (Win32).

What about drivers?

The clean micro kernel architecture of Windows NT was broken up to take in the graphics driver, due to performance reasons. Personally I blame my occasional Windows 2000 reboots on the nvidia driver.

and the underlying kernel is a hellava lot more scalable and flexible than BSD

I deem the NT kernel much less flexible since they dumped the alpha port. Is there another platform left than x86?

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Jason Earl]

VMS is the original anti-UNIX. It later added some general POSIXy behaviour simply because everyone was using UNIX. Windows NT also had the stated goal of becoming "a better UNIX than UNIX," but they certainly haven't spent much time actually trying to be Unix compatible. Their POSIX layer is a joke, and they don't even have a decent way to fork() for crying out loud.

Besides, while Microsoft almost certainly is looking into "borrowing" portions of BSD code (which will then magically become innovative), they aren't ever likely to actually release an OS that is Unix like. Part of the fun of the BSDs, Linux, and Commercial Unixen is that it usually isn't too much trouble to port your software from one of these platforms to a different one. This is precisely what Microsoft wants to avoid. Microsoft wants the equivalent of a one way valve when it comes to software portability. They want for it to be easy to port from Unix to Windows, but they want it to be impossible to port from Windows to Unix. Clearly shifting to a BSD based OS would work against them.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[cobar]

A gui installer is in the works for FreeBSD. One of the things that's being worked on for 5.0 is the libh installer which will componentize the installer so that you can throw an ncurses or qt frontend on it and have whatever kind of installer you want.

The current installer is a piece of junk that they threw together as a temporary measure back in the 2.2 days. It's only now getting replaced - see man sysinstall to see how what happened.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[linzeal]

Yes, but...

You wanna know how I got a linux box into my aunt and uncle's home and lord forbid this christmas my mom's home?

One word Smoothwall. I tried Single Network Firewall by Mandrake but did not have time to get it to like the NICs I had in there.

If they had a Nice pretty 20-30 meg *BSD firewall distro or a 100-200 meg *BSD firewall/print server/webproxy/IDS server I will install it on my own network along with at least two relatives.

P.S. My Aunt and uncle have had a linux firewall box with a switch on top for 3 years and neither one of them knows dick about computers. The damn thing just works and if it doesn't (its a headless system) they power cycle the bitch and it does. Pretty Webadmin interface makes the whole thing slick and useable, and useability is what at least part of *BSD should be looking at if they want penetration. If not they can circle jerk the whole damn sysadmin community forever but because they do not have the backing of the some big iron company they will forever be regulated to a niche comnunity. No flames meant by any of this, I'm just trying to point out that the Linux community has grown by leaps and bounds since the inception of projects the likes of mandrake, gnome/KDE, and others. I think its time that *BSD learns from its upstart cousin and build something that has the potential for mass appeal.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumping Alpha (&PPC &MIPS etc) for market reasons does not automatically mean that they filled up the kernel with i286 ASM code from the OS/2 1.3 repository. It runs on IA64 and rumor has it that the Alpha is still maintained internally.

The video driver situation is probably regretable, but IMO a non-issue on servers that run bland, stable SVGAish drivers. People blame their Linux reboots on their (partially kernel-mode) bleeding edge Nvidia drivers too, you know.

None of that has to do with the fact that NT scales to shitloads more CPUs than BSD (which esp because we are talking about OpenBSD, is highly based on assumptions that were true with your 80s VAX.)

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[linzeal]

Past girlfriends, some roomates, and relatives of mine agree that once you have to tab between things to install something the install stops and they look for something else. Why, I'll tell you why. B e c a u s e not everyone on the face of the planet knows about tab or shift-tab if you want to get down to it. If the option remains for a more expert customized install who cares? 99% of computers in use by everyday consumers can display some sort of graphical interface and do at least some probing/guesswork for drivers.

Lets get over ourselves and the secret handshakes to get in the clubhouse where non geeks are not allowed.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?

Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.

It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.

With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.

-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Jason Earl]

Someone please MOD THIS UP!

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[psxndc]

Lets get over ourselves and the secret handshakes to get in the clubhouse where non geeks are not allowed.

While I see where you are coming from, you need to understand that some people do not feel this way for good reasons. Lowering the barrier for entry decreases the signal to noise ratio.

Imagine a super hard to use OS where only five people can use it. Any conversation about it among the five users would most likely be useful banter. Now imagine they lower the barrier for entry. Now joe bob idiot is asking "How do I use my printer?" "Why do I need to login?". Conversations devolve into hand-holding sessions and the original five now can't spend the time doing what they used to do: be productive.

It really comes down to the question of "Do you want your OS to be useful to you or useful to others?" and if you choose the latter, who are the others? Joe PhD engineer, billy high school smartkid, or grandma who thinks TV's are new fangled devil boxes? As far as OpenBSD is concerned, I got the impression Theo wanted to make it for himself (and his group of developers). If other people wanted to use it, great, but they are on their own if they don't take the time to delve into the nitty gritty like Theo and company do (not the extent obviously, but you get my point)

psxndc

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[linzeal]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly but I thought the "MandrakeBSD" name meant to branch the CVS into a Userfriendly distro. It would not be desirable to impinge on the sanctity that some developer's hold their codebase in, but it would fine for those people that desire publicity and mass appeal. I mean the parts are there if I was more expierenced I would be half tempted to patch up a beta this winter of a *BSD built just for what I mentioned previously firewall/print server/etcetera.

One thing I have noticed about projects that for one reason or another expose a large portion of newbies out there is that the best thing you can do for them is not to try to appease them with personal interfaces of email, IRC chat banter, or an unwieldly FAQ but to get them together on a forum. So long as the lynch mob is tastefully kept at bay 95% of things resolve themselves there as only one or two people in the know can easily saturuate an issue with knowledge rather quickly.

Mailing lists, forums, and the such are one thing my grandma knows and when they are created just for the knowledge base of newbies and allow the more seasoned people access to more in depth information these sort of things can be self perpetuating. I've seen projects dead for almost a year still being kept alive by virtue of a link to a forum or a mailing list with a few active subscribers.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[timothy]

"The original post was talking about making a GUI installer that had no more inherent functionality than the console installer."

Depends what you consider functionality. I think a better help system during the install (troubleshooting, context-linked explanations to call up with various levels of verbosity ...) would be improved functionality. And in general, unless the *old* functionality is removed, giving users new ways to do things sounds good to me.

timothy

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[poemofatic]

I see that as being a pointless waste of effort.

I don't understand the prejudice which a lot of oldster unix guys against graphics. I reject your frivolous argument as insincere, since text based console tricks have a long and rich tradition in unix. Look at the emacs feature that tells you the phases of the moon, gazillions of aphorisms, the names of programs such as fsck or daemon, lots of text based games. People like to have fun with their computers. That's just as important as anything else a home computer or workstation does. What you don't like is graphics. Well, grow up. See that there's no difference between graphics frivolity in this generation and text frivolity in yours.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

isnt it called os X !??!??!!

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphics and prettiness cost resources. Although you can get the top CPU and gigs of RAM, it won't be faster than the system without graphics. Incorporate this efficiency in a server environment.... OpenBSD isn't a gaming OS because that's not what it was designed to do. If you want to play fast 3D games, or if you like pretty interfaces, then OpenBSD isn't for you. To me, OpenBSD isn't a Linux movement out to take over the world, or trying to at least; however, it's a stable, reliable, fast, and secure OS available for anyone to use. OpenBSD is an atheist in the religious OS war. If you don't want to use it, fine, nobody asked you to, and if you want to use it, fine, good for you.

You don't buy a truck to take to the track, nor do you buy a sports car to take it off-road.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Syberghost]

Or of EMACS; why not just use ed? All that extra functionality is just frippery.

Where'd that come from?

The C-X C-S in your signature.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[poemofatic]

No one is suggesting that graphical installers should be mandatory -- or even default. But OpenBSD still has a large hobbyist following. For God's sake no SMP support, clunky threads, a bit on the slow side, a behind-the-times alpha port -- we're not talking about some huge production OS here. One of my colleagues runs openBSD mainly to serve up his webpages on his workstation. He likes the security. Sure, he gets 12 hits a day, but his thesis is on the machine and his RedHat box was cracked the second day he installed it. Also, the man pages are of surpassing excellence. And a lot of people buy the CD's to get the stickers. Why not? They're having fun. A cs friend on mine hacks on openbsd just because it's well document and the code is so pretty. He wants to have fun, too.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Arandir]

It also gives you more room for onscreen instructions and help and so on.

Hmmm, everytime I've tried a linux GUI installer I get some stoopid 640x480 screen. Doesn't help the readability much.

The big problem with (FreeBSD|Linux) textmode installs that I've seen is not that they are text, but that they are crappy applications.

You mean like that Mandrake installer in a purple and yellow color scheme that makes choosing packages a nightmare?

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[itachi]

It's been out for a while, in fact. It's got a BSD core, it's very user friendly (to the point that it is always criticized on /.), it has the simplest, cleanest install I've ever seen, and it's all about the user's experience. Mac OS X. I'm running 10.1.1 and OpenBSD (respectively) on my two primary machines, and if I could throw the two of them into a blender for a 3rd machine...

itachi

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Arandir]

Past girlfriends, some roomates, and relatives of mine agree that once you have to tab between things to install something the install stops and they look for something else.

We're talking about unix here. If someone can't handle using the tab key, then perhaps, just perhaps, *BSD is not for them.

I've never seen an OS that was truly one-size-fits-all, and I don't ever expect to.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Craig Davison]

I for one would like to see a way to easily move back and forth through the install - as it is in OpenBSD 2.9, I have to start over if I fuck up one thing.

Unpacking the ports tree at install time would be cool too.

I'd also like some clearer docs on what ISA device settings will work with the kernel - an ne2000 at IRQ5 or 9 is ok, but not 3 for example - but since the kernel build files are available that's easy enough to find out on another machine.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Arandir]

My GUI Installer Experiences:

Corel LinuxOS: Crashed every time it tried to probe the video card, even though the XFree86 documentation clearly says in unambiguous terms not to probe my video card. I found now way around it, and no obvious textmode installer to fall back to. It's the only Linux distro I have never been able to install. It's was also cited as a model for user friendliness before even the newbies gave up on it. (it wasn't an obsolete card)

SuSE Linux: On a friends computer: His card did not have a standard VGA mode (seriously) but that was the mode that the installer wanted to use. On the bright side, at least it was easy to get to a textmode installer. (it wasn't an obsolete card)

Installers have to be, by definition, a one-size-fits-all program. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all graphics standard. The PC video display industry is anything BUT standard. As my friend's computer demonstrated, even the VGA display standard is not standard. The only display that every PC can be assured of having is a textmode console.

I'm not prejudiced against graphics. I love the GUI. But I love reliability more. I have learned through painful experience that setting up XFree86 by hand is more reliable than trusting the installer to do it automatically. Go ahead and make your super-duper works-on-anything GUI installer, but keep a textmode installer around for those that require it.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Arandir]

Okay, my reply was a copout. I apologize. I asked a question and you gave a sincere answer.

I wanted to know what made a GUI "user friendly" and you answered basically "readability". Thank you. I will agree that readability is a big factor. I've seen some GUI installers that weren't readable, but a GUI done right can be more readable than a console program done right.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Pope Slackman]

The C-X C-S in your signature.

Um...yeah. I figured.

I was wondering where the EMACS/ed comparison itself came from...

C-X C-S

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[iankerickson]

I'm surprised (not to say hurt, disappointed and disconsolate) that no one (am I wrong?) has come out with the equivalent of Mandrake to at least one of the BSDs -- and by equivalent I mean in a certain superficial but important way: user-friendly, pretty install, emphasis on user experience, intelligibility.

• Fortunately, you
• are wrong. You must feel greatly relieved.
• MacOS X
• Solaris 8 for Sparc
• NetBSD

All of these are BSD-style OSes with easy installers and (almost) automatic hardware detection. The first two boot into painfully easy-to-use GUIs with hypertext help, graphical control panels, and assisted mounting/ejecting removable disks. (The Intel version of Solaris is much more difficult to install, and requires you to know your motherboard/PCI chipsets, like FreeBSD and OpenBSD.) Both MacOS X and Solaris make a comparable workstation desktop to that of Windows NT (meaning: everything except system administration and adding any 3rd-party software is a no-brainer. Especially if you RTFM). The NetBSD install is text-mode, but it's no harder than MacOS X or Solaris. All of them take under a dozen questions to install, especially if you accept the default partitioning and use DHCP or no network at all. NetBSD has some historical docs in /usr/share/doc/. They all make Debian look like filling out a 1040 (though I happen to like the Debian installer).

Really, I'm just talking about the install. Something with some graphical flair, built-in help system for new users, and a game or two, or a little slideshow, or some interesting history text files, *something* built in to play while slow parts of the install proceed.

Try leadership@apple.com and see if you can get them to slip Breakout or some decent reading material (like a bunch of Bill Gates jokes) into the next MacOS X installer. You have an iBook, and today's just might follow through on it. Solaris, incidently, will let you goof off in the shell in a seperate window and has graphical on-line help during the install. No tetris though, unless you provide it yourself on a floppy disk. NetBSD makes you wait to play Tetris until the install finishes, and even then it hides them in /usr/games, which is not in the default path. These NetBSD guys are all business, sheesh. ;-)

Have fun.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Woko]

It runs on IA64 and rumor has it that the Alpha is still maintained internally.

And I heard a rumour that billg enjoys shoving gerbils up his anus.

Was there a point to that story? I like stories.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[be-fan]

However, you have to get beyond the idea that hard=useful. Why is JoeBlow asking how to use his printer in the first place? There must be something wrong with the configuration/printing system. While I very much see your pointer that OpenBSD intends to be a niche OS, its no excuse for being annoying. Many "usability vs. power" tradeoffs actually aren't tradeoffs but developer laziness. If these issues can be fixed, and the system made easier to use, who does it hurt? The system gets new users (who could potentially contribute to it) and even the '1337 hAxors get a system that allows them to fuss less and work more.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theo and company may really like what they do but that doesn't mean they are not blunt assholes to anyone who disagrees with them.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[mmontour]

That's a funny attitude to take. An install with an graphics mode would do much to dispell the image of BSD as a niche OS. And seeing as both FreeBSD and OpenBSD are commercial products, one would think that their repective owners would be keen to broaden their appeal.

Two words: "serial console".

For me, one of the biggest advantages of OpenBSD is that it can be installed, configured, and maintained over a very low-bandwidth channel. This is very useful when you are building servers to be installed in colocation facilities, where you don't have easy physical access.

It is very easy to do a network install of OpenBSD onto a server with no CD-ROM and no video card. All you have to do is connect a network cable and a serial terminal[1], and add a 1-line configuration file to the standard boot floppy. Then you will be able to do the entire installation over the serial console. Linux can be set up for serial-console operation once it's installed, but I haven't seen an installer that supported it as well as OpenBSD does. I have better things to do with my time than plug a video card in just so I can install an OS (especially on a 1U server like the Intel ISP1100, that comes with no video card and only has one full-size PCI slot).

For my money, OpenBSD _is_ a "niche OS", and that niche is sitting between my network and the outside world. It does that very well - the grouchy, spiky blowfish protecting the soft, naive Penguins on the inside. I would be very annoyed if OpenBSD started adding graphical "fluff". That's what SuSE is for (the 7.3 installer does look very nice, I must admit).

FreeBSD, on the other hand, would probably benefit from a graphical installer. It's more of a general-purpose operating system, and it's already menu-driven. Adding VGA graphics would give it a more modern feel (as long as it was still possible to do a text-mode install).

[1] e.g. a Palm IIIx running a terminal emulator. Yes, I've done it, and it worked just fine.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Billly Gates]

Solaris is a SYS-V OS. However SunOS I think is BSD based. To ensure compatability with SunOS its possible Sun could of added some BSd style configs. I use Linux so I am not a solaris expert.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[DrXym]

That's a valid point, but I didn't say the GUI would *replace* the text based installer. I see it working in much the same way as Mandrake or Redhat do - choose console install at the start and that's what you get, otherwise the default is a GUI.

As I mentioned, both these OS's are commercial products. The case for a GUI is much stronger for FreeBSD (it's screaming for one), but both could benefit.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Syberghost]

I was wondering where the EMACS/ed comparison itself came from...

An example of how one person's frippery is another's functionality.

GUI administration interfaces make the difference between me getting paged in the middle of the night and telling an Operator "do this", and me getting paged in the middle of the night and having to get up, log in, and do it myself. I actually got paged during sex last night, with a mandatory 7-minute response time, so I really appreciate shorter calls. :-)

GUI installation interfaces serve similar purposes, but more importantly, they sell CDs. More people using the software leads to more hardware vendors supporting the software, which is A Good Thing. Since OpenBSD sometimes puts sales ahead of proliferation (otherwise they'd make their ISOs downloadable), clearly this is a goal that's not on the bottom of the priority scale.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[stubear]

What abotu MacOS X?

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[_peter]

OpenBSD has no lack of things to do.

JoeBlow needs to realize that the competent developers are already busy spending time working on SMP, better buffer caching, new architectures, entirely new network tools, testing IPv6 interoperability, solving real-world performance issues etc, etc, in addition to trying to stay ahead of the exploit race.

If JoeBlow is capable of fixing the printer system with a clean, well-implemented design that makes the pain of changing over worthwhile, I'm sure he'd be welcomed. But no one is unaware that the current printer system sucks. It's just not the kind of problem that motivates the volunteer developers.

It's not developer laziness, it's the simple fact that developer time is a scarce resource.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[_peter]

just fyi, OpenBSD's install fits on one floppy, and they've put a lot of effort into keeping it that small. Thus you won't see online help anytime soon.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[doob]

Yes, the Solaris x86 installer is the bitch installer from hell. I managed to neatly clean the partition table off a disk after giving the wrong answer to a cleverly disguised question. It seems that Sun's method of 'fixing' a single dodgy partition entry is to get rid of the whole partition table...

DOH!

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD CANNOT be compared to mandrake.

Run "ldd /bin/*" on both machines.

As you can see, there are very fundamental differences. For instence, OpenBSD is actually organized properly.

Re:MandrakeBSD?

[linzeal]

We are talking about a single application of unix in a niche market with a nice simple to use interface. Openbsd is simply more trustworthy in an install that may not be updated in a regular manner. Whereas win32 and linux both need patches at least once a year.

Status of the pf packet filter?

[Rushuru]

What is the status of pf as of now?

Is it stable, secure, and feature complete or is it recommended to install ipf from other sources?

Re:Status of the pf packet filter?

[Zach Garner]

Read the interview. PF has everything IPF (plus more) has already.

Re:Status of the pf packet filter?

[Stochi]

i've just done a complete overhaul of my firewall (2.7 upgraded to 2.8) and in doing so, chose to use the new pf package in the 3.0 release. so far everything has been working great. the move to the pf package was extremely smooth. i only had to change a couple of ICMP rules in my ipfilter ruleset, and re-writing the NAT rules wasn't hard at all with a little help from the pfctl man page. from my testing it appears as though it is performing every bit as good as ipfilter.

the only downside to pf that i see is in the new packet logging scheme. i've written several scripts that used the old ipmon style of syslog logging to run stats for my firewall and the new pf tcpdump format won't work with them. however, it does log, so i can always re-write my scripts to use the new format.

3.0 already?

[Andreas(R)]

I though they had just released 2.5 ?
Code at the speed of light!

Re:3.0 already?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5 was released in May '99. Missed a couple releases over the last 3 1/2 years.

Re:3.0 already?

[Dan Ost]

Last release was v2.9 this summer.

--Dan Ost

Interested...

[Junta]

I'm interested in running OpenBSD for my NAT gateway, though I'm left with a lingering issue..
Does OpenBSD include any support for decent irc connection tracking like what is available in iptables for linux? I have people behind the gateway that use DCC within IRC, and without good connection tracking, I'm not sure how to go about securely allowing one or more people to use IRC and have DCC work.
Everything else I plan on using this system for (software RAID, NIS+, samba PDC and fileserver, NFS) seems to be fine, but this one little nitpick of mine may keep me off of OpenBSD.
Also, how is the raid implementation as far as moving the array from one openbsd install to another, and is there any semblance of lvm there? The volume management stuff w/ resizable partitions would be nice, but by no means necessary..

Re:Interested...

[Bishop]

Use tircproxy in transperant mode. I have found it to work better then either the linux or OpenBSD irc modules. As an added advantage you can tie it in with auth/identd to work with IRC servers that require it. I run OpenBSD identd with the -h option to hide users which works quite well.

Re:Where was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to see a writer not automatically assuming people know where Florida is -- not all his readers will be in the United States. But I guess you're just being a typical ignorant American?

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

This is going to come as quite a shock to my laptop, which runs FreeBSD 4.2 with Gnome and Enlightenment just peachily (peachily? there I said it twice). It will also astound all those people in the security community who would never think of running a firewall other than OpenBSD. Dying? Dead? If *BSD is dead, surely IRIX is next. Then Solaris. In fact, if it requires more than three clicks and a ctrl-alt-del to install, we just may as well bag it because competent administrators just don't exist for it. Wait - maybe that was just flamebait and I bit. Oh well.

softupdates new?

[ckuhtz]

The blurb on /. home makes it sound like SoftUpdates are something new, which is just being introduced. That stuff's been around for a bunch of years now.

mozilla not so happy at the moment

[jslag]

mozilla works

Under OpenBSD, at least, mozilla doesn't work, and never really has. Somebody's working on it. Konqueror apparently works just fine.

Re:mozilla not so happy at the moment

[cmowire]

Ooops.

If you check Mozilla Releases, you will find releases for Free and Net BSD builds, but no OpenBSD builds.

SLACKERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

You trolls are slacking off! It took you almost 30 minutes to post the *BSD is dead troll on a blatantly obvious BSD article!

Better start beefing your trolls up. You're gonna get overrun by a buncha girly geeks!

-DFW : Jamie banned.

WOW the Ego has landed....

[MosesJones]

Pretty impressive reading. It reads as a bunch of guys on the NetBSD front being pretty reasonable and just wanting him to stop behaving like a prat. His response is to throw his toys out the pram and storm off in a huff.

Full credit to him for getting this sort of stuff done, but I hope he has grown up since then.

Re:WOW the Ego has landed....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ted the Rat will never grow up.

Re:*BSD is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong!

I have 34 friends who use BSD on a regular basis. I am not a popular man. So there.

pf : an excellent packet filter

[chrysalis]

The big new feature in OpenBSD 3.0 is pf.

• Interesting stuff in pf over ipf : the configuration file accepts a very similar syntax, but with very handy shortcuts, especially expansion. For instance you can write { pop,smtp,imap } in a rule to specify a list of ports, instead of creating multiple rules. It also accepts macro substitutions. You can easily write very clean configuration files.
• Interesting stuff in pf over ipfw/ipfiler/iptables :
  • scrub : just give an interface name, and pf will "normalize" everything coming to this interface. Packets will get cleaned up and reconstructed : your local network will only see clean packets, nothing that could be dangerous for badly written IP stacks.
  • tcp state modulation : this feature dynamically remaps tcp sequence numbers, to give the excellent entropy of OpenBSD stack to all your traffic. It means that servers running Windows, badly configured Solaris or older FreeBSD versions can be protected from session hijacking, even through their stack has weak sequence randomization.

pf seems to be very stable so far. Just don't forget to apply the related errata if you're planning to use IPv6.
Another great feature of OpenBSD 3.0 regarding network filtering/routing is the integration of AltQ, that brings quality of service to your IP traffic. It basically has the same (but very flexible and efficient) algorithms and class system that Linux has. But it's very nice to see it in OpenBSD.

Re:pf : an excellent packet filter

[Pinball Wizard]

I've been hearing this lately. Say, I notice your sig refers to pureftp, something that I'm trying out. How does the OpenBSD pf firewall work with active FTP connections? Using ipf(3.3.14, I think) I wasn't able to get active connections to work through my firewall. How does pf compare?

Re:pf : an excellent packet filter

[Anonymous Coward]

Arbeit macht frei.

Re:pf : an excellent packet filter

[chrysalis]

* For NAT:

OpenBSD 3.0 has a transparent ftp proxy called "ftp-proxy". You have to run it through inetd (or any super server. I use it with tcpserver) . It listens to a local port, and you just have to redirect outgoing traffic for port 21 to the local ftp proxy port. It allows active and passive connections to NATed internal hosts.

If it can help, my /etc/nat.conf file is :

rdr on vr1 proto tcp from any to any port 21 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8081
nat on vr0 from 10.1.1.0/24 to any -> 195.132.209.36

I start ftp-proxy like this :

/usr/local/bin/tcpserver -H -R -q 127.0.0.1 8081 /usr/libexec/ftp-proxy &

*WARNING*
ftp-proxy has a nice security feature to only accept anonymous sessions (-A). But don't trust it : clients can bypass the restrictions with some buggy servers (the flaw works with proftpd and ncftpd. it doesn't work with pureftpd) .

* For firewalling (without NAT) :

You have to explicitely open some ports for active connections. For the minimum number of ports : choose at least twice the max number of simultaneous sessions you need. Open them on the firewall. Then, force your FTP server to only use these ports. On Pure-FTPd, it's with '-p :', example :

pure-ftpd -4 -p 50000:51000 &

(don't forget '-4' for OpenBSD) .

Re:pf : an excellent packet filter

[Noxxus]

Anyone know if any of the Linux projects (Debian, Slack, etc.) are working on porting pf to their distros?

Re:pf : an excellent packet filter

[chrysalis]

pf uses really OpenBSD-specific hooks. Plus BSD and Linux TCP/IP stacks are really different.
So porting pf to Linux wouldn't be a trivial work.
Actually, Netfilter is really a good packet filter, too. It's very, very, very flexible (especially if you start playing with patch-o-matic patches) . Maybe what could be done is :

• A config-file parser, with a syntax similar to pf, but that outputs iptable rules. AGT is a good starting point.
• Adding features to Netfilter, so that things similar to pf's scrub and modulate state are implemented.

Re:bsd is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

bsd is more dead than my sex life

for something to be dead it must first have lived. since your sex life is undoubtedly non-existent, it never lived and therefore could not die, or be dead. therefore i would argue that your sex life is more dead than bsd.

ms bsd skunkworks

[timothy]

I think you have a good point on that -- BSD License (I'm not about to argue what form of license is the One True Sense of Freedom) would allow just that. I think it would be great if MS came out with an OBSD based OS -- good competition for other OSes ;) And if, as you say, they tout it also as Linux Compatible, then the embrace phase of the dance at least would be good for nearly any *nixish OS. (Then comes extend, extinguish, etc, but ... that's another issue.)

If they make good, high-quality software, that part is good. Bad, intrusive, petty licensing issues are still annoying and a good reason to avoid MS software, but any good stuff they make is still good stuff.

timothy

file systems

[geekoid]

could somebody explain, or point me to a site that explains, diferent filesystems. perferable at a 5,000 foot perspective. I want to know about them, and there advantages/disadvantages but I own't be coding them. I would like to make a informed decsion in this matter.
Thank you.

"Don't like my spelling? blame a teacher"

Re:file systems

[mvw]

Some links:

• The article given does some comparisons:
  http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/usenix2000/general/full_papers/seltzer/seltze r_html/index.html

• Then we have the Matt Dillon Interview, where Soft Updates covered as well (point 3):
  http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=153

• Here is a nice french article:
  http://www.freebsd-fr.org/docs/fr/others/systeme-f ichier/

• And this is a series of articles on file systems:
  http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-fs7/

• This is the original FFS paper:
  http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper. html

Re:file systems

[WasterDave]

Where are my mod points when I need them?

Dave

Re:file systems

[WasterDave]

In the beginning were file systems. A file system took what you wanted it to write and put it on the disk for you. And it was good.

But the users moaned "speed, we must have more speed" and indeed their call was echoed by the admins. So write ahead caching was invented so the users calls would return sooner, and once again all was peaceful with filesystems.

But then one day someone tripped over the power cable and the OS died. On recovery it was discovered that the filesystem was completely borked (due to some of it being in the write ahead cache when the power died) and lots of data was lost. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth so the journal was invented. A journal writes a list of things that the file system will do when it gets around to it, but writes this list to the drive so it doesn't get lost when the power is lost. Because the list is all in one place the journal is fast and once again there was peace.

Over the years slowly everyone, even Microsoft and even the Linux kernel made themselves journals but the BSD hackers (Greg Lehey?) realised you didn't really need one if you were careful about the order in which you wrote to the disk. And hence softupdates were invented, and are (arguably) very slightly faster. But mostly just different. Like Reiser, but that's another story entirely.

Gottit? Synchronous writes good, but slow. Async writes bad, but fast. Journaled writes good, and fast. Softupdates good and fast without a journal.

Dave

Re:file systems

[Anonymous Coward]

perferable at a 5,000 foot perspective.

For high altitudes, just cook it another few minutes.

Re:file systems

[Dom2]

softupdates were first invented as theory by Ganger & Patt and the idea was published as a paper. Kirk McKusick then took their idea, and coded it for *BSD.

Re:file systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Their paper is from 1995. Seems to take a while for such an idea to get implemented in operating systems.

Re:Where was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

>But I guess you're just being a typical ignorant American?

Not like you're stereotyping or anything. Wouldn't want to generalize, seeing as how enlightend you are.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

You dum. I admin over 500 *bsd boxes myself. Mostly FreeBSD and firewalls as OpenBSD. We've done in house speed tests and linux just blows for us. I'm not in development but FreeBSD just hauls, we had over 200 linux boxes but so many headaches I refuse to allow it back into the office (cept for user computers).

I bet you tell people to use MS products also ;-)

Re:Where was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you knew thing one about geography you would know where florida is. and south florida in particular is quite an international place - people from all countries live here. yes - i am in s florida. no i have not met jeremy. ask your average afghan where disney world is - you think they won't know? moron

ISO download

[Syberghost]

As Theo says himself in his interview, people who don't like his model of selling the ISOs are free to make their own. This will hopefully quiet the stupidity that usually follows this announcement:

As usual, ISO images here.

Re:ISO download

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we just download images of the 'official' ISOs off Freenet?

Re:ISO download

[Anonymous DWord]

You could, but it's illegal. Whatever that means to you.

Re:ISO download

[Corporate Troll]

I don't know about you, but I am going to *buy* the CD. These guys need all the (financial) support they can get. A platform build from the bottom to be secure is worth money. I heard that merely the name "OpenBSD" keeps script kiddies from even trying to hack.

Re:ISO download

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate WHORE. Damn you! Off to http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html you go.

Re:ISO download

[Corporate Troll]

I have the vague impression that I shoudn't try that link...

Whore? Well, could have been....except it didn't work and I really did buy the CD's. So who is better? The karmawhore who tries to get some points and really buys the thing or the the troll that claine *BSD is dead and doesn't give a shit?

Re:ISO download

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless Theo changed the BSD licence, it's not illegal. Or was that a lame attempt a joke?

Re:ISO download

[ralmeida]

It is illegal to distribute the ISOs because Theo has the copyright on the CD's layout, although the software is BSDed.

Re:ISO download

[mirabilos]

I wouldn't trust your images.
Rather build your own
www.de.openbsd.org/anoncvs.html
or use ctm, cvsup (think of the S1G bug), ftp.

GET_A_CLUE_SLASHDOT.TXT

[Accipiter]

Here's the text from that file:

Slackware 7.2 is NOT released.

Is this in the slackware-current, or slackware-7.2 directory?

Looks like slackware-current to me.

Wake up, do some REAL reporting (like, ask someone on our team), and stop trying to get "fp!".

...should be about a month for the actual release.

- Pat

(I wish I could find the reply to michael's ascertation of it being a beta, aptly named "THIS_IS_NOT_A_BETA_EITHER.TXT, but that seems to have been lost in the sands of time.)

Ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the USENIX article:

[24] McKusick, M.K., Ganger, G., "Soft Updates: A Technique for Eliminating Most Synchronous Writes in the Fast Filesystem," Proceedings of the 1999 Freenix track of the USENIX Technical Conference, pp. 1-17. Jun. 1999.

This publication is from mid 1999. If my memory serves right, SUN paid McKusick for part of the work. (Anyone knows if Soft Updates went into Solaris?)

In the interview Theo complains about ignorance from the Linux camp regarding Soft Updates. Indeed we rather read about ReiserFS vs. extfs3 battles there. It would be insightful, if one of the Linux fs experts could give his opinion on the issue.

Re:Ignorance?

[Luyseyal]

see my top-level post with some links to Linux hacker commentary:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24290&cid=26 32 739

-l

Re:Ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Perhaps they write a paper someday on it.

Re:Ignorance?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as a "linux fs expert".

All the people running linux are weenies that read slashtrash all day. Of the unix users I've met, 95% of linux users are admins / trolls / script-kiddies. On the other hand, about 50% of the BSD users I know can actually _write_kernel_code_.

I'm waitting on our 3 OpenBSD CDs

[alexhmit01]

We use OpenBSD exclusively for our web servers. We moved our database servers from OpenBSD to Linux. I look foward to migrating our systems (some 2.8, some 2.9, one that I broke trying to do a fancy 2.8->2.9 upgrade...) when our CDs arrived. We figured that we use OpenBSD a lot, owning a bunch of CDs was worth it. Alas, it is is still cheaper than the copies of RedHat that we pick up.

OpenBSD has a real problem that I was never able to resolve, this makes it worthless for a database server. The machine is quite "efficient" with memory, which let it run with very little memory. However, with a lot of memory (our db servers normally have 1.5GB -> 2GB, I LIKE giving PostgreSQL lots of buffers and sortmem) there is little documentation on tweaking the system. I even contacted the developers in charge of the SysV memory support, etc., and they thought I hit the crack rock a little to hard.

For web servers, however, I'm quite comfortable with our OpenBSD servers sitting open on the Internet. I'm terrified of a RedHat box not being hidden. As a result, I keep the database nice and hidden.

Linux blows OpenBSD's performance away. This is a matter of Linux focusing on performance. However, for web servers (that for us just run PHP, mod_rewrite, and some other toys) I don't care... When I need more web serving power, I buy another web server for $2K. Having SSL built in to Apache is nice, and the ports is too fucking slick.

BTW: OpenBSD seems to run quite nicely on my Penguin Computing 1U servers... :)

Alex

I expect to keep our production servers on 2.9 for 2-3 months, but move development to 3.0.

Re:I'm waitting on our 3 OpenBSD CDs

[jslag]

there is little documentation on tweaking the system.

Did you try the postgresql docs?

FreeBSD, OpenBSD

The options SYSVSHM and SYSVSEM need to be enabled when the kernel is compiled. (They are by default.) The maximum size of shared memory is determined by the option SHMMAXPGS (in pages). The following shows an example of how to set the various parameters:

options SYSVSHM
options SHMMAXPGS=4096
options SHMSEG=256
options SYSVSEM
options SEMMNI=256
options SEMMNS=512
options SEMMNU=256
options SEMMAP=256

Linux blows OpenBSD's performance away.
When you're done reading the postgresql docs, try the openbsd faq

Re:I'm waitting on our 3 OpenBSD CDs

[alexhmit01]

I found that, thanks for the help. The problem I found (I haven't tried this in 2 months) is that those numbers weren't aggressive enough. I tried just doubling those, but monitoring the results, one of the parameters appeared to have a max. Certain values appeared to be manually overridden in param.c, etc.

Again, I wanted details, I got One (1) example. I was trying to assign 1GB of buffers, which required much more shared memory than that, and I appeared to hit a cap before I reached that.

OTOH, my Linux install handled it beatifully with 1 (non-compile time) configuration change. Red Hat now has my database server, complete with a dual-processor machine.

PostgreSQL is developed for Linux and Solaris... sticking to one of those two platforms has some advantages.

Alex

Re:I'm waitting on our 3 OpenBSD CDs

[mirabilos]

tweaking?
man 4 options

performance?
I prefer stability.
SuSE 6.4 won't even bother to _boot_ from CD
on a not-more-so-recent Duron system.
The BSDs do.

Re:I'm waitting on our 3 OpenBSD CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux blows OpenBSD's performance away.

This is why we use FreeBSD. Not to mention actually _using_ multiple processors.

When I installed...

[andersbd]

OpenBSD last (&first) time, the group "wheel" was created (for those users who are to be allowed to su to root).

I've been wondering since: what's the meaning and origin of the use of the word "wheel" here (there?) ?

Re:When I installed...

[Anonymous Coward]

what about a quick search on the jargon file?

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/whe el .html

Re:When I installed...

[joe_bruin]

the jargon file being of no help...

users in the wheel group can "take the wheel", as it were. if you're not in wheel, you don't get to drive. wheel is still implemented on openbsd and freebsd (dunno about net)

Looking to get into using BSD

[browser_war_pow]

I'm interested in getting started with a BSD, but which one I should use I don't know. I'm not that afraid of having to configure hardware myself, but I'd prefer something that makes a reasonable attempt to do that for me.

So.....
1. Which is the easiest/best to get started with?
2. Which has the best documentation
3. Do any of them have compatability with Linux configuration tools like Kudzu and HardDrake?
4. Which one supports the most x86 hardware

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Free
2. Free/Open (man pages are actually useful, not like in Linux). Free has more users, so more online docs in that regard.
3. Yeah, vi.
4. Free.

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[Freedent]

all IMHO, but feel free to flame away

1. Open
2. Open
3. Dunno, but I'd place bets on Free or all of them
4. Free

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[WasterDave]

FreeBSD. And life is a lot easier if you use PCI peripherals.

If you've got the time give 'em all a go.

Dave

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[Col. Panic]

I would say FreeBSD on all counts. The install is fairly intuitive and somewhat graphical. You can find the documentation here. There is also info for newbies.

You can run Linux binaries on FreeBSD if you install support for it, but since the underlying system is different you can't configure BSD that way. The FreeBSD equivalent of linuxconf would probably be sysinstall. It is pretty easy to use.

Here is the supported hardware list for x86. I have FreeBSD 4.2 running on my Toshiba laptop with a Xircom NIC for God's sake. It supports plenty.

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[mike_the_kid]

They all have good points and bad points. If you do not have a strong reason to use one, you can narrow it down.

4. Which one supports the most x86 hardware
NetBSD supports a wider range of non-x86 hardware than any other OS. This is an advantage you probably will not need.
1. Which is the easiest/best to get started with?
It depends on when you consider the box "set up". If you are going to use it as a firewall / router, OpenBSD is hands down the way to go. Thats just the way it is. You want to spend as little time as you have to installing bug fixes.

If you are going to use the machine as an all purpose "learn about stuff" box, go with Free. Its used by the most people of the three, so there is a good community as far as dlists and howto's.

I studied the three a bit before making a choice for myself, and found that the FreeBSD deamon had a slightly more developed look than the netbsd logo. Objectively, I found the deamon logo more interesting than the blowfish in general. Don't get me started on penguins.

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[MobyTurbo]

Q: which is easiest?

A: FreeBSD is easiest; but easiest means that it's harder to install than most Linux.(Getting packages is easier however!) Best is a matter of opinion.

Q: Which has the best documentation?

A: FreeBSD 4.2 Powerpack included great documentation, a somewhat outdated "FreeBSD Complete" book, but I don't know if FreeBSD is sold in a box anymore; it may be only CDs for recent versions; though you could still buy the books seperately and the FreeBSD handbook is available for free online. Again, there's not as many books as for Linux (understatement); but the book I mentioned is very good.Some but not all of that book and other FreeBSD docs would apply to other BSDs by the way.

Q: Do any of them have compatability with Linux configuration tools?

A: FreeBSD has binary compatability with Linux, maybe so do the others; but I wouldn't run any Linux configuration tools on it if I were you. :-) They don't use the identical configuration syntax and files.If you need GUI configuration utilities you should stick with Linux...*DON'T* run them on BSD.

Q: Which one supports the most x86 hardware?

A: My guess is, again, FreeBSD; but the others probably have similar support; which is to say not as good as Linux but supporting mainstream server hardware. NetBSD has the most portability, it runs on more machines than any BSD, or even possibly any Linux; but that's not what you're asking. :-)

OpenBSD is pretty good, especially with regards to security. However, it's definitely not known as being the easiest or having the most hand-holding of the BSDs, which seems to be (no flame intended) what the questions posted are asking. FreeBSD has the reputation of being the easiest of the BSDs.

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[The Ape With No Name]

1. FreeBSD -- sysinstall is as easy as Linuxconf and, maybe, more straightforward. No marketing lingo tossed into the salad like Linux.

2. All of them are good, but FreeBSD has the Handbook. Nothing wrong with man pages, IMHO.

3. FreeBSD again, although this may be possible with the others.

4. FreeBSD. I have it running on a Toshiba Tecra 730CDT. Yoiks! The others run on far more different hardware than FreeBSD.

Re:Looking to get into using BSD

[hearingaid]

Definitely FreeBSD.

Use FreeBSD 3.x for old boxes, 4.x for new boxes. (Especially use 3.x if you have old, weird, cranky proprietary CD-ROMs and other hardware from that era.)

Here's the breakdown:

• FreeBSD - Easy to setup, fast, well-supported; x86 and Alpha only
• OpenBSD - Security paranoid; doesn't have as many packages as FreeBSD, nearly as fast, much more secure, also more architectures than FreeBSD
• NetBSD - Runs on everything - want to put a *nix on your fridge? This is the most likely candidate :)

Re:Where was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

America needs to be emasculated. Cut off the Florida penis!

Re:First foot fetish post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, and no password either, huh? You useless bastord.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will also astound all those people in the security community who would never think of running a firewall other than OpenBSD.

We need more than rumors and hearsay. Who is this 'security community.'

If it's just a bunch of guys who hang out on Usenet don't bother replying.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[bitty]

Okay troll, I'll bite.

Try pulling your head out of your ass before spouting off next time. Usenet posts don't prove squat. Have you ever even thought to look at the archives of the various *non-usenet* mailing lists?

And Netcraft, they only talk about servers running web sites. My firewalls don't run websites, my email server doesn't run a web site, my print server doesn't run a web site, my home computer doesn't run a web site...

Yes, by all means, let's keep to the facts.

because things change :)

[timothy]

wiredog wrote: " Why? Mandrake is aimed straight at the Desktop. RedHat aims at Windows NT users. The BSD's aim at unix sysadmins who Know What They Are Doing. Open/Free/Net don't need a User Friendly graphical install interface because their current interface is friendly to the users they aim at."

OK. You're right, and that's what I tried to say in the first place -- they don't *need* to do anything, really, this is just an idea I've been wondering about for a while. Then again, no one needs to eat anything besides what they've eaten before. To me, that's an unconvincing argument against not trying new things ... conservativism has its merits, but there are drawbacks, too. "As it was, so shall it ever be"?

Needs are relative and context-dependent. Someone who wanted to use an ultra-secure OS as the basis of a turn-key retail or data-entry system, for instance, might want the good things about OpenBSD, but not the learning curve. "Take it or leave it" is one answer to this, but I see no reason for it to be the only answer.

Sure, the BSDs are (currently) well suited only for people who are used to UNIX, know their way around shells, etc (though there are some good intro books, which would probably turn anyone who's pretty computer literate into a moderate user in not too long a time) -- but there's really nothing inherent that says they have to be. (And a nice counterexample in the case of OS X, too.)

The reason I would like to see this is because I think it's good to have a crowded, robust OS marketplace. Like my comment said, my wish isn't a demand on BSD developers or anyone else; I'm surprised, though, that an ultra-friendly version of at least one of the BSDs hasn't already emerged, but it takes some lucky intersections of interest, ability, time and money which aren't inevitable, only possible.

cheers,

timothy

Re:because things change :)

[matroid]

Well said.

Mod this comment up.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

you fscking moron! it is a trooll full of b.s. facts. it's not supposed to make sense or be true. it's just supposed to piss you off! you fell for it

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA HA

don't give in to your hate. fear leads to anger anger leads to hate and hate leads to frist prost!

w00t

-ac

Changelog /.ed

[necrognome]

"This page cannot be displayed." BSD must be dead.

Re:*BSD is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a popular woman?

Re:OpenBSD leader Theo admits...

[Anonymous Coward]

All your *BSD are us Usama Win Modem

note to self: "conservativism" is too long a word

[timothy]

"conservatism" probably works just as well ;)

Brain ... mushy ... need ... sleep ...

timothy

TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Luyseyal]

TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

As Levar Burton says in Reading Rainbow, "but don't take my word for it."

• http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20000814_80. ht ml#1
• http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20001016_89. ht ml#1
• http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20010119_103 .h tml#1
• http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20010702_124 .h tml#10

-l

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[spektr]

Afraid of BT?

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Luyseyal]

British Telecom?
-l

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Yep. He doesn't want to be sued for patent infringement :-)

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? TUX2 doesn't exist. It was a nice idea that fell apart and no work has been implemented. This is what we in the industry call "vaporware." Stick with one of the four existing journaling filesystems if you insist on using Linux.

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Luyseyal]

Wow, what a persistent troll.
-l

Re:TUX2 Phase Tree: Better than Soft Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah!

I'll believe it when I see it.

Oh, and I'd love to see those linux children try to implement snapshots.

Holiday...

[DarkMan]

Most relevently is that int's only really in the month or so after a release (rather, the month starting a couple of weeks after a release) that Theo gets a holiday.

With that in mind, the Dec 1st release date was obvious.

Is BSD really dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is too!" "Ain't!" "Is Too!" "Ain't" So is BSD dead? Does any operating system really die? CP/M, AmigaOS, MSDOS, and so on are still used. Multics is dead only because the hardware to support it is not in the "hobbyist" price range. BSD is dead in the sense that CP/M is dead. It is still used, but it is not a viable platform for future development. BSD is at its heart a hobbyist's operating system. Nothing wrong with that. So there is some truth in both sides of the argument over whether BSD is dead. It depends on your definition of "dead"

Re:Is BSD really dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, Descartes.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in development but FreeBSD just hauls, we had over 200 linux boxes but so many headaches I refuse to allow it back into the office (cept for user computers).

If you had that much trouble with the kernel source you should ask for help. Oh, do you mean you installed a shitty distro? Linux is a kernel, the distribution is what runs on the computer. If you like FreeBSD style stuff, then you should have used Slackware Linux, of course, by the tone of your post, you probably used RedHat, in which case I don't blame you. I wouldn't allow that shit anywhere near a computer that I am responsible for either.

why bother? Re:ISO download

[StandardDeviant]

Can't we just download images of the 'official' ISOs off Freenet?

why bother? the varia ISOs are for x86, which the vast majority of people use. to most people, the official CDs are pretty much worthless (now, folks that want to make an Amiga firewall or something, yeah, they need the official CDs).

I wish the OpenBSD guys had some sort of "pick-an-arch" system where you could get X number of arches for Y dollars (like $10 for an x86 cd, $10 for a macm68k/macppc cd, $10 for a combo of the smaller arches, or something like that).

This would provide the most utility/choice to the end users, and probably increase CD sales by lowering the cost barrier (I mean, $40 is enough for most folks to notice, $10 is almost an impulse buy). Also, a minor side effect, the cd insert could be (more extensively) tailored with installation hints for the arch in question (not a big issue because the instructions are on the cd, but sometimes it's nice to have paper to follow along with while you're typing).

Re:why bother? Re:ISO download

[uberdood]

Meanwhile, if you had *read* the interview, you'd know why there's one set of CDs for $30.

Re:why bother? Re:ISO download

[azrix]

I read the interview and just went back over it again just to be sure. I don't understand what you're talking about with the 'one set of CD's for $30'. The 2.9 CD's are only $30, but the 3.0 CD's are $40. And I have to agree with the above poster on this one. $40 is a lot of money for three CD's. Even coming down to $30 for the CD's would be a big improvement. So, could you please explain what you mean, please?

Re:why bother? Re:ISO download

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it a while back when it was linked to from deadly.org. Like the other person who replied, I'm quite curious where in the text of the interview you noticed that there was an official, $30 3.0 obsd distribution.

~
StandardDeviant
at work as an obsd admin and perl wrangler,
too lazee bother logging in...

Re:why bother? Re:ISO download

[uberdood]

I'm wrong on the price as I was thinking of the 2.8/2.9 price. What I meant about read the interview is that the cost of the discs is not for the media. It is to support the OpenBSD project. People who wish to keep Theo and crew working on OpenBSD should buy the CD set. People who cannot afford it can:

- download the appropriate architecture folder
- install across the 'net
- make their own CDs
- download someone's custom ISO

Don't bitch about the price though.

KDE on PPC?

[saintlupus]

I'm running OpenBSD 3.0/macppc on my iMac, and can't get KDE to build from the ports collection. Is anyone else having this problem? I CVSed the 3.0 branch of ports, so I don't think it's some weird update issue.

--saint

Donations have slumped?

[gruntvald]

"The donations have seriously slumped in the last year, but that is probably just due to industry tightening of the belts." says De Raadt.
Based on what evidence? Many other OS and software projects are getting serious funding. Perhaps it's something to do with the reponses that the core development team post on the mailing lists? If you've seen some of the bile that gets spewed up over journalling, boot loaders, and anyone who dare make a security question, you'll probably understand that a lot of folks get alienated against the project.
When you see stuff like "journalling is for linux weenies" (all fs problems are solved by soft updates - oh yeah? what did you do before you had 'em ?), referring to the user base as "whiners", and comments such as "we don't care if you use OBSD", from the core developers themselves it makes you wonder why there's even an advocacy mailing list.
My personal favorite from the last de Raadt interview posted on /. was the comment along the lines "Linux only has SMP because they don't know what SMP really means". That may be so, but OBSD is one of the few *nix like products I'm aware of that still doesn't have SMP. And there's a lot of software that will show a big performance boost on SMP these days.
One final caveat, the security of the product is great, providing you want Apache the way Theo gives it to you, and you don't intend installing any ports....

Re:Donations have slumped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Theo frequently act immature online ... sure. But clearly Theo is at least no worse than he was in the past (actually, I think he's matured a bit), and his .. uhm .. social graces aren't exactly a big secret. It makes little sense to reason that this accounts for fewer donations to the project.

It is too bad that OBSD lists/newgroups are often frequented by impressionable Theo-wanna-be's that are under the misimpression that it is cool to be rude. Theo acting alone would just be a curiousity ... Most of the OBSD core developers are generally pretty civil.

As to the lack of SMP support, the OBSD core group's reasoning is pretty sound. They feel that it will introduce security complications, and isn't a big advantage in the roles OBSD generally serves (e.g. firewall; basic web-server; OBSD enthusiast desktop). Since security is their priority, it is ridiculous to critize them for slow progress in SMP support. I believe the official line is the unreligious statement 'if you truely need or want SMP, look elsewhere for now'.

Re:Donations have slumped?

[itachi]

I've been reading misc for the last two years, and yes, there are a lot of flames. 99% of them are responses to someone who didn't bother to try man -k, the FAQ, the mailing list archives, or including relevant information (like what version of Open on what hardware). If you can't be bothered to try to think about it for yourself, why ask other people to think about it for you? If you ask a question that you tried to answer, chances are you wont get flamed. If the entire message is "how do I configure this?" with no clue as to what this you might be refering to, I hope Theo flames you. Having said that, that 1% or so of flames are people being people. It's not pretty, it's not nice, but it's human nature, there are no mailing lists without flames.

itachi

Re:Donations have slumped?

[mirabilos]

> we don't care if you use OpenBSD
as Theo says, he does it as a hobby and doesn't want to force anyone to use OpenBSD.
The fewer users, the more the developers have time to hack (which is joy for him).
Even I got an answer :)
> journalling is for linux weenies
I liked fewer fsck time, but I have let me persuade by the team. Softupdates are ok.
See the thread on linux-kernel@ (yes I follow l-k, misc@, tech@, source-changes@ and few others) on "Journalling pointless with today's hard drives?"
> what did you do before
4.2BSD FFS
4.4BSD LFS
check it out - LFS is still in the tree (escept for newlfs), albeit defunct.
I tried to get it running, but won't compile.
> bit performance boost on SMP
A Pentium-133 with 64MB RAM can easily saturate a 100Mbps line as web- and fileserver at up to 30% load.
My Pentium-100 (OC'ed 90) with 24MB additionally acts as Samba server and router/NAT/firewall,
and as IPv6 native router + tunnel endpoint.
This box using a Hercules gfx card (oh yes, this thingy at 720x348x1) and a self-built snapshot by anoncvs. It is rock solid, and I regularily hit the power switch by accident.
And my Windoze user profiles are stored on it, and it's my companion on almost any LAN I attend.

> Security
Prove an exploit.

Re:This whole article is moot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask the pen-test and vuln-dev mailing lists and read what contributors have to say. Check Jan Johansson's comments here. Oh, and yeah - a couple of people in Usenet too.

The reason for the early release:

[snake_dad]

was that the cd's were available earlier than expected, according to this message from Theo at the OpenBSD Journal.

Btw, the headlines from this site are available as a slashbox, just check the box in your /. preferences.

Snake_dad (who runs Linux, Winedose, Novell 3.12 and ... OpenBSD :-)

Again me....for the non-believers

[Corporate Troll]

And those who don't believe the "will buy", well....I just filled in the form: 1 T-shirt + 1 OpenBSD 3.0 + 33 EUR donation => totals up to 100 EUR and I'll just keep down my beer consumption next month... :-)

This is a few days old

[Hobart]

This news (both Theo interview and others) has been up for a few days on OpenBSD Journal.

Slashdot readers who have made an account and are logged in can customize their display to add the headlines from OpenBSD journal and other sites to their main slashdot page, and catch news like this as it happens. It's a neat feature. ;)

Re:mozilla happy at the moment =)

[Quazion]

OpenBSD should be able to run Linux Executable's although i didnt try it yet Mozilla should work...

Quazion.

Slashdot bias

[ajs]

I'm getting sick of this constant stream of freshmeat-like announcements of Linux-specific junk. You know there's more in the world than just Li... oh, you said OpenBSD! ;-)

-Aaron, who has seen too many serious posts that began with similar statements

Facts about Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

When NetBSD broke off it was considered militant. The was partly because Chris Demitrious did not get along with people. Other people were upset because their patches (submissions to the patchkit effort) were not accept. There was much ill feelings. Chris is now a different person, I think he learned things. Those other peoples are now the core team at NetBSD.

Theo de Raadt was the most militant, disagreeable, and nasty, hence the hard-line at OpenBSD. NetBSD people, as they tell it, just want Theo to not yell at people. He considered it censorship (see recent article).

Many other fact worked their way in. Aside from the stuff I've mentioned, there is still lots of ill feelings toward the authors of 386BSD. Another factor is BSDi. Many individuals (at the now defunct BSDi) actually started rumors and incited mis-trust. AT&T also added pressure at the time by claiming Unix was a National (treasure??) and therefore should be consider un-exportable. This in a similar way as we have controls over munitions. There was an out-of-court settlement. Part of the settlement did not allow anyone to talk about it.

Executive summary - Theo is an ass; bad karma crippled BSD from the get go.

GUI Installers

[hearingaid]

The problem with them is that they make basic assumptions about your hardware.

Every Intel box in the universe is capable of putting up characters on the screen. Anything past that, you're making assumptions.

The *BSD installers can be setup on a box with a Hercules graphics card.

And you wonder why you'd want to do that? Well, let's say you're setting up a server. The normal way I have of getting a server going is to plug in a video card - any video card, junk is great - get FreeBSD going on it, get a telnet or ssh daemon running, and then compile a custom kernel with no video card driver & rip that sucker out of there. Because there's no GUI, I can do that.

Re:GUI Installers

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude -- I'm sorry, but I'm calling bullshit on you. Nobody's running around risking motherboard blowout by shoving a decades-old ISA Hercules in there. VGA-compatible display hardware has been standard for more than a decade.

Re:GUI Installers

[Arandir]

VGA compatible hardware may be a common denominator standard, but that doesn't mean VGA hardware is installed on on your rackmount.

All you need is a console. It could be a Matrox G450+, a VGA display, a Hercules card, an even older MDA card, or even a connection to the serial port. I would recommend the latter as opposed to swapping cards in and out, or course :-)

Re:GUI Installers

[mirabilos]

Heh?
I fscked ASUS for not having allow me use my
HGC in my shiny new Duron-800.
Now it's sitting in my Pentium-100 (OC'ed 90)
box which, once upgraded to 3.0-current, will
be 24/7 online, file server, web server, samba
server, NAT router, IPv6 native router and tunnel
endpoint, etc.
It's a pity that pccons does not have virtual consoles, because the MGA and the CGA have limited GFX RAM (the HGC and EGA don't).
So I'm mostily using ssh or putty. RSA logon of course.

Re GUI installers:
Whilst reading this article I gave the FBSD handbook a shot.
I laughed at their kernel configuration tool.
Either easy (and in OpenBSD you safely know _where_ a thing is: where it belongs) or easy the other way round (there is Win3.1 and there is NT5).

great

[Anonymous Coward]

Great - too bad I have more than one processor in this box.

Looks like it's FreeBSD for me.

The main problem with OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that FreeBSD is in deep trouble. And while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer.

I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...

Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.

If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"

That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a VAX port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.

The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD has lost.

Re:The main problem with OpenBSD

[mirabilos]

I remember some of the sentences in this post byte-by-byte in another thread, one year or more ago.
Is this considerable a troll, or are these his opinions, which, cut'n'paste aside, are so crucial that they get the same wording over a year later?
Mod me up, mod me down, it doesn't matter, but I'm honest not to post as an AC.

Re:The main problem with OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a complete troll.

Why is this +1 interesting?

Any BSD follower worth his salt knows that there is _plenty_ of good karma between FreeBSD and NetBSD. OpenBSD may be another story, but hey, that's just the way Theo is.

Fact: code from one BSD frequently appears in another

Fact: when FreeBSD borrows from NetBSD, an "Obtained from" line appears in the CVS commit message

Fact: NetBSD similarly gives credit where it is due when borrowing from FreeBSD

Fact: OpenBSD borrows code by the truckload from NetBSD

Fact: NetBSD code added to OpenBSD frequently does NOT give credit to the original author

Perhaps OpenBSD does not play well with others, but that doesn't say a damn thing about the rest of us.

So long as you are talking about Theo's mail archive, I thought I'd point out the fact that large chunks of it are missing. Upon inspection you will clearly see quoted portions of text without a source. This is because Theo has censored the archive. What was that you were saying about censorship?

Re:it works great

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another uninformed opinion which is so indicitive of slashdot... Try using iptables before stating something like that.

Just installed it...

[red_dragon]

I recently installed 3.0 to replace a 2.8 that I was using as a firewall. At first I didn't want to upgrade due to ipf and ipnat having been removed (ipnat in particular is quite powerful given its simplicity). Fortunately, pf is quite easy to set up, and I managed to do the switch in the course of one work day (most of it spent installing the OS). I noticed the following gotchas, though:

• with frag/short is gone. if you have it in your rules, you'll have to remove it. I think scrub does the same, though (but correct me if I'm wrong);
• NAT is not quite the same NAT. pf only supports many-to-one at the moment, and the outside address *must* be the machine's external address. If you've used ipchains, you'll recognise this is the same as masquerading.
• pflogd doesn't log to syslog. Instead, it dumps logged packets to a binary file, which you then examine with tcpdump.

However, those are minor issues, mind. In the end, I'm quite pleased with the changes. It "feels" much more stable, for one. And the installer couldn't be any simpler: it sets up your disklabels, formats the partitions, configures your network connections, and downloads the OS, and you only need one floppy for that.

Say it like it is.

[rice_burners_suck]

From the interview:

Some vague claims have been made that the fuss was over stuff that I said. Well, if anything I said back in those days was a crime against the community, I would say it again. And as anyone on our mailing lists knows, I am not someone to mince words. I say things as they are. Slackers are called slackers, people who can't read manual pages are called losers, and in general, calling things what they are results in developers wasting less time.

You gotta love comments like these! Well, you might not, but I do anyway. I say, why hide behind glossy, laminated marketing? (By the way, I'm not trying to say anything against the NetBSD team. They're good folks and NetBSD is a great product, as is OpenBSD.) All I'm saying is that people should say things as they are. If you can't read a man page, you shouldn't be using a computer! It's as simple as that.

Oh well.

Good read; Proper maintainance.

[rice_burners_suck]

Theo included a good link in his interview...

I just finished reading it and it is some wonderful information. Seriously, everybody who runs any of the BSDs or Linux should read this paper. It will give you a much deeper understanding of what's going on and why, and this will lead to better choices when you configure your next box (or maintain those you're running right now). As always, reliable operation of any machine (be it a computer, a car, or a nuclear power plant) depends heavily on knowledgeable use and proper maintainence.

Oh well.

Re:VA Software confirms.. *BSD is dying

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Silly troll. Your miracle was the solar flare that accompanied the announcement of the release of OS X.1. Apple has put OS X (as a secondary dual-boot OS) on hundreds of thousands of Macs since last May, and will be making it the default OS on all machines shipping starting next March. OS X is the mighty sword with which Apple plans to slice and dice Microsoft's monopoly!

In case you didn't even bother to read the title of the parent article (except for the letters "BSD"), OpenBSD 3.0 is going to be released on December 1st. New releases are not a good sign of impending doom. ;) Although I firmly believe that OS X has a special place in Mothra's heart due to its role in her divine plan to save us from an evil monopoly ;), I think it is best to have many versions of BSD, Linux, etc. so there is something to fit everyone's needs and preferences. OS X is great as an end user OS with both commercial and open source applications. OpenBSD is good if you need the security. Linux does great things as an embedded OS (and several other things). Etc. As long as they all play nicely with open standards, they can all coexist happily. The only things that needs to die are Microsoft's bad attitudes and their bugs.

"Mothra, you are Life Eternal! Hear the prayers of your servants. Come back to us from out of the legend. Come and save us with your power of Life!"
- From the US release of "Mothra"

15 days until Mothra returns!

99% are in the FAQ?

[gruntvald]

That's a crock. Unless you have some statistical facts you've done on mailing stats, to back this statement up, you are making mistaking opinion for research. I decided, for fun, to look at the flames, then research them in the OBSD FAQ and mailing archives. The result? OBSD mailing lists are overwhelmingly a symptom of juvenile venting, they bear no relation to the content of the FAQ's, or mailing list threads, and are simply self-righteous chest-beating by folks who never learned manners.

Re:99% are in the FAQ?

[itachi]

Fine, pending number crunching, s/99%/vast and overwhelming majority/

Happy? My point still stands - the people who get flamed, for the most part, did something really rude, which got them a rude response. Mind you, I did not say that they were in the FAQ, I said that they were in the FAQ, or they asked something like "how do i configure it" with no reference to what "it" was, or the question is answered by the man page, etc. Like I said, the questions that try to put the work off on someone else get angry responses, sort of like how your response was a bit snippy, because you (rightly) didn't want to do the work to back up my numbers.

itachi

Background FSCK

[Daeron]

In that case You simply let the system make a "snapshot" of your dirty filesystem. Mount the filesystem ... and simply let FSCK do the cleanup in the background ... FreeBSD-5.0-CURRENT already has this functionality WORKING for (if i recall correctly) several months by now .... so don't be surprised if this starts to creep up into e.g. NetBSD/OpenBSD as well.

ahh yes it is

[QuantumG]

I dont *want* to wait, I want my computer booted *now*. I dont want to wait for it to power down. I dont want to wait for it to power up. When the trivial bit of code main() { while (1) fork(); } run from userland can cause me to need to hit the reset switch I dont wanna lose data and I dont wanna have to wait for 15 minutes for it to boot back up.

Re:ahh yes it is

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall you being a fag.

Re:Where was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are parts of South Florida that sure don't seem to be in the US...

Re:it works great

[mirabilos]

ipfwadm syntax was soo straightforward...
once I read an article in my native language
covering firewalling concepts in general,
and the englisch manpage of ipfwadm, I was able
to set it up.
Ok, pf has (thanks do dhartmei@) a nice manpage,
and an even better howto, but it is soo complex...

Not that I'd complain, I've just get tused to it.

Re:it works great

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? The linux kids will just yank it out and replace it with the next "stable" version of the kernel.

depends what aspects you're going for ...

[timothy]

itachi wrote: "It's been out for a while, in fact. It's got a BSD core, it's very user friendly (to the point that it is always criticized on /.), it has the simplest, cleanest install I've ever seen, and it's all about the user's experience. Mac OS X. I'm running 10.1.1 and OpenBSD (respectively) on my two primary machines, and if I could throw the two of them into a blender for a 3rd machine... "

heh, OS X is pretty nice, though my esperience has been slightly buggier than yours, it sounds like.

Solaris I've used (slightly) but not myself installed.

NetBSD is the closest to what I'm suggesting probably, simply for licensing reasons. It's true I didn't get this specific when I said "Mandrake Linux" but the thing which rules out Solaris and Mac OS for that role is that Mandrake produces free / Free software. So does OpenBSD -- Mac OS is a cool example of the way the *BSD license is flexible enough to branch proprietary as well as non-proprietary software, but I'd *prefer* (not kill puppies for, just prefer) an OS of the non-proprietary variety.

timothy

NONONONO

[Anonymous Coward]

Please! No luserfriendly installer for BSD! That'd become its downfall!