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Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run
LiquidPC writes "In this article Jeremy Reed of BSDNewsletter.com talks about installing MicroBSD, what features make it special, troubles and successes I encountered, and the beauty of the BSD license."
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The BSD license is pretty beautiful, if you are MS and you need a TCP/IP stack to steal.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I don't see what is 'micro' about the distro. The default installation takes 160M. Back when I have my AT&T 3b1 running, the whole thing fit on a 10M disk with 3M left for my files. No tcp/ip tho, but does that really take 150M?
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
BSD is not at all dead, if it were, you wouldn't be seeing all this new development. As for Darwin's survival of the fittest, why do you think Apple called the underlying BSD system Darwin. :)
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
more news at 11.
succeed and thus helps sources be closed.
heh, thats pretty funny. i know liquidpc, and unless he is hiding something (ok hiding alot), then he is not the guy that wrote the article.
I am fine with your opinion saying BSD is not dying, yet, I would like to point out that BSD has the near-the-best kernel in the whole wide world doesn't meant that it has the best user interface, best applications ported, best usability in the world, hence it is doubtful whether it is _the_ best OS there.
I would agree that BSD is a real good arch though, microkernels, decent IP stack.
BTW i'm using Darwin though.
Probably a troll but:
Linux and BSD are both just *nix.
*nix is *nix is *nix. Crappy ACL-type security (as opposed to Capability Systems security [EROS, for example]).
Performance differences are negligable. The areas where BSD and Linux do differ, usually the Linux way is better known around. The Stack is ripped off in closed source OS's because Linux doesn't use a license that supports Closed Source distributers.
In hardware support, Linux probably beats BSD, but I haven't followed it much.
Also, Linux has a native Debian distribution, and many others, while BSD has second-hand ports of such and its native distributions are in many oppinions far worse.
The *BSDs and Linux (and related OSes) all fail basic usability - by which I mean my Mom can't configure them to just run darnit. Sometimes the gentically inferior, but more brightly plumaged cock gets the chicks. When these OSes get better plumage the public may consider mating - er using - them.
As much as I hate feeding trolls, if you're using a BSD operating system, chances are you already know what the IP address of your primary name server is.
If you don't know what at least some of those files do, then why are you posting in the BSD section of Slashdot?
Nevermind that MicroBSD isn't close to a 1.0 release yet.
So basically the author says that MicroBSD is a great developing OS which is basically FreeBSD and OpenBSD somewhat combined with a few patches and a search and replace performed to put MicroBSD all over the place.
What a waste of an OS and a waste of an article. Why was this even posted on Slashdot?
otherwise it will take tens of thousands of megabytes to install it - simple mathematics. pico --> micro we got around 100 times, so we can expect what would happen
if the trend is linear...
Looks like its Reading Comprehension Time®. The review is written entirely in the 1st person. The poster posted in the 3rd person. Then he included part of the interview, in 1st person, in his 3rd person post. Are you diggin me? Sorry for being kind of long winded but I've had no kind buds.
There's no record of Darwin ever saying or writing the phrase "survival of the fittest."
Any any rate, he would have been incorrect if he had.
Correct: Survival of the fit enough.
--Richard
You should stay far, far away from genetic algorithms because it is clear you could not write a fitness function.
You are assuming that the technically superior OS is going to be the fittest, which is patently untrue. The OS which is easy to use, has the largest base of interesting software, and which is made most attractive to the consumer in general is the fittest. This would clearly be the microsoft on x86 platform.
If linux did everything windows did (which it patently does not, even if you look at it from a technical standpoint - consider cleartype) then it would have a chance to displace windows. However, it must also run Win32 binaries which link to the MFCs, which it does poorly at best. It must be as easy to use as Windows, and as easy to fix when it breaks. About now many of you are saying "what the fuck is this guy's problem, when windows breaks it's a nightmare!"
Consider what happens when linux "breaks" in even a trivial way; The user must venture into a Unix shell to repair it. When windows "breaks" it's usually some sort of hardware conflict (statistically speaking the majority of cases in which windows won't work right, there is a hardware problem/hardware configuration problem) which is resolved by troubleshooting through a GUI. Whereas if you have ext2 filesystems and they have one of a certain set of software-correctable errors, you must run fsck manually. While this particular problem is going away, what with the plethora of journaling filesystems available or about to become available (XFS, ext3fs, ReiserFS, JFS, and probably more) it is representative of a Unix mindset which is not necessarily a bad thing, but which will keep Unix from replacing Windows on the desktop for, I believe, all of eternity.
Windows, as of NT 4.0, has the added advantage that the Desktop OS (Windows 95 at the time) and the Server OS (NT 4.0, again, at the time) look and operate in essentially the same way. As of Windows XP, the desktop and server OS are the exact same thing. While linux has this as well, it does not have user-friendliness. Most of us (myself included) would never put redhat (For example) on a server unless we had no other choice, because it is cumbersome. We might use gentoo, or slackware instead. Or we might even run BSD. But for a desktop system, we want something simple for the user to understand, and unless we feel like building many many software packages, we will probably give a user RedHat or Mandrake.
People use linux over BSD in most cases because of the wider feature set (journaling filesystems, moderately mature SMP support, some of the BSDs have none) and the dramatically broader driver support. While BSD is catching up in some areas, like sound card support, it is still woefully behind in others. I used to run linux just because MIT-pthreads didn't exist on BSD at the time and I wanted xmms. How sad is that? Not for me, mind you, but for BSD.
So BSD is clearly not the fittest operating system as far as world domination goes. However, due to its lesser overhead (which is unfortunately growing every day) and yes, the clean TCP stack, it is sometimes ideal for embedded systems. Of course, various linux variants including rtlinux and ucLinux are making strong inroads into this space, which may serve to further displace BSD.
I'm a big fan of BSD, but if it doesn't keep up with the times, it's destined to be relegated to third-class status.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am damn willing to bet that your mother cannot configure windows properly either. My father is a generally a very smart and trainable guy but there is no way he is capable of administrating his own machine much less installing software and or drivers.
Got Code?
With GPL code its not really up to the developer. The choice of how they're going to license something has been made by someone else. I will never write GPL code, as will many many companies.
scott
Well no one said you have to write GPL code that is personal choice. The BSD license removes the checks and balances that reward the developer. This is my reason for choosing the GPL over the BSD license. No one has forced me ever to code under the GPL and no one has ever made that decision for me.
Got Code?
You seem not to understand that people are diffrent. There are many, many developers that wants companies to use their source, and they dont care if they make money of it.
The BSD license is not friendly at all to the developers producing code.
i can't agree with you in that.
if you write a class with basic functions, let's say a textbox, and you give the sources to me, and i write a hole application using your textbox, i think i have the right to sell my product back to you.
you just wrote the textbox. i did a lot of work around it.
just like apple did.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
i think what your paren post was stating is that if you take a peace of gpled code and you want to modify it, you can't. with the bsd license you can.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
[...]if you take a peace of gpled code and you want to modify it (and publish it under a different license witch is not gpl compatible), you can't[...]
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Yep and he is exactly correct because I decided to modify GPL code the original property holder is protected yet I get to use his gifft.
Got Code?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From a quick look at the fdisk and fdisk manual, it was just the same OpenBSD unintelligent fdisk (where a calculator would be handy).
Sigh, OpenBSD install procedure is annoying, there's little or no documentation available throughout the installer. Hopefully MicroBSD will move on from this archaic and elitist installer used by OpenBSD.
scott
...the number of open source projects that have "gone away" because of licensing that allows companies to use the code in proprietary closed systems can be counted on no fingers. Earth to Codepunk. Earth to Codepunk. Please return to base to pick up your clue. BSD's been around for how long without "dying?" Ever use X11? TeX? Perl? Vi? All things with licenses that allow commercial versions. (And in my book it's a good thing the licenses for all those original programs that drive the Internet, from the BSD IP stack to Bind, allowed commercial versions, or the Internet today would be very much like the Internet of 1990 and you and I would be using NetWare at work.)
The sad thing is that I agree that the GPL is a more "developer-friendly" license, a position I have a great deal of difficulty getting anti-GPL zealots to understand. (You'd think the idea of "I should have the right to prevent others from profiting from the work I did without giving me recompense" would not be difficult to get across to capitalists, but it is.) This kind of nonsense thinking from pro-GPL zealots surely doesn't help.
May I ask what debian has to do with FreeBSD in any way shape or form?
I think your viewpoint is biased and ridiculous. Expand your horizons before commenting.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
why do you think Apple called the underlying BSD system Darwin. :)
Clearly it's due to the dolphin on SeaQuest.
any *serious* install of network Windows also requires parameters corresponding to each of the configuration items you are complaining about. Of course, if you're one of those who just plops in the CD and runs through the wizards taking the simplest/shortest/least effort path, then you are one who doesn't know how to set up Windows either.
Hmm interesting. I was a Linux guy for a few years till recently (since about 96), and switched to BSD because it felt more mature.
Granted, video and sound drivers on FreeBSD aren't at the same level as they are on Linux, however the parts of the OS that matter (documentation that is actually consistant with software for example) FreeBSD is streets ahead. Anything that I've tried to do with it just *works* as the documentation says it should.
As for threads - Linux was without threads for a good long time as well, and went through a number of implementations. FreeBSD now has threads, so they're both now on an even footing there...
Journaled FS - well... FreeBSD has softupdates. Different strategy, similar end result... Honestly don't know enough to comment on which is best, other than the fact I have had no issues with either...
In the few areas where Linux is clearly more advanced than BSD (video drivers/sound drivers) its still pretty pissweak anyway. FreeBSD may not be the shiny pretty desktop OS of the month, but its happily sitting in the background doing more important things.
With regards to SMP - we'll see how FreeBSD 5.0 goes ;)
The general feel I get from FreeBSD is that it has its clearly defined limits, but the stuff it does, it does well - there doesn't seem to be much half-assed, unfinished shite that you'll spend 3 days messing with to get it to *almost* work, included.
anyway... its 3am, im rambling...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
In your zeal to castigate others for the ignorance of evolutionary fitness, you've shown your own ignorance of ecology. Nature abhors a monoculture. The Windows monoculture is poised to be the victim of a mass extinction when the landscape changes. If Linux achieves its goal of "world domination", then it will be the next monoculture to be devastated when the environment changes yet again.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes, BSD-licensed code may end up in commercial products. But that often beats the alternative. I'd much rather see Microsoft use a piece of software with a BSD license than have them hack their own--I already know that whatever they come up with themselves is going to be less compatible with the rest of the world and usually technically worse.
Most companies who use BSD code and try to keep it closed sooner or later realize the futility of their endeavor and publish it--there is just no point on keeping software closed when other people have very similar software already for free.
The GPL relies on a contractual obligation to ensure source availability. BSD relies on something much simpler: laziness.
The LGPL and GPL both are very useful, and I use them for my software too. But BSD isn't "insane"--it's a valid license and a good approach to open source software. And sometimes, giving commercial users more than they "deserve" is a good idea because it helps get the APIs and architecture of free software systems into commercial and proprietary products.
So, here is how I see good licensing choices that promote free software:
For software like kernels and command line tools, the GPL/LGPL often isn't very strong anyway because most commercial uses would not involve linking with the code. Note again that the GPL (or some even more restrictive license) isn't always the best choice for promoting free software. Imagine where Linux and free software would be today if the Linux kernel only allowed the execution of free software applications, or if the X11 window system only allowed the display of GPL'ed GUI apps.
So, in short, all of the *GPL and BSD licenses have their purpose. Which one is best for the promotion of free software depends on the software and the potential users.
>BSD is not dying ! Why is everyone saying that ?
>BSD is the best OS in the world, anyone who
>doesn't use it is an utter moron.
Depends on what your criteria are. Just as a quick example, what is the status of SMP support on the free BSD variants? OpenBSD has it in a CVS branch, but it still depends on a BKL (Big Kernel Lock). NetBSD has it, but only for Alpha in current, and AFAIK the only other architecture is i386, which is in CVS, and again depends on a BKL. FreeBSD has it, but only for i386, still has some serious known issues (e.g. race conditions), and won't be fine grained until 5.0 is released.
Contrast this to Linux which has had SMP support built in since 1996, is relatively fine grained, and support x86, Alpha, Sparc, PPC, ia64, MIPS, and s390.
And what kinds of clustering are supported in BSD? How about disk layouts? Filesystems?
No, Linux is by far not perfect in any of these respects. Neither are any commercial operating systems. BSD has its strengths, but it has weaknesses like everyone else.
Matt
Mod this one up!!! This guy, unlike the gentleman to whom he is replying, has it together.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
I'm reading a Computer Networks textbook right now. The author frequently points out that the success of the TCP/IP stack can be largely attributed to the BSD license because companies had access to a well-engineered network staff for free. Otherwise, OSI protocols might have been chosen as they were the "hot" research/development topic of the 80's.
Exactly. This is why I prefer the BSD license - it is truly a gift, unlike the GPL, which just pretends to be.
I once read a story about "Freedom: I Won't", the idea that everyone has the basic right to say "I won't" when requested to do something by another, and that answer must be accepted.
The BSD license says "I won't. I've chosen to freely give this away. I won't make money off it, but if you want to add your own code to it and try to make money off the combination, you're free too. It's a gift, and like any gift, can be resold."
The GPL says "I won't - and you won't either. If you use this code, you become beholden to us, and you must release your code in order to further our political ends."
The GPL violates my Freedom: I Won't: it tries to dictate to me. Well...I Won't use the GPL then.
I thought it said "Taking Microsoft BSOD for a Test Run". :)
From their Web Site
:
/bsd: signal 11 received by (qmail-smtpd:13657) UID(1006) EUID(1006), parent (tcpserver:11016) UID(1006) EUID(1006)
/. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
We are going to give you all a little preview of exactly where we are with the 0.6 release and whats been going on here. Right now our tree is current as on 9/06/2002 and all code/updates/patches have been applied, and our modifications integrated. These include fixing up of some erroneous errors in the documentation, up to date Network Port ACL code, File Systems ACL code provided as of 9/6/2002. This also includes the stripping of all uneeded system binaries, the framework of integration of packages installed during the installation process as you desire. The base system is now below 25 Megs installed so we can now fit nicely on a 32Meg CompactFlash with room to spare. The first packages in the server installs will be IPSec, PPP, PPTP, IDS, MySQL, HTTP, DHCP, and Sendmail with other additions to follow. We are also testing now an AutoUpdate/Binary Upgrade process to centralize this for users. More will show up on that later. Our Downloads will be alot smaller for the full and mini versions of the ISOs. We may even drop the mini and create a combined for those that wish to install a compiler. This release does include the previously mentioned major code updates and functionality like TCP/IP mods, further privacy protection, the non-exec stack modifications and systrace functionality updates, GCC compiler mods of Stack Smashing protection, restarting of the TCP/IP counter at 0 for each new connection. plus fixes for the reported problems with file system ACL binaries. We are moving forward with this build and are looking for testers to pound out the bugs before the release.
We have gotten further additions for the 0.6 release integrated into the system along with the previously mentioned fixes and updates. If you are interested in joining the testing phase email us @ dingo@microbsd.net
FTPD Security Hardening
This makes ftpd run 99% non-root, while remaining 100% functional. Root privileges are dropped immediately after a successful authentication, and never regained later.
Human-time Resource Limitations
Traditional Unix semantics defines inheritable per-process resources limitations : memory usage, CPU time usage, stack size, file size, descriptors, max subprocesses and core dump size. It lacks something that can be really useful : human-time, ie. the real (not CPU) number of seconds a process is allowed to run. So even if the process is waiting forever without taking CPU time (dead lock, something waiting for data that nobody sends, etc), it can be automatically killed after a maximal time.
Signal Logging
With this the kernel will log important uncatched signals sent to processes. It will help to track down hardware and software bugs, processes that mysteriously crashed, and possible attacks.
Output in the log files looks like
Sep 5 20:26:46 mserver
Seems someone decided to
This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.
641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz
I hate to say it but BSD is going away due to it's insane licensing.
What is it with you GPL freaks? Do you just sit around all day waiting for a BSD related article so you can shit all over it? Get a life!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Pardon me. I did not write this. I just pasted the introduction they used, as it fit well, and I didn't s/I/he/. It happens.
Thats a great idea. I have been thinking along the same lines of using the BSD or MIT license for codecs as a way of spreading the codec to the largest market with perfect interoperability but the hijacking ala divX of the codec before it is complete and before large penetration irked me. This idea of making it gpl while it is being completed and after completion turning it into bsd for consumer penetration is a great idea. Prhaps slighly modified bsd to make sure it is mentioned in the documentation to make it easy for people check for compliance to the standard.
>Contrast this to Linux which has had SMP support
> built in since 1996, is relatively fine grained
It wasn't fine grained by any definition in 1996, It wasn't fine grained when 2.2 come out and sections of the kernel are under BKL even in 2.4 and 2.5 development kernel. Not much difference as compared to FreeBSD here.
> FreeBSD has it, but only for i386
FreeBSD has is for Alpha and Sparc64 too, check your facts before spewing them on public.
I didn't have ANY trouble installing it.
I just had the age old network card compatibility problem. Why the HELL can't these damn companies agree on a standard!? I'd like to see a series of OSS rom images that companies can use in their products to garuntee compatibility.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Interesting comment... in my brief forays into linux (RH6.0 with all the bells and whistles) and BSD (Darwin for x86 downloaded from Apple, just a naked commandline) I got exactly the same impression: BSD is a more mature, more *professional* OS than linux.
It's not a matter of drivers and apps and such; it was a matter of feeling *finished*, ie. that everything had been completely thought through and polished, not just roughed out and tacked into place. Such as tiny details like that in BSD, "man" knows enough to auto-exit when it runs out of text, whereas in linux you have to know to press Q for Quit.
I'm reminded of an old saying: the difference between "old junk" and "antique" is the quality of the paint job.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Having dealt with a source-hoarding coder, I'd be the first to agree that the GPL is miles better than nothing when having open source is important. But it also prevents me from making a no-strings gift of code that I now administer, simply because it was in turn based on GPL'd code.
One is put in mind of the doctrine of First Sale for books. The BSD license is in that spirit; the GPL license is not.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
GPL Simplified: Don't like my software license? Try writing your own damn code! I'm not in the business of giving you gifts if you're in the business of saying: "Thanks, now screw you." I'm glad you grasp this subtlety. You won't use the GPL.
You don't grasp this subtlety, though: The GPL doesn't violate your freedom. It never has, and it never will. As you said yourself, you won't use the GPL (and I guess you're implying you won't use GPL software). Fine by me.
Along with my GPL-software writing cohorts, I guess I say, good riddance. If you're not the sort who views the GPL as something that enhances the world and makes it a better place, then you're not the sort I want changing and distributing my code.
See? The GPL enhances my freedom without infringing on yours. And I'm the one who wrote the damn code. Seems like we both got a good deal.
fifth sigma, inc.
>It wasn't fine grained by any definition in 1996,
>It wasn't fine grained when 2.2 come out and
>sections of the kernel are under BKL even in 2.4
>and 2.5 development kernel. Not much difference
>as compared to FreeBSD here.
I never claimed it was historically fine-grained, or completely fine-grained in the current release. I specifically said "relatively fine-grained", which I stand by completely.
The 2.0 kernel was a first implementation, and was dealing with a largely non-threaded kernel. In other words, it was largely bolted onto a code base that had been traditionally uniprocessor.
The 2.2 kernel added fine-grain locks for the scheduler, signal-handling, interupts, and much of the I/O layet
The 2.4 kernel has a multi-threaded TCP/IP stack, I/O layer, VM subsystem, page cache, scheduler, interrupt handler, etc, etc. Most of the traditional BKL bottlenecks *have* been removed.
Is scalability still optimal? No. Hence the word "reasonably".
The implementation of SMP in FreeBSD has been called "simplistic" and "rudimentary" even by the developers. Both 3.x and 4.x rely heavily on the BKL (or Big Giant Lock, or Giant Kernel Lock, or whatever nomenclature you prefer), although 4.x did move portions of the syscall code outside the lock.
It appears that the smpng code in 5.0 will be an immense improvement, in part due to the access developers had to the BSD/OS code base. But for current production releases, the "not much difference" verdict doesn't hold water. Maybe if you were comparing FreeBSD 4.0 against Linux 2.0.
>FreeBSD has is for Alpha and Sparc64 too, check
>your facts before spewing them on public.
I apologize. I had forgotten about the Alpha support, and the Sparc64 support was only added earlier this year, and as far as I can tell only it's only in the as yet unreleased 5.0 branch.
Matt
You sir are a karma whore.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
What Debian has to do with BSD is that it doesn't exist for BSD, and if there is some port, its not as good as the original Debian GNU/Linux.
My point was that Debian is probably the best distribution out there, and Debian GNU/Linux as a whole is thus probably better than BSD.
I have tried FreeBSD in several occasions, as well as some of my friends, we all abandoned it in favour of Debian, for apt and friends.
>Most of us (myself included) would never put
/etc and KDE config files by default. Oh, and since they only provide binary packages for releases and snapshots, you have to wait for this to compile on each box individually.
>redhat (For example) on a server unless we had no
>other choice, because it is cumbersome.
Define "cumbersome". It's far from rocket science to configure a Red Hat system to have a foot print of only about 150MB, running only the services you want.
Managing a Red Hat system can be done just the same as most other Linux systems. All the standard tools work (ifconfig, fdisk, etc), they follow FHS policies for filesystem layout, and conform to the LSB.
The configuration tools they provide don't destroy changes made by hand like the ones provided by some other distributions do (*cough*YAST*cough*), and their convienence scripts (ifup/down, chkconfig, service) are just that - convienent. They in no way prevent you from manipulating these things by hand (e.g. you can still configure networking with ifconfig, you can still manupulate services by running the scripts in init.d and manually editing symlinks in rc.d).
>We might use gentoo, or slackware instead.
Sorry, but I'd seriously question "most of us", particularly if you include people who actually have real experience administrating servers in a production environment, instead of on their home network.
With Red Hat I can use kickstart to create replicated installation scripts. I boot off a CD, and in 15 minutes the type of machine (e.g. SMTP, POP) is ready to go.
With Slackware I can install each machine individually, or I waste my time developing, debugging and maintaining my own method for replicated installs. I actually did this, before we migrated *off* Slackware (choice of a previous admin who was 0ld sk3wl 31337, when there was only one server).
With Gentoo I have to their gawdawful primitave installer (I'm sorry, but having to manually load modules and set up networking is just stupid), or again waste my time writing my own installer.
With Red Hat I have a robust package management system and a secure update mechanism. They provide critical updates usually within a day, and it only takes me a few minutes to update every machine on my network.
With Slackware I can manually download updates, distribute them to the servers, and install them. Or roll my own system for doing updates. (Starting to see a pattern here?)
With Gentoo I have to emerge the old package, and then unmerge the old one. Mind you, there's no mention of testing to make sure services aren't negatively affected by their files changing underneath them, and "config file protection" is only turned on for
I might have taken your comment more seriously if you had suggested Debian, which does have automated installation available, and provides a laudable upgrade system. On the other hand I've managed a large (~ 100 machine) Slackware installation in the past, and know the downfalls all too well. And Gentoo is, I'm sorry to say, piss in your pants laughable.
Capability systems have many provable mathematical properties that are very important to real security. For example, one can prove privelege escalation is impossible in a capability system.
Sure, a real life implementation will differ from the design until all bugs are resolved, but its still better than *nix security, where even the design itself has no secure properties that are mathematically provable. Also, since the security code in EROS and such systems is very limited to the implementation of the low-level capability mechanism, the amount of security-testing code is very finite in size, and thus will at some point in time be clear of bugs, and identical to the architecture's design.
One of the main differences between capability systems and systrace for all apps, is that in a capability system, _only_ authorized requests can even be expressed by an application, while with systrace, all requests can be expressed, and if a bug exists in one of the millions of requests' implementations, you get a security hole.
Also, capability systems grant you far more fine-grained security control, and they define processes as entities, rather than users.
Capability systems are also much simpler in concept, and do not have a global namespace such as a filesystem that makes for richer communication between distant entities of the system, even those who are not supposed to communicate.
Capability systems are not volunerable to the Confused Deputy problem that exists with ACL-type systems where you must have applications that 'Change hats' (All apps with 'suid bits').
While i agree that BSD's feel more mature, i dont feel this point is relevant. The default pager for man in linux (at least the distros i've used) is less, while in BSD it is more. The auto-exit you mention is one difference between more and less.
Personally, i prefer less to read man pages since i often want to page back up when i reach the end. Luckily setting PAGER=less works fine in both OS's.
-f
www.blackant.net
That doesn't follow. You're saying that the GPL violates your freedom to steal someone else's code. Well yes, it does, in the same way that the law violates your freedom to murder people and steal their stuff. I'm glad the GPL exists, to protect us from people such as you.
It agree on all three counts. OpenBSD could be easier for first time users, but is simple and fast the second and nth time around. FreeBSD and its menus can be confusing. You need the Handbook right in front of you. Even then I seem to install something a little different each time. Haven't used NetBSD recently. I had trouble with the installer, but that was a while ago I hope things have changed.
:-) The installer is not friendly to the first time user. My first install was wiped in about 3 minutes as I started my second install. My second install worked well. My third and nth installs are great. The install is very quick. The defaults are sane and not a lot of questions are asked. There are only a handfull of packages that I install from precompiled instead of ports. When I need a *nix I install OpenBSD.
OpenBSD is my favorite *nix. It is perfect. It is a simple clean install that comes with everything that should be in a default unix install. (Except BASH!
OpenBSD may be for a more advanced user. Anyone willing to learn, read a little, make some mistakes, should have no trouble working with OpenBSD. I encourage any *nix admin to make some time and learn OpenBSD. Call it professional development. I am sure that you won't turn around and install OpenBSD everywhere. However I am confident that you will find uses for OpenBSD where its quick and simple install will save you time and stress.
The thing about the BSD license that, it seems, most GPL advocates don't see is that BSD does guarantee that my code will remain truly free.
If someone else uses my code in their own product and sells the result, my code is still free. The end purchasers of the proprietary product are only paying for the difference between that product and my free code since they could always freely have my stuff. This is true even if there is no difference between that proprietary product and my free code.
In fact, the BSD license even grants you, dear developer, the freedom to change the license to GPL and redistribute the exact same code otherwise unchanged. Just don't send me GPL patches because I can't use them. This is not true the other way around. So, which license offers developers more freedom?
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
I 'stole' a slurpee from 7-11 for $1.29 too!