Slashdot Mirror
End Of OpenBSD 3.0-STABLE Branch - Upgrade To 3.2
jukal writes "From here: "Hello folks,
Due to the upcoming release of OpenBSD 3.2, the 3.0-STABLE
branch will be out of regular maintainance starting
december 1st. There will be NO MORE fixes commited to
this branch after this day.
People relying on 3.0-STABLE (or older releases even) are
strongly advised to upgrade to a more recent release
(preferrably 3.2 as it becomes available) as soon as
possible. Thanks for reading,
Miod" Download from your preferred FTP mirror."
*BSD is dying
No, dont download it. Buy it! Support the brave people how work hard to get openbsd to work!
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there may be no future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood. Slackware Linux is perhaps the most in endangered. Let's look at the numbers.
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MandrakeSoft's CEO Henri Poole states that there are 70000 users of Linux-Mandrake. How many users of Debian GNU/Linux are there? Let's see. The number of Linux-Mandrake versus GNU/Linux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. The refore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 GNU/Linux users. Slackware posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of GNU/Linux posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of Slackware. A recent article put RedHat Linux at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 RedHat Linux users. This is consistent with the number of RedHat Linux Usenet posts.
Now Linux companies are consolidating, overhauling their business plans, laying off staff, scaling back expansion plans and pushing back profitability schedules. "It would seem there are too many distributions for the market to bear," said Gartner analyst Tom Henkel. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,26
Red Hat, Inc., the leader in developing deploying and managing open source linux solutions, announced on a reported basis, a net loss of $24.2 million. (http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-
Turbolinux, based in Brisbane, Calif., a Linux-based software provider has withdrawn a $60 million initial public offering "in light of current market conditions." (http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010320/n20215287_2.html) (http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/03/20/deals/ipo/)
Clayton-based Linuxgruven.com, a Linux training and service company with 106 employees, laid off 100 employees (http://stlouis.bcentral.com/stlouis/stories/2001
Lineo withdrew its initial public offering in January. Caldera Systems delayed the acquisition of Santa Cruz Operations' Unix software by a quarter. Linuxcare laid off dozens in February, with Linuxcare co-founders Dave Sifry and Dave LaDuke are among those departing. VA Linux Systems cut 114 people in February and delayed its expected profitability by nine months. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,26
Due to the troubles of Corel, abysmal sales and so on, Corel Linux is going out of business and was nearly taken over by Microsoft who sell another troubled OS. Owing to the GPL, SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. Major marketing surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Even LinuxWorld.com shut down "because of the economy and everything else" (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/13
TuxRacer going closed source and commerical shows how, when it comes down to money, Linux doesn't cut it.
Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists (i.e. those who dabble with Minix, Xinu, etc). Linux continues to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
They think that in two months I can take all of my production servers, build replacement boxes, test them, and put the new boxes into production? When the newest release of the OS isn't even available yet? (Why upgrade to the intermediate release when that'll be dropped as soon as the next one comes out...)
Do they assume I have only one box, or that I don't bother to test things, or that I don't lose any money if the upgrade is perfectly smooth? Do they assume that I won't switch to something with a better support policy (and more notice for dropping support) than what they do?
Do any of these people know anyone who manages systems for a living, or do they only talk to other developers?
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
man release to get started
/usr/upgradetmp /usr/upgradetmp /usr/upgradetmp /bsd /bsd.old /bsd / / / / / .. /etc changes have to be merged manually but i keep my global configs in private cvs. bsd tar unlinks everything before overwriting, so doing it multi-user isn't a problem.
i have a single master system that builds a release distribution and publishes it to a private site. i run the following script to do an in-place binary upgrade of all my systems:
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf
mkdir -p
cd
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/bsd
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/base31.tgz
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/comp31.tgz
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/game31.tgz
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/man31.tgz
ftp http://WEBSITE/3.1/i386/misc31.tgz
cp
cp bsd
tar xzvpf base31.tgz -C
tar xzvpf comp31.tgz -C
tar xzvpf game31.tgz -C
tar xzvpf man31.tgz -C
tar xzvpf misc31.tgz -C
cd
rm -rf upgradetmp
reboot
this makes managing 10+ openbsd servers a breeze.
oh no, this is the end of openbsd! I guess *BSD really is dieing!
i do 'lynx -dump http://WEBSITE/upgrade.sh|sh' to upgrade so i don't have to keep local copies of the script incase it changes
I admin 850 linux boxes, and as far as I am concerned "release early, release often (and provide no support for older versions)" is open source's major flaw. Developers doing it for fun don't want to support old versions. They're lazy. This laziness has been turned around into some kind of virtue by the open source movement.
What open source needs is a company which provides an 18 month upgrade cycle and supports three concurrent versions. This is exactly what Sun provides with Solaris, and is something that system admins really badly need. And its not just the upgrading issue. You also lose time on the front end of this release cycle because it takes a long time for vendors to certify their software for the new release of the operating system. RedHat is starting to ge some kind of clue about this and is switching to an 18 month release cycle with their advanced server product. They still put on this godawfully stupid dog and pony show though about they'll come in and (for a price) help to upgrade all you machines every time they release a new version. This is entirely unacceptable and waste of resource and a waste of money spent on RedHat. It is basically RedHat trying to turn their laziness into a business model.
And please don't talk about how you've got a couple of scripts whipped together to make it easy to manage 10 openbsd boxes. I'm on a team that manages *850* open source boxes. Whatever you suggest doing simply doesn't scale well enough to deal with doing 850 upgrades every 6-12 months. An upgrade will take everyone on my team offline for at least a month, and we can't afford to be doing that all the time. Also, the next upgrade we're doing is from RH6.2 to RH7.2. We haven't had the time yet to certify all our software for RH7.3 or RH8.0 so we're actually going to be starting out behind once again... This is how system management works at very large sites though.
I know this should really be an "Ask Slashdot" question, but I am _really_ interested in learning how to admin OpenBSD systems, and I am having a hard time trying to find books and websites aimed for beginners. Here is my question:
Any good (Open)BSD books on the shelves?
I am currently a sysadmin/netadmin/sys-support guy for a (really) small isp/hsoting company. Our boxes are a mixture of NT/W2K and I'm looking into operating systems for our new servers whenever they arrive. I feel adequate running a linux distro such as Slackware as a new web server, but I would love to put up a *bsd box. (As well as run mySQL, radius, ids[snort], on *nix flavours, as opposed to MS)
I've played with Linux for about 5 years, but not consistently until this past year, where I ran Apache under Mandrake for a websrever for my friends and I (that didn't last long), as well as installed Slack 8.0 on an old p133 for a router/firewall and Slack 8.0 on my laptop. I'm not 100% fluent in *nix scripting and such, but I'm trying really hard to become less reliant on Windows. Both at home (desktop) and at work (servers). Back to my question, now that I can pull my weight with Linux, what is the best way to teach myself more OpenBSD? I've tried using it on a couple of different occasions, but I found the command names and devices so.. so... cryptic(?) to me. I have extra boxes to play on (including two new Celerons 1.3's) at home, but my spare time is almost non-existent, so I'd rather have a book I can read on the shitter or before I go to bed.
Any ideas are GREATLY appreciated.
(I haven't looked into this for about 6 months, but this slashdot article renewed my appreciation and lust for OpenBSD. There may have been kick-ass books and websites written within the past 6 months that deal with BSD administration, but like I said, I'm really busy and my time is tight, so even if you have a pointer that seems obvious to you, please post it up.)
Submit/Preview?? I'll take Submit.
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
Nevertheless there is enough documentation on the web and plenty of help on IRC (esp irc.openprojects.net #open-bsd), the newbie openbsd mailinglist, O'Reilly and man pages, so go for it and join up. Even Lowendpc has a good openbsd section for newbies. It's easier than you think, and the installation is a doddle.
If you want a secure OS, use NetBSD
Also, don't forget that Theo de Raadt is asshole
if there were sufficient demand for COMMERCIAL ENTITIES (e.g. red hat) to support 5 versions, they would do it. that's because they have the money to throw resources at it.
openbsd could offer to support 5 versions too, and that would place forward development at a virtual stand-still because of the overhead required.
when the world needs that level of support from red hat, they will have it. that level of support from totally volunteer-based projects will show up WAY later.
as an aside to all this, openbsd simply isn't the kind of os people put on 850 machines. if there's a single grouping of 500 somewhere i'd still eat my hat. it's not a performance/clustering os, it's an edge/internet server os. even if it had exponentially greater development resources, the focus would likely still be on the future as opposed to the past because farms of it simply don't exist.
If you can't make it work, you're doing it wrong. I've got about 120 FreeBSD boxes here, I can upgrade them all in about 2.5 days assuming there are no serious issues (and it is just me). If you can't do something similar, your doing it wrong. The biggest problem I have is accidently forgetting a box.And what the fuck do you care if the OBSD people aren't maintaining the release anymore.. you have the source code!
There is no reason they cannot continue to use 3.0 if it suits their needs. It's not like it's going to roll up and die in December.
And, ignoring the 'technically superior' issue, because that's a whole different argument, what issue is it that lets you not be able to run something?
The OpenBSD team has confirmed it, OpenBSD 3.0 is dead. After an initial increase in use the decline has become visible even for them and they decided not to support it anymore. Everybody who was using it has dropped it in support for version 3.1 and 3.2. This is a clear message to the community: OpenBSD 3.0 is dead. Upgrade NOW!.
bash$
Wow an old version of OpenBSD is being EOL'd. I don't see how this is even remotely news worthy. This happens every release.
I already spent 4 mod points modding your shit down, I will next time I get mod points too, Asshole.
Hello Anonymous Coward, feel free to recognize a parody when you bump into one.
bash$
Okay... so fetching source from the openbsd cvs mirrors.
All the docs on the openbsd site are a bit dated, and you have to piece things together..
everyone talks of -stable and -current. Are these actual CVS tags?
Can I do a cvs get -rSTABLE and get the latest stable?
I know that, for instance, OPENBSD_3_1 is the 3.1-stable tree....
is there somewhere where the cvs tagging is properly documented?
A good source of 'how to' for OpenBSD is www.geodsoft.com's guide to installing and locking down OpenBSD. Whenever I do a fresh installation, I always double-check said site to make sure I haven't forgotten anything. It isn't complete, but it's a damned good start.
Really, though, the best way to learn OpenBSD is to just start using it. As you need to do new things, you'll learn how to effectively use the man pages, sites like Geodsoft, and the misc@OpenBSD mailing list to tackle your questions.
--Ryv
You don't recommend Debian because the OpenBSD project has a new major release every 6 months? Would you mind clarifying that?
As for OpenBSD, you only need to upgrade when there is a flaw in some part of the system that you use, or a security risk. That should take less than 6 months to test. Hell, if you can wait 6 months before rolling out a security fix, then what's the sudden rush? You don't need to install OpenBSD 3.1, by the time you are done evaluating each security fix, just install OpenBSD 3.3 or 3.4.
Seriously, if you can't handle the 1 year (6 + 6 months) upgrade cycle, then just use Debian stable. You really need to explain that unfounded pot shot at Debian, which is very stable, and doesn't force you to reinstall at all... just keep up to date with the security patches, and you shouldn't have to upgrade in your hardware's lifetime.
Oh, and screw H-PU-X , Slowlaris or ACHES, your customers need to demand IRIX!
http://pics.bash.org/swim-bsd.jpg
[o]_O
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and after initial successes with the 4.1 BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In that same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
So anything older than 1 year gets no security updates?
Guess when 3.1 gets killed I'm going to be putting Linux on my firewall.
Comment removed based on user account deletion