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OpenBSD 3.3 Released

An anonymous reader writes "OpenBSD 3.3 was released today, with many new features, including integration of the ProPolice stack protection technology, W^X ('write xor X') on sparc, alpha and hppa, privilege separated XFree86 and an incredible number of enhancements and stability improvements to the packet filter, pf, including address pools for reverse NAT/load balancing, ALTQ integration for network conditioning, and anchors/tables/spamd for spam tar-pitting. Information on the release can be found here and download sites are listed here. (Also, here's a handy way to speed up your DSL connection - prioritizing empty TCP ACKs and ToS low-delay traffic with OpenBSD 3.3's pf.)"

347 comments

  1. OpenBSD 3.3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Does anybody know if NetBSD has been ported to this yet?

  2. OpenBSD 3.3 Song by dknj · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lets not forget about the OpenBSD Song

    -dk

    1. Re:OpenBSD 3.3 Song by dknj · · Score: 2, Informative

      Next time I will actually preview my post. Mirror available here

      -dk

    2. Re:OpenBSD 3.3 Song by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1
      Is there a different sound for every release?

      I remember a different more techno song about OpenBSD.

    3. Re:OpenBSD 3.3 Song by extra88 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, if you look in that directory, you'll see there has been a "theme song" for each release since 3.0.

      Here are the tracks with my made-up genre categorization of them. I think 3.0 and 3.1 are superior to 3.2 and 3.3.

      3.0 "E-Railed (OpenBSD Mix)" Genre: Electronica
      3.1 "Systemagic" Genre: Germanic industrial
      3.2 "Goldflipper" Genre: James Bond theme
      3.3 "Puff the Barbarian" Genre: Fantasy metal

  3. FIVE icons by Ark42 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    When did /. stories start getting FIVE icons??

    1. Re:FIVE icons by odie_colonie · · Score: 1

      There are FOUR icons!

      http://www.stinsv.com/TNg/Picard/4lights.wav

  4. OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by coene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm continually impressed by the amount of improvements in each new release of OpenBSD, the frequency of the releases (6 months), and the sheer amount of value that each new release brings.

    If anyone hasn't tried OpenBSD yet, give it a shot - you're certain to appreciate the quality that goes into it.

    1. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      ...signed,

      coene
      Head Developer, OpenBSD Project.

    2. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by JungleBoy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I hope OpenBSD has gotten easier to use and install. Its not for the faint of heard. Last time I used it (2.something) post install configuration was non existant. it was like:

      "Here's some iron ore, build a truck"

      I can vi ascii files, but getting X running was an absolute chore, it was reminiscent of Slackware back in the 1.4 kernel days.

      --
      "You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
      -Calvin
    3. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it was reminiscent of Slackware back in the 1.4 kernel days.

      I'll bet that was especially hard since there was never a 1.4 kernel.

    4. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Stonent1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I hope OpenBSD has gotten easier to use and install. Its not for the faint of heard. Last time I used it (2.something) post install configuration was non existant. it was like: "Here's some iron ore, build a truck"

      I dunno, I've always found it quite easy. You've got about 5 or so tgz files that it downloads (I always do ftp installs) and decompresses them. I find it simple and clean.

    5. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by evilviper · · Score: 4, Informative

      What's so difficult about getting X working? Use xf86cfg or xf86config to make the config file, then change xdm=NO to xdm="" in /etc/rc.conf (the comments will tell you as much, BTW).

      Maybe you should have checked out the FAQ on the website or man afterboot ...

      I don't know what to tell you if you can't do that much without more hand-holding.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    6. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Ryvar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      OpenBSD, while a capable desktop, isn't primarily intended as such. It's strengths are in the realm of the firewall, gateway - the commandline leftover Pentium 200 that makes a nice mailserver. It's focus as security, and security demands a 'disabled by default' approach.

      There isn't much there to begin with when compared to FreeBSD or Linux because of this philosophy. While it's not exactly politically correct to say so within the OBSD community, it's sort of an accepted truism that 'less is more', and you're better serviced by one of the former two OSes if you're for ease of use and a desktop OS. GUIs and user friendliness = reams of unaudited code = lots of bugs. That said, the GOBIE project IS looking to overhaul the OpenBSD setup process, at least, so hopefully things will be easier for everybody in the future.

      Personally, I came to OpenBSD three years ago after having used RedHat for only six months and having gotten my box owned *HARD* - while it took a bit to figure everything out for a relative *nix newb, I can vouch that the payoff is worth it if you're willing to invest the time into making sure you never get owned again (not that there are any 100% guarantees with any software).

      --Ryv

    7. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by JungleBoy · · Score: 1

      My bad, I mean linux kernel 1.2. This was back in the summer of '96

      --
      "You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
      -Calvin
    8. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by coene · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I dont think it's a matter of whats easier, but what fits your need, and what you're used to. I prefer OpenBSD to any other OS. Configuration is a snap, easier for me than any other OS.

      Between /etc/rc.conf and pkg_add, IMO it can't get any easier. I get lost in the myriad of configuration files present in current Linux distributions.

      Also, the source where you will get information on OpenBSD (for example, setting up X) is VERY different from what you'd expect for Linux.

      Namely, OpenBSD has EXCELLENT manual pages. Also, the online documentation is very helpful for new users, as it clearly explains the basics of the system, and where to start if you're unfamiliar with it.

    9. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by debilo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Check out the G.O.B.I.E Project. It's a graphical installer for OpenBSD.

      From the web site:
      The main goal of the GOBIE is to add a graphical installation of the famous OS OpenBSD. This project has bee developped in the spirit of OpenBSD which means that the installation is as close as possible as the text one.

      GOBIE wishes to add some value to the product by developping installation modules to known servers such as Bind, Sendmail, Inn, Apache...


      Here are some screenshots - looks pretty cool to me. The only downside to it is that the release is scheduled for July and thus not availabe yet, so keep your eyes open. It seems like a project that is worth supporting.

    10. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by UU7 · · Score: 1

      How sad :)

    11. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1.2 was back in 94/95.. in 96 2.0 was already out. As I recall 1.2.13 was declared by most people around during the release to be the first kernel that was actually usable for alot of crap (apache etc).. we all went back and forth testing etc etc.. 2.0 was almost done, the poking was going on at that time..

    12. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by RLiegh · · Score: 1
      I don't know what to tell you if you can't do that much without more hand-holding.

      "use FreeBSD"? (where xf68cfg is part of the default sysinstall!)
    13. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by b0r1s · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      And with that kind of webpage, spelling errors and all, you know they're paying attention to detail.

      --
      Mooniacs for iOS and Android
    14. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by epine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Once you get used to it OpenBSD is not at all difficult to install. I use it entirely for network security (five machines) so I've never bothered to install X.

      The man pages are excellent. The only place I've been bit is that the dclient man page doesn't mention that it runs a script in /sbin/dhclient (which is not an obvious place to look) and that this script clobbers resolv.conf That was a bugger to sort out back in the 2.6 days when I didn't what I know now about DNS and resolvers.

      Since the 3.2 release of OpenBSD we have been making heavy use of chroot Apache as a forwarding web proxy to hide the real server machines from the public internet. This way all of our SSL connections terminate at an OpenBSD box. If OpenSSL requires a security patch, we only have one OS to update. And the security is great even if we don't patch, because only the chroot Apache on OpenBSD is exposed.

      It seems like very version adds another great feature. In this release we are anxious to experiment with the failover NAT in PF.

      I generally don't praise OpenBSD in public. I figure if you need it, you know it already.

    15. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by alptraum · · Score: 1

      And not everybody's first language is English:

      domain: GOBIE.NET
      owner-address: theodore TOURY
      owner-address: 2, rue Leriche
      owner-address: 92110
      owner-address: Clichy la Garenne
      owner-address: France
      admin-c: TT224-GANDI
      tech-c: TT224-GANDI
      bill-c: TT224-GANDI
      nserver: ns3.sporinfor.com 80.65.224.180
      nserver: ns1.toury.net 62.212.99.161
      reg_created: 2002-01-28 15:13:46
      expires: 2004-01-28 15:13:46
      created: 2002-01-28 21:13:47
      changed: 2002-11-28 08:30:21

      person: theodore TOURY
      nic-hdl: TT224-GANDI
      address: 2, rue Leriche
      address: 92110
      address: Clichy la Garenne
      address: France
      phone: +33 142709381
      e-mail: toury_t@epita.fr

    16. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why even bother with your reply if you cannot contain your propensity to be a jerk? No one appreciates a smart ass reply. If you are incapable of helping people without looking down upon them, then just be content that you know how to make your own systems work and keep your mouth shut. Thank you.

    17. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      the graphical xf86cfg is the single most confusing application ever developed to help you. I prefer hand editing /etc/X11/XF86Config over it.

    18. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The End of FreeBSD

      [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'

    19. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by rifter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They didn't have

      man afterboot

      then? (Incidentally one of the best man pages you'll ever read. Everyone should have one).

      And did they not have xf86config ?

      Seems unlikely, but then I have only ever used 2.8+ IIRC.

      The biggest hurdle for most people is getting around the idea of BSD "slices." But it makes sense and there are good reasons they did it that way. The installer and help are very good, actually. I would have to say OpenBSD has some of the best docs of any system out there, period.

    20. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by ocelotbob · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree, and I'm not being funny here. Why the hell won't the XFree86 team bring back the old XF86Setup program? That thing is infinitely better than xf86cfg. I won't touch xf86cfg with a 10 foot bargepole.

      --

      Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses

    21. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by rifter · · Score: 1

      Hmm, looking back, it seems the first release I installed was 2.5 or so on m68k. I don't remember much else about it though, I was playing with a lot of systems at the time.

    22. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by RLiegh · · Score: 1

      I agree with you there 110%. Luckily I'm mostly used to using xf86config, but I do miss the old 3.x.x graphical setup tool.

    23. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention the fact that bind, sendmail, and Apache are included in the base install (and have been as long as I can remember). Reading the webpage makes me wonder if the GOBIE people have even used OpenBSD. And yes, thier speling dosn't inspire confidense.

    24. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Uhum... Thats july 2002. The project seems dead... Thats a shame. Take that a reminder that all open source projects should release source periodically...

      Not saying that a graphical installer wouldn't be useful, the existing one does it job fairly well. Sure, the first times you want to have the instructions printed out, but after a few installs you really appreciates the ease it provides.

      For example, I almost went ballistic trying to install FreeBSD; if one gives some parameters wrong and the install process hangs, you have no options of restart (ok, this was in 4.x).

      In OpenBSD's installer you can:
      - escaping to the underlying shell by pressing ^Z
      - restart the install by executing install.sh

    25. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by DoctorPepper · · Score: 1

      I totally agree. I gave up trying to decipher the graphical config, and just went back to basics: xf86config. Once you figure that one out (which isn't hard, if you know what your hardware is), setting up X is pretty simple. I can finger-trip through the setup now in Debian Linux and FreeBSD. I don't think OpenBSD would be any different.

      --

      No matter where you go... there you are.
    26. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After being hacked about 4 or 5 times while running Linux, depsite my best efforts, I abandoned ship and went to OpenBSD 3.2. The liner notes in the CD jewelcase were enough to get my disks partitioned, and 'man afterboot' answered most of my other questions. I got the machine talking to my DHCP router, hit the internet and got most of the rest of my questions answered. I've had to patch sendmail twice (the second patch ended up being a conversion to Postfix, heh) and that's about it. OpenSSH wasn't affected by the latest vuln and nothing else that I'm running has had problems.

      In fact, a guy who doesn't like me for various reasons (the primary one being that his wife is pyschotic and I told her so) tried to get a buddy to hack into my server and wreak havoc. The dude emailed me and said, basically, "I was going to take him up on it because I love a challenge, but I don't love them THAT much. Nice choice, OpenBSD."

      *score*

    27. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by fries · · Score: 1

      Interesting.. I thought the README explained that for you. After install, you can find this file at /usr/X11R6/README. Plus, you most likely were trying out a pre 4.x XFree distribution which could easily be as hard as you describe.

      --
      Todd Fries .. todd@fries.net .. OpenBSD, because security matters!
    28. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 1

      I've found that the text-mode (curses) interface of xf86cfg is a lot more straightforward than the X-based graphical version. Simple and step-by-step, much like X configuration on mainstream Linux distros.

    29. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Shanep · · Score: 1

      I hope OpenBSD has gotten easier to use and install. Its not for the faint of heard.

      Easier to use? Learn it and you will never look back. Seriously. Read the FAQ, man afterboot, there are some OpenBSD specific books coming out... I am pretty much finished with Linux (although Gentoo interests me for media/MAME console), I'm only keeping up with it for employment reasons.

      Easier to install? OK, if you're not going to use the whole disk, then it can be trickier than Linux to install at first, but besides that, it is SUPER easy. Are you afraid of it being all text? That is actually a blessing. I do most of my OpenBSD installs via serial port. Most of my OpenBSD servers have nothing but power, ethernet and null modem cables plugged in. No keyboard, mouse or video card and I really like it like this. KVM for me consists of simple serial port switches.

      If I trusted OpenSSH enough, I wouldn't even rely on the serial console. The major proactive improvements to security they've been making lately will probably cause me to re-enable ssh soon though.

      Last time I used it (2.something) post install configuration was non existant. it was like:
      "Here's some iron ore, build a truck"
      I can vi ascii files, but getting X running was an absolute chore, it was reminiscent of Slackware back in the 1.4 kernel days.


      As Mr evilviper points out, it's really easy to get X going.

      --
      War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
    30. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by JungleBoy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, well in '96 I was just a newbie who bought a linux book at fries that happened to come with a cd.

      --
      "You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
      -Calvin
    31. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Strog · · Score: 2, Informative

      My preferred method of setting up X.

      X -configure
      Edit XF86Config and add monitor refresh setting, wheel mouse tweaks, default color depth
      startx

      This method has worked great for me. YMMV

    32. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative

      The best method is xf86cfg -textmode, which provides a very nice, interactive, fullscreen, textbased configuration tool. Very nice. One hell of an improvement over the GUI xf86cfg.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    33. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by evilviper · · Score: 1

      Well that certainly is an option, but if you can't do that much by hand, you are completely screwed the first time there is any sort of a problem with your installed system.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    34. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by RLiegh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think that -regardless of OS- most /.'er would agree with that sentiment.

      However, there's a difference between being able to do things the hard way, and having no option other than to do things the hard way.

    35. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by evilviper · · Score: 1

      When "the hard way" involves typing 7 extra letters...

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    36. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by b0r1s · · Score: 1

      If I were writing articles in French, I would use a French spell-checker.

      It's not very hard to find an ispell english dictionary.

      --
      Mooniacs for iOS and Android
    37. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting. I've been running multiple windows machines for 10 years now, starting with the BBS days. I have always been on line and I have never been compromised. I stay safe by taking the simplest of precautions. I've been running servers (Some MS some not) for years and have had a constant on cable connection for 6 years now. Not one single compromise.

      My wife on the other hand on her Linux machine (She is a rather competent Linux admin too, better than I am at being a Windows admin) and she was compromised once.

      I have several friends on windows boxes that have been compromised due to their own carelessness. And as you showed, if any of them had shown the same carelessness with Linux they would have been compromised as well.

      It has always seemed to me that the "Windows is insecure, Linux is secure" crap was just that, crap. You believe what you want to believe, you flame and FUD what you don't.

      The real world seldom measures up to the infinately simplified /. view of things...

    38. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by RLiegh · · Score: 1

      not counting the effort of seeking out what those '7 extra letters' are, instead of having the option presented to you automatically.

      With FreeBSD you can configure X either way, with OpenBSD you have only the one single way.

    39. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      'man afterboot'

      HTH

    40. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Arandir · · Score: 1

      "man afterboot"???? WTF?

      How the hell is someone supposed to know that there's a manpage for "afterboot"? Unless it's told to you explicitly on first login, only seasoned OpenBSD users will even know that it's there.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    41. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Flower · · Score: 0, Troll

      Or people like me who went to the website, did a little research and RTFM.

      --
      I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
    42. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Arandir · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My problem is not that's there's a single easily overlooked line in the FAQ that mentions an "afterboot". My problem is with the previous poster's attitude.

      "man afterboot" is hardly a common UNIX way of finding out about necessary post installation tasks. To expect everyone to know that it's there, even after reading every word of the FAQ, is assuming too much. It's all in the attitude. A simple "your answer can be found in 'man afterboot'" is much better than "I don't know what to tell you if you can't do that much without more hand-holding."

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    43. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --I think the last one I tried was like 3.1... Still have it installed AAMOF, but I never boot to it.

      BASH command-line handling was goofy. Couldn't wrap beyond 80 chars.

      System as a whole ran s-l-o-w - it's like there were no optimizations.

      Install - if you don't know anything about how BSD handles "slices", you're screwed. I had to go to a FreeBSD installation to re-learn how it works.

      Install documentation "in-situ" was pretty much nonexistent. They need to make the thing MUCH more user-friendly before I'll even attempt installing it again.

      I saw no way of activating my DSL directly from OBSD right after install, altho I could connect to my existing Linux Squid proxy cache. So I went back to Linux.

      --Anybody that's using the latest OBSD and can help with any/all of this stuff, fee free to post... This is not a troll/flamebait, this was my actual experience with OpenBSD.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    44. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --If you're not joking around, I'll have to try that next install...

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    45. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Groganz · · Score: 1

      I concur. RTFM is is not encouraging to newbies. I realise that some people get frustrated at answering the same questions over and over. Well the answer to that is to leave it to someone else to answer. Eg. a keen newbie who has just learnt the answer him/her-self and is happy to pass on their new knowledge. A bit of civility will earn you more respect and friends.

    46. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by evilviper · · Score: 1

      The OpenBSD Readme tells you about afterboot. When you install a system, an e-mail is in Root's mail queue, telling about man afterboot, as well as many other things.

      If you've installed OpenBSD, and never heard about man afterboot, you've got some serious problems... I assume you haven't installed OpenBSD.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    47. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Arandir · · Score: 1

      ...an e-mail is in Root's mail queue...

      You're right, I've never installed OpenBSD. But as my first post said: "unless it's told to you explicitly on first login". Now I know it is.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    48. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Strog · · Score: 1

      I use it all the time with the BSDs but X is X so it should work for others too.

    49. Re:OpenBSD = Coordinated Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm... First time you run mail, it tells you about this.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. Why? by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Why should someone who's using linux be interested in OpenBSD?

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For the gamimg capabilities, obviously.

    2. Re:Why? by RdsArts · · Score: 1, Interesting

      As opposed to most GNU/Linux distros, OpenBSD is "insanely" geared towards closing all and any security holes in the default install, and is fanatical about exploits. The only distro that comes even close to OpenBSD's quality checks is Debian stable. (And honestly, they share the same "problem" - stable but out-dated desktop software with stable, rock solid server apps)

      Honestly, OpenBSD and most GNU/Linux distros are going after different audiences: most GNU/Linux distros I see are reaching for the workstation, while OpenBSD (and, honestly, all the BSDs) are geared with the server in mind first, with desktop being a late comer or complete after thought.

      If someone's using GNU/Linux as a desktop, they wouldn't be interested, but for someone running a server they want to secure as best as possible, OpenBSD is really a great option.

    3. Re:Why? by ashkar · · Score: 5, Informative

      1. The best reason is security. Even with the best planning crackers can sometimes reach the machine in question. OpenBSD has the lowest rate of bugs and security holes of any OS out there. Any serious problems that are found are usually patched within days instead of weeks.

      2. Stability. Like a rock. Even running the current branch, you will most likely not have any stability problems. Install, configure, and throw away the key. This is the first OS I've run that I can truthfully say is, besides any necessary patches, maintainence free.

      3. BSD systems are much easier to maintain than Linux yet just as powerful as a full Unix. The ports system is well kept up and easy to use and the filesystem is much less cluttered than in Linux.

      Very much worth a try if you have never used it.

    4. Re:Why? by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      Thanks. Might check it out. Um... who's the tool that moderates a simple question flamebait?

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    5. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There alot of issues with DJB's software on OpenBSD that will cause it to crash for absolutely no reason. Maybe with the new mem protection it'll help but I highly doubt it..

    6. Re:Why? by RLiegh · · Score: 2, Informative
      Honestly, OpenBSD and most GNU/Linux distros are going after different audiences: most GNU/Linux distros I see are reaching for the workstation, while OpenBSD (and, honestly, all the BSDs) are geared with the server in mind first, with desktop being a late comer or complete after thought.

      How so? Are you going to tell me that *BSD can only run Windowmaker or something? Or does *BSD ship with a broken [k||x||g]dm?

      In what way is it that FreeBSD and NetBSD are somehow less usable for a desktop compared with GNU/Linux? The desktop apps are there (including Windowmaker), the mulitmedia is there...so what is the basis for saying that BSD is some how more intrinsically inferior to GNU/Linux as a desktop?

      (openbsd I'll give to you as it doesn't run mozilla--or so I've heard, I haven't checked for myself.)

    7. Re:Why? by b0r1s · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1. The best reason is security. Even with the best planning crackers can sometimes reach the machine in question. OpenBSD has the lowest rate of bugs and security holes of any OS out there. Any serious problems that are found are usually patched within days instead of weeks.

      FreeBSD is a close second. The reason you hear so little about FreeBSD's security is that there is no concept of the 'default install', and thus, there's no easy way to tell what FreeBSD's security record would be if you did the default install. But, if you choose the absolute minimum, and configure it similarly to OpenBSD (which is quite easy to do, make sendmail start only on the loopback, set the same defaults for SSH, etc). It's not as secure by default, because there is no default.

      Moreover, anyone who installs services they don't need deserves to get hacked. Need a mail server? You're gonna get hit with the sendmail holes. Need SSH access? You're gonna get hit with the (1) OpenSSH hole. If you don't need the services, they shouldn't be enabled. You can mitigate the threat with firewalling (or hopefully, detaching it from the real internet), but chances are, the holes are going to be in the services you run and not in the OS itself.

      (You could argue that systrace can limit a lot of otherwise horrific vulnerabilities: fair enough. So does chroot() and jail())

      2. Stability. Like a rock. Even running the current branch, you will most likely not have any stability problems. Install, configure, and throw away the key. This is the first OS I've run that I can truthfully say is, besides any necessary patches, maintainence free.

      FreeBSD. More stable and FASTER.

      3. BSD systems are much easier to maintain than Linux yet just as powerful as a full Unix. The ports system is well kept up and easy to use and the filesystem is much less cluttered than in Linux.

      I agree. 'make buildworld; make buildkernel; make installkernel; reboot ; make installworld' is pretty nice too.

      --
      Mooniacs for iOS and Android
    8. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha good thing you posted such retarded dribble as an AC :)

    9. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly, you don't know shit from apple butter.

    10. Re:Why? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1
      Oh Come on! You mean its not great fun and delight and pure orgasmic sex to deal with rpm dependancy hell and chmodding half of the files for proper security?

      Not to mention in most linux distro's all the files in /etc are just symlinks to god knows where.

    11. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mozilla works if you stroke it nicely.

      *cough* Actually, there's an openbsd build on the mozilla.org, so maybe you should stop spreading bullshit?

    12. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      In what way is it that FreeBSD and NetBSD are somehow less usable for a desktop compared with GNU/Linux? The desktop apps are there (including Windowmaker), the mulitmedia is there...so what is the basis for saying that BSD is some how more intrinsically inferior to GNU/Linux as a desktop?


      ummmm...

      existing marketshare, and momentum just about cover it.

      you could, of course, continue your denial trip. just like ms, and ms's analysts and shareholders who are just as deeply in denial as you appear to be.
    13. Re:Why? by The+Snailman · · Score: 1

      If you don't like rpm's try Debian. As far as Linux goes for stability/security/packaging I recon it's pretty good.

      --
      Warning: you are logged into reality as root...
    14. Re:Why? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1
      Dependancy hell is still there. Try doing an apt-get from what debian would consider unstable and all of the suden all of the depancies of alpa level packages will replace the stable ones.

      I will stick wiht the ports thank you.

    15. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The bsd's run mozilla, kde, gnome, etc. fine, and can even run linux binaries if needed (e.g. closedsource things). So it is perfectly possible to have a desktop as usable as with linux. But there are a couple of obstacles:

      Not focused on desktop. The desktop is not the top priority of the bsd's. This mean you have to choose to install it, and configure it for your need. It is not hard, but it can take some time (e.g. "cd /usr/ports/misc/instant-workstation && make install clean" on FreeBSD). Administration is done via cli(command line interface), so if you, as a desktop user, want to gui point-and-click your way through the system, use mandrake, redhat or the like.

      Bleeding edge drivers. If you need an obscure driver for the videocapture on your graphicscard, or in some cases 3d acceleration, it might only be supported on linux.

      (Desktop) developers use linux. There are more linux users than bsd users, thus the software is more tested with that operating system, and you might run into more rough edges on bsd (e.g. when I ran kde on freebsd, some time ago, the battery power monitoring applet did not work (probably due to different interfaces beetween bsd and linux). It is stuff like that.).

      Commercial apps There are some closesourced desktop applications that the enduser usually wants (e.g. java, realplayer, flash, ...). These usually have better support for linux than bsd. Here you either have to register to get the source(for java), or get it to run via linux emulation, which leads to the next point.

      Linux emulation. You may need to run linux binaries. It works fine with linux emulation, but then you also have to maintain a linux distribution (RH or debian afaik) within bsd. If that is the case, and you do not need a specific feature of bsd (e.g. paranoid security, glorius man pages, ports, etc.), then using linux for the desktop might save some administrative load.

      --
      An Anonymous Coward - who prefer to use gentoo linux for desktop, freebsd for servers, openbsd for firewalls and netbsd for pda's, toasters and the like.

    16. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just notice that if you're a windows user dont bother even to try unless you're willing to spend a LONG time at RTFM. I tried and I must say it's difficult.

    17. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try doing an apt-get from what debian would consider unstable and all of the suden all of the depancies of alpa level packages will replace the stable ones.

      Really? You mean that if I install "unstable" packages, then those packages may require "unstable" dependencies too?! No shit! Who would have thought?

      Well, clearly not you. Thinking does not appear to be your thing.

    18. Re:Why? by Caligari · · Score: 1

      Yes I agree with your post. While OpenBSD is an excellent operating system, there are definate advantages to FreeBSD. It is similarly secure nowadays (as you pointed out) and has much better application support (Mozilla runs for example, and the FreeBSD ports tree is MUCH larger).

      FreeBSD also has SMP support, much better Java support and has jail(8). It's also been better tweaked for performance. Once FreeBSD 5 matures, it will have alot more advanced features.

      OpenBSD has pf (which is being ported to FreeBSD), systrace, audited userland and kernel (I think FreeBSD people borrow alot from OpenBSD people in terms of audited code - sendmail for example)

      OpenBSD is great, so is FreeBSD - they both have their own niche areas.

      --
      The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
    19. Re:Why? by RdsArts · · Score: 1

      I didn't say they were unusable as a desktop OS, in fact I'm typing this on my FreeBSD 5.0 laptop ^_^

      But they are more concerned with the server side of their systems then with the desktop, is all I'm saying. They will spend more energy on making it a better server then they do making it a better desktop.

      On a completely different note, OpenBSD can run Mozilla now. In fact I've seen news on Deadly of Mozilla 1.3 running (with some level of patching), and there's even instructions to get it using Phoenix.

    20. Re:Why? by drunk_as_in_beer · · Score: 1

      Actually, yes. The last time I used FreeBSD as a desktop OS (about 6 months ago). Windowmaker was broken. This was due to the FreeBSD ftp sites lacking the latest version of some of the necessary files. I waited a month for them to fix it (after submitting bug reports), it wasn't fixed in that time and I haven't messed with it again. It is obvious that they do not pay much attention to desktop/GUI functionality. KDE worked fine, but X was very slow, maybe something I had to tweak, but I don't have to tweak anything in Debian.

      I really like *BSD, but only for server and CLI purposes.

      --
      --Drunk as in Beer
    21. Re:Why? by evilviper · · Score: 1
      The reason you hear so little about FreeBSD's security is that there is no concept of the 'default install',

      No. The reason you never hear about FreeBSD's security is that they don't work on it nearly as much as OpenBSD. They aren't exactly pushing the boundaries of security.

      Numerous code audits. Propolice, W^X, et al. Systrace. Apache chrooted by default. OpenSSH (writen by the same people) privlidge seperation. Does any of this sound like FreeBSD?

      but chances are, the holes are going to be in the services you run and not in the OS itself.

      With propolice, W^X, et al., most problems with most programs are now going to be VERY hard, if not impossible, to exploit. Systrace also negates any security holes an application might have.

      (You could argue that systrace can limit a lot of otherwise horrific vulnerabilities: fair enough. So does chroot() and jail())

      With chroot, they are still on your system. If they find a bug in some chrooted software (it doesn't completely drop privlidges), or if they can find a bug in the kernel, they'll be reading your passwd file in no time. Chroot may help, but it doesn't do much on it's own.

      FreeBSD. More stable and FASTER.

      As for both of the above, I would say "nominally".
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    22. Re:Why? by jo42 · · Score: 1
      > Why should someone who's using linux be interested in OpenBSD?

      Because they have an OpenMind(tm) and are always looking for something better.

    23. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Numerous code audits. Propolice, W^X, et al. Systrace. Apache chrooted by default. OpenSSH (writen by the same people) privlidge seperation. Does any of this sound like FreeBSD?

      Propolice was available for FreeBSD before OpenBSD.

      W^X should be ported soon, once the problems are seen and corrected. (I believe the talent that would be porting that type of code has been shifted towards the x86-64 port)

      Systrace is nice, I've already mentioned that.

      OpenSSH with PrivSep is in FreeBSD too.

    24. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think FreeBSD runs inetd by default, so it's fairly secure. Example firewall (ipfw) scripts are in /etc/rc.firewall and similar files. By default, you can never log in as root from a remote connection. There are more steps that you can take if you're paranoid, but that's most of the big ones.

    25. Re:Why? by evilviper · · Score: 1
      Propolice was available for FreeBSD before

      EXACTLY! And it STILL isn't in the base system. FreeBSD doesn't care about security nearly as much as OpenBSD.

      W^X should be ported soon

      You think so? Think it'll gain any more support than propolice on FreeBSD?

      OpenSSH with PrivSep is in FreeBSD too.

      Yes, it is because the OpenBSD team ported it over to FreeBSD. FreeBSD folks don't seem to care very much.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  7. If Microsoft wants to steal... by mfifer · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...from someone *besides* Apple, OpenBSD is the bank they should look at!

    Aside from maybe the esoteric trusted OSes (i.e. Trusted Solaris), is there really another "mainstream" OS people can just rely on for security?

    Hell, Bill G oughtta just start waving $$$ in front of Theo and company until they all say "OK, that will do" and join MS to show them Redmond boys the Right Way (TM) to lock down an OS*!!!

    * of course the Office team would no doubt open right back up any holes the new security-conscious OS team closed down...

    1. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not really.

      Bearing in mind that security is, code flaws aside, one side of a balance between security and user features, OpenBSD, from what I can tell, more than pays the price for its security in lack of features. For example, Outlook is notorious for its security flaws. Most of these seem to stem from all sorts of abilities to run code embedded in emails. Did MS coders do this because they were stupid and forgot not to code in this feature? No, they did it because it is indeed a feature, when not abused.

      Obviously a lot of vulnerabilities just stem from coding flaws but, ultimately, a more secure OS is going to be harder to use. MS has chosen the balance they prefer and, apparently, have chosen correctly, from a business perspective.

    2. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by FauxPasIII · · Score: 1

      > OpenBSD, from what I can tell, more than pays the price for its security in lack of features.

      I wouldn't necessarily say that. If anything, OpenBSD shows you can be secure without a great deal of sacrifice, it just requires applying talent and effort (which the OpenBSD team has). Just look at PrivSep XFree86. You don't really lose anything by doing it that way, afaik. It just wasn't being done before, somebody needed to code it.

      --
      25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
    3. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The MS coders(or possibly some other people) were stupid and forgot to contemplate the security risks of their features. This is a design flaw, and not necessarily a coding flaw. However, it most certainly is a flaw. Masking it under the word feature is dismissive.

    4. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you seriously think that the MS coders are that stupid? I would bet the farm that they were given the order to put such and such a feature in. They knew the risks but didn't have the choice to say no (which is why software engineers need to be real engineers. Ethics are a good thing). MS has the money to buy the best programmers they can get their hands on, if you don't believe that you are a moron.

    5. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by dkf · · Score: 1
      Do you seriously think that the MS coders are that stupid?

      Yes. Running untrusted code in anything other than the most restricted of contexts is asking for trouble. And it's not as if ways of supporting the feature are unavailable (sandboxes, digital signatures, etc.)

      What you have here is almost certainly the law of unintended consequences; features that make lots of sense in one context (and which are not a problem in that situation) getting mixed together with things from another context to create something that's got a mix of these things which exceeds what the security model ought to justify. Software's secure when everything is done right; it only takes a single bozo to foul things up.

      I would bet the farm that they were given the order to put such and such a feature in.

      Sure, but security isn't just a check-list item.

      They knew the risks but didn't have the choice to say no (which is why software engineers need to be real engineers. Ethics are a good thing).

      They could have done it though and got it right. They did not. It would seem that a fair number of the programmers working on Outlook have a mental model of the use of their product that does not include malicious people and messages, especially when combined with remote software that doesn't follow the rules at all well. In security terms, you can't assume that everyone's playing the game by the rules...

      MS has the money to buy the best programmers they can get their hands on, if you don't believe that you are a moron.

      Hah! They must have some good people, but they've got a lot of... "differently able" programmers as well. Bound to have with that many employees by application of the Law of Large Organizations.

      The way out for them would be to add an extra layer to the release process that won't let anything out the door until it passes a proper security audit. But that won't happen; the extra time added to the release cycle would send the financial people into apoplexy, and many corporate users are (lamentably) using existing security misfeatures to manage systems (a legacy of historically poor remote-access-and-admin support) and would scream loudly if they had to change anything.

      All Unixes (by virtue of tools like ssh, proper virtual terminals and a network-transparent GUI) are well ahead on this last front and have been for decades.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    6. Re:If Microsoft wants to steal... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft didn't get where they are by hiring the best coders (read lots of $$$).

      They hire smart (but incredibly inexperienced) kids fresh out of school, and work them until they snap (or just leave).

      Understanding this simple fact makes Microsoft's actions perfectly clear.

  8. Looks like they need to take their own advice ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, here's a handy way to speed up your DSL connection - prioritizing empty TCP ACKs and ToS low-delay traffic with OpenBSD 3.3's pf.) ... and prioritize empty ACKs on their server's connection.

  9. Umm, because they want a real Unix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why use a "Unix-type" OS when you can get the real thing? Plus it's legal, not like the OS that belongs to SCO. Only criminals support Linux.

    1. Re:Umm, because they want a real Unix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No unix source code is in the BSDs, sorry to tell you. Don't you remember the lawsuits? Don't you remember how BSD replaced all of AT&T's code eventually? Don't you realize that IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER if it has the original source code? Get the hell over it already.

  10. Argh! by LooseChanj · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm not done d/l'ing it yet! And it was slow *before* it got /.'ed!

    --
    Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
    1. Re:Argh! by espo812 · · Score: 1

      Follow this with the obligatory "I just installed 3.2 yesterday, time to wait for the /. effect to die down so i can upgrade :(" post and we have a complete set of comments that are made for every single new release of a piece of software story.

      --

      espo
    2. Re:Argh! by LooseChanj · · Score: 1

      Well, I do find myself waiting to actually install anything from ports or packages. So far everything's been compiled from other sources.

      --
      Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
  11. Because you were 0wn3d?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A linux user might want to look at OpenBSD if they were 0wn3d and all their porn was deleted because of it.

    1. Re:Because you were 0wn3d?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please. All their "pr0n" was deleted.

  12. and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been using Freebsd on my servers as of fairly recently and so far I love it. As a result, my intrest in BSD in general has grown. I was looking just today at OpenBSD and NetBSD features. OpenBSD looks fantasic and I was about to give it a whirl when I realized they don't support SMP. Now this wouldn't be an overly huge issue if it were primarily a desktop OS. I applaude all the work that has obviously gone into this project. But I will be overjoyed the day I see SMP added to the new feature list. This is NOT a troll. I think the way it stands is extremely impressive. I just want to express my sincere desire to see SMP support. =)

    1. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes. They've wasted so much time on useless security features that they're forgotten to make a functional operating system.

    2. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SMP would be great. I think they've been working on SMP for quite a while; just nothing to show yet.

      However, SMP opens a whole new can of potential security vulnerabilities, so the OpenBSD team is being particularly cautious about doing it properly. As someone who uses OpenBSD for security reasons and someone who has done a smidgen of SMP coding, I think this is the exact right approach. I'd rather have security than scalability. Both would be nice, but if there's any doubt, I want security. If I wanted scalability, I'd go with another OS; the last thing the OpenBSD team should do is compromise their #1 strength and reason for being.

    3. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I couldn't agree more.. And I wasnt suggesting they compromise a thing to provide SMP.. just scribbling it on my wish list.

    4. Re:and still no SMP =( by dr4ma · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OpenBSD is built around being secure, not on high performance multiprocessor support for hosting huge database servers.

      look at /. servers, the web server is a PIII 600MHz and the database server is a quad Xeon 550MHz system.

      Newer desktop systems are equal to the quad box minus the extra cache on the xeons.

      So, IMHO SMP support is not a huge deal and should not be for most sub 1000 user companys.

      --
      Privacy? Not in this lifetime.
    5. Re:and still no SMP =( by mritunjai · · Score: 5, Informative

      Theo replied to this a while back

      In an SMP environment, auditing all applications and figuring out all race conditions and resource corruption is a nightmare. You never know when a programmer overlooked the fact that a signal handler and a thread could *actually* be running in parallel and cause a race condition.

      Theo wants to avoid these pitfalls for now. Thus OpenBSD has no SMP support.

      Incorporating SMP support in OpenBSD shouldn't be an issue, mainly because NetBSD from which its derived has had SMP for ages and FreeBSD has it too! The friggin' thing is how to be sure that sendmail's author imagined all parallel excution scenarios and has coded accordingly.

      Trust me, SMP environments are bitch to work in and you should either have professional tools to work with or a really good imagination to work out all possible race conditions.

      --
      - mritunjai
    6. Re:and still no SMP =( by dougmc · · Score: 1
      The friggin' thing is how to be sure that sendmail's author imagined all parallel excution scenarios and has coded accordingly.
      Are you sure about that?

      If the OS is properly done, the userlevel applications shouldn't have to worry about if the box has multiple cpus or just one. If something works with one cpus and fails with multiple cpus, then either 1) the OS isn't doing it's job right or 2) there's some subtle timing bug in the (application) code that would probably eventually fail on the right single cpu box -- that it doesn't fail on a single cpu box is just ... (bad) luck.

      (kernel level stuff is a TOTALLY different issue.)

    7. Re:and still no SMP =( by afidel · · Score: 1

      That is old info from what I can tell, they are hosting in Cali now. Plus it mentions RH 6.2, I doubt anyone is running a website on that anymore (shudder).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    8. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If sendmail has a race condition in one of it's locks, two sendmail processes might end up writing the same file, overwriting eachothers data. The OS cannot guard against this. If sendmail trusts it's own data, it might even read it back in, resulting in an overflow, which worst case could give you root.

      There is nothing the OS could do about that, unless you somehow want to limit the programs abilites to take advantage of SMP.

      Ok, so replace sendmail with any other program.

    9. Re:and still no SMP =( by warrax_666 · · Score: 1

      Well, actually... If the user application is multithreaded there is a whole class of bugs (race conditions) which cannot appear on single-CPU systems simply because the code is not actually executing on two CPUs simultaneously -- these bugs would appear on SMP systems. (This is of course a bug in the application, not the system, but I though I'd mention it.)

      --
      HAND.
    10. Re:and still no SMP =( by Tuzanor · · Score: 1

      NetBSD has not had SMP for ages, in face just recently they committed some "real" SMP code. It is freeBSD that has had it for ages.

    11. Re:and still no SMP =( by pmz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      OpenBSD looks fantasic and I was about to give it a whirl when I realized they don't support SMP.

      Consider what OpenBSD excels at and consider these questions:

      Does a firewall really need two 2GHz CPUs?

      How about a router, modest fileserver, or e-mail server?

      Considering the complexity that SMP would probably add to the kernel (race conditions, data integrity, etc.), it may be counter-productive towards the goal of uncompromising security.

      For bigger servers (4 or more CPUs) just run Solaris, FreeBSD, or Linux behind OpenBSD-based infrastructure. I think this is a tasty compromise.

    12. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny isn't it. The same people that point out the lack of SMP as a show-stopping shortcoming would be the first ones gloating when SMP-OpenBSD was found to have numerous privilege escalation holes. SMP will cause these problems, and the OpenBSD developers know it. When/if SMP-OpenBSD ever sees the light of day, I'm betting it will come with a disclaimer, and it will take years to plug the holes introduced.

      It would also be entertaining to find out how many of these 'must have SMP' people are running a machine that isn't single processor ... alas we will never know. If you need a Freenix with SMP, I believe Linux is getting the most testing (and I'm sure FreeBSD and NetBSD will catch up sometime soon, if they haven't already). Right tool for the job....it is that simple.

    13. Re:and still no SMP =( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This has NOTHING to do with SMP. If that problem exists with running 2 sendmails it will happen on single and multi CPU machines in exactly the same way.

      I guess it's not suprising that 99.9999% of all /. readers really know nothing about multi-threaded or multi-process programming and yet have no hesitation on making authoritative remarks about it anyway.

    14. Re:and still no SMP =( by c13v3rm0nk3y · · Score: 1
      Does a firewall really need two 2GHz CPUs?

      Exactly. Scale the hardware for the job. Sure, I'd love to use my unused 2-way PII box to replace my aging OBSD router, but I don't need all that grunt. Anyway, I could use it, but CPU1 would never be fired-up on boot.

      Here at work we use modest boxes with OBSD running on them that acts as company-wide worldwide mailservers. When we needed more power to do some heavy lifting via spam filters, we just split the mailserver into two boxes (one for spam filtering, one for delivery).

      SMP is a neat feature that has real advantages for a select few applications. Nobody I know uses OBSD for these applications.

      --
      -- clvrmnky
    15. Re:and still no SMP =( by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      The OpenBSD team is working on SMP for the i386 and Sparc, but it won't be ready for a while, project page here .

      It just doesn't seem to be their priority, given the normal use of OpenBSD on edge machines. Of course, the extra security checks and features mean OpenBSD will never be as fast as the other BSD and Linux, so I don't think use on large crunching machines will ever be a popular use for the O.S.

  13. would be nice by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is great news, or would be, if OpenBSD would actually work with our hardware. We use KVM switchs that have a mouse and keyboard plugged into a USB hub. OpenBSD just doesn't have good enough USB support to even install with a keyboard through a hub. And no, changing 'usb legacy support' in the bios does not help the problem. It is a pity. Linux kernel has the same issue, however all recent versions of Windows work fine with it.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    1. Re:would be nice by ch-chuck · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It's kinda bizarre to pick one's software based on the hardware you happen to have to run it on. My OpenBSD PostFix mail server runs fine on an older Celeron workstation and the good feeling of trust and security is worth not even having a keyboard and mouse normally connected - I last plugged them in to reboot after a power failure, then moved them over to the Win2K box for it's regular maintenance reboots. Rarely ever have to move them back as all OpenBSD maintenance is done from my office.

      That is to say, having a near uncrackable box is well worth giving up the peripheral style de jour, to me ;))

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    2. Re:would be nice by coene · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The primary install kernel (RAMDISK) does not have support for USB Human Interface Devices (HID). Use PS/2. I know it's a limitation, I've run up against it too. Once you get the OS installed, it will work with the USB KVM fine.

      Or, you could add USB HID support to the RAMDISK kernel on a spare box, and cd /usr/src/distrib && make, and install using the new floppy image.

    3. Re:would be nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      don't buy a POS KVM

    4. Re:would be nice by Schubert · · Score: 1

      There are quite a few issues with KVM's and wscons (the driver that controls keyboard/mouse input). I know I've run into many similiar problems but haven't been able to nail down the exact cause.

      --
      -- schubert
    5. Re:would be nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Turn on USB Legacy support

      boot the kernel with -c (bsd.rd -c)

      disable uhci
      disable ohci

      Install using USB keyboard (on KVM switch).

    6. Re:would be nice by gunga · · Score: 1

      Not to troll here, but are you seriously saying that you were interested in OpenBSD features but that the KVM was a show stopper? This is crazy, have you asked yourself how OpenBSD user do?

    7. Re:would be nice by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

      Already own the hardware, any OS will do for the particular project.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  14. OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, I'm impressed with this release. I think we can now say for sure that this OS is better than FreeBSD and definatly better than Linux and Win2k/XP. Good work OpenBSD developers.

  15. Eh? by BJH · · Score: 5, Informative


    Just to clarify that, W^X is not "write xor X", but "write xor execute". It's a new policy that OpenBSD uses to specify whether memory is writable or executable, but not both.

    This helps prevent buffer overflows on the architectures that support it (sparc, sparc64, alpha, hppa) in that any memory that can be written to cannot be executable, and vice versa - so even if a buffer overflow succeeds in overwriting memory, that memory cannot be executed (or, the memory cannot be overwritten in the first place if it is executable).

    Also note that W^X is also available on x86 in -current.

    1. Re:Eh? by roskakori · · Score: 1
      This helps prevent buffer overflows on the architectures that support it.

      AFAIK this does not prevent the buffer overflow. it just makes the program terminate instead. so you trade being rooted with denial-of-service.

      to actually prevent the buffer overflow, you need to code in a language with dynamic strings and arrays.
    2. Re:Eh? by rabidcow · · Score: 1

      this does not prevent the buffer overflow. it just makes the program terminate instead.

      That depends on the exploit. If the attacker can find the address for system calls, he can write a function call onto the stack that will activate on return. That's potentially more difficult tho, especially with systrace.

      so you trade being rooted with denial-of-service.

      Not the best, but an extremely valuable trade.

      to actually prevent the buffer overflow, you need to code in a language with dynamic strings and arrays.

      Nonsense. To prevent the buffer overflow, you have to make sure not to copy more into the buffer than it will hold. Nothing more, nothing less.

      Dynamic strings and arrays can help, since you can make the buffer as big as your data, but you can still overflow a dynamic array if you never check the data size.

      Furthermore, you don't need dynamic arrays, nor do you need built-in language support. I have written (trivial) programs in C that use fixed buffers, don't truncate input, and are immune to buffer overflow attacks. In most cases it's easier to go with dynamic arrays, which even C supports, tho perhaps not in the way you intend.

      The only thing you need to prevent buffer overflows is to check the size of all data from untrusted sources before you put it in your buffer.

    3. Re:Eh? by kma · · Score: 1

      Also note that W^X is also available on x86 in -current.

      How do they accomplish that, when that the x86 doesn't differentiate between execute and read permissions for paging? Is is some sort of crock involving limits on the code segment?

    4. Re:Eh? by roskakori · · Score: 1
      Dynamic strings and arrays can help, since you can make the buffer as big as your data, but you can still overflow a dynamic array if you never check the data size.

      i suppose you are referring to the case where some input explicitely specifies an invalid array-index. you are right, this has to be dealt with and turned into a proper error message. in case this check is missing or flawed, the language also needs array index checking to prevent this kind of buffer overflow. (this might result in the program to be terminated, unless the language allows to recover from such a condition.)

      The only thing you need to prevent buffer overflows is to check the size of all data from untrusted sources before you put it in your buffer.

      yes, but you can not guarantee that all this is done - and without making mistakes. that's why i don't consider this an approach to prevent buffer overflows. it just attempts to avoid them.

      different to dynamic strings/arrays and automatic index checking, which are a no-brainer to use. (well, there is a possibility for compiler/library bugs, but its rather small.)

    5. Re:Eh? by rabidcow · · Score: 1

      i suppose you are referring to the case where some input explicitely specifies an invalid array-index.

      There are a number of cases where this can happen, all of which can be blocked. You can block them once, when you get the input from the user, or you can block them at every memory reference.

      yes, but you can not guarantee that all this is done - and without making mistakes.

      How do you know? Even if you hand code the checks everywhere, it is entirely possible to get all of them right. Programming time could get prohibitively expensive, but it is possible.

      OTOH, I could write my own string/array copy routines that would make it similarly difficult to create a buffer overflow vulnerability. As long as you don't code drunk, no problem.

      different to dynamic strings/arrays and automatic index checking, which are a no-brainer to use.

      And you could do that, too. You can, in the language you're already using, add automatic index checking, etc. (or use a premade library) It might be a little awkward, but it can be done, and then you don't have to rewrite everything else.

  16. pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by iocc · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This thing that speeds up the connection (and prioritizing empty TCP ACKs
    and ToS low-delay traffic)... Does that exist as a patch for linux also?

    I think some ppl would be interested.

    1. Re:pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by MoOsEb0y · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have only two words for you.
      Wonder Shaper.

    2. Re:pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by Sahib! · · Score: 3, Informative

      For those running Mac OS X, there is an application called Cocktail that will let you turn off delayed ACKs.

      --

      I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."

    3. Re:pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by iocc · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I know. But I was hoping for a kernel patch.
      Wonder shaper is a bit complex to setup if you only need this thing.

    4. Re:pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this will do it: ?
      http://www.clarkconnect.org/forums/showflat.php ?Ca t=&Board=UBB4&Number=11685&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1

    5. Re:pri TCP ACKs for linux patch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Uh, this is bullshit.

      The kernel-part (which linux already has, QoS) is complex to setup and wondershaper are just some shellscripts which make it *really* easy.

  17. Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Dag+Maggot · · Score: 3, Informative
    Relates equally to OpenBSD, kind of a backhanded compliment to the BSDs over Linux.
    The way things are structured today, from a licensing perspective, in the Linux world nobody will ever commercialise Linux the way the Sun commercialised FreeBSD. For some customers, that can be viewed as advantageous. But customers will never really know who stands behind this product. If the lead developer for this component chooses to do something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that? The fact that it will never be commercialised is assured by the GPL. The GPL licensing form does that, as opposed to the open-source license for FreeBSD, where you could say Sun took it and commercialised it and can say that they own it. Nobody can ever do that (with GPL).
    Complete interview on Zdnn
    --

    I have no pants and I must scream

    1. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by ch-chuck · · Score: 1

      If the lead developer for this component chooses to do something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that?

      Seeing the Msft strives very hard to purposely keep customers dependant on a continuous stream of paid upgrades, support and bugfixes, that position is understandable. However, I don't see how anyone can beleive anything the emBallmer says as anything other than a used car sales pitch unless they're on the company payroll. How about this Steve: I'll use an open product that fits *our* needs, and if the developers drop the ball and it no longer is a solution, and Msft has successfully monopolized then entire software universe, THEN we'll buy your lousy products ?

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    2. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Cirvam · · Score: 2, Informative

      Uh, when did Sun commercialize FreeBSD? They had SunOS which had a BSD style init system I think, and then moved to Solaris which has a SysV init system. And they bought out cobalt and sell those linux boxes. Do they have any interaction with freebsd?

    3. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by ch-chuck · · Score: 1

      What do you expect from the guy who gave us the 'hardware application layer' - he's just a prancing rich guy who wants to stay on the gravy train. Msft is a highly visible alien culture that constantly spreads disinformation about anything other than themselves (and often screws that up too). Listening to any Msft mogul's statement about any aspect of the computer industry other than themselves is like an eskimo's comments on life in the Andes mountains - usually cartoonish caricatures , like someone's profound comments about Shakespeare after a 5 minute speed read thru the cliffs notes on Hamlet.

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    4. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Cplus · · Score: 1

      There is a port of FreeBSD that runs on Sun machines, this port was funded and basically created by Sun so that they could sell the machines to BSD users. A very good plan actually, but one that they dropped after a while, though they still develop quite a bit of software including StarOffice and java. Read more here.

      --
      "Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
    5. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Steve Ballmer's necktie must be too tight. Amazing how wearing a suit can cause a person to think they know what they're talking about.

    6. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should check out the recent book Bad Boy Balmer. It's pretty enlightening, and shows how maniacal this man is.

    7. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm...Let's see. When SUN (Stanford University Network) was founded, they needed someone to head their OS department. This person was Bill Joy. Now, if you don't know who Bill Joy was look him up on Google. Better yet, read this: He was the designer of BSD!!!! Interesting Coinkydink???

      Now the question is how come Ballmer knew that and you didn't ;-)

  18. Only slashdot... by Bearded+Pear+Shaped · · Score: 3, Funny

    the packet filter, pf, including address pools for reverse NAT/load balancing, ALTQ integration for network conditioning, and anchors/tables/spamd for spam tar-pitting.

    Oh WOW!
    My prayers for the packet filter, pf, including address pools for reverse NAT/load balancing, ALTQ integration for network conditioning, and anchors/tables/spamd for spam tar-pitting have been answered!

    Thanks OpenBSD! Thanks for the World!!

    --
    Who are y oo ?
    1. Re:Only slashdot... by afidel · · Score: 1

      It's called news for nerds for a reason you know?

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Only slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ..speed up your DSL connection.... that sounds promising!! Since I'm sharing my DSL connection (don't tell my isp;-) with my neighbors, I'm very much interested in this. Does anyone know if this can be done with Linux as well?

  19. Would be nice, but in the meantime by Ryvar · · Score: 1

    While I certainly can't say that "this is ALWAYS the best way to run things", I find it helpful to do split up tasks according to what I view as the respective strengths of each OS.

    Firewall, Mail, and DNS I handle with OpenBSD (running Postfix and DJB's tinyDNS), and my actual website gets run on FreeBSD 5.0 in order to take advantage of SMP - a very, very stripped down FreeBSD, I might add. Looking at my loads, I'm considering setting up a secondary OpenBSD machine strictly for the apache processes, and leaving the FreeBSD machine as an ultra-stripped down DB box.

    For the small business network this seems like a fairly optimal way to handle it.

    When OpenBSD gets SMP (if ever), they'll effectively run my network - although a software monoculture has as many weaknesses as it does strengths (plus side: everybody uses Mozilla mail instead of OE, minus side: the first OpenBSD root exploit and you've lost the entire network).

    --Ryv

    1. Re:Would be nice, but in the meantime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean to tell me that the superbad.com requires an SMP box? Please tell me you are joking, besides being incredible annoying to navigate, there is little on the site. SMP? I would run that thing on a 486 with 24MB Ram.

  20. High bandwidth whoring by cultobill · · Score: 1

    Ahh, now I remember what I pay the school that monthly fee for. ~300 KB/s download for the whole thing.

    I find it odd that they don't provide instructions on the site anywhere easy to find on providing mirrors. I'd like to, but fucked if I can find where.

    Did anyone else find that the mirrors aren't complete yet?

    --
    -- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
    1. Re:High bandwidth whoring by UU7 · · Score: 1

      http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html

      bottom of the page..

    2. Re:High bandwidth whoring by cravey · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try the 'FTPing Releases' link under 'Getting OpenBSD' or just click here

      Looking at the homepage helps. ;)

    3. Re:High bandwidth whoring by dohcvtec · · Score: 4, Funny

      How about "FTPing Releases" right in the middle of the front page? How hard was that? I can't believe you are able to grasp the concept of OpenBSD, develop the initiative to install it, and realize that mirrors are a good idea (not to mention you are apparently a college student) yet you cant even read a simple web page.

      --
      -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
    4. Re:High bandwidth whoring by cultobill · · Score: 1

      Right... I meant me providing a mirror, not "where the hell are the mirrors".

      --
      -- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
    5. Re:High bandwidth whoring by dohcvtec · · Score: 1

      Uhh... yeahhh... it's on that page, at the bottom. It gives you the layout of a mirror, as well as an email address to contact saying that you would like to be listed as a mirror. While you're at it, tell them that archive.progeny.com (listed as providing ftp and http mirrors) is no longer mirroring OpenBSD. Shame, too, as they seem to be well-connected.

      --
      -- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
  21. Re:fp by boola-boola · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Thank you :-) I don't wanna ruin my karma, hence the AC. Only took me two years (of only checking the front page)

    ...but to stay on topic, it sounds good, I will wait a week before even attempting to download it and throw it on a spare partition on my server. Quick question, is this ProPolice by Hiroaki Etoh which is integrated into OpenBSD's 'system compiler' the same as the stack protector patch for GCC developed by Hiroaki Etoh at IBM, as previously mentioned on /. concerning the new Trusted Debian 1.0 release, just without the fancy 'ProPolice' name?

  22. Not at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MS Windows NT family (ie. NT, 2000, XP, 2003) has a MUCH better security model than any UNIX I've seen, OpenBSD in particular.

    If you ask Theo, he'd probably tell you that that is a big reason why Windows is less secure. The added features make for a more complex implementation with more code. That makes mistakes more likely and audits harder.

    Windows really is better technology than UNIX in most ways. The problem is in the details. Microsoft is fixing them, but compared to most UNIX products the implementation sucks.

    1. Re:Not at all... by ChadDa3mon · · Score: 1

      MS Windows NT family (ie. NT, 2000, XP, 2003) has a MUCH better security model than any UNIX I've seen, OpenBSD in particular.
      Are you friggin serious?!?!?
      How can anyone honestly say that Microsoft has a better security model? OpenBSD has had 1 root compromise in the default install in 7 years.
      Yes, more features, more code, more holes, plain and simple. It's not even that OpenBSD lacks features, they're just not point and click easy, and maybe thats a good thing. It keeps any num nuts with a pirated version of XP (go registration) from polluting the net with another machine just waiting to be owned.

    2. Re:Not at all... by Simon+Lyngshede · · Score: 1

      If you believe that the NT operating systems from Microsoft has a better security model, fine with me. I would however like to hear the argumentation. OpenBSDs argumentation is their 7 years without root exploits. What is the argumentation for NT being more secure?

      If your going to make claims like that on Slashdot, you better have some good arguments handy.

    3. Re:Not at all... by Nothinman · · Score: 1

      Whenever you see a statement like this it's usually referring to the filesystem ACLs where it says "security model".

      And the piracy protection in XP is activation, not registration, registration is very different.

    4. Re:Not at all... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the VAX-decended goodness of Windows and more is coming to a BSD you... TrustedBSD is nearing prime-time at FreeBSD 5.2 expected in the Fall...

  23. ProPolice stack protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The ProPolice (PP) stack protection is enabled by default in this release of OpenBSD. One has to wonder about the overhead PP's stack protection adds. According to this, there is some overhead, depending on the local character array usage of an application. (8% at max in a very simple program). So be warned that this protection does come at a cost.

  24. Will apple inherit this by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    Maybe someone can explain this to me. As I probably misunderstand it, darwin is based on BSD. so presumbaly any imrpovements in openBSD are easy to migrate to Darwin and OS X?

    when can I expect I get my security enhancements in OS X?

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Will apple inherit this by coene · · Score: 3, Informative

      I believe Darwin is based upon FreeBSD. While they share the same name, the same roots, and a lot of the same code, the BSD's (Free|Net|Open) are very different.

      Of all the BSD's, NetBSD and OpenBSD are the most similar, and share the most code, primarily because OpenBSD forked from NetBSD not so long ago. FreeBSD has taken quite a different path to be more mainstream.

      Improvements to OpenBSD should not be impossible to merge into FreeBSD/Darwin, but it's an easy or painless task either - not to mention that FreeBSD and Darwin are quite different. This isn't saying that a fair share of code isn't shared, indeed it is, but it's not a trivial task.

    2. Re:Will apple inherit this by idiotnot · · Score: 1

      Darwin is Mach. It has a FreeBSD 4.4 userland, but does *not* use a FreeBSD kernel. Some of the networking code is used, also, iirc. It's more comparable to the old BSD-lites that ran on top of mach, except that Apple has modified mach to allow the BSD subsystem to share address space with mach to enhance performance. Take a look at this article about modifying the NetBSD kernel so that it can run Darwin code. They're different beasts.

      Also, the change to FreeBSD compatibility is recent. The userland used to be based on NetBSD. Not that it makes that big a difference.....

  25. OpenBSD just makes sense... by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Regarding various troll-slams on OpenBSD... I dunno, I'm using OpenBSD and it's great. Nowhere to go but up, as far as I'm concerned. FreeBSD and NetBSD don't have much of a value proposition in my book compared to mainstream Linux distros, but if you want a secure webserver (or network appliance) without having to patch the thing all the damn time, OpenBSD seems a heck of a lot better than any Linux variant.

    That said, I'm not dogmatic about this; it's just the conclusion I've come to based on the evidence I've seen so far.

    --LP

    1. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Ryvar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      FreeBSD 5.0 seems superior to Linux in the role of webserver when it comes to scaling, and Linux to all other open source OSes (but in overall ranking I'd still put Win2k Pro over it, sadly) for desktop.

      While OpenBSD is certainly the leader in the security and frontline realm, the guys at FreeBSD really have a slew of interesting ideas as far as what directions they want to go in are.

      Can't wait to see what the OpenBSD 3.4 release looks like, though. That's supposed to be an even bigger release than 3.3 - here's hoping the DARPA-snuffing didn't can that. In any case, looks like I'll be busy upgrading the firewalls tonight :)

      --Ryv

    2. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      and Linux to all other open source OSes (but in overall ranking I'd still put Win2k Pro over it, sadly) for desktop.

      Why? The one link between all my servers, regardless of OS/use/location, is my desktop machine, as at some point i am connecting to those servers from that machine. Therefore my desktop machine should be the most secure there is, and in this regard it makes sense to use OpenBSD, particularly if you follow someone like Dug Song's pointers in locking down the machine.

      For my servers i use whatever runs the server software best in terms of performance, price, support, etc (all OS's are secureable, if you make the effort) - Solaris for Oracle, FreeBSD for apache, RedHat for media streaming, etc. But on the desktop, all that matters is that i can connect, in as secure a manner as possible, to those servers; all that matters is that i can Work. OpenBSD runs OpenSSH great (duh), and plays nicely with vnc/rdesktop and X-dsiplayed apps. In other words, it lets me connect to disparate OS's.

      For desktop - the only link between those servers - why would i use anything other than the most secure OS i can come by?

    3. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am irritated that I installed 3.1 a year ago and now I have to pull many production machines to upgrade the OS. Solaris machines go years between major revisions. MUs are painless and have never hosed my apps. OpenBSD has been nice, but I can do without the version churn. I am switching to debian.

    4. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep trollin', trollin', trollin',
      Though the boards are swollen,
      Keep them geeks a'trollin', slashdot.

    5. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      why would i use anything other than the most secure OS i can come by


      Oh I don't know... how about applications? A desktop OS is useless without them. Thus, OpenBSD is useless as a desktop os.

    6. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by etrnl · · Score: 1

      OpenBSD has been nice, but I can do without the version churn. I am switching to debian.

      I feel your pain. While debian has its flaws, the one thing they really do right... is REALLY done right.

      Package/software maintainance is a pain in every other distro (including gentoo; not every unix box needs a compiler...). Debian does it right.

      I heard about Debian being ported to the NetBSD kernel. I'd be very interested in seeing a Debian port of Solaris :)

      --etrnl--

    7. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by platypus · · Score: 1

      FreeBSD 5.0 seems superior to Linux in the role of webserver when it comes to scaling, ...

      This myth has to die or someone has to prove it, with recent versions of linux and bsd. There have been so many advances with linux (for instance after the mindcraft incident etc.) that I doubt it's true.
      The current advances in linux can clearly be seen over at spec.org, linux with the tux webserver scales nearly linearly to 8 procs.

    8. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by chefbimbo · · Score: 1

      You must be kidding me to take a daemon that runs in Kernel for anything like realworld HTTPd (which in most cases would mean Apache) performance. This isn't even apples and oranges. That's apples and cars.

    9. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by platypus · · Score: 1

      There is at least on userspace daemon which reach the same performance/scalability on linux (commercial, I don't remember its name, the creator posted on linux-kernel about it). The point is that when implementing tux, they made a lot of general improvements in the kernel. These are the reason for tux' performance, not the fact that it is in kernel space. Therefore the spec numbers of tux give far more substance to the scalability debate than 5 years old hearsay.

    10. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by platypus · · Score: 2, Informative

      Found the server, read about it here
      http://www.chromium.com/x15tech.html

    11. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by eht · · Score: 1

      One word, Ports, true OpenBSD has them too, but not in the rich diversity that FreeBSD, I've yet to find anything that I wanted to try out that the ports system didn't have

      Ports is also the reason I'd choose FreeBSD over any of the Linux distros, though Gentoo's and Debian's systems are very close

      I like OpenBSD and all, it's just not something I'd really consider on anything other than a firewall, and I'm still using FreeBSD for my firewall as that's what I know best

    12. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Um, you don't *have* to upgrade just because a new version came out you know, either for security or functionality reasons. Open BSD 6-month iterations are not "major revisions" typically.

      I'm still running OpenBSD 2.7 on my production machines, having made a few critical security patches made over the last 2-3 year timeframe.

    13. Re:OpenBSD just makes sense... by Homebrewed · · Score: 1

      Check out:
      http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade-minifaq.h tml

      The OpenBSD mantra-- RTFM, RTFM, RTFM....

  26. Re:Looks like they need to take their own advice . by dr4ma · · Score: 1

    If I remember correctly, benzedrine.cx is hosted on a 512K/128K ADSL line.

    That type of connection cannot take the /.ing.

    --
    Privacy? Not in this lifetime.
  27. PF FAQ by dolmant_php · · Score: 5, Informative

    With the new normal FAQ upgrades also comes the new PF FAQ:
    http://openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html

  28. Interesting feature - spamd by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Informative

    spamd, a spam deferral daemon, can be used to tie up resources on a spammer's machine. spamd uses the new pf(4) table facility to redirect connections from a blacklist such as SPEWS or DIPS.

    -- Probably questionable legality and ethics on that one, being a real tool in the battle against what some call 'free speech'.

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    1. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by schwap · · Score: 4, Insightful
      - Probably questionable legality and ethics on that one, being a real tool in the battle against what some call 'free speech'.

      Probably 'Free Speech,' but the activity consumes the finite resources of a computer that costs the operator money in electricity, bandwidth, maintenance and access by customers and/or employees.

      There is nothing about 'free speech' that allows one entity to force another to be the carrier or reciever of the idea or message.

    2. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, mail server != free speech

      SPAM is not free speech in any way, because it is conducted on private property. I own my server, its not on public property, I set the rules on how it is used.

      Its sort of like comming to my house, if you come to my door and try to sell me something or talk about subject i dont like, I will tell you to leave. If you do not leave, i will notifiy you that your trespassing and call the cops on you. If become incessant about it I'll hold you at gun point till the cops remove you from my property (Texas is great).

      I consider spam trespassing.

    3. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by RazzleDazzle · · Score: 1

      I don't see any legality issues on this and ethics, well you want to talk about ethics of spammers?

      basically spamd is going to waste resources of open mail relays and spammers who spam directly from their computers. Besides bandwidth, how is anyone else in the world affected? If you get your e-mail from a mail server that is also an open relay, well than I say you got whats coming. Chances are that server will get blacklisted and you may not receive your mail due to other anti-spam solutions you use (if you have any or your ISPs).

      OTOH I also believe that spam is not illegal, just highly immoral. Just like all the spam I get in the postal mail (mostly credit card applications), you know what I do? I take the postage paid envelopes and mail back goofy things to them like Taco Bell hot sauce, openbsd boot disks, the forms from different credit card company's application, wads of paper dots from the hole-punchers, miscellaneous paper trash from the office, notes about how stupid the applications are, the actual form they send but I check the box that says "I have a new address, cross off the below and write your new address" box and change it to their own mailing address, or other fun things I think of at the time. Hey, this helps the us postal office get money because they are getting paid for all the mail I send back, while the credit card company's pay for it.

      --
      ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
    4. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by skillet-thief · · Score: 2, Insightful
      There is nothing about 'free speech' that allows one entity to force another to be the carrier or reciever of the idea or message.

      They are free to speak, we are free to not listen or to not pass their messages on.

      --

      Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire

    5. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From the write up you need the BSD "pf" command.
      Is there a way to do the redirection in Linux?
      Using iptables?

    6. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by McDutchie · · Score: 1
      -- Probably questionable legality and ethics on that one, being a real tool in the battle against what some call 'free speech'.

      ITYM "frea speach". HTH. HAND.

    7. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by yomegaman · · Score: 1

      LOL, you're joke almost made me loose it their for a second...

      --
      ...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
    8. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by pmz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They are free to speak, we are free to not listen or to not pass their messages on.

      When "speech" becomes effectively a Denial of Service attack, freedom of speech ends, IMO.

      Examples:

      SPAM -- literally reducing peoples' ability to communicate effectively. This hurts individuals and businesses. The cost to the recipient is real.

      Loud Music -- that bass pumping out of my asshole neighbor's house is not protected speech. It distrupts my family, my quality of life, my own attempts at speech, and is, like SPAM, bad for society.

      Grafitti -- it is vandalism and not art.

      There are the other classic examples like yelling "fire" when there isn't one. Burning a cross in someone's yard is, also, definitely not free speech.

      People who piss on other people's lives using Free Speech as an excuse are among the lowest examples of humanity. They deserve no sympathy.

    9. Re:Interesting feature - spamd by evilviper · · Score: 1

      Or, more of a spamd appropriate analogy: ``We are free to stare at them and nod our heads, pretending to be listening, while we are actually ignoring them, and just wasting their time!"

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  29. Ahh damn by ehintz · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was quietly downloading the packages, and then you had to send the /. hoards after it. Now their bandwidth is shot to hell. I mean, I'm all for sharing, but I wanna get my copy before I start sharing... ;-)

    --
    ehintz
    1. Re:Ahh damn by Call+Me+Black+Cloud · · Score: 1

      What, you couldn't wait a couple of days? Is there some OS emergency that you need it right now?

    2. Re:Ahh damn by ehintz · · Score: 1

      At the rate things are going now, it WILL be a couple of days... Although, at this point I've got all the major packages, so I'm only waiting on src and ports now. At least I do have enough for an install now. I am somewhat interested in some of the new pf goodies, and too lazy to do a full cvs download...

      --
      ehintz
    3. Re:Ahh damn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A MAFIA TURNCOAT told a stunned courtroom yesterday how he gunned down his mob boss - because he was gay. Former DeCavalcante soldier Anthony Capo said the New Jersey-based family - often described as the real-life "Sopranos" - feared they would be the laughing stock of the New York underworld if their acting boss, John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato was outted.

      "Nobody's gonna respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down discussing La Cosa Nostra business," Capo told jurors in Manhattan federal court.

      Capo was testifying at the racketeering, murder and conspiracy trial of Stefano "Steve" Vitabile, the DeCavalcantes' reputed counselor for more than 30 years, and alleged capos Philip Abramo and Pini Schifilliti.

      Capo, the mobster-turned-government informant, said he felt like killing D'Amato when the boss's girlfriend, known as Kelly, confessed to him about his secret life.

      "She told me John D'Amato and her were going to sex clubs in the city, swapping partners and John was engaging in homosexual activity," he said.

      "It shocked me . . . he couldn't be acting that way - he was a leader of men."

      He said the family's leaders, including consigliere Vitabile and then-capo Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo, approved the killing, but knew the hit would be a "very delicate matter."

      "The rule in La Cosa Nostra is not to take down a boss without the permission of the commission [of all New York crime families]," said Capo, under questioning from federal prosecutor John Hillebrecht.

      "We knew we'd have to sneak him - kill him without permission."

      Capo made his move early in 1992 against D'Amato - who had helped him become a made man only two years earlier - when the acting boss returned to New York from Florida, where he'd been on the lam.

      He told the jury how he and another mobster, Victor DiChiara, arranged to pick up D'Amato up from Kelly's home in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn.

      "John D'Amato got in the car and sat in the back," Capo said. "He said, 'Let's go eat,' and as we drove away, I turned and shot John D'Amato.

      "He said, 'Oh, s- -t,'" Capo recalled proudly, saying he shot the boss twice and then twice more when he kept moving.

      Capo said they found $5,000 in one of D'Amato's pockets.

      He said the money was given to DiChiara because his car "would have to be destroyed because of all the blood in the back."

  30. Re:Looks like they need to take their own advice . by dr4ma · · Score: 0, Redundant


    google mirror if you want to read the article on ALTQ and ACK prioritization.

    --
    Privacy? Not in this lifetime.
  31. OpenBSD = ppl who are very good at what they do by dh003i · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Which is producing the most secure server OS out of the box (of course, the fact that it's very very minimal out of the box helps).

  32. *BSD is Dying by thanjee · · Score: 4, Funny

    *BSD is dying to announce that it has once again improved that which was already considered perfect.

    Way to go!

    --
    Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
  33. does *nix not allow self-modifying code? by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Funny

    That was all the fun of DOS assembler programming...

    1. Re:does *nix not allow self-modifying code? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 3, Interesting
      If you write in assembly code, you should still be able to by-pass the operating system, if you're clever enough. The days of the Real Programmer are pretty much done, however, and when memory is a lot cheaper than the programmer's time, there's not much advantage in writing self-mod code, no matter how cool it might be :-).

      Last time I wrote this type of code was on Data General's AOS/VS (which pretty much dates it), and DG didn't approve of that kind of thing at all. It didn't stop my program from working, though.

    2. Re:does *nix not allow self-modifying code? by jesser · · Score: 1

      There's probably a system call that turns writable memory into executable memory that self-modifying programs can call.

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    3. Re:does *nix not allow self-modifying code? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just use mprotect on the region. theres a wealth of discussion on this in the misc archives for more info.

  34. notice by NoRemorse · · Score: 0, Troll

    u said windows supports it, this isnt windows its linux :)

    1. Re:notice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Be quiet while the grown-ups talk.

  35. bittorrent? by xenocyst · · Score: 1

    can someone plz set up bittorrents for these, or something... i've been waiting since last month to set an obsd box up.. because i wanted this release =)

    --
    And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
  36. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by gomerbud · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also, good luck getting a JDK/JRE to run here. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Fuckers.

    [daver@medication:/home/daver]$ java -version
    java version "1.3.1_02"
    Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1_02-b02)
    Classic VM (build 1.3.1_02-b02, green threads, nojit)
    [daver@medication:/home/daver]$ uname -mrsv
    OpenBSD 3.0 PUS#9 i386
    I must have good karma.
    --
    Kan jeg få en pils, vær så snill?
  37. Mirror of Benzedrine by OneArmedMan · · Score: 1

    Google cache can be found here.

    http://www.google.com.au/search?q=cache:4jbVxQia zu 4C:www.benzedrine.cx/ackpri.html+&hl=en&ie=UTF -8

    PS .. sorry for the plan old text.
    HTML is my not so good

  38. Buy on BudgetLinuxCDS.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    it's available on BudgetLinuxCDS.com for only $3

    1. Re:Buy on BudgetLinuxCDS.com by irenetheno · · Score: 1
      If you don't plan on buying the install from OpenBSD ($40) directly , at least buy a ($16/$20/$40) shirt, or a ($10) poster or something.

      DARPA cut their $2 million funding offer, the OpenBSD project is stuck with all kinds of bills.. $$$upport quality "little-man Open Source Software" or it will go away.

    2. Re:Buy on BudgetLinuxCDS.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh no, you mean they spent government grant money before they actually had it? You know what that makes them? Dumbasses. You don't spend money a government, any government and especially the US government promises you until you actually have it, and even then you should wait. I feel no pity for them, not at all.

  39. AbiertoBSD by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1
    AbiertoBSD... claro que lo uso mucho.

    I've been waiting for this release for a number of months now and want to express my gratitude to the OpenBSD folks. Of course, that means buying a few more of their CDs. Heh, heh... Shameless support for my favorite OS. What's in their best interest is in the best interest of my computing environment, right? Good!

    Now where is that post I wrote a few days ago about building a new distro called AbiertoBSD out of used car parts?

  40. Re:(Linux|*BSD) Sucks! (*BSD|Linux) Rules! by Adam9 · · Score: 1

    Hm.. you flame BSD and you flame Linux. Does that mean you hate them both and prefer Win/Mac/Sun? Or does that double-sided hatred actually mean you love them both. When in doubt, mod flamebait!

  41. Prioritizing ACKs by Stormie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Damn, that business with the prioritizing ACKs sounds fantastic! I have the same setup as in their example (ADSL 512Kb down/128Kb up) and always have to put upload limits on filesharing programs so they only upload at maybe 11KB or 12KB per second, 'cos if I let them hit their full 16-ish KB/sec, the downloads choke and die.

    I might have to salvage some crappy old box from work and see if I can't set it up as an OpenBSD gateway..

    1. Re: Prioritizing ACKs by Euzechius · · Score: 1
      The ALTQ engine that makes it possible to prioritize the TCP ACK's (to spead up ADSL or cable link) is also available for other UNIX platforms: FreeBSD, NetBSD and of course OpenBSD. And can be downloaded here. It can be built into the FreeBSD kernel using this kernel patch.

      But my setup uses ipfw and not as in the example pf, I am not sure it's possible to setup ALTQ with ipfw (ideas are welcome!!). IPFW does support bandwith throttling in combination with Dummynet.

      Here is another white paper I found: Managing traffic with ALTQ.

    2. Re: Prioritizing ACKs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can do the same thing in FreeBSD with ipfw and dummynet. Although if you're running 4.x or -STABLE, you'll probablly need to recompile with IPFW2 option in your kernel to get the iptos option. See near the bottom of the ipfw man page for details.

  42. Cool... by rf0 · · Score: 0

    Just doing an update now on my test box. Once again a secure OS become even more secure. Also as mentioned in other articles OpenBSD could be argued to have the most complete Linux base with version 8. I believe FreeBSD is on 7.1 :). Who said BSD by dying?

    rus

    1. Re:Cool... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Also as mentioned in other articles OpenBSD could be argued to have the most complete Linux base with version 8. I believe FreeBSD is on 7.1"

      What?

  43. any idea if it's ever done? by Trepidity · · Score: 1

    Are there any real programs that ever modify their own code, or compilers that output code that does so? OpenBSD seems to be assuming not, and I'd guess they've done their research, but it seems that whenever you forbid something that used to be legal you're inevitably going to break something that used to work.

    1. Re:any idea if it's ever done? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sure: Anything that produces machine code at run time needs memory that is writable AND executable. It's not such an esoteric trick -- for example many high-performance Smalltalk and Lisp systems compile everything you type down to machine code instead of using a simple interpreter. Then there are dynamically recompiling emulators, ie. just about any high-performance emulator these days, and of course JIT-compiling Java VMs. That's quite a lot of software to disable.

    2. Re:any idea if it's ever done? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The software doesn't need to be 'disabled' - the memory just needs to be switched from writable to executable. That's what "W^X" means.

    3. Re:any idea if it's ever done? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It works fine on OpenBSD if the application makes correct use of the mprotect(2) syscall

    4. Re:any idea if it's ever done? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1
      I don't know if it's commonly done now (probably not, though), but when hardware resources were harder to come by, yes, this was quite common.

      Needless to say, this kind of facility was never in the hands of COBOL programmers, for instance, but I wrote lots of self-modifying routines to link COBOL or FORTRAN programs run on diferent machines simultaneously. In those days, it was more or less expected that a decent sysprog should have no real difficulty with that.

    5. Re:any idea if it's ever done? by rabidcow · · Score: 1

      Are there any real programs that ever modify their own code, or compilers that output code that does so?

      Self-modifying code is used a lot less on modern processors because the CPU tries to look into the future assuming that the code doesn't change. If you change the code too close to it being executed, it throws off pipelining, branch prediction, etc and really hurts performance.

      There's the other kind, where you basically have a compiler in your program, compile a whole subroutine and call it, and in this case you don't need write and execute at the same time. You always finish writing it before it's executed.

  44. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by bzzzt · · Score: 1

    Classic VM (build 1.3.1_02-b02, green threads, nojit)

    Good luck getting performance on that vm...

  45. Linux traffich shaper here... by Smoking · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the ones not willing to change their OS only for the trafic shaper DSL trick, here's the link for linux: (including many other very interesting things...) Linux advanced routing and traffic control
    enjoy it!
    Q.

    1. Re:Linux traffich shaper here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      What about a Windows solution for traffic shaping?

    2. Re:Linux traffich shaper here... by iggymanz · · Score: 2, Funny

      There's things like this They must be better than Linux and *BSD based solutions, because they cost alot and need more admin time!

  46. But is it ... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1, Funny

    ..secure as Windows. Thats what I want to know.

    1. Re:But is it ... by rf0 · · Score: 1

      I think its more secure don't you? Seven years and only one remote security hole. Windows 7 weeks?

      Rus

    2. Re:But is it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      He is joking. Nobody still believes this. Not even MCSE's.

    3. Re:But is it ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As seen on the Full Disclosure mailing list:

      "My Apple ][, C64, and MS-DOS machines have had 0 remote holes in the default installs for 20-odd years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon." -BB

      Keep it all in perspective, people.

  47. RH 6.2 by green+pizza · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Plus it mentions RH 6.2, I doubt anyone is running a website on that anymore (shudder).

    HAH! I know of *many* sites that use a RH 6.2 boxes for serving, and even some that use RH 5.x distros as well. Just because RH no longer rolls their own fixes doesn't mean that the distros have dried up. Many sysadmins would rather manually update the software on their servers than go thru the trouble of migrating to yet another distro.

    There are also those that use a heavily locked down ancient distro for serving. Apache is kept current and everything else is closed. This is even easier to do in an environment where each task has its own server. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

    I'll tell you what, there is no way in hell that I would ever use RH 8 or 9 for a server. Even a bare bones install has way too much BS. For my needs, Debian does my Linux needs quite well. As do IRIX and Solaris. RH is great for the desktop, but nutty crazy for server use.

    1. Re:RH 6.2 by really? · · Score: 1

      I "admin" a few 6.2 HEAVILY used boxes that will never be upgraded. There is nothing extra a newer release has to offer. If it's not broken ...

      --

      "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
    2. Re:RH 6.2 by ansible · · Score: 1

      Well, what about buffer overflows in glibc, zlib or one of the other system libraries? Even if you're keeping Apache current (as the parent poster mentioned), you've still got other issues, potentially.

      Better, IMHO, to try to stay current, and use a relatively secure OS, like OpenBSD.

      Besides, upgrading regularly forces you you keep documentation on what you did for the install and setup. These docos also help with new administrators and disaster recovery.

  48. Re:Speaking of BSD: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    No, you were gay long before you got that computer, you just don't know it yet.
    Tense disagreement/failure 0x800040E3: correct verb phrase is didn't [Penalty: 1 testicle]
  49. Getting 0wn3d by jmorris42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh it isn't that bad. Pull the network plug and clean up the mess. Preserve the corrupted files for later and restore from your backup. (you DO have a backup, right?) and then use the RPM database to verify all of your binaries to make sure you weren't owned when you made the backup. Verifying the critical files against the installation media will ensure against a trojaned rpm/database.

    Then once you are clean again, examine the saved files and try to figure out how they got in. Learn from your mistake and carry on.

    Happened to me a couple of times, usually when I make a mistake in configuration or don't keep up with the errata. Yes I'd like to connect electrodes to the script kiddies testicles, but it really isn't something to get bent overly out of shape over either.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
    1. Re:Getting 0wn3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Oh it isn't that bad. Pull the network plug and clean up the mess. Preserve the corrupted files for later and restore from your backup. (you DO have a backup, right?) and then use the RPM database to verify all of your...[snip a lot]

      Un huh. Not that bad? I think I'll stick to just not getting owned in the first place. If you think doing all that is easy, you're getting just as complacent as the Windows users who reboot several times a day to maintain stability.

    2. Re:Getting 0wn3d by Alioth · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...and remember, every local root hole is almost certainly remote rootable too.

      It's a good job I stopped the Linux =2.4.19 ptrace kmod local root hole, or I'd have been rooted on Sunday morning (see my journal).

      Ironically, the skript kiddie hasn't been too careful, and he has left the PHP shell unpassworded and unprotected on his system. Running a uname -a through it shows that he's running a vulnerable kernel. I now face a terrible internal struggle - do I play ethical and just email abuse@chello.nl again with more evidence if his system still hasn't been pulled in a week's time, or shall I do a Simonly-BOFH trick to him as payback? Maybe like modify his bindshell so that instead of starting a shell on the target machine, it connects to a bindshell on his machine so he just roots his own box when he tries to hack his next victim :-)

    3. Re:Getting 0wn3d by runderwo · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Ironically, the skript kiddie hasn't been too careful, and he has left the PHP shell unpassworded and unprotected on his system. Running a uname -a through it shows that he's running a vulnerable kernel.
      Erm, careful. What makes you think this isn't some other innocent person's box that the kiddie owned in the first place, perhaps as a cover while building up a botnet by owning other boxes? After all, it has the same vulnerability he's trying to exploit on yours. He probably just got to it first.

      It's too easy to get on the wrong side of the law these days, and you might have a wrong target to boot. I wouldn't risk it.

    4. Re:Getting 0wn3d by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 3, Funny
      do I play ethical and just email abuse@chello.nl again

      Speaking as a Chello.nl subscriber: Don't even bother. They let their members violate every little bit from the EULA, including the running of webservers, FTP servers, IRC server, other servers, NAT gateways, etcetera. And I'm talking from personal experience here ;)

    5. Re:Getting 0wn3d by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, don't get owned in the first place and save yourself hours of wasted time and aggrivation.

      Maybe it's not that bad if the only other thing you have to do is play solitaire.

    6. Re:Getting 0wn3d by jjackson · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You've got to be kidding me.

      Unless you spend all day chatting on IRC or playing UT2k3/NWN on your box and that is the best you can put it to use, having your system compromised can be very serious.

      Personally, I use my computers for my online banking, my business billing/invoicing system, not to mention the fact that I have quite a bit of sensitive personal and business information stored in spread sheets and oo.org documents.

      This type of thinking (getting hacked is no big deal, so I will be lazy about security) is a very good portion why we have so damn many Internet Worms floating around and why the Internet is a playground for script kiddies in the first place.

      If you don't care about what happens to your box, do me a favor and disconnect it from the same world wide network that my boxes are connected to, please. I really don't what you contributing to the next time my company gets hit with a DoS or something similiar.

    7. Re:Getting 0wn3d by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      yow! that sounds painful, especially for someone like me who runs his box in a coloc 180 miles away! I prefer not to be 0wned at all, thanks! Have been secure thus far with OpenBSD hosting my domain for past year and a half on a Sparc 70, then when I upgraded to a really weird x86 box had to go to FreeBSD. I still wouldn't put a Linux box directly on the net with no protection. Hope this FreeBSD holds up until I have money to get a more normal box.

    8. Re:Getting 0wn3d by jmorris42 · · Score: 1

      Good point. But I'd get root on the machine and look around. If your idiot is on the console you can rm -rf his happy ass without a twitch of conscience. And if it is just another owned machine you could leave the owner a note. Safest would be to dump a page out of the system's printer so nothing is there for the kiddie to find.

      --
      Democrat delenda est
    9. Re:Getting 0wn3d by jmorris42 · · Score: 1

      > getting hacked is no big deal, so I will be lazy about security

      I said nothing of the sort. But it IS a risk of being on the Internet. If you can't deal with that fact perhaps it is you that needs to pull the plug from the wall. Security is not about being 100% secure and forgetting about it. It is an ongoing process and unless YOU are a net-god and never misconfigure anything, never miss a patch on ANY machine on your networks, etc, it will probably happen to you someday. And when it does, you will probably do exactly what I did. Act to contain the damage, clean up the mess and learn from the experience.

      We all lock our cars, some buy security systems and Lo-Jack. Yet a few cars will get stolen every day. Does that mean it was all a waste of time and money? Nope. At some point you have to stop securing things and get on with life. It is a point of diminishing returns. Where that point is depends on your risk factors and the potential losses from a failure of security.

      --
      Democrat delenda est
  50. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sun didnt commercialize FreeBSD. Solaris 1.x (SnuOS 4) shared no code wiht FreeBSD.

    Ballmer is a fat stupid prick, and while its not ahrd to think of many reasons why linux sucks shit and why FreeBSD rules, Ballmer knows jack shit.

    Also, FreeBSD is light years ahead of OpenShitBSD.

  51. Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Those same bugs could still happen on a single-CPU system. Remember this isn't Win 3.1, this is a multitasking OS, threads can be interupted on any instruction.

    The execution of instructions from Thread A and Thread B can be interleaved an any random order whether there 1-100 CPUs. The bugs are a little more likely in the SMP case, but I can't imagine a user mode bug that can happen in the SMP case, but not the single.

    1. Re:Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how many large multithreaded apps have you worked on? none? i thought so!

    2. Re:Wrong by stripes · · Score: 1
      The execution of instructions from Thread A and Thread B can be interleaved an any random order whether there 1-100 CPUs. The bugs are a little more likely in the SMP case, but I can't imagine a user mode bug that can happen in the SMP case, but not the single.

      In theory they can be interleved. In practice things are frequently not so random. For example when you call fork on a non-SMP system the parent process gets to use up it's time slice before the new child process gets it's first chance to run. There might be some (buggy!) code that accidentally does the wrong thing and gets away with it because it does some stuff that needs a lock it will normally be ok. Once in a while it will fail. Not real frequently, just once in a while. On a SMP system if there isn't anything else running the child process and parent process will both return from the fork at the same time and that "once in a great while it goes bad" thing becomes "most of the time it blows up".

      That's what happened when Sun became the first major Unix-like system that did real SMP.

      I expect there is other stuff that can go wrong going from UP to SMP, and while lots of OSes have done it before, none have the same security bent that OpenBSD does, so there may be security bugs that still are unfixed...

    3. Re:Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously don't do much real multi-threaded programming. They interleave ALL THE TIME.

      Of course shitbag constructs such as "fork" and running multiple processes and calling them "threads" may be a different story. I stay way from such pretend thread systems...

  52. Re:(Linux|*BSD) Sucks! (*BSD|Linux) Rules! by tedrlord · · Score: 1

    The latter. I just wanted to get in on the argument that people always bring up in BSD articles.

    I didn't need that karma anyway.

    --
    [insert witty quote here]
  53. That isn't my site by Ryvar · · Score: 1

    Superbad's just a site I thought was sort of a creative 'web as art form' project. My site's yet another typical game review site with yet another 'dark, angsty, hateful of most games and their developers so we say 'fuck' and 'cunt' a lot' propped-up teeny-bopper edginess to it. It sucks pretty hard but we seem to get a lot of traffic *shrug* - overall I think it's better for the Internet if people go to superbad.

  54. Yes... by Thaidog · · Score: 1

    Just bought the CD... $40... not bad for 5 separate compiles on one cd... I'm going to take an old iMac DV (incapable of quartz extreme) and lock it down!

    --

    ||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.

  55. Rehat 8 and 9 can be cut back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just don't install the stuff you don't want I have a redhat that is term all no X11 desktop system that is 8 it just servers files to my other systems.

  56. Show your support! by terrencefw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is good news for the OpenBSD community indeed, but rather than downloading, you might consider buying the CD set from a retailer near you to fund further development. Given the recent funding issues, now couldn't be a better time to support this superb open source project.

    --
    Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
  57. Available swag -- Support OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    There are some nice 3.3 goodies you can order now:


    Support the OpenBSD developers by getting a 3.3 CD $40 or for Europe EUR 45


    There is a new Tshirt: 3.3 Tshirt $20 or for Europe EUR 20


    The new 3.3 poster is very nice too, get it for $10 US or EUR 14 in Europe


    If you prefer OpenSSH, have a look at this new Tshirt OpenSSH 2 $20 or for Europe EUR 20

    thank you.

  58. They probably do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wouldn't suprize me if the slashdotting has no impact at all on their downloads.

  59. Re:and still no SMP --VS v8, not yet secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    oh right: complain about lack of SMP. I prefer to have the basics covered--like security. After getting my redhat system taken over I like the fact that it's so much easier to secure an openBSD. The question is not for openBSD--why don't you have this feature, but the question is for the other OS--why are you *still* not secure! Why do I still get email because a virus has attacked your system, etc.

  60. Is the i386 port finally ELF? by marcovje · · Score: 1


    Had some problems with development tools on OpenBSD because of the ancient bintils.

    1. Re:Is the i386 port finally ELF? by stefanjo · · Score: 4, Informative

      No its still a.out. You need to get a recent snapshot of CURRENT to get ELF.

    2. Re:Is the i386 port finally ELF? by marcovje · · Score: 1


      Thnx. For when is a release of the current branch
      scheduled? (just for a rough idea)

      I currently maintain the BSD ports of a 3rd party compiler, and OpenBSD eats more time than NetBSD and FreeBSD combined due to its relative old toolchains.

    3. Re:Is the i386 port finally ELF? by stefanjo · · Score: 1

      The openbsd faq say: The OpenBSD team makes a new release every six months, with target release dates of May 1 and November 1.

      So 3.4 with ELF should be out on November 1.

    4. Re:Is the i386 port finally ELF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Normally you can get a current branch by downloading and installing from the snapshot directory, then cvs upgrade to current. All described in the FAQ on the OpenBSD web site.

      There was no snapshot directory on the ftp mirror I usually use this morning, maybe to keep confusion down while the new 3.3 flows out. Check in a few days and it'll be back. To go from 3.3 to 3.3-current you will want to do a fresh (I)nstall, which wipes your hard drive, so beware.

    5. Re:Is the i386 port finally ELF? by marcovje · · Score: 1


      That's what I've been hearing every release now since 3.1.

      From FreeBSD experience I'd expect current to go gold only as 4.0 ??!?!

  61. What funding do you want to be revoked today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    from the darpa-funding-be-damned dept.

    Good thing this guy is anonymous, otherwise, who knows what funding of that guy would be revoked.

    Canadians. They always get themselves kicked in the butt --and they never learn.

    No. I am not assuming that the poster is Canadian. I am talking about the OpenBSD guy who shot himself in the foot, just like others, also from Canada who spouted nonsense about the US.

  62. I miss the SysV init scripts. by emil · · Score: 1

    As someone who is currently ditching redhat for openbsd, I don't care for rc.conf at all.

    However, I am certainly looking forward to not upgrading my kernel/glibc every three months. My complaints are mostly cosmetic.

    1. Re:I miss the SysV init scripts. by jo42 · · Score: 1
      > I don't care for rc.conf at all.

      Give it time. One day you will wonder how you got along without it...

    2. Re:I miss the SysV init scripts. by stalinvlad · · Score: 1
      I feel the same about Sys V gormless init system, rc.conf is sooo easy!

      And whats this about vi? *BSD's all seem to have god old ee, look mummy it knows what the cursor keys do!

  63. security model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since you have never studied operating systems, you will probably not understand this. Still, I will give you what you ask for. The NT Security FAQ contains large amounts of information on the Windows security model.

    As for the effectiveness of the security model, look at the number of Windows exploits that were along the lines of, "To get this task done I had to give him that level of access, which he used to screw up all sorts of things." I assure you it is less prevalent than on UNIX systems, precisely because of the better security model in Windows.

    Of course, you won't find that on bugtraq. They don't report problems with the security model unless they are due to clear bugs in the security protocols. So you can't make the comparison without research, which obviously isn't your strong point.

    As far as root exploits go, a well secured Windows system doesn't even have a root user or equivalent. Can you understand that, smug in your little UNIX world? So in that sense Windows can be made to have no potential root exploits. Not that it matters if you have a bug that allows you to gain arbitrary priveliges.

    I guess my real point is that you shouldn't spout off ignorant drivel when you don't know what you're talking about. You should keep quiet, or learn about the subject. I suppose that is too much to ask, though.

    1. Re:security model by Simon+Lyngshede · · Score: 1

      Since I never studied operating system I should have the university remove that course from my exam papers. Really you should never assume that people you don't know doesn't understand a given subject.

      Thank for the link. I'll agree with you. Microsoft has some very good idea regarding security features. You should have link to it in your inital post. You often get marked as a troll if you don't argue your claims.

      However good idea MS has, it doesn't make up for writting good code. There are no nice features like ACLs if they aren't properly implemented. OpenBSD strenght lie in the quality of their code, while MS tried to implement more security features, without auditing the code they already have. OpenBSD attempts to find bug in the code before they become a problem. MS ignores small bug, which could become a problem, simply because they have to meet their deadlines. Later on the small bugs many not be as small as they first seemed. Deadlines aren't good for security.

      Don't you think it's a bit strange that even with all those nice security features, Windows isn't more secure ?

    2. Re:security model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ACL's and MAC are in FreeBSD-CURRENT (5.x branch)

      The good stuff (TrustedBSD) is on its way...

  64. X Doesnt belong on OpenBSD by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    Its intended target is secure network services, not as a workstation.

    Trying to shoehorn it into that mode would defeat the whole idea of it being secure, as 'un-ceritifed' apps would break that faster then you can blink....

    If you want a BSD desktop, go FBSD.. and keep OBSD on your server/firewall/etc where it belongs.....

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  65. documentation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The following is a blatant troll ;-)

    What do you mean, documentation? With Red Hat, I don't need to read any documentation to set up and run most of the system. And that is the way it should be.

  66. Re:and still no SMP =( tsarkon reports by Jon_E · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    actually it's openssh - and that's a whole 'nother ball of goo ..

    I've always found the puffy blowfish to be an oddly appropriate mascot for OpenBS - bloated, prickly whiners full of nothing really substantial inside but hot air .. probably why the stuffed shirts in Washington took them at first.

    "no remote security hole in the default install"? spin, spin, spin ..

    DARPA cut their funding for the Canadian "hackathon hotel"? get over it - the US Government invested in an effective think-tank and didn't like some of how they chose to think .. nobody can be totally objective

  67. Re:Speaking of BSD: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, it's correct. He still does not know that he's gay, that's why I said "don't" instead of "didn't".

  68. A shame the ideas were stolen (NOT a troll) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    W^X and stack gap randomisation in OpenBSD were inspired by PaX, and yet Theo refuses to give credit where it is due. Even if we assume the pitiful excuse that drunkeness during HAL2001 caused OpenBSD developers to forget the PaX presentation (seriously! try that one on a lawyer), we're still left with the PaX presentation in 2002 which was attended by several OpenBSD developers.

    Disclaimer: I'm not associated with either the PaX or OpenBSD team in any way, and speak for neither organisation.

  69. Even better than prioritizing ACKs... by meese · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's possible to play various tricks as a TCP receiver to get a server to send you data as fast as you want. Instead of just prioritizing ACKs, if you split ACKs, send duplicate ACKs, or send ACKs for data you haven't gotten yet, the server will think the connection is great and increase the send window. The details are here.

  70. don't forget to patch sendmail, people by ubiquitin · · Score: 1

    If you're installing from CD, OpenBSD 3.3 did not contain sendmail 8.12.9. Correct me if I'm wrong but this was fixed in 3.3-current but didn't make it onto the CDs (?). Older sendmail-based servers should use patches 014, 027. See: www.sendmail.org/patchps.html

    --
    http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
    1. Re:don't forget to patch sendmail, people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you take the time to read the change log for OpenBSD-current you will discover that:
      "Update sendmail(8) to 8.12.9 to fix a buffer overflow in address parsing. Note that this fix went onto the OpenBSD 3.3 CDs and so is not a 3.3 erratum." You could also check the patches page to see that none are currently offered because everything is up to date, so far.

  71. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +5 informative? Slahbotting groupthink. I would like all the "moderaters" to try and verify gomer pile's claim here. That JVM is anything but productoin quality. Yes the slashboting public just takes his java -version as gospel.

    This may have been a response to the troll, but this guy is far more misleading than the troll was. Anyone who works with Java knows that this JVM he simply versions is unuseable in production.

    +5, "You said what the groupthinking Slashbots wanted to hear"

  72. But they're so far behind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FreeBSD is at 5.0, and Suse Linux is up to 8.2. Why is OpenBSD so far behind everyone else? I'm going to go with Windows, they're way out in front of everyone with their version 2003.

  73. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Sun didnt commercialize FreeBSD"

    I already answered this above. Look here...

    http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62658&cid= 5854446

  74. OpenBSD 3.3 boxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!

  75. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yes it is the same ProPolice. Since OpenBSD integrated it into their system, many problems and bugs have been worked out (until OpenBSD glommered onto it, it hadn't been widely used). So with a little luck, it should now slip fairly smoothly into the trusted Debian distro. There is a performance penalty (I believe I've read 10% for OpenBSD), but such is life....

  76. SunOS, BSD, and *BSD by phliar · · Score: 1
    [Sun] had SunOS which had a BSD style init system I think, and then moved to Solaris which has a SysV init system.
    SunOS 4.x was BSD. As in, Bill Joy was the graduate student who brought that Unix magtape from NJ to Berkeley, wrote vi, and then went around universities proselytizing the Berkeley Software Distribution of Unix with cool new features like virtual memory.

    The next major OS release from Sun was to be SunOS 5. Then they got a little marketing-happy and decided to rename their OS Solaris. They said SunOS 4.n == Solaris 1.n, and the new! improved! OS would be Solaris 2.n, and SunOS 5.n == Solaris 2.n. Running uname -a on my Solaris 2.8 box,
    SunOS rhonadler 5.8 Generic_108528-08 sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraAX-i2

    (And then the Solaris 2.8 == Solaris 8 madness.)

    So SunOS is Real Unix (TM) -- whatever that counts for these days. SunOS 4.x is the "Real" BSD, a direct descendant of the Berkeley CSRG's "4.n BSD" on the VAX-11, and has no connection to any of the free BSDs.

    So yes, Ballmer doesn't know shit about Unix, but we already knew that.

    --
    Unlimited growth == Cancer.
  77. Re:and still no SMP =( tsarkon reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i think theo is a cuntcaskety mediocritomaton.

  78. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, having access to both SunOS 4.1.4, I have the CD right here and a Sun 4C (SUNW,Sun 4/75, CY7C601 @ 40 MHz, L64814 FPU) machine with it on there, and I have used FreeBSD extensively since 2.2.x. They are "of the same heritage" but vastly different.

    Also, Please not that Since Solaris 1.x, Sun has done everything in its power undermine BSD in favor of System V. While Sun did commercial BSD in way, I would strongly point out that the Sun kernel is far more capable in terms of scalability and probably shares nothing with FreeBSD, and that that Solaris is very very much its own development target. About all you can say is that FreeBSD and SunOS 4.1.4/Solaris 1.x are coherent in some ways.

    You never thought I would have a Sun 4/75 and SunOS 4.1.4 right at my fingertips, did you ? :o]

  79. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That doesn't mean Solaris 1/Sun OS 4 and Open/Net/FreeBSD has the same code base. They may be coherent, but they do not have the same code base. Period. If it was that simple, why did sun have SMP support years ahead of any of the BSDs? Oh, that would mean the kernel is different. Doesn't sound like a rip off of BSD anymore does it? Also, now that you implement SMP in the kernel, you have to go make the entire c library and userland SMP sane. Oh, and you have to write you own compiler as sun did. They may have been coherent, certainly not after Solaris 2.x/sunos 5 came around, but this insinuation that they are somehow the "same" is simply not correct. You may know how to use Google but you are drawing incorrect conclusions. Cutler spearheaded VMS for DEC, then NT for MSFT, they are similar, but you can't say NT is VMS. (It would be wrong to insult VMS that way, and VMS was a production system by the late 1970's.)

  80. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i couldnt listen to that stupid, fat sweaty protege of hitler for more than 5 muinutes without wanting to kill him.

    he isnt even a capitalist, the fucker is a fascist peice of human detritus.

  81. Re:IPV6? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While a blatent troll, I think the score on this
    one should be upgraded on account that it's funny,
    since this is Mike Smiths resignation post from
    FreeBSD which some luser reposted doing s/Free/Open/g

    OpenBSD being about rules and committees and milestones and deliverables? heh heh heh heh,
    that's a fscking hoot. Elections? In OpenBSD?

    "Democracy? Hah! We're living in a Bleeding Dictatorship!"

  82. What I really like... by Brett+Glass · · Score: 1

    ...is the penguin skeleton in the cover art. Subtle.

  83. Doesnt make sense.. by mikeclark · · Score: 0

    ....Thanks. Might check it out. Um... who's the tool that moderates a simple question flamebait?

    Because a person who is interested in Linux would also be interested in BSD... Linux/Unix - whats not to understand

  84. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    [daver@medication:/home/daver]$ uname -mrsv
    OpenBSD 3.0 PUS#9 i386
    I must have missed a post somewhere.

    W^X support, which I assume the original poster was suggesting would cause problems with dynamic recompilation, was only introduced shortly before OpenBSD 3.3.

    Posting output from a 3.0 box doesn't really demonstrate much, then. Proving that Java works without W^X support in the kernel is one thing; proving that it works with it is another.
  85. fuck you *BSD cunts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hate you all, even more than America.

  86. App vs System by nuggz · · Score: 1

    (This is of course a bug in the application, not the system, but I though I'd mention it.)

    And applications are in the OpenBSD "Base Install".

    Which means the base install might very likely have some bugs, which is unacceptable.

    I think one of the great appeals of OpenBSD is a very strong preference for known good as the target, rather then "good enough because it is so unlikely to happen".

  87. When will DeadBSD 1.0 ship? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or has it already?

  88. Re:OpenBSD 3.3 Song tsarkon reports by spongman · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    you should put a rating on some of the things you do. i'll give you a 10 out of 10 for being a complete fuckwit.

  89. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by spongman · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    FreeBSD!!! FreeBSD!!! WOooohoooO!

    get a life, tourette's boy.

    fuck, piss, fag, fag. wohoooo!

  90. Re:Steve Ballmer's Comments on BSD tsarkon by spongman · · Score: 1

    yeah, on the other hand, you've got so much to say...

  91. Re:and still no SMP =( tsarkon reports by spongman · · Score: 1

    I think you're under the mistaken impression that someone, anyone, gives a damn about what you think.

  92. Re:and still no SMP =( tsarkon reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YHBTYHLHAND - struck a chord with you, you are so easy to troll.

  93. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yhbtyhlhand. you are fuming. you cant control yourself, you are now using a search feature of slashdot trying to created a backlash at a superior entity. little windows kiddie wingnut trying to prance around /. like a big dog. heh. heheh. hahahahaha. bwahahaha.

  94. yhbtyhlhand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you realize this is just the thing i want you doing.

    i give you a 0 for anything on any scale because thats what you are, a zero and a complete fucking loser.

    look at your feverish typing, your basketcase replies. you fat sweaty ass sticking to your little computer chair.

    get a girlfriend or a boyfriedn, loozaaa, so you can blow your wad in reality.

    corked up trollbaited freak who cant do sheeeeeit

  95. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by spongman · · Score: 1

    heh, who's the one using the search feature again?

  96. Re:tsarkon reports - openbsd - seirous issues. by spongman · · Score: 1
    you are fuming.
    on the contrary, I find it all rather amusing. I pity you, I really do. I'm just waiting for you to actually say something...
  97. Upgrade complete :) by pkplex · · Score: 1

    Ive just completed a 3.2 -> 3.3 upgrade from source. Things went pretty smoothly.

    To test that your stack protection has been compiled into binarys, do this:

    strings /path/to/program/binary | grep stack_smash

    You should a line like this this ( and perhaps others ):

    __stack_smash_handler

    Yay for OpenBSD :)

  98. spoogeman the weak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Right. You are such a low end digital janitor and its now painfully obvious. any claims of technical know how are totally subjugated by your retarded behavior.

    I fucking wont the argument a long time ago. YOU digressed. You can't even have a technical argument. Now you will languish in this loop where your complete immaturity is DOCUMENTED.

    So, mister I pity you, a mister waiting for me to say something. I did, case closed, know nothing.

    And just to know, spoogeman, when I show these threads to friends, we piss ourselves laughing.

    You should get an outside opinion, because if you did, you see yourself the buffoon, the jester, and that you are being completely manipulated.

    Tah tah, automaton retard know nothing lying about credentials.

  99. spoogeman the weak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    look at you

    checking your little homepage on slashdot, ~spongman.

    you see a reply, you rush to defend you holy territory.

    but you see, you have been trolled. you have lost, have a nice day.

    this is all a troll's plan. i win technical arguments all the time. your digression fed the trollish nature of the parent, and now this continuing loop is you being manipulated, trolled.

    if you cant see that mister super hacker programmer .net loving super microsoft "employee" master man, oh, well, then please continue.