Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Absolute OpenBSD

Posted by michael on from the absolute-security dept.

porkrind writes "No Starch Press has announced its latest BSD title, Absolute OpenBSD, by Michael Lucas, scheduled to be in stores in July, 2003. Lucas is known as a FreeBSD contributor and the author of Absolute BSD. You can read all about it and pre-order now direct from No Starch Press or at Amazon."

6 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Absolute BSD by scrotch · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm reading Absolute BSD now to get ready for my first FreeBSD install. I've mostly worked with Macs, with a couple of linux installations on servers. This book is great. It's well written, human and clear. It makes recompiling the kernel - which I've never considered touching - seem like a normal, no big deal thing that you just do sometimes. If this install goes well, this new book will help convince me to try OpenBSD for more secure installs.

    1. Re:Absolute BSD by teemu.s · · Score: 2, Informative


      the install will go well - freebsds setup is pretty straight forward and kernel recompiling is a quit normal task :-) - I got much help from http://www.bsdvault.net their howtos are well written and user driven.

      the cool thing about absolute bsd is, that michael wrote it as stp by step guide for setting up a server. on the other hand portions of it can (and should) be taken to drive your home workstation. it gives you the tools and the insight you need to do tasks on your own - and tells you how to behave on bsd related mailinglists (and even when you are "allowed" to post :-))

      Im really looking forward on absolut openbsd, too

  2. About time, I say by irenetheno · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is only second book in history on OpenBSD.

    That doesn't mean that OpenBSD is bad or has a small group of supporters.. It's only one of the most secure ("out of the box" is one of the items of high importance to me) firewall operating systems in the world. It's completely Open Source and available for free download.

    The original book on OpenBSD from the year 2000 is sorely outdated since the OpenBSD project tries to release a new version every six months. This book covered lots of security/firewalling concepts and how to implement them in OpenBSD 2.5 (as well as Linux) while we are now at OpenBSD 3.3. The above-mentioned books should be able to help fill in the background details as to the "whys" more than the "hows."
    The "hows" are provided on the OpenBSD website for free:
    FAQ (installation)
    Packet Filter User's Guide (does most of the amazing firewalling that OpenBSD is famous for)
    Manual Pages

    OpenBSD is freely available for download, but if you like the project, I strongly encourage you... Buy something from them (they have a few shirts and posters): Or donate money or hardware.

    Also, I wonder if this book is in any way related to the Deadly.org plea from the community for topics that an OpenBSD book should cover.

  3. Re:BIOS = Built In Operating System? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    neal stephenson referred to BIOS as "built in operating system" in his book "snow crash"

  4. Australians can get it here by Zeddicus_Z · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.everythinglinux.com.au/item/1886411999 Note that the book is currently on back order. Originally they only ordered three... and I have two of them :)

    --
    Janie took my gun...
  5. Re:one of the most secure by aschlemm · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been using OpenBSD for nearly a year now after switching out a 4 year old Linux system that was still using ipchains. I subscribed to the OpenBSD "misc" list just to see how people were treated. While it's true there are some people that flame a newbie I see a number of helpful posts from people on that list even for stupid things that could have been looked up in the man pages. The OpenBSD man pages are kept reasonably up to date and are quite useful if people actually take the time to read them IMHO. I must say that some people that post for help are rather lazy and don't even bother to research anything on their own. They know what command or package they're having problems with and they seem too damn lazy to read the man page or research anything first before posting for help.

    I applaud the work of Theo and others that have taken up the task of ensuring that all of the code in OpenBSD is free. Any code that has licensing issues from the original author and the auther is unwilling to change their license appears to get removed and replaced in the OpenBSD source code. I recall the author of "IPFilter" changed his license so that derivative or modified works of "IPFilter" were not allowed without the author's concent and so "IPFilter" was removed from OpenBSD and "pf" was written to replace it.

    OpenSSH and "pf" are fantastic and I've never looked back after switching my firewall over to OpenBSD.

    Tony