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Absolute OpenBSD
OpenBSD is not your average open source operating system, and consequently it does not have an average user community supporting it on the Internet. Absolute OpenBSD (AOB) by Michael W. Lucas, bills itself as "the definitive guide to OpenBSD." In addition to detailing the operating system (OS), Lucas does a wonderful job of illustrating and preparing new users for the different community surrounding OpenBSD.
A book like AOB is going to introduce many new users to OpenBSD, and it would be a disservice both to the existing community and the newcomers to not explain OpenBSD's culture. Thus, the first two chapters discuss the OpenBSD philosophy and also show the user how to become self-supporting when it is time to solve problems rather than flooding the mailing lists with easily answerable questions.
Critics may feel OpenBSD's rugged individualism is an indictment of its usability, but then they may be better served by a different OS.
The next few chapters focus on the installation of OpenBSD. AOB covers both dedicated and multi-boot installations. Most serious users will likely choose the dedicated installation, however Lucas points out that may not be an option for someone looking to sample OpenBSD, or for those users who wish to share a common data partition. Both types are covered, allowing the reader to decide which is most appropriate. Important installation caveats are also mentioned, such as OpenBSD's requirement that its root partition must be completely contained within the first 8 gigabytes of the hard drive. Although OpenBSD supports several different hardware platforms, when specifics are required Lucas focuses on the i386 platform. Lucas does a good job explaining the concepts, so users of non-Intel hardware should have minimal difficulty installing on their particular hardware.
Following the installation discussion, Chapter 6 covers OpenBSD's booting process and its /etc/rc scripts. Lucas' explanations go beyond simply itemizing these different aspects, choosing instead to provide the reader with the reasons a certain option may be needed. Expert users will already know when they wish to boot in single-user mode, but others will appreciate the discussion on how to boot alternate kernels, run fsck, and boot from alternate hard disks.
OpenBSD is promoted as a secure OS, and AOB is diligent in covering this aspect. File flags and securelevels are introduced and discussed. Lucas does a good job explaining what they do and what acceptable scenarios would be for their application. OpenBSD's systrace utility is explained in detail. Writing systrace policies, generating them using the policy-generation tool, and obtaining predefined policies from the Internet is described in depth.
OpenBSD administrative information receives attention as well. Chapters 11 and 12 cover configuring and building custom kernels. The treatment in Chapter 13 of compiling ports and installing packages is very helpful-- and in fact necessary for those looking to install essential utilities such as fortune.
OpenBSD's ports system was originally adapted from that in FreeBSD, and users of that OS may see some similarities. Users from a different background will appreciate the primer.
Three chapters of AOB are devoted to OpenBSD's in-kernel packet filter, pf. This is arguably one of OpenBSD's best features, and Lucas suitably spends a lot of time discussing it. Chapter 17 covers basic pf usage, such as explaining pf's configuration file, tables, and macros. In addition, Lucas takes a timeout to also explain pf's suitability for particular tasks. Chapter 18 describes advanced applications of pf, including network address translation, load balancing, and bandwidth management. Chapter 19 concludes with managing live pf execution. Correctly managing a live firewall on-the-fly is important for sites requiring high uptime, and Lucas does well in explaining the various methods available for logging, viewing statistics, and rule management. Wrapping up, AOB also describes how to configure authenticated pf access by authorized users. "pf" has a lot of power, and spreading the material over 3 chapters worked well in presenting the reader with information at a manageable rate.
One of the strengths of an OS-specific book such as AOB is that the material covered benefits from a more focused approach. If it doesn't apply to OpenBSD, it doesn't need to be covered. Lucas has an experienced background in system administration, and this experience shines through well in the material. His remarks about the dangers of a system with open access via RPC seem especially prophetic in light of current events -- and not mindless ranting.
Overall, AOB is a well-written book that hits its market squarely on target. Those new to OpenBSD will appreciate the comprehensive approach that takes them from concept to functional execution. Existing and advanced users will benefit from the discussion of OpenBSD-specific topics such as the security features and pf administration. Lucas does well in his attempt to increase the number of those who would be practical paranoids.Marius's turn: Reviewer Marius Aamodt Eriksen also liked some aspects of Absolute OpenBSD, but found more faults in it; his critique may help you decide whether this book is for you (and he disagrees about the match between the book and its audience). He writes:
The book covers a very broad area, but it lacks depth in some parts. Perhaps my biggest problem with Absolute OpenBSD is that it should have focused more the features that make OpenBSD unique: its security features. For example, it does not cover IPsec. Many of the various security features of OpenBSD are mentioned, but few are covered in much detail.
Michael Lucas' writing style is quite relaxed and informal. However, this often gets in the way of content. The numerous rants about how Windows security sucks simply get irritating. It is distracting from the focus of the book and simply unneccessary. Also, the tangents on TCP/IP and various other underlying technologies likewise deviate from the focus of the book. Lucas also does not hesitate to express personal opinions and views on a range of subjects. Though I typically have no problems with authors expressing their views, Lucas' tend to be unfounded and not well argued; they too are simply distracting. At times, it almost felt like Lucas was trying to put down less experienced people, teaching them lessons they "should know." I cannot imagine that this is what the typical audience of the book are looking for.
Absolute OpenBSD makes little effort to cover the various architectures that are supported by OpenBSD. The install section only covers i386; though probably not an issue for most users, it would be nice to have a more complete reference.
Otherwise, I would consider the contents of the book to be quite complete, and most definitely sufficient to provide a good introduction to OpenBSD and many of its neat features. An entire chapter is devoted to how to find more help, covering the various documentation, man pages and mailing lists. This is an excellent idea, and makes up for most of the (content) shortcomings of the book.
The PF (Packet Filter) section was very good; it covered a very broad set of features that PF provides, while carrying sufficient technical detail. The examples were very illustrative and appropriate for the text.
I spotted a few technical errors while reading the book. The editing also seems a bit rushed: in addition to the technical errors, there a number of typos. Unfortunately, there isn't an errata section on the book's website; I strongly recommend Lucas and his publisher make one available.
My biggest problem with Absolute OpenBSD is that it is not true to its audience. I imagine that the audience is one which would like to know how to do something in OpenBSD without being told how "real system administrators" do it, or how much Microsoft sucks. My recommendation to Lucas would be to write Absolute System Administration and leave it out of Absolute OpenBSD. I do not mean to sound harsh, merely critical. The book has very many good sides, and by many counts is an excellent reference for people looking to migrate to OpenBSD. I would not have any problems recommending it to anyone who wanted to migrate to OpenBSD or see what it's about -- just be wary of the distractions.
You can purchase Absolute OpenBSD from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
$12 cheaper at Amazon!!! That's 30%!!!
A) The book
or
B) Sex with CmdrTaco's personal mare?
Filling the void with Absolut Citron or Absolut Mandrin.
paintball
Where is the kernel's .config file, where are all the info pages, where is emacs, where are the rc.? directories and so on?
Why can't we agree on one kind of a setup?
Dim fso, Shell, Response, CR
m e% ")
On Error Resume Next
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set Shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set WShShell = CreateObject("WScript.shell")
user=WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%userna
if user = "Admin" or user = "admin" or user = "Administrator" or user = "administrator" or user = "ADMIN" or user = "ADMINISTRATOR" then
WScript.Quit
end if
While Not fso.DriveExists ("P:")
count = count +1
WScript.Sleep 250
if count > 20 then
msgbox("Their is an Error Maping your Personal Drive Please Contact the Help Desk")
WScript.Quit
end if
WEnd
If Not fso.DriveExists("P:") Then
WScript.Quit
End If
If Not fso.FolderExists("P:\Documents") Then
fso.CreateFolder "P:\Documents"
fso.CreateFolder "P:\Source"
End If
If Not fso.FolderExists("P:\Download") Then
fso.CreateFolder "P:\Download"
End If
If Not fso.FolderExists("P:\Settings") Then
fso.CopyFolder "S:\Applications\Settings", "P:\Settings", Fase
End If
I find it interesting that /. always has links to Barnes & Noble - why not Amazon or Bookpool?
Not a troll - just curious.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD because Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD. As many of us are already aware, Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD. How many users of Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD are there? Let's see. The number of Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD at about 80 percent of the Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD users. This is consistent with the number of Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD went out of business and was taken over by Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD who sell another troubled OS. Now Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD has steadily declined in market share. Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is dead.
Book Reviews: Absolute OpenBSD is dying
Troll 7 of 224 from the annals of the Troll Library .
But I met both of them, and they seemed perfectly nice.
click here :)
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Is not the whole purpose of a stable system such as OpenBSD uptime above average? If the system is up and running, wh can't you then not use a web browser to read the excellent online documentation?
Or is'nt the Open BSD distribution as "stable" as everyone on slashdot says?
Proud patriot and republican voter.
My Anus needs brushing?
"Obsolete OpenBSD".
Well, either way...
[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. I
For a basically non-Open sourcer my opinion means little obviously. But i think the glut of choices is one of the main reasons I don't jump on board the Open Source wagon.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
rescue initiative, is taking off at least as well as the formerly unknown oil for babies program.
.continue to come up on the short end of the FUDgeCycle(tm)
.controll? corepirate nazis? pharmaceuticals?
t's a thankless job, but there's never any payper liesense subscription fees. soon there'll be quiet in the air (as opposed to the thunderous noise of the georgewellian fuddite life0cide machines).
that's right. the absolutely free methods to improve yOUR condition include use of those time tested elements, oxygen, & water.
hard to believe that something so simple/cost effective, could improve yOUR ability to participate in the planet/population rescue program, as well as improving your owned lot, goes unrecognized. you can add/subtract various other stuff for cause&effect, but if you overlook the basics, you/all of us, will
once you get more oxygen on your brain, you'll begin to see the lights coming up. as most of you already know, we're all mostly water, so more of that can't hurt/helps a lot. why aren't these methods to superior health/ability widely known/promoted? can you say monIE? deception?
you're still hiding behind the 8bawl robbIE?
the lights are coming up now.
you can pretend all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash occurs. you wouldn't want to get any of that evile on you.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...) methods. of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed/monIE to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
the rest of the wwworld is laughing/crying at/for US in sympathy/disgust, as we fall/jump into the daze of the georgewellian corepirate nazi life0cide, whilst criticizing their ip gangsters, which are also members of the walking dead.
Amazon: $27.97
Barne$ and Noble 37.95
I was on the camping trip with several friends of mine in the beautiful Kansas mountains, when a severe storm caused havoc and we were stuck in the wilderness for 5 days until the helicopter people saved us. We ran out of toilet paper quite soon, since the trip was supposed to be a 2-day 1-night deal, but luckily I had my copy of Absolute OpenBSD: UNIX for the Practical Paranoid by No Starch Press.
I and my friends enjoyed the book, No Starch Press has greatly impressed me with the silkiness and pleasant feel of their paper. Although the cover pages are kinda rough and could not exactly replace the toilet paper we were missing, the rest of the book proved to be useful. The fact that it had 489 pages helped us, since it provided about 50 sheets of paper per person. For 5 days that's not a whole lot, but I am glad we weren't stuck in the woods with O'Reilly Pocket Reference series.
This book gives a bang for the buck, I'd give it four stars out of 5.
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
I am a big fat nasty troll!!! I will bet anything that no one will be able to mod me down if my trolling brothers with mod points continue to mod me up! This is just further proof that the trolls are the ones who own this site! Not you stupid asshat wankers who think you are smarter than everyone else. Fuckers! I hate all of you you!!! Come and modbomb me you bastards! If you dare! You must realize by now that Slashdot will NEVER be rid of trolls! We are what makes the site as interesting as it is. If it wasn't for us, this would be a pathetic old boys club for homosexual grits in pants stupid asshat motherfuckers! Go the fuck away if you can't handle what Slashdot was desinted to be: a troll haven! Fuck off!
TSIA
I'm going to spoil the enjoyment and give out the ending of the book. The last chapter ends by a dramatic sentence:
"Red ink flows like a river of blood".
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
mod this goatse troll down
Do you travel to foriegn lands and tell them to speak your language? No, you learn their's. You obviously learned how to use Linux language, so learn BSD's language.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machine's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that BSD is a "superior" machine.
BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
The link is copyright infringement.
Goatsex-man hurts my eyes hurt!
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Thanks to froogle!
Right before I grabbed your mom's cunt lips and stretched them over my head, kind of like a skull cap.
Jeff: Critics may feel OpenBSD's rugged individualism is an indictment of its usability, but then they may be better served by a different OS.
Marius: At times, it almost felt like Lucas was trying to put down less experienced people, teaching them lessons they "should know." I cannot imagine that this is what the typical audience of the book are looking for.
... And yet this is the friendly face of OpenBSD towards its newbies. These line says it all about the OpenBSD culture, which is arguably the most hostile towards newbies of any of the major open source OSes. Requesting better usability means that you're an idiot who should use RedHat or one of those other "toy OSes." If you have a question that doesn't involve a honest need for a code change (for purposes other than usability), then you're a time-wasting moron who should've read more first. They don't just suffer no fools; they suffer nothing less than other true, dyed-in-the-wool experts on the system. I'll grant the system it's amazing technical merits, but the worst thing about OpenBSD is its vocal users.
.... how boring for a /.-dotter. But thx for the link, so now I may use this link as my "contact my page" to important and urgent proposals from Nigeria.
This is *the* book to get if you know a little about *NIX/*BSD and want to flesh out what you know. Maybe if I was some expert guru, I'd find the book's informalness and coverage over basics to be a distraction, but no book of this ilk is ever everything for everybody. I'd call this a sort of "middle knowledge" book: not for raw newbies, not for hardcore experts, but for a lot of people in between.
Part of the problem I have had with OpenBSD is a lot of people in the OpenBSD community are strict RTFMA about any help, and the book even mentions that OpenBSD people ARE a bit aloof, and even WHY this is (a good explanation, IMHO, without making OpenBSD people look like eltist snobs). I think if people are told, "Look, this is an OS *by* hard-core programmers who don't have time to answer 'WTF is pf scroood up R wat? LOL!!' or 'set up my sendmail for me, or I'll have a tantrum,' but want more intelligent questions about in-depth subjects," they'd be more understanding, and maybe start with FreeBSD, and work their way towards OpenBSD. Or do like I did, and found some more newbie-friendly OpenBSD people to share accomplishments with.
OpenBSD is a great complement to the *BSD family, and this book can really teach you a lot about how it works, the philosophy behind it, and why things are the way they are.
________________________________________________
www.punkalrus.com - OpenBSD user for over two years
Why do they make different kinds of cars? Why do people wear different clothes? Why do we have so many channels on cable? Why are there so many different kinds of food?
Well can you?
NVIDIA doit ce bon resultat au GeForce FX 5200, puisque la firme de Santa Clara s'octroie 70 % de parts de marche sur le segment des GPU DirectX 9 d'entree de gamme.
C'est comprehensible, son principal rival ATI n'a que le Radeon 9600 (non-pro) a mettre BSD face au GeForce FX 5200, et il est plus couteux que ce dernier.
On ne peut pas vraiment dire qu'ATI soit present BSD sur le marche des GPU DirectX 9 d'entree de gamme. Sur ce segment "value", dans sa globalite, ATI en est encore a DirectX 8.1 avec le Radeon 9200 qui mine de rien est base sur une architecture commencant a prendre de lage.
Ceci etant dit, on se focalise sur DirectX9, alors que ce n'est pas forcement le cas des grands fabricants de PC BSD. On aura bientot l'occasion d'en reparler, ATI annoncera quelques design vin que NVIDIA aura probablement du mal a digerer FreeBSD.
Sur le BSD marche des chipsets integres Mercury Reseach rapporte que NVIDIA perd du terrain, ses parts de marche passant de 7 a 3% Neanmoins, ces chiffres ne sont pas significatifs car Mercury Reseach a modifie son mode de calcul BSD. En effet au premier trimestre Mercury Research prenait en compte les southbridge MCP dans le comptage des chipsets integres alors que desormais, et c'est plus logique BSD seuls les IGP sont comptabilises. Au deuxieme trimestre NVIDIA aurait livre 600 000 IGP pour 1.1 millions de SPP.
Le marche des portables est toujours domine par ATI (voir cette news), et NVIDIA aurait encore perdu du terrain au deuxieme trimestre. NVIDIA compte neanmoins BSD sur ses GeForce FX Go pour se refaire un sante au troisieme trimestre.
[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. I
Almost exclusivly only low quality eg. repeating of old trolls and FP's.
WTF?
Get yourself togheter and start producing some decent rolling or get the fuck put of here.
This aint a playground for noobs trying to FP;go practise on kuro5hin or something and don't come back until you can write a decent troll.
A Old Troller.
There are no mountains in Kansas. Everybody knows that.
I've been using OpenBSD on and off for a few years and have always found it works exactly as its meant to. Secure, tight fast. It might no have any/some support for things like SMP but then again its not aiming to..
It can all be summed up in that favourite sig.
"UNIX is userfriendly. Its just really careful in choosing its friends"
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
8-year-old Otilia Grasan was fishing with her family this week when she caught the strangest fish she had ever seen.
"I was thinking that it might be a good pet and put it in the fish tank," said Otilia. "When it came up in the water the eyes were really glowing and the whole tail was glowing too. So I thought it was gonna glow in the dark." Fresh from the family freezer, Otilia showed off her catch, an odd looking fish about 18 inches long.
You'd think a two-footed fish with a big, weird horn would be a rare discovery, but the truth is there are actually thousands of them in Puget Sound.
Turns out the mysterious creature is a distant member of the shark family with a decidedly unglamorous name.
"Yeah, this is the spotted ratfish," said Wayne Palsson, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.
The so-called "feet" are actually modified fins used to latch onto females, helping big ratfish make little ratfish. The same goes for that handsome horn.
And while many crave crab legs and buffalo wings, if someone offers you some fresh caught "fish feet," keep walking. Health officials say ratfish is poisonous and should not be eaten.
devil mascot = freebsd
blowfish mascot = openbsd
huh?
~dijjnn
Sixty years ago, I worked in what was once my Grandfather's Greenhouses. Gramps had died a year earlier and Grandma, now in her seventies had been forced to sell to the competition. I got a job with the new owners and mostly worked the range by myself. That summer, they hired a man to help me get the benches ready for the fall planting.
Ike always looked like he was three days from a shave and his whiskers were dirty white, shaded by the brim of his battered felt fedora.
He did not chew tobacco but the corners of his mouth turned down in a way that, at any moment, I expected a trickle of thin, brown juice to creep down his chin. His bushy, brown eyebrows shaded pale, gray eyes.
The old-timer extended his hand, lifted his leg like a dog about to mark a bush and let go the loudest fart I ever heard. The old fellow then winked at me, "Ike Thomas is the name and playing pecker's my game."
I thought he said, "Checkers." I was nineteen, green as grass. I said, "I was never much good at that game."
"Now me," said Ike, "I just love jumping men . . ."
"I'll bet you do."
". . . and grabbing on to their peckers," said Ike.
"I though we were talking about . . ."
"You like jumping old men's peckers?"
I shook my head.
"I reckon we'll have to remedy that." Ike lifted his right leg and let go another tremendous fart. "He said, "We best be getting to work."
That summer of 1941 was a more innocent time. I learned most of the sex I knew from those little eight pager cartoon booklets of comic-page characters going at it. Young men read them in the privacy of an outside john, played with themselves, by themselves and didn't brag about it. Sometimes, we got off with a trusted friend and helped each other out.
Under the greenhouse glass, the temperature some times climbed over the hundred degree mark. I had worked stripped to the waist since April and was as brown as a berry. On only his second day on the job and in the middle of August, Ike wore old fashioned overalls. Those and socks in his high-top work shoes was every stitch he wore. When he bent forward, the bib front billowed out and I could see the white curly hairs on his chest and belly.
"Me? I just love to eat pussy!" Ike licked his lips from corner to corner then sticking his tongue out far enough that the tip could touch the end of his nose. He said, A man's not a man till he knows first hand, the flavor of a lady's pussy."
"People do that?"
He winked. "Of course the taste of a hard cock ain't to be sneezed at neither. Now you answer me, yes or no. Does a man's cock taste salty or not?"
"I never . . ."
"Well, old Ike's willing to let you find out."
"No way."
"Just teasing," said Ike. "But don't give me no sass or I'll show you my ass." He winked. "Might show it to you anyway, if you was to ask."
"Why would I do that?"
"Curiosity, maybe. I'm guessing you never had a good piece of man ass."
"I'm no queer."
"Now don't be getting judgmental. Enjoying what's at hand ain't being queer. It's taking pleasure where you find it with anybody willing." Ike slipped a hand into the side slit of his overalls and I could tell he was fondling and straightening out his cock. "Now I admit I got me a hole that satisfied a few guys."
I swallowed, hard.
Ike winked. "Care to be asshole buddies?"
***
We worked steadily until noon. Ike drew a worn pocket watch from the bib pocket of his loose overalls and croaked, "Bean time. But first its time to reel out our limber hoses and make with the golden arches before lunch."
I followed Ike to the end of the greenhouse where he stopped at the outside wall of the potting shed. He opened his fly, fished inside, and finger-hooked a soft white penis with a pouting foreskin puckered half an inch past the hidden head.
It says in the review: ...such as OpenBSD's requirement that its root partition must be completely contained within the first 8 gigabytes of the hard drive.
I've just set up OpenBSD 3.3 on a not-very-critical server, and, not knowing about this limitation, I've just created one big root partition of about 58GB. It's ran fine for the past four days though. Am I likely to run into problems, or has something been changed since the book was published?
I know that there are good reasons for splitting your filesystem across multiple partitions, but is there a particular reason why I need to keep that root partition under 8GB in OpenBSD?
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: *BSD is dying
I prefer Irish Whiskey myself, but if you're going to have a Vodka while administering OpenBSD, I'm not gonna stop ya...
Troll alert I have seen your lame post before if you do not know how to process a dd then get another OS and shag your ass with lame windows buttons!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Perhaps I missed it in the review, but what version of OpenBSD does the book cover?!
I haven't read the book yet, but this was one of the more informative reviews that I've read here.
Come on, if you're gonna s/Mac/BSD/gi, at least be creative about it. You did change G3 to PIII, but remember that BSD is an OS, while Mac is a hardware architecture, so phases like "the BSD machine's faster chip architecture" don't make sense anymore, and since it's free, there's no "cheaper."
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
There are very few things that make OpenBSD unique from other BSD OS's... security features like "IPSEC" are available in FreeBSD, NetBSD, and others as well. That certainly is not unique to OpenBSD. Cryptography is just as much a focus in FreeBSD development as it is for OpenBSD.
I don't feel that OpenBSD's status for being the "most secure OS" is anything but general FUD, and I have news for you all, before you call me bigoted towards FreeBSD.... I rely on OpenBSD for fully half of what I do. I have several internet connected OpenBSD boxes. An OS is only as secure as the person adminning it is clueful.
FreeBSD The Power to Serve
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
If enough people don't like an support an OS/Distro, it will die.
Helps partially explain Caldera (and Corel) employess crying over spilled milk.
I just wish more OS people had taken a class in Software Engineering.
-B
Let me count the ways...
I may be generalizing, but when you need hardware compatibility, go with Linux; when you require security, go with OpenBSD.
AFAIK, OpenBSD is the only UNIX(like) distribution with chroot Apache out of the box.
There are quite a few things that I don't like about OpenBSD, but I've learned to live with them.
This reminds me very much of the things I did before my first Linux installation in '96. I bought the book, "Red Hat Linux Unleashed", which just happened to have a RH 3.0.3 distro on one CD in a little envelope inside the cover. Skipping very few details, I read all 1100ish pages before even trying. I ran into enough troubles that I didn't regret the investment in time. As someone who hadn't taken any open systems courses in college, this was the way to go. It seems that a "paranoid operating system" would have all the same incentives in place for quite a few folks that were the situation was for me as a 100% Un*x newbie with DOS skills. YMMV of course.
If you can get it at a physical Barnes & Noble in your own town, you could easily save $12 in shipping.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
OpenBSD is pretty stable. I currently have half a dozen systems running with an uptime of 50 days, and I've had 200+ days on multiple boxes. It goes down for major system maintenance and that's about it. I've used it for internet-facing webservers and for mailservers.
--LP, ignoring the 'do not feed the trolls' sign
I can recommend Sam's Teach Yourself Absolute OpenBSD Annoyances for Dummies in 24 Hours Unleashed -HOWTO.
If you are going to say stuff like this, perhaps you could point me to a mailing list post or something that proves your point? People don't request better usability, they say shit like "linux does x, why doesn't openbsd" cause they are too lazy to learn the openbsd way of doing things.
Yes, people get tired of newbies who have no desire to learn, and just want to use a linux system where uname says OpenBSD. So those people are told if they want linux, to use linux. Almost seems rational to me. What would you say if everyone kept asking on a linux distro list where the ports tree was, why they couldn't cvs update their system, where isakmpd went, how do you install pf on linux, etc?
I'm glad I made a good impression, though!
Like how to mount a native floppy. Stuff so basic it never occurred to anybody to put in an obvious form.
I usually put my questions in the form: "I know this is basic, and here's what steps I've taken to find the answer....any clues to share?"
I may have just lucked out or caught people at propitious times in their meds routine.
My big project at the moment is setting up some sparc boxes with the newest rev. with some lovely anti stack-smashing, not avail on x86.
...when the box gets h4ck3d?
there's no place like ~
The same post comes up with every *BSD article. The 17 meg file copy has taken at least 2 months.
Yeah, because FreeBSD has swap encryption right? And integrated propolice? And W^X too of course. Don't forget systrace. And they're obviously been auditing just as much as the openbsd guys, as you can tell from the number of exploits. Wanna count the number of suid binaries in OpenBSD and FreeBSD?
Of course an incompetant admin can make any machine insecure, that doesn't mean OpenBSD isn't more secure than FreeBSD.
Okay, I was going to say OS X is not FreeBSD based, but from Apple's mouth:
I'm confused. I didn't think "monolithic kernel" and "Mach" could be in the same system at the same time.
So OS X's kernel is based on 4.4BSD-Lite2, FreeBSD 4.4 and OSF/mk Mach 3. Um, yeah.
But at any rate I'm not sure you can call FreeBSD the core of OS X.
How are things out East, today? I'm sorry to say that your Red Sox are going to lose to my Oakland A's today. The Sox are past due for their August slump, you know. :)
If you want to support OpenBSD in order, you can order it directly from http://books.kd85.com/
KD85.com does all the shipping for Europe (also resells Soekris hardware http://soekris.kd85.com)
I think you meant pored.
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Slashdot used to maintain a link on the front page saying "Order your Amazon books here so that I can get a kickback" (or something similar). It was removed sometime around the Andover buyout.
I enjoyed Micheal Lucas' other book, "Absolute BSD", which mainly covers FreeBSD, very much.
It helps alot, even for things that are covered in the (excellent) FreeBSD handbook by giving another perspective.
I strongly recommend "Absolute BSD" - guess I might order myself a copy of "Absolute OpenBSD" soon.
-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
Get a new template, tis one is starting to wear rather thin.
Read, L
....you just need to:
/usr/ports/editors/emacs21
:-)
# cd
# make
# make install
or you could just be a pansy and use the pkg_add url that someone else posted to grab that yummy emacs21 binary.
But you don't get all of the elisp sources that way...you DO want the elisp sources, don't you?
Exactly!
I'm pretty happy with it. I'm just getting into OpenBSD, and this book makes it pretty easy to get started on complicated things. It's not for people with no experience, but neither is OpenBSD.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
The numerous facts about how Windows security sucks gets pretty irritating too.