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BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too)

Posted by timothy on from the such-euphony-from-three-little-letters dept.

robotdreams writes "Once again BSDCon showcases the BSD community's long history of innovative research, open exchange of ideas, and collaborative work. Tutorials this year feature: an intensive code walkthrough of the new FreeBSD 5.x release, debugging kernel problems on live systems, advanced BSD system and network security, and FreeBSD's new GEOM disk I/O subsystem." Since BSDCon runs from September 8th through 12th, you're probably either already going or out of luck ;) On the other hand, you're still early for OpenBSD 3.4, now taking pre-orders -- details below.

An anonymous reader writes "Pre-orders for the OpenBSD project's latest release, 3.4, are now being taken. This release will ship around November 1st. Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including i386 switch to ELF executable format, further W^X improvements for i386, ld.so on ELF platforms now loads libraries in a random order for greater resistance to attacks, inclusion of a static bounds checker to the compiler for basic checks on functions which accept buffers and sizes, strcpy/strcat function audit to replace with safer strlcpy/strlcat, ProPolice stack protection in the kernel, further manual page cleanups, large number of bug fixes and optimizations to the packet filter (PF) including packet tagging, stateful TCP normalization, passive OS detection, SYN proxy, and adaptive state timeouts, and many other improvements to the rest of the system.

Order a CD from the OpenBSD store. Ordering a CD helps support the project, as a bonus you get cool stickers, artwork, and an audio track!"

The same reader sent links to more information on this release, including new features, and the changelog between 3.3 and 3.4.

16 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Buzz Buzz Buzz by CEHT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't wait for new OpenBSD music!

    --

    ============
    Mathematics will always come back to hunt you down, in so many ways

    1. Re:Buzz Buzz Buzz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Fandom? What are you talking about? Explain.

      First of all: "they aren't even trying to win-over business IT departments."

      Personally I wouldn't want to use an OS that is designed for that reason, why do you think Windows is the way it is today? An OS should be designed to be secure, bug free, well documented, and at the end of the day, just damn well do what it's supposed to do. Nothing else.

      Do you think that the FreeBSD team tries to win over IT departments when they write code? You're kidding, right? Thought you were, had me going there for a second. OpenBSD won over my IT department for a firewall. Why? Not because they tried to for the sake of it, but because it just fucking works and is secure at the same time. (being free, minus CD cost, was a bonus)

      Please give this some more thought.

  2. I know, but... by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 0, Interesting

    As far as I know Windows have had native support for Java for ages. Actually since Microsoft and Sun signed an agreement about this back in 1997 that deals with this issue. So the fact that FreeBSD got this is fine but not exactly revolutionary.

  3. FreeBSD filesystem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I keep hearing that FreeBSD has a kickass filesystem. Is it more reliable than ext[2|3]? Because frankly, I think Linux filesystem is not all that great. I noticed that when I download a lot of files at the same time, like say with ncftp, netscape and wget all saving data to the same disk at the same time, I invariably end up with serious filesystem issues at the next fsck (and yeah, I use ext3, but you still have to fsck it to fix duplicate/corrupt inodes).
    So anyway, how does FreeBSD's filesystem stack up against Linux?

    1. Re:FreeBSD filesystem by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 5, Interesting
      This could be incorporated in Linux, if that's what you mean. It would be a pretty major undertaking, however. This operates with hooks at the filesystem layer and the block device layer both, which means that for every filesystem implementing this, a path needs to be made through it. This would touch not only the INode queue system (which would be good, as the Moustache ride-ordered queue mentioned above is more efficient), but also the Async Network And Loopback probe since this would have to permeate 2.4's proc-based /dev filesystem, and the penal sheath bits of the thread dispatcher in order to allow a filesystem to halt the process requesting fsck-limited activity.

      This could well be a good phd project for someone who wants to work on a thesis project that gives back to the community, and would surely secure them a job at Oracle or one of the other Big Data Storage Management companies.

    2. Re:FreeBSD filesystem by realdpk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If ext2 is so reliable, why does it, by default, insist that I must fsck after X days or Y mounts?

  4. one issue that should be hot on the table by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    is ximian compatability.

    Any linux related (binary compat in this case) that wants to move or shake should investigate ximian compatability....

    I for one welcome out new ximian overlords.

    Imagine a schimick GUI interface, FreeBSD underneath, all you'd need is a cheese grater aluminum case......

  5. removing some utilities by deputydink · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Replacement of GNU diff(1), diff3(1), grep(1), egrep(1), fgrep(1), zgrep(1), zegrep(1), zfgrep(1), gzip(1), zcat(1), gunzip(1), gzcat(1), zcmp(1), zmore(1), zdiff(1), zforce(1), gzexe(1), and znew(1) commands with BSD licensed equivalents.

    Anyone know why OpenBSD is removing GNU tools ... other than the licensing issues ?

    1. Re:removing some utilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Many companies use OpenBSD with their server products. Theo doesn't care and he ends up making enough money. This freedom of how a person may use code is great. Look at the BSD licensed Tk for example. Tk is used in Tcl, Perl, Python, Erlang, KSH, Ada, Scheme, and so on. People have adapted it for many things, and often use it commercially. I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but some companies have strict rules that forbid the usage of GPL or LGPL licensed software.

    2. Re:removing some utilities by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Anyone know why OpenBSD is removing GNU tools ... other than the licensing issues ?

      While I'm greatful I have these tools for free, and they have served me well, they are not without brain damage. For example, I found to my horror that 'patch' will, under certain circumstances, seek out and change my original files used to generate a patch, instead of what a reasonable reader would think to be the target files (the ones marked with "+++"). This is in fact documented behaviour, presumably thought to be good by some well-meaning but confused soul.

      Here, the argument of continuity apparently outweighs that of sanity. Solution: fork. Maybe with a little competition, the gnu utilities will eventually get updated to get rid of that nasty, destructive behaviour.

      --
      Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
    3. Re:removing some utilities by cpeterso · · Score: 3, Interesting


      absolutely! The BSD license implicitly encourages companies to share patches "upstream" because it will make future forking easier. The companies that used "forked" BSD software do not want to maintain tons of separate bug fixes in a different codebase. They just want to copy other people's work. That sounds "evil", but it does provide a strong incentive to share a common codebase.

      --
      cpeterso
  6. OpenBSD 3.4 song? by MADbull · · Score: 2, Interesting

    when will the next song be out? http://openbsd.rug.ac.be/ftp/pub/OpenBSD/songs/ i don't see it there yet...

  7. Re:Soothing break by pirodude · · Score: 1, Interesting

    THIS is a much better reason. I'm just wondering, does she come in the box or as an upgrade?

  8. OpenBSD Journal is dying (not a troll) by evilviper · · Score: 4, Interesting

    deadly.org, which was previously the premiere place for OpenBSDers to learn and communicate has now disabled comments completely. Comments, 90% from intelligent and informed users, happened to be the highlight of the site, but now it's all over because the admins are very unhappy about a pair of trolls, and aren't willing to do anything anti-troll. instead, they shut the door completely.

    So, I wonder if anyone here knows of another site that will take-over? BSD-specific, with knowledgable users, and plenty of comments... BSDforums has a large number of factors working against it, keeping it from becomming anything really good, so rule that one out.

    The BSD section here at /. has EVERYTHING working against it... VERY infrequent stories, few commenters, even fewer informed commentors, and nearly as many trolls as BSDers.

    Any suggestions?

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    1. Re:OpenBSD Journal is dying (not a troll) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You have no idea what you are talking about.

      Please stop posting on these forums. Your comments are not welcome. Freespeech doesn't apply to people like you.

      BSD is not fading out. GET A DAMN CLUE.

      OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and...lets not forget, APPLE'S MAC OS X - ARE ALL GOING -STRONG-

      Just because "CNET" doesn't have hype stories on them everyday, does that make them less of an OS?

      Have you been living under a rock? I think so.

      There is not much difference to Linux. Linux today is just a distro with a bunch of GUI's tacked on, this is what makes Linux for A LOT of people. Everything else is pretty much available accross the board.

      BSD hardware support is more than good enough. All the popular hardware works fine. and sometimes commerical driver support sucks, eg nvidia's drivers. I'd rather the open source community write some of those drivers.

      If projects like Mozilla, OpenOffice etc were coded to be a bit more portable, they would be running fine on any BSD. It's not impossible to get Mozilla and OpenOffice (talking desktops here) running on OpenBSD - just takes a bit more effort than it should.

      FreeBSD has very good commericial support. You have no idea, really.

      Maintream...does it really matter what the kids are using to play their MP3s on? Down with Microsoft! yay! Lets clone the Windows gui!

      hobby. Linux is more of a saddled hobby to administer than BSD anyday. FreeBSD and OpenBSD configure and lock down with ease. I can't say I'd use Linux for any of my servers, the stability is just not there.

      Anyway that's enough for you, you're just a common troll and you've been fed. Happy?

  9. Keynote: Computing fallacies by alien_blueprint · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I notice that the keynote speaker is Michi Henning, and he is delivering the "Computing Fallacies" talk again, presumably in an updated form.

    Since this very presentation was discussed on /. previously, it might be interesting for an attendee to take notes so that we can compare with last time. Does he believe things have improved, or not, and why?