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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.

11 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

  2. 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?

  3. 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......

  4. 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 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?
    2. 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
  5. 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...

  6. 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
  7. 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?