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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.

43 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. The important question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will that hot FreeBSD devil babe be there?!

  2. 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

  3. Technical sessions start Sept 10 by cperciva · · Score: 4, Informative

    The technical sessions start on September 10th, so there's still lots of time to register and book plane tickets.

    Speaking of the 10th... I'd better start working on my slides.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  4. 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, Informative
      So anyway, how does FreeBSD's filesystem stack up against Linux?

      FreeBSD chose to address this problem by making fsck capable of running in the background. fsck cooperates with the kernel, checking all files/inodes, and when a file is requested that has not yet been checked, the file operation is held while that check is moved to the front of the unique "moustache ride-ordered" queue.

      Journaling without sacrificing performance and clean algorithms simply isn't possible, and corruption is still possible on a journaling filesystem with out-of-order writes as done by many kinds of cache-enabled drives and controllers, leading to a false sense of security when fsck is bypassed. FreeBSD's approach catches every situation, and guarantees an intact filesystem on every boot.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:FreeBSD filesystem by caluml · · Score: 2, Informative
      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

      Load of arse. ext2 is both fast and reliable. If you're having lots of disk problems, you should look at your hardware.

      --
      Get your own free personal location tracker
    4. 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?

    5. Re:FreeBSD filesystem by Frohboy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sigh... why do people mod things up as "interesting" or "insightful" when they don't understand what they mean? The parent should potentially be modified up as +1 funny.

      Note the following terms used (and think of associated acronyms):

      • Async Network And Loopback probe
      • Big Data Storage Management companies
    6. Re:FreeBSD filesystem by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 3, Informative
      Come back with benchmarks.

      That the FreeBSD filesystem blows the above away is one of its greater strengths. Sun is the only UNIX with a faster filesystem, but at nothing like the price point of course.

      There's a reason why FreeBSD and Solaris are the only platforms where Oracle doesn't require a dedicated partition to create its own database filesystem. FreeBSD and Solaris can hack it. JFS, XFS, Reiser and friends are a fairly distant second.

      Please do your research before posting. This kind of performance isn't about the desktop. Leave the replies to people with real server experience.

  5. Soothing break by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 5, Funny
    We'd like to interrupt this BSD story for a bit of pro-BSD propaganda.

    Tell me you don't want BSD on your laptop now.

    Further persuasion available here. This is definitely +1 Interesting material to any heterosexual male. Mod me down if you are the sendmail author or otherwise uninterested.

    1. Re:Soothing break by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 2, Funny

      Do you know how hard it is to find an attractive mormon woman in latex?

  6. 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......

  7. Soon? by JamesTRexx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Will soon be widly placed on desktops... I think that's a bit much very premature. So far it's still Windoze, and the hype is Linux, so I think *BSD won't grow that much on the desktop market. Although I would like to see much more articles on using *BSD for the regular consumers. In the meantime *BSD will keep the important parts of the internet running. Oh, and no *BSD is dying comments please. It's getting really old and tired to hear that from close minded people...

    --
    home
    1. Re:Soon? by nyteroot · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I would like to see much more articles on using *BSD for the regular consumers


      Why, god. Why is it that an OS must be usable "on the desktop", "by mom", or by "the regular consumers" in order for it to be considered "good"? First we had Linux, and then they mom-ified Linux. Now you want them to mom-ify *BSD too? Fuck that shit!


      There are server OSs. There are desktop OSs. Any attempt at combination is bound to fail miserably at one or the other and quite likely both.

      --
      Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
    2. Re:Soon? by MrHanky · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Why, god. Why is it that an OS must be usable "on the desktop", "by mom", or by "the regular consumers" in order for it to be considered "good"? First we had Linux, and then they mom-ified Linux. Now you want them to mom-ify *BSD too? Fuck that shit!


      I don't know. FreeBSD is a fine desktop/workstation OS. I use it on my laptop. However, it's not quite mummified yet (sorry, but we all have to have a reference to '*BSD is dead', don't we?). I recently installed it on my desktop as well, and wantet GDM as a log in manager. That was painful. After I finally got GDM to start at all, and managed to log in, I noticed I was root. This came as a surprise to me, since I had tried to log in as a user. I didn't bother too much with it, and installed KDM instead. It worked.

      FreeBSD might or might not work for the regular consumer, as a desktop OS. It doesn't rot away from normal use, like Windows does. But the ports and packages aren't necessarily working correctly, might need tweaking and so on. A FreeBSD install that has been set up by a knowledgeable nerd for its intended use should work fine, even for a mummy.
    3. Re:Soon? by evilviper · · Score: 2, Insightful
      There are server OSs. There are desktop OSs. Any attempt at combination is bound to fail miserably at one or the other and quite likely both.

      OpenBSD has been working fine as my desktop for years. I'm using Mozilla on OpenBSD on my Laptop to type this message right now.

      It's really quite easy to install, and you only need the tiniest bit of knowledge to setup X and install applications. I wouldn't say it's for "the regular consumers", but only because those people are horrified if they have to type-in a single word, rather than being able to click the mouse to do everything.

      With a simple shell-script, I could have an OpenBSD CD automatically install itself, configure X, and install and configure basic applications. That's pretty-much what Windows does, but Unixers expect more control and flexibility than that, so nobody bothers to do it.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  8. 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 Tirel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Theo has said many times before that they will only use GNU tools if there's nothing to replace them with. Infact, the good folks at @openbsd have been looking into replacing gcc with tunDRA (with little success atm) simply because of the GNU licence.

      Basically, GNU licenced programs are only there if really necessary.

    2. Re:removing some utilities by iamdrscience · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are you serious? Their work can't be "locked down" -- no matter what any corporation does with their code they'll still have all the stuff they wrote available to them and that's what's really important.

    3. Re:removing some utilities by nyteroot · · Score: 4, Insightful
      . . .their work may be locked down and stolen by a corporation [at] any time.


      Ah! Such enlightening insight into the world of open source licensing!
      ..yeah, right.


      My dear sir, you are utterly incorrect. Were some corporation to "lock down" their source code (and I can only assume that by "lock down" you mean to re-release under a proprietary license) they would only be assuring that their version of the software would be utterly disregarded by the entire computer community, because (pay attention here) the free version would not somehow magically cease to exist! So on the one hand you would have the free, latest version. On the other hand, you would have the not-free, catching-up version. Gee, tough choice.


      Now what the BSD license does allow is for some company to take some or all of the source and reuse it elsewhere, under a proprietary license if they so wish, without giving anything back to the Free software community. Whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing is a philosophical matter. However, your assertion that a company could "lock down" the OpenBSD code is completely and utterly incorrect.

      --
      Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
    4. Re:removing some utilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
      making enough money.

      Wrong. There's never enough money.

    5. 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?
    6. Re:removing some utilities by eht · · Score: 2, Informative

      If anyone really does have a problem with a lockdown of BSD code, they could always take everything and re-release it under the GPL, they're quite welcome to do so as long as the BSD copyright notices remain intact in the source code.

      gplBSD here we come.

    7. Re:removing some utilities by tedu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      licensing, less gpl is always better if possible. we also now maintain the tools entirely ourselves. cleanliness -- they don't even know how to indent properly. :) in the case of grep, it was a major improvement in size of the binary (think floppy installs) because we use libc regexp, not 3 different special edition text searchers made just for grep.

    8. Re:removing some utilities by howardjp · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, I was the original author of FreeGrep, and even if you pull out the text searchers in GNU Grep, FreeGrep is still only 1/3 the size (source lines).

      FreeGrep is also FAR more extensible and, in general, better designed. It would not be difficult to add support for grepping bzipped files, other compressed types, or even new types of files. It's also easier to add new options and features, though I do think the entire alphabet has been exhausted.

    9. 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
    10. Re:removing some utilities by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative
      the good folks at @openbsd have been looking into replacing gcc with tunDRA (with little success atm) simply because of the GNU licence.

      First of all, there has been a _small_ bit of interest in Tendra by just a few in the BSD community, but I don't think it's fair to say that they have been looking into replacing GCC.

      Secondly, licensing isn't the only concern. An upgrade from GCC 2.9 to 3 is on the horizon, and at least one of the primary OpenBSD developers has said that they aren't happy with GCC 3. I don't think it's worth getting into detail, but it isn't licensing issues alone.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  9. 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...

    1. Re:OpenBSD 3.4 song? by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 2, Informative

      Theo says it will be out in 'about three weeks.'

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
  10. Don't go! by in7ane · · Score: 3, Funny

    Please don't go to either of these, and if you already are - come back now. I hear there is a good change of dying at either of these two conventions.

  11. Ceren? attending? by santiag0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I hope so. Dust off the red daemon suit and get packing! For the few who don't know who Ceren is... nevermind, everyone knows who Ceren is!

  12. Re:huh? by realdpk · · Score: 2, Informative

    Make a superior version from the freely available codebase and refuse to release the modifcations back to the Community.

    Inspire competition, the community creates a superior program to the corporation, etc etc. This cycle has been going on for a very, very long time.

    Some of us are OK with sharing, even if it means someone else might make money off of it.

  13. DragonFly at BSDCon by m.dillon · · Score: 5, Informative
    I will be attending BSDCon this coming week and will be setting up a BoF session on DragonFly as well as doing a quicky summary WIP (Work In Progress) talk. Some extremely interesting work is being done in DragonFly as well as in other BSD's (FreeBSD-5, OpenBSD, and so forth). But the conference is not for the weak of heart. If all you care about is the next K00l music UI don't bother to come {EVIL GRIN}.

  14. Re:Why so late? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2, Insightful
    At a guess: a.out works. If it works, why screw with it?

    Remember, with OpenBSD the focus is on correctness and keeping the codebase free of bugs. Making drastic changes in areas where those changes are not absolutely necessary undermines that focus.

    I haven't seen 3.3 or 3.4, but 3.2, which is barely a year old, still runs BIND 4. The current version of BIND is 9. This gives you some idea of how the OpenBSD team things.

    FWIW, other versions of OpenBSD have switched to ELF. I run OpenBSD 3.2 on a SparcStation, and a quick "file /etc/ksh" reveals ksh to be "ELF 32-bit MSB executable, SPARC, version 1". I guess testing the system on obscurer platforms has paved the way for it to be released on the more dominant architecture.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  15. 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
  16. non-executable stack? by Rock+Ridge · · Score: 2

    Are the BSDs working on this? It seems it would be a "good thing," since most of the cracks hope to smash the stack and execute some mal-code. Solaris may have had this feature, but not sure.

    -Rock

    1. Re:non-executable stack? by Schubert · · Score: 2, Informative

      It has been in OpenBSD since at least 3.2 if memory serves (http://www.openbsd.org/plus32.html | grep non-exec)

      --
      -- schubert
  17. Re:Why so late? by hegemon17 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The work that needed to be done to switch i386 to ELF has been ready for a long time. But doing such a switch is a huge pain for the developers and users, so it was delayed for as long as possible. Same thing was with other architectures. alpha switched to ELF when the alpha port was almost dead and was violently revived by redoing lots of code and completly changing everything. sparc switched to ELF after a bug was discovered in how the dynamic linker worked. The dynamic linker didn't map the code segments executable which didn't really work after the kernel was taught to honor the executability bit on memory mappings (that was done to get non-exec stack). And i386 swichted because that was the only way to get proper non-exec stack. OpenBSD does big disruptive changes only when it's really necessary and when those changes come, all disruptions are clustered thightly.

  18. They want it to be "stolen"... by anthonyrcalgary · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've never quite understood how the BSD people can think they've got freedom when their work may be locked down and stolen by a corporation any time.

    You don't understand the BSD license. It's impossible to steal something that's given freely. BSD has been such a seminal influence precisely because the code can be "stolen". That's the intent.

    Besides, AT&T did try to steal (in the "you can't use it anymore" sense of the word) BSD's code. They lost.

    If he thinks separating from the protection granted by GPL will further the survivability of OpenBSD, he's seriously mistaken.

    BSD predates the GPL.

    --
    When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
  19. Very interesting, but... by edunbar93 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including i386 switch to ELF executable format, further W^X improvements for i386...

    Yes, but what *I* want to know is whether the BSD babes are going to be there. :D

    Mmmm. Mondo cleavage and red latex!

    --
    "No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
  20. 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?

  21. Links to ordering site & items -- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    Support the OpenBSD developers by getting a 3.4 CD $40 or for Europe EUR 45


    There is a new Tshirt: 3.4 Tshirt $20 or for Europe EUR 20


    The new 3.4 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.