Slashdot Mirror
Metawire.org Admin On OpenBSD Hosting
hext0r writes "Open Hosting provider metawire.org administrator Daniel Selans recently wrote an informative article for the OpenBSD Journal about the difficulties and successes in running a free hosting provider using OpenBSD. It's an informative read for anyone considering starting any type of hosting company using free technologies."
Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD 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 surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dead
Maybe *BSD died back then... but it's most surely coming back! Just take a look at the latest NetCraft survey and you'll see that they have come back a little.
I think this article confirms it. Just check where it's posted: http://undeadly.org/, doesn't that light some lights!?
One thing that I can most definatelly note is that with the use of OpenBSD, the experience was made by far simpler, and headache free. The common belief out there is that OpenBSD is best used for security gateways, firewalls, routers and etc. Well, I personally do not believe so. The capability of this OS is only admin deep. The more you know, the more you can achieve. I have personally ran OpenBSD in large enterprise environments as web servers, file servers, database servers, and frankly, it's resource management and speed is uncomparable to most other operating systems out there, multiply that with the security standards, and you've got an amazing OS.
I feel like installing OpenBSD!
All the *BSD is dying posts are contained in this one post to spare the BSD section of the heavy trolling. If I've missed any, please add your troll as a reply and I'll include it in the next Troll-in-one. Keep your flames to yourself -- I already know you have a distorted psychological need to imagine BSD as dying because it only helps to relieve the cognitive dissonance you are currently experiencing with Linux. In reality, though, it only shows a deep-seated jealousy towards BSD, which you'll go to any lengths to deny.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
I must make it clear that:
1) *BSD is associated with the Devil (see mascot).
2) *BSD promotes anti-social behaviour.
3) *BSD encourages a homosexual lifestyle.
4) *BSD stands for destruction of the economy.
5) *BSD attacks the average man in the street.
6) *BSD allows no critisms of its mission.
7) *BSD harbours terrorists and other state enemies.
8) *BSD collects weapons of mass destruction.
9) *BSD believes in the enprisionment of mankind.
10) *BSD is dying.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
The *BSD Wailing Song
What's left for me to see
In my ship I sailed so far
What can the answer be
Don't know what the questions are.
And after all I've done
Still I cannot feel the sun
Tell me save me
In the end our lost souls must repent.
I must know it is for certain
Can it be the final curtain
As long as the wind will blow
I'll be searching high and low.
Who knows what's really true
They say the end is so near
Why are we all so cruel
We just fill ourselves with fear.
And heaven and hell will turn
All that we love shall burn
Hear me trust me
In the end our lost sould must repent.
I must know it is for certain
Can it be the final curtain
As long as the wind will blow
I'll be searching high and low
Final curtain
Final curtain
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
pressed to bsd lips
bsd drink up
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this BSD box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
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 machines 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.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Almost everyone knows 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
!daed si DSB
I didn't see anything negative in that article. Nor any major "difficulties". He made it sound like it was a breeze - just put together a bunch of scripts and it's all done.
PS: I love OpenBSD. Like Daniel, I also use it as both a server and a desktop workstation. I just wish people would RTFA.
Braindead Software Distribution
SLASHDOT SUMMER CAMP
Hey Slashboteers! Are you finishing university? *STILL* unemployed after the dot com layoffs? Well, have we got the answer for you! Chief Executive Officer Rob Madla and SS Officer Michael Sims invite you to join them at the Black River Public School in Holland, Michigan from the 10th of August for the SLASHDOT SUMMER CAMP. Three full days of pony rides, coding and male bonding. Special Appearances by NAMBLA Grand Wizard Katz with his partner Wai Tu Yung.
Activities include:
Tickets are US$90 each, and the event lasts for three days. For more information, or to book a place, contact CmdrTaco
Terms & Conditions:
Spaces are limited to how many people we can lock in a basement. Camp is open to males aged between 12 and 19. No soap is allowed on the premises. CmdrTaco's Jubei cabinet is not to be used as a simulated coffin for sex games without his involvement.
With all its bugs, constant security problems and totally ridiculous ways of handling ports/packages, the TCO for BSD is so high that it would make Microsoft proud. Just wait until Billy uses BSD in his case studies against open source.
OpenBSD is Open about its being wide Open to crackers.
I'm 1447, d00d!
With ports, you usually have to install everything from source, that means spending a lot of time configuring something, then trying to compile it, failing to compile (because ports aren't really very well tested for mutual compile-compatibility). Sometimes you may spend 10 hours compiling, say, KDE only to find out that the compile breaks because of something, and you have to start over. BSDs are now trying to make binary packages and binary updates the norm, but there are huge difficulties with those, because the ports system simply isn't designed to work well for binaries. In conclusion: use Debian instead!
If you are regularly reading the BSD section of Slashdot, you should know that a FreeBSD hacker called PHK recently appealed to the masses for funding. OpenBSD developers should jump on this train, because OpenBSD is less braindamaged than FreeBSD, and so more people will be willing to donate money to its cause.
Cemetery
Recommended hardware for running *BSD
Please do not say anything bad about BSD. In Western cultures you should say only good things about the deceased or say nothing at all. Thank you.
If *BSD keeps shambling along like one of those mall-rats in "Day of the Dead", we will have to coin a new term for this type of program: open-casket software.
s33 t0p1c. 1447 d00d!
Oh where, oh where is my BSD?
I just loaded it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven, so I've got to be good,
So I can see the OS when I leave this world.
I'd started to load it in my roommate's Dell,
the hard drive was taking it pretty well.
During the load, straight ahead,
the distro was stalled, *BSD was dead.
I couldn't stop, so I yanked the cord.
I'll never forget, the sound , oh Lord--
the screamin' drives, the speaker's blast,
the painful scream that I-- heard last.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
That load took it away from me.
It's gone to heaven, so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
When I woke up, the sparks were pourin down.
There were admins standin all around.
Some fragments of chips gotten in my eyes,
but somehow I found my *BSD that night.
I lifted the CD, it looked at me and said,
"Load me darlin just a little while."
I held it close, I kissed the CD label--our last kiss.
I found the love that i knew i had missed
well now it's gone, even though I hold it tight
I lost my *BSD and my Dell-- that night.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
The load took it away from me.
It's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
Come on, OpenBSD hosting is very easy.
All you need is an open coffin with an internet connection.
I would just like to echo that Metawire is by far the best shell hosting I have ever used. I think I was one of the first signups, and since the beginning they allow alot of trust to their users and aren't restrictive.
Metawire is simply exactly what it says on the tin. Free, and amazing shell hosting, have them for an email account, or your website, for hosting scripts and whatever else you can think of.
Great service.
The cost is picked up by the administrators themselves, and it's ran extremely professionally with complete regard for their users.
Simply by the services they allow you can see that OpenBSD is a great OS for just about anything and everything.
If you are willing to donate money, OpenBSD donations is the place to go.
Of course, buying CDs, t-shirts or posters also helps the project. Look at the catalog here.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD 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 surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dbblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
you fell for a troll
you fell for a really old troll. how dumb are you?
1. You can not play games on it.
2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
4. There is no support available for it.
5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
7. You have to compile everything and know C.
8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
10.It is dying.
Metawire.org, my precious server, slashdotted!
:)
:P
I guess we can consider the fact that it's still up a testament to OpenBSD
In all seriousness, though, OpenBSD has been a blessing for running Metawire. I joined the admin team a few months ago, after having been a lowly user and an active member of the community since last year, and have found (as Danny put so well in his article) that the biggest challenges in terms of maintaining a secure and stable server with thousands of users are well met by a system with a philosophy like OpenBSD's.
The challenges that OpenBSD and a proper user management system (which I have been an active developer on since I was made an admin) can not handle are those that plague any provider of a free service, namely the ages-old Tragedy of the Commons.
Garret Hardin's prophetic essay deals mainly with the human tendency for one to maximize the usage of any communal space for his own personal gain, and at the same time to shirk the responsibilities of its upkeep since it is not "his". As this applies to being a free shell provider on the Internet, you have to deal constantly with users who apply, abuse the service, are given the boot, and then show up again. As far as they are concerned it is a common space, freely available, for which they are not responsible. Since they do not take ownership in any sense, what responsibility to they have to keep things OK for others?
The "tragedy of the commons" manifests itself in the biggest administrative headaches the team has had to face so far. People signing up to use bandwidth-hogging psyBNCs/IRC proxies to get past bans on networks or keep nicknames alive, people using our service to mailbomb, people using it to host illegal materials... Had they been using a paid shell (which are widely available) for which they had some degree of "ownership" and at least an implied responsibility to follow the rules, their behavior might be less destructive, but because they are using a free resource, they feel unburdened by any responsibility towards other users and the administrative staff.
I could let these failings of human nature get me down, but thankfully there is another tool which can fill in where OpenBSD fails. Perhaps even the vagaries of man can be overcome...
by Perl
Q: What do you call a review of the latest version of FreeBSD?
A: An autopsy.
Compare this fact:
"Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!"
Please list all of your superior OS' that can match that this track record.
I await your list/answers!!
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD 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 surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
What more proof do you need?
Metawire User Upgrade 01 Apr 2004 by blister
Metawire has recently gotten a corporate sponsor, Microsoft, who is going to be
putting the administration on a paid salary as well as provide hardware, software,
and money for bandwidth for us to promote hosting on the superior Microsoft
platform. Metawire will be going through a 2 week upgrade to the new server
farm, at the end of which we will be transferring all email and webhosting to the
new servers. Everyone show your thanks to Microsoft by purchasing some MS
software. Microsoft has really helped this community out big time and deserve all
your support.
Ahahahaha...look at you, getting up in arms over a damn troll post. Go outside and kiss a girl, for crying out loud.
Posted on their frontpage,
"Metawire User Upgrade 01 Apr 2004 by blister
Metawire has recently gotten a corporate sponsor, Microsoft, who is going to be putting the administration on a paid salary as well as provide hardware, software, and money for bandwidth for us to promote hosting on the superior Microsoft platform. Metawire will be going through a 2 week upgrade to the new server farm, at the end of which we will be transferring all email and webhosting to the new servers. Everyone show your thanks to Microsoft by purchasing some MS software. Microsoft has really helped this community out big time and deserve all your support."
I am not trolling... but that last sentence is sarcasm right?
Error: Id10t detected
Read the website, install the OS, read the mailing list. Security wise, open vs free, its not even close. You thinking that giving a user a shell is as good as giving them root is a good example of how freebsd is not as secure as open.
Try this, install openbsd and freebsd, and count how many setuid root apps are installed on each. Does apache chroot() on freebsd? Do bind, syslog, tcpdump, X and probably a couple other things I am forgetting have priviledge seperation like openssh? Has freebsd thouroughly audited their code? Does freebsd have propolice, non-executable stack, W^X and stack gap randomization to prevent programs that do inevitably have security problems from being exploited? Random pids? Random ephemeral ports? Encrypted swap?
That's a list I came up with off the top of my head, its not complete. I like freebsd too, and I use it where it serves it purpose, but trying to pretend its as secure as open is rediculous.
They also place very little restrictions on what you can do. SSL access to webmail will be online soon too.
I just signed up for an account and have been very pleased. It sounded to good to be true, but its been great. But if people don't eventually donate, it may not be able to continue in the long run, so please consider that. They seem fine now, but lets keep it that way.
Sign up, contribute, and eventually donate if you like at:
http://metawire.org/donate.php
Hello everyone!
You may know me as the "troll" that posts the "BSD IS DEAD" and all of the "FACTS" to every BSD story on Slashdot. Many people wonder why I do it. The answer is that BSD is detrimental to the open source community.
As a Linux advocate, I have taken upon myself the duty to convince Slashdot readers that BSD is dead and that Linux is the future. If BSD were to gain a bigger marketshare, corporations such as IBM and Sun may be distracted from their interest in Linux.
If you know any BSD users, you must convince them to convert to Linux. These people are slowing down open source developement because developers are distracted from working on Linux programs to make them work with BSD. Imagine how great our software would be without worrying about cross-platform. Imagine how great Gnome/KDE, Mozilla, and Apache would be if the developers didn't have to waste precious time writing code so that it would also work on BSD. We need the entire open source community to get behind one operating system so that open source developers and can focus on achieving our goal, OS dominance.
We can all agree that Microsoft has to go. We cannot allow any other proprietary operating system to take it's place. That narrows it down to the open source operating systems, of which the 2 major options are Linux and BSD. Since Linux already has the larger marketshare, we need to kill off BSD. Once we convert all the BSD developers to Linux, we will have a stronger army.
So what can you do to help? Easy. Find BSD users and developers and convince them to switch to Linux. Do so by any means necessary. You can start out being nice, but be persistent. Don't give up. In the end, they will thank you for enlightening them.
There can be only one open source operating system. Divided we fall. Together we shall rule.
As a great man once said, "Let us never forget the duty, which we have taken upon us."
I've had a Metawire account for a few months, with basic rights. No problems with the operation of the system, or the management. The only side effect that I've seen is lag. My original guess was that their DSL-class links weren't keeping up with the demand, or that having several dozen logged in users was taking a toll on the hardware. Nowadays, the systems seem to have their days of speediness and their days of lagged response.
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
...using putty with port forwarding because the firewall is down.
METAWIRE, YOU ROCK!
[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. It