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SMP Now In OpenBSD HEAD

A number of people dropped e-mails this morning saying that OpenBSD has now got SMP, according to a post from Niklas Hallqvist.

17 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Uh oh, here comes SCO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    BSD could not have become so popular so quickly without IBM taking the SCO code, putting it in Linux where the BSD people took GPL code put it under BSD license and then.... and anyway, this is based on Minix, because no one person could have written BSD, and AT&T probably would sue them for this anyway. This is hurting american economic... GPL is communistic... and Alex de Tocqueville said that... BSD is dying anyway..

    Oh man. I just give up.

  2. Re:No SMP? Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    haha nice try, 4.x DOES have smp.

  3. Re:No SMP? Huh? by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well OpenBSD has a different set of priorities then Linux. OpenBSD philosophy is to do it and do it well make absolutely sure that it is secure. This strong focus on security slows down a lot of development and thus keeping OpenBSD from the leading edge of technology. Now that a lot of SMP technology has matured and proven its worth it is now time for an OpenBSD implementation. Being on the leading edge is nice. But when you have a solution that must absolutely has to be running and secure there is no shame on being a little behind the times in technology.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Re:No SMP? Huh? by Morth · · Score: 4, Informative

    *BSD had (useful) IPv6 long before Linux thanks to kame. OpenBSD is also the last of them to get SMP support, even if it's pretty fresh in NetBSD too (a year or so).

  5. Re:Hooray! by turgid · · Score: 4, Funny
    Now it can die with super SMP efficiency and at double the speed!

    Depending on the implementation, it could only be 1.5 times the original speed. In certain special cases, a good implementation might be able to make it die at 2.1 times the speed or greater.

  6. Re:No SMP? Huh? by Shakrai · · Score: 4, Informative

    haha nice try, 4.x DOES have smp.

    I have mod points so I actually researched the AC to see if he was right or wrong. Rather then waste them on an AC though I figured I'd actually post a link to back up his claim: FreeBSD Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel.

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  7. Re:Time to move openbsd.org to OpenBSD then ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's actually crap. They use the university of alberta's server as it has more bandwidth available to it than their own connection.

  8. Re:Time to move openbsd.org to OpenBSD then ... by zyche · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFFAQ.
    http://openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#wwwsolar is

    "www.openbsd.org and the main OpenBSD ftp site are hosted at a SunSITE at the University of Alberta, Canada. These sites are hosted on a large Sun system, which has access to lots of storage space and Internet bandwidth. The presence of the SunSITE gives the OpenBSD group access to this bandwidth. This is why the main site runs here."

    And even given this, ftp.openbsd.org is usually very slow around release time.

  9. Multiple Niches by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Yeah, the whole BSD vs Linux conflict is ridiculous. There are a lot of niches out there in the software world, and Linux can't fill them ALL. Linux is nice on the desktop, handheld, and cluster, but the BSDs seem well suited for firewalls, routers, and other kinds of always-on equipment. OpenBSD in particular seems useful for bastion hosts, because of its rock-solid security. And of course, we still need Windows for hardcore gaming.

    The point? Niches -- there are a bunch of them. Although I'm a loyal Linux user, I love the OpenBSD project. It contributes a great deal of useful software and bugfixes that help the whole community.

  10. Re:No SMP? Huh? by Tranzig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The bigger news here, for me, is that Linux just jumped way up on my totem pole of respect.

    I wonder where Windows NT is on your totem pole, because it had SMP support years before Linux 2.0. And ACPI support and journalizing filesystem support and modules (drivers) support and so on...
    I know I will be modded down for such blasphemy.

    Anyways OpenBSD has (at least had last year) scalability issues, it scales pretty bad, and it needs to be solved ot get SMP really effective.

  11. Faulty Assumption? by SteveM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They really need to stop assuming everyone who reads /. knows it all.

    They don't assume you know it all. They do assume you are smart enough to do some research and find info on stuff you don't understand.

    How hard is it to google "SMP"?

    SteveM

  12. OpenBSD commands respect... by emil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...quite easily. Examine Red Hat's errata list for AS3, then look at OpenBSD's errata. I assume that you will see a rather conspicuous difference in the quantity of changes?

    Granted, this list is not entirely fair, as many ports and packages have bug fixes, which would push up OpenBSD's count. However, OpenBSD includes a great deal in the base distribution (SSH, Apache, Sendmail, etc.) that comprises what they assert to be audited, secure code.

    To me, the ability to deploy a server and then spend minimal effort with security patches is more important than SMP. YMMV.

  13. Get informed plix... by CptnHarlock · · Score: 5, Informative
    OpenBSD is NOT premirely a webserever. It can and is used as one (I do it), but its main use is as a firewall. It even got voted as "best application for firewalling" by the MS crowd.. :)

    I've been aware of OpenBSDs lack of SMP since 2000 when I installed it on a double PentiumPro 180 Mhz. I Thought it was weird it didn't have SMP since Linux and FreeBSD had it but after some reading I accepted the desision.

    I guess the OpenBSD guys went for SMP considering the double core desktop processors gaining more ground. Am I correct?

    Cheers...

    --
    $HOME is where the .*shrc is
    -- silver_p
    1. Re:Get informed plix... by jimi1283 · · Score: 4, Informative
      Ok, I have mod points and I have to comment on this. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the OpenBSD team does not do anything at the whim of the bitching masses. Did you not read the recent mailing list thread about the decision to stop updating Apache in the ports tree??? And what about when they removed ipf???

      Theo may be a hard headed son of a bitch but he takes care of buisness and is not swayed by popular opinion. This is not a sudden development, there were articles a year ago about how the OpenBSD team was looking for a full time programmer to work on SMP.

      This has been planned, and when OpenBSD executes a plan they execute it well.

  14. Re:Not so fast... by cubidou · · Score: 4, Informative
    Since OpenBSD SMP support is mostly NetBSD's plus code style changes, I'd say it only took 4 months to import what was started 3 or 4 years ago by Bill Studenmund for NetBSD.

    Oh, and I forgot, removal of all ACPI code, too.

    That means OpenBSD won't work with MP computers that have a broken MPBIOS or simply require MPACPI (like most, if not all, HyperThreading processors do).

  15. Re:No SMP? Huh? by Alioth · · Score: 4, Informative

    OpenBSD's focus is vastly different from Linux's (I use both, and I use them where appropriate). OpenBSD's primary focus has been on security and correctness of the implementation. Compare OpenBSD's pf with Linux's iptables - pf is so much more powerful and useful than iptables the difference is like night and day. The OpenBSD pf has security features that cost large sums of money in the closed source world.

    SMP simply is not a priority for OpenBSD. The kind of uses OpenBSD is put to hardly ever requires it, so it's not in the least surprising that they are only just implementing it now.

  16. soekris by curator_thew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Read the soekris website, it puts it nicely:

    FreeBSD The most powerful x86 open source Unix OpenBSD The most secure open source Unix available NetBSD The most portable open source Unix available Linux The most popular open source Unix