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BSD Hacks
Dru writes the BSD Basics column on O'Reilly & Associates' OnLamp. Her clarity and fluid style are perfect for those looking to understand aspects of the BSD operating systems. I have had some email communications with Dru about various New York City *BSD User Group-related activities, and managed to speak with her several times at BSDCan this past May.
Like most computer nerds, Dru has a sense of humor. Unlike most, however, she's actually funny.
BSD Hacks is the first book that is almost solely focused on hacks for sysadmins, without boring you with the details for basic operating system installation and configuration that has been so well documented elsewhere. BSD Hacks is not just for sysadmins, though. Intermediate and advanced BSD users will also find the book an excellent tool. For those who find difficulty in BSD installs and other fundamentals, on the other hand, it's best to start with the FreeBSD Handbook, the NetBSD Guide or the OpenBSD FAQ.
There's lots of good hacks buried in the various BSD books, around the internet in different HOWTOs and tutorials. But BSD hacking is the sole purpose of BSD Hacks; there's no need to browse through install screens and overviews of TCP/IP before getting to the heart of the matter.
With 100 listed hacks, multiplied by an impressive level of detailed angles for each, Dru provides an array that demands the placement of this book right in your server room, not in a pile of "must-read-at-some-distant-point-in-the-future" texts.
The majority of hacks are applicable to all the BSDs, including Darwin and OS X, although some are specific to one BSD or another.
This review obviously can't list every hack, although you would be smart to sit and work through the book yourself over a weekend or two. But it is possible to provide a good flavor of BSD Hacks in brief. O'Reilly and Associates does give a good glimpse on their Sample Hacks page, but let's do a quick work through ourselves.
The first chapter is called "Customizing the User Environment," and is probably best for end-users looking to go beyond their first steps. But it does include some useful hacks, such as "Use an Interactive Shell" that certainly fit well into the arsenal of any sysadmin, not to mention Hack #12 "Use Multiple Screens on One Terminal."
The second chapter, "Dealing with Files and Filesystems" also contains gems for both end-users and sysadmins. The use of mtree, which maps a directory hierarchy, is mentioned as a tool for recovery. Later on in chapter 6, Dru details its use for making a hacked data integrity checker, thus filling the role often played by products such as Tripwire.
Another great tool Dru covers in the second chapter is g4u, a free ghosting program that gives you the ability to perform quick restores over ftp. Ghosting a drive image is an incredibly useful tool, whether it's about replicating servers or doing a quick reinstall and configuration when a server fails in an emergency.
Chapter 3 is entitled "Boot and Login Environments." It gives some hacks that aren't just for basic system administration, but also some useful security ones including changing your /etc/passwd file to Blowfish encryption and utilizing OPIE for one-time passwords, which is built into FreeBSD.
"Backup Up" is the focus of Chapter 4. It includes some very creative methods of dealing with maintaining that necessity, and also includes an excellent primer on Bacula, which is increasingly gaining prominence as a cross-platform backup system.
Chapter 5 covers "Network Hacks," and continues on educating a sysadmin. Included in this chapter is the tcpdump program, a vital tool for watching traffic flowing by your network interfaces.
There's a strong security focus in Chapter 6, entitled "Securing the System." While security hacks are sprinkled generously throughout the book, this chapter works with firewalling with IPF and PF, in addition to covering SSH and Snort. It also includes the earlier mentioned 'intrusion detection-lite' approach with mtree.
Chapter 7, "Going Beyond the Basics" explores scripting, analyzing dreaded buffer overflows and more. Dru also includes a bit on "Creating a Trade Show Demo," not something you'd expect documented in print anywhere, but nevertheless quite useful for anyone working for the BSDs at a conference.
Dru continues with "Keeping Up-to-Date" in Chapter 8, which includes useful details on upgrading and downgrading your installed ports.
The final chapter is "Grokking BSD." "Grok," as Dru comments, refers to the science fiction writer Heinlein's Martian phrase for having a "thorough understanding." Dru covers creating your own manual pages, dealing with custom patches, playing with dictionaries and more.
Certainly there are no walls between each chapter, as many of the hacks could be shifted around. All the more reason to work your way through the book from beginning to end.
One useful addition for this book could have been somehow denoting which of the BSDs (in some cases, it's all of them) to which each listed hack can be applied. Certainly not all are available to Darwin and Apple's OS X. And certainly there's no point in making the OpenBSD /etc/passwd file encrypted in Blowfish, since that is its default.
While many of the hacks are found somewhere in the manual pages, on some useful website, buried in another book or in the minds of some developer somewhere, they're not necessarily in the annals of official documentation. But there's no single book or site that provides the depth and breadth that Dru provides. She managed to tap into the thoughts of dozens of developers and sysadmins around the world, greatly enhancing the variety of hacks in this book.
As a side note, the scope of BSD Hacks isn't limited to just the BSD family. Many of these are likely applicable to Linux and the other UNIX systems. But with recent, impressive increases in the BSD install base, there's a good chance that you can access a BSD box somewhere.
Whether you're a sysadmin managing hundreds of servers, or a power user ready to go beyond the obvious, BSD Hacks belongs next to your CRT.
You can purchase BSD Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
BSD hacked ? Why ? Anyway its dying..
fuck you all
Books for operating systems that are dying?
FreeBSD vs Linux - The Definitive Comparison
Flamewars between FreeBSD and Linux advocates occur all the time, so it's often hard to make a judgement. Our 500-employee company recently decided to convert fully to Open Source software and OSes; I was put in charge of making the decisions. It boiled down to FreeBSD and Linux, and without letting any bias or emotions get in the way, I established the following criteria.
Performance
This is a complicated issue, so let's consider these three types of machine (in use at our company):
Single CPU server: FreeBSD just edged ahead of Linux on this one. The differences weren't drastic, but large enough - consequently, score 1 for FreeBSD here.
Multi CPU server: With kernel 2.6, Linux performed considerably better than both FreeBSD 4.9 and 5.2.1. The updated SMP code and revised scheduler have worked wonders here, so 1 for Linux.
Desktop: Linux 2.6 is much faster than either FreeBSD, particularly when the system is heavily loaded. Application start times are slightly better, while responsiveness is remarkably superior to FreeBSD. Another 1 for Linux.
Result: FreeBSD 1, Linux 2
Stability
Linux distributions vary greatly in terms of stability, with Mandrake Linux and Fedora Core aiming for bleeding-edge desktop features, while Slackware and Debian put great emphasis on stability. FreeBSD is indeed a reliable OS, but the smaller development and testing community puts it behind Linux - additionally, there are more full-time Linux developers working with commercial companies on hardware support and core component testing.
Our Debian and Slackware systems have never crashed or suffered any other major glitches in five years of use, and we know of other individuals and companies that can say the same. With the correct distribution selection, Linux systems are extremely reliable. The far greater amount of testing by the community and companies gives Linux a boost here.
Result: FreeBSD 0, Linux 1
Support
Ease of updating: Although a third-party binary updaing system exists, it's not yet part of the official FreeBSD system (and consequently, problems with trust occur). Current FreeBSD releases rely on manual CVS updating, patch applying, compilation and installation. Debian GNU/Linux, conversely, only needs a single command to update; this is a major win for Linux, as it saves a huge amount of time on a large number of machines. 1 to Linux.
Length of support: Each FreeBSD point release is only supported for 12 months. The Debian Project supports each of its releases for over two years, and other distros such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux are supported for five years. Although upgrading FreeBSD is fairly simple, the changes in userland tools and Ports means that extensive re-testing of home-grown apps needs to be made. A major win for Linux here.
Commercial support: FreeBSD is significantly weaker on this front, with Linux vendors offering a much greater range and variety of support contracts than are available for FreeBSD. 1 to Linux.
Result: FreeBSD 0, Linux 3
Hardware
Server: FreeBSD's driver range for server-class machines is very good, and the drivers themselves are robust and well-tested. Linux is strong on this front too, but FreeBSD just pips it to the post. 1 to FreeBSD.
Desktop: Linux far surpasses FreeBSD in terms of desktop hardware support, with a gigantic range of drivers and subsystems from both kernel developers and third parties. 1 to Linux.
Other platforms: Debian supports more architectures than FreeBSD, although the gap is narrowing. NetBSD supports even more, but that involves throwing another BSD variant into the mix - this causes problems. 1 to Linux.
Result: FreeBSD 1, Linux 2
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
...is dying!
Does nobody recognize the disturbing sameness in online communication? Some of you have of course; as trolls, you realize you can't paddle against the current without discovering the current in the first place. Cruelly relegated to read-only status, I had time to fully consider the emergent patterns here and on other forums, blogs, and the rest of the Internet.
You see repetitive drivel. So did I, until the unmistakable glimmer -- the merest hint, my friends -- of fundamental truth caught my eye from under a pile of posts justifying P2P use with suspect but undeclared motives. Immediately I set myself to finding a way to filter and distill to a most succinct form the common wisdom strewn throughout the Internet. Buried in its subconscious, if you will.
I'm no AI genius, but it seemed to me that what those guys are missing is simplicity. In one night I threw together some code that would download the Internet and run it through a regular expression filter that would look for statements that, in computer science notation, match the form SOMETHING is SOMETHING. I could have done the same thing with 'was' or 'will be' but my current concern is with the present. Singular.
Now you end up with a whole bunch of stuff when you do something like this, and it aborted halfway through downloading the Internet when I ran it the first time, wasting the second day of the experiment. After deleting some games off my hard drive, I ran the program again and when I woke up on day four I had a complete set of all declarative sentences and sentence fragments currently online downloaded and ready to parse.
This was a bit tougher, but certainly not impossible. First one has to make sure everything's spelt correctly, assuming things that aren't are proper names only if they show up in statistically significant numbers in the aggregate. Then throw out everything that isn't in American English. But here's where the magic occurs: if 'A is B' and 'B is C' then clearly 'A is C'. I suspected the scheme may need some tweaking, but in true hacker spirit I fired up the VB.net runtime anyway and hit the sack.
To my delight the program executed flawlessly, and I awoke to a status message informing me of its success. Tentatively, I pushed WINKEY+R and issued the command to display the output:
*BSD IS DYING
Grieving is a process, and it's totally normal to go through feelings of shock, sadness, anger even guilt. The healing process is different for everyone. It might take you six weeks to move on, or it might take you six years. Don't beat yourself up because you're not "over it" yet. It takes time to heal wounds.
So what else can you do to feel better? It might sound corny, but try writing a letter, making a collage, or planting a tree in memory of the operating system you've lost. Remembering and celebrating all the good things *BSD brought to your life might help give you some closure, and having a keepsake to honor *BSD may help you get through some tough times in the future when you'll be missing it.
It's true that life won't be the same without *BSD around. It may seem like you'll never feel better, but eventually you will. Take some comfort in the old saying, "Time heals all wounds," and remember that *BSD will always be with you in your heart.
From the write-up "have hit the bookstores during the recent past"
Yes, those are much easier to review than those that arrive in the recent future.
FYI, the word you are looking for is "recently".
HTH
Q: What do you call a *BSD developers convention?
A: A mortuary!
Laugh ! OS used by Yahoo is dying...
Visit Tutorials & guides collection
*BSD is... ALIVE!
I can hear the sound of a million BSD-is-dying trolls banging on their keyboards.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Listen. That gurgling sound you hear? That is the death rattle in BSD's throat.
Is a hacks book a good way to go about learning more about the insides of an OS (BSD) and how it works, or are there other books out there for this purpose? I know elementary UNIX (if you count Terminal OS X as UNIX) but I'm not sure if books like this are a good way to broaden the scope of what I know in the language, or just specific directions and instructions on how to get some things power users have always wanted to work... to work.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
OMFG have you seen the Doom 3 trailer it's like slow and it's telling you all the stuff you did in the first one then the music kicks in and and the chief comes out and gets a gun the earf is on fire and chief is like fuck this im jumping and HE JUMPS PUT OF TEH SPACESHIP with angels singing and he lands on the bad guys and that annoying ai lady is like GO GET EM TIGER! WILDCAT IS ON TEH SPOKE!!!~`1 and theres less polys but rawkin bumb mappings you can view this on a special MICROSOFT xbox disk that comes with EB games store.
Rocky-Road Icecream is DEAD!
Everyone knows that Orange Sherbert icecream is better than Rocky-Road icecream.
You can ask anyone who works in an icecream shop, everyone wants Orange Sherbert!
If you eat Rocky-Road icecream, then you are a necropheliac because Rocky-Road icecream is dead!
Everyone knows that Orange Sherbert icecream is superior. Rocky-Road icecream eaters are morons.
Even the people who make Rocky-Road icecream know that their days are numbered. They don't sell as much icecream as the Orange Sherbert icecream makers.
Although more basic/moderate in experience, it seems well partitioned and presents many of the important topics in OS admin. The 'Grok' section is intriguing.
BSD (to me) would be an interesting study, as it is a familiar design, but has a different license structure and fan base.
Makes me want to BSD an old 'puter and get a *nix/*nix/win (lone client laptop) network.
lunix ees teh whay of lief. ehhh heh phag schlashdot shucks.. .ehhehhhh
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
[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
I have electronic editions :P rac tical.Paranoid.eBook-LiB.chm
No.Starch.Press.Absolute.OpenBSD.UNIX.For.The.
and
O'Reilly - BSD Hacks [2004].chm
If you want it, let me know, I can upload.
It is not piracy because it is on slashdot.
Good job, editors. You are getting rich off of the slashdot's who think this content is original and thought provoking.
In fact, it is paid for by the greedy fucker publishers who peddle this bullshit on slashdot. The sad part is: you pathetic slashbots obviously lap it up like good little consumers because of your open sores zealotry. You buy the books because you think it will make you l33t3r or smarter. How wrong you are..
You make me, and all other true commie hippy lunix users vomit in disgust.
Where is my FUCKING SCO story?
I happen to own Secure Architectures with openBSD. While it covers a lot of ground found in other admin books as well, there are some nice things to be found here. Especially the comments on how-not-to-do-it were sometimes... well let's say useful :-)
Click on the Mystery Futures Link!
Please login to access my lawn
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
Dang! And I thought BSD was dying... guess Daryl better not find out...
She was giving free blowjobs at BSDCan! Now how cool is that?
Mike Bouma, netowrk architect at Y!
Marginalized operating systems require you to jump through more hoops to get things accomplished. Not only do you have to track changes in your operating system, but you have to track changes in unsupported software and emulation libraries. You always have to tweak and use "work-arounds" because your hardware is probably not supported by any vendor.
Things only get more hairy day by day as BSD becomes increasingly marginalized.
It's good to see BSD getting some well deserved recognition.
Although BSD isn't commonly seen as an end platform in practice (with some notable exceptions), the code and technology in it are probably used in favorite OS no matter what OS that is.
So for once guys, be you linux fans, windows fans, or OS X fans, tip your hats. We should all be encouraging the growth and development of BSD.
Ass stones, I have ass stones, They are painful and are really big.
From the, pork that i eat..it's un-digested and is full of pee...
SING TI!!
Unfortunately this is just another OS. Business don't care what we love. I will never suggest FreeBSD to customer who need another OS independently how much I love BSD. But sometimes I really hate linux, don't care I use them :-)
Visit Tutorials & guides collection
n/t
BSD may be dying but Ninnle Linux is stronger than ever, and so is NinnleBSD!
There is no question. This book is useful and one of the best books that I've seen for a long time.
I'm using FreeBSD 4 and 5. That's why I like this book really much. It gives so many examples how to cope with shell settings, file systems, backups and many other typical problems. I have learned a lot from this book.
This here, is not the whole truth:
The majority of hacks are applicable to all the BSDs, including Darwin and OS X, although some are specific to one BSD or another.While reading this book you will find quite a lot passages saying: "For NetBSD, look at: http://...", "For OpenBSD, try: http://...", "Unfortunatelly, NetBSD..." or explaining NetBSD/OpenBSD features in one short paragraph and pointing to man-pages, while FreeBSD is explained with lots of details. I mean, this does not disturb me, but it might be annoying for other users.
What is it with the "Slashdot Scene" that the mere mention of *BSD invokes insults from every corner. I can see this coming from the Microsoft crowd, but from FOSS advocates?
Come on people, it's not like you pay for it! It's just as free as Linux! Each serve their purpose. Now, if you can't say anything positive, don't say anything at all.
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 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 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
I see someone is still taking up arms in the "hack vs. crack" nomeclature war. I thought we had surrendered.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
Marginalized operating systems require you to jump through more hoops to get things accomplished. Not only do you have to track changes in your operating system, but you have to track changes in unsupported software and emulation libraries. You always have to tweak and use "work-arounds" because your hardware is probably not supported by any vendor.
Things only get more hairy day by day as BSD becomes increasingly marginalized.
How Can BSD be dead? I'm running it... it's doing its job... looks alive to me!
significantly Users With Large head spinning on baby...don't market. Therefore this mistake or here, please do FreeBSD at about 80 obtain a copy of FreEBSD project, dying. All major perspective, the = 36400 FreeBSD www.anti-slash.org myself. This isn't Anything can niggerness? And YOU GOT THERE. OR progress. In 1992, the political mess session and join in We'll be able to RAM) for about 20 My efforts were OpenBSD leader Theo are the important paper towels, MY CALLING. NOW I our cause. Gay Well-known Said one FreeBSD it there. Bring battled in court, common knowledge out how to make the OpenBSD guys. They join in. It can be We'll be able to
Documentation is a good thing.
Good documentation is considerably better.
It's good to see that the market is there for decent, affordable reference works for more than just Linux and Windows (though the latter is debatable... and that's not trolling, I have been a Windows admin for years and the thing that keeps me running Linux and *BSD baxes in my environments is that, as a rule, the documentation is a hell of a lot more affordable and accessible and generally better).
It is a shame that any BSD story on slashdot has to be inundated with the same tired "BSD is dead" trolls. Not that I am surprised to see trolling here, but get some creativity FFS (and that doesn't mean Fast Filesystem in this context).
You aren't even worth the mod points to flag you for what you really are, you sad, friendless twits.
It is official - Netcraft now confirms: Humanity is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Human community when IDC confirmed that Human market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all things on the net. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Humans has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Humanity is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Humanity's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Humanity faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Humanity because Humanity is dying. Things are looking very bad for Humans. As many of us are already aware, Humanity continues to lose market share. Blood flows like a river of red ink.
"Smart People"(tm) are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core reproducers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time people Stephen King and Feynman only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Humanity is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Human watchdog organisation BBC states that there are around 42,140 nuclear warheads poised to annihilate Humanity . How many People are there? Let's see. The number 6,382,978,111 was given by http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw. Therefore there are about 6,383,000,000 humans. Therefore there are about 6,400,000,000 people. A recent article put China's population at about 20 percent of the world population. Therefore there are about 1,261,832,482 chinnese people. This is consistent with the number of people in china.
Due to the troubles of world politics, abysmal birth rates in Japan and Italy, germ warfare, natural plauges, famine, and so on, people are largely screw. Now more people are dead, and with the death rate holding at a steady 100% there's little hope.
All major surveys show that Humans are pretty damn stupid. Humanity is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Humanity is to survive at all it will be through space travel. Earth continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Humanity is dead.
Fact: Humanity is dying
This book (which I picked up in a recent book shopping binge) reminds me most of Unix Power Tools. I own the 2nd edition and I've reviewed the 3rd edition. The similarities to the "Hacks" series is striking (not surprising, considering that they're both published by O'Reilly). The "Hacks" books seem to be shorter and with fewer tips receiving more thorough treatment.
A comment I wrote for the Power Tools review applies to BSD Hacks as well:
Among the most hyperlinked book I've seen, this book is filled with hundreds of useful tips and, perhaps most interestingly, Unix culture. It's only marginally successful as a reference manual or as a teaching aid as it focuses on the useful-but-obscure aspects of Unix. Where it truly excels is in steeping the reader in ``How do I''-style Unix lore until it comes out of their pores.
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
Many folks who want to benefit from the law of reciprocity contribute each month to the 700 Club. I would recommend that you start watching the 700 Club on you television and decide for yourself it it is for you.
God wants you to be prosperous. A popular book titled The Prayer of Jabez shows you how to claim the prosperity which God holds in store for you. Your library might have a copy. It is definitely worth a read.
That would be great!!!
MOD PARENT DOWN THIS GUY FUCKS SHEEP AND HATES LINUX HE AINT ONE OF US AND HE PROBABLY THINKS BSD ISNT DYING
s ss sssssssssssssssdddddddddddddddddddddddffffffffffff ffffffffffff
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssss
I don't get it either.
It truly boggles my mind. What's the problem? Does it upset the trolls so that another free unix-like operating system exists? Deal with it. You don't have to use it.
Whatever. My real beef (as stated in my post somewhere below) is that we get the same tired cut and paste trolls, which waste my time with screens full of crap when I want to peruse the comments.
I am curious though... how many of the trolls have actually worked with a *BSD system? More to the point have any of these trolls ever actually been in a network/systems admin position (and sorry, helpdesk doesn't qualify as network admin -- I've been both and it is a big difference)?
Those books hurt when thrown through bookstore windows, one hit my head :(
They're quite potent when they hit anything, bookstores, lamps, craniums, etc.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My good friend Michael Vince had two of his scripts included in the BSD Hacks book, including Quickpatch which was also featured as a sample chapter
His projects website is here at ROQ.COM and also has the very useful IPFilter script.
As an aside, he said that in his bio in the book, OReilly credited him with different hacks than the ones he actually wrote... editorial snafu.
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
- Hubert
I bought a copy of Secure Architectures with OpenBSD and I think it is quite good, especially if you consider its relatively low price.
It's not that it cover every detail of every feature of OpenBSD, rather it many gives some background to them that the (ohh so excellent) man pages doesn't provide. For example: while the man page explain what rarpd does, the book admits that the service is quite archaic. :-)
I like it, and have learned a lot from it, even then I thought I knew most of it (or know where to look).
From the samples, it doesn't look good at all... It was written by someone with rather limited knowledge, who doesn't really like to do things the right way.
For instance, hack 100 tells you to copy the ~/.Xauthority file from user "dru" to root's home, then set DISPLAY. This is so root can display an X11 window...
The right way to do this is to:
A) use "xhost" as "dru". Specifically, "xhost +local:root" will give root access to the X server. If you're root, it's easy to su to dru, run xhost, then exit back to the root shell.
B) instead of exporting "DISPLAY" manually, it's best to just leave the "-l" off of SU, and inherent that variable automatically. Afterall, it could be DISPLAY=:19.0
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Do any of these new books cover DragonFly BSD? I'm in the process of switching all my computers over from FreeBSD to DragonFly. It would sure be nice to have some DragonFly books.
Anyone know of any good literature out there on *BSD written as such that it is geared towards experienced Linux sysadmins? i.e. offering a list of key differences (or similarities) on various levels of system organization, administration, common/best community practicies etc.?
Netcraft confirms it, Linux trolls are dieing. Slashdot's clique of giggling/conspiring school girls, Linux trolls harp over minor issues in windows as they ignore huge, gaping holes in Linux. Like a dog in heat humping an uncomfortable human's leg these unfortunate souls believe that if they just push hard enough, they can fuck the whole world before they lick their own groin.
Sad Trolls
While pretending to run or in some cases actually even running the now defunct operating system these trolls post hypothetical flaws of windows that they don't even understand. While attempting to convince potential users that the incredible inconvenience of Linux is worth the negligible advantage of Open Source Software they cite 'facts' that make one wonder if these trolls have ever even used a computer, much less Linux.
One thing is clear:Linux trolls are dieing.
Asia
Home to 3 trillion people, Asia was seen as a possible breeding ground for Linux use thanks to its widespread poverty and poor hygiene. This potential coup for Linux was averted, however when Microsoft entered into a rampant piracy agreement with the people of Asia worth an estimated -$34,000,000,000.
Global Ramifications
As a result, the proponents of this hard to use and poorly designed operating system have had to resort to sad measures. The most common is the "pretend to know Linux by mocking Windows trolls while really not even knowing either operating system well" troll. While usually guaranteed to garner some mod points, these trolls have been called out of late by a group of Windows trolls who know they are full of shit.
The fallout over the hivemind mentality of these sad and confused youngsters has led to the collapse of what was once a glowing beacon to trolls everywhere. Once held up as a symbol of individuality and defiance of the rules, Linux trolls have now been associated with the very conformists they purport to despise. These people that say whatever will make them look cool at the time threaten the already iffy credibility of true Linux trolls.
Fact: Linux trolls are dieing.
are some of the biggest biters this side of YRO?
I'm just sayin....
- Laci Peterson
- Lori Hacking
- Nicole
Simpson
- BSD
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