OpenBSD 3.6 Live

An anonymous reader writes "There is a mounting excitement for the upcoming OpenBSD 3.6 release, as it is the first release that supports multiprocessor systems. To celebrate the event, ONLamp.com published an interview with several developers to discuss new features, tools, and future plans."

Comments

At least he's honest

[cmad_x]

FB: How does this compare with FreeBSD 4, FreeBSD 5, and DragonFlyBSD? Niklas Hallqvist: Actually I don't know. I'd expect we'd do worse in anything that is interrupt-intensive. We probably do worse even for the common case where several runnable processes exist simultaneously as well. But ... we do not aim to compete at the edge here. We want to make scalability happen without disrupting our security and robustness track record. We just have other priorities.

Well at least he's being honest, unlike *cough* other people/companies. Go OpenBSD security!

What an Interview! Wireless firmware storm brewin

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never seen so much credible info from so many of the OpenBSD developers! I understand now a little more how they approach things. I wish I could read a similar article on the others, to see how FreeBSD and NetBSD and DragonflyBSD compare. Hopefully Oreilly will see the uptick in web hits and keep it up, with some more interview type articles.

There is a storm brewing over at the OpenBSD Journal web site at http://undeadly.org over including binary blob files in the kernel for the fariuos wireless cards. I have to agree with the premise: You vendors put your binary firmware files on all the CDs you sell with your wireless cardss, so if anyone wanted to reverse engineer yoru stuff, they just have to buy the card and they get the binary file. OpenBSD just wants to put same file in their distribution so if you plug your wireless card into an OpenBSD system it will get recognized and used. Sounds simple enough to me. The other approach is to somehow download the file (freely available on sourceforge or from the vendor, or the CD that came with your little card..) That makes it so much more involved for installing.

The short version: Some companies see the light and are cooperating, others, notably Texas Instruments http://www.ti.com have been strangely silent. Fasten your seat belts, fellow puffys.

Re:Props

[Ricin]

And pf was of course modeled after Darren Reed's ipfilter which was OBSD's package filter software in the past (until there was some disagreement), and NetBSD's (still now) and optionally FreeBSD's (one of two, now three).

In fact I think iptables was somewhat modeled after ipflter. There has been an ipfilter port for RedHat around RH5 IIRC but it got abandoned.

Re:openbsd is so slow

[setagllib]

That wasn't actually a reply to what I said at all, but I agree with you anyway, NetBSD is the one for miling performance out of machines and software. I find it usually leaves Linux in the dust too, but I haven't tried SMP.

Re:OpenBSD 3.6 released

[evilviper]

anyway, where are you getting the md5 from? the same ftp server where you're getting the release?

Well, an MD5 is very small, and could easily be checked. If I was running the OpenBSD project, I'd have a machine with all the correct hashes, downloading the hash files from each server ever hour, and rasing hell if they're different. That would take care of the problem, if only the people running the project even cared.