OpenBSD 3.7 Released

pgilman writes "It's official: OpenBSD 3.7 has been released. There are oodles of new features, including tons of new and improved wireless drivers (covered here previously), new ports for the Sharp Zaurus and SGI, improvements to OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, CARP, PF, a new OSPF daemon, new functionality for the already-excellent ports & packages system, and lots more. As always, please support the project if you can by buying CDs and t-shirts, or grab the goodness from your local mirror."

Comments

How's the install?

[m50d]

Manually creating a BSD disklabel is not to be taken lightly. If you're experienced you can do it, but it's very far from friendly. Anyone know if they've done anything to make it easier?

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

buy the CD. Dedicate 1 HDD to OpenBSD. Then follow the printed instructions. i avoided OpenBSD for a lond time because of FUD like this. Found out that it is probably one of the best *nix distros there is. Simple, well documented, and WORKS. Also the pors tree is clean and smooth. Almost as easy as apt-get.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. If you're dedicating a disk to OpenBSD and don't care about how you lay it out, you can do a very simple install with just swap and / , though of course you're better off splitting this up. And for many of the options for disklabel the default works fine. It's not pretty nor pointy clicky, but if that's what you're after the bsd's probably aren't for you.

Re:How's the install?

[ignorant_coward]

Yes, people who say OpenBSD is hard because of the non-GUI installer just end up making themselves look lame. OpenBSD really is not that hard to install, and I actually prefer it to Red Hat's do-as-we-want-you-to-do installer.

Re:How's the install?

[Caligari]

Its really not hard, especially after you read the excellent documentation.

The installer might not have shiny graphics, but its actually extremely simple. It fits on a single floppy and can be used remotely. Same goes for upgrading.

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

Manually creating a BSD disklabel is not to be taken lightly. If you're experienced you can do it, but it's very far from friendly. Anyone know if they've done anything to make it easier?

It is confusing when you come from i386 and have used Linux. It was, at least for me, quite confusing the usage of the word "partition".

To simplify, on Linux on i386 for each file system there will be a partition (DOS type). On BSD you commonly create a primary DOS parition using fdisk, and then use disklabel to create different filesystems on that particular DOS partition. "Primary" beacuse BSD may only boot from a primary DOS partition (at most four of those).

Now, when you enter fdisk you are asked to "parition" your harddisk(s). Then you enter disklabel and are asked to create new partitions. WTF? I just did that! Enter the term "slice" that is not quite the same across the BSD. Erh, you won't see the word "slice" in the man pages, though.

Not sure if OpenBSD 3.7 still have this usage of partition, though.

In any case, I'm a happy user of OpenBSD since 3.2/3.3.

Re:How's the install?

[DrSkwid]

aw come off it

partitioning HD's is Computer Building 101

spend an evening to understand it and it will put in good stead for the rest of your life

Re:How's the install?

[conteXXt]

"Primary" beacuse BSD may only boot from a primary DOS partition.

Are you sure about that?

I mean that BSD will only boot from a Primary partition.

As I understand it, That is an i386 problem, not limited to BSD.

If I am wrong please feel free to enlighten (but not ignite) me.

Re:How's the install?

[maita]

Don't worry, it is just another added security layer for your safety. Now, you have to agree, it works well!

The installation lures you into thinking all is going well until it hits you with OpenBSD's most reliable security method: the Dumb Sysadmin Prevention System . In short, OpenBSD's install is so hard that you need to be genius to complete it, thus eliminating the cause of the majority of security issues -- dumb sysadmins.

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

aw come off it partitioning HD's is Computer Building 101 spend an evening to understand it and it will put in good stead for the rest of your life

Perhaps you should widen your experience beyond i386 and Linux. It's confusing because the same word partition (on i386) is used to refer to both DOS partion (fidsk) and filesystem (disklabel).

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

will people never ever learn the basics of partitioning? disklabel is easy as hell if you cant use it go back to windows, you probably wont get anything out of openbsd anyway.

Re:How's the install?

[TheRealMindChild]

The boot sector must be loaded from a primary partition, this is true. The bios first looks at the MBR, then the boot sector of Primary Partition 0 on disk 0, and so on...

Now, booting an OS that resides on a non-primary partition requires what is called a two-stage boot loader, and it does exactally what you think it would. Both NTLDR and lilo (among most others) work this way. The boot sector contains JUST ENOUGH code to find the second stage boot loader (reading a file, looking on the root of all partition, whatever), load it, and set the execution point.

Hope this helps

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

Yes, on i386 OpenBSD may _only_ boot from a primary parition, and that is what I wrote. On other architectures there are different rules.

Re:How's the install?

[saider]

I think the confusion came from the fact that you called it a "primary DOS partition". Primary partitions are a i386 thing. DOS partitions are partitions created to hold a DOS filesystem (FAT,FAT32,etc).

The primary partition does not need to be a DOS partition to install BSD.

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

I think the confusion came from the fact that you called it a "primary DOS partition". Primary partitions are a i386 thing. DOS partitions are partitions created to hold a DOS filesystem (FAT,FAT32,etc).

Exactly the point of my first post ;-)

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

You don't need to be a genius to install OpenBSD. Assuming that you can read English, the installation instructions are more enough.

Actually, the (almost) main reason why I use OpenBSD is because it's easy to install, configure and maintain in a secure way. Yeah, I know, I'm lazy ;-)

Re:How's the install?

[arete]

You're right that these are i386 limitations (although not all BIOS's are actually limited like this) But you're overstating how big of a limitation it is.

I think the way you said that is misleading, because it sounds like you're saying "OpenBSD must be installed in a primary DOS partition to be bootable"

That is definitely not true. OpenBSD does not necessarily have to touch a primary partition to be bootable.

The limitation is really "SOMETHING has to pick what boots" usually (but not always) the i386 BIOS is pretty dumb about this, so something somewhere has to be on a primary partition.

One of the primary partitions on the first drive must be marked active, and that partition must contain a bootable OS OR boot loader that can find your OS - but that's trivial these days. - THE BOOT LOADER DOESN'T HAVE TO MATCH YOUR OS -

So you could have OpenBSD in a logical partition and have a linux boot loader in a primary partition that lets you select on boot which partition - primary or logical, on any drive - gets booted. You could also have this selection be automatic. You could have it boot OpenBSD if it's Thursday, if you wanted. Except for that last part, this is all very, very common freeware.

http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/BOOT/PARTITIO.HTM

Re:How's the install?

[conteXXt]

Actually I wasn't really playing on the "DOS" part.

I was more trying to get the point across that it isn't only OpenBSD that is limited to this.

Another poster described the boot process very accurately (and as I understand it).

So no OpenBSD CAN boot from any partition. But its BOOTLOADER must reside in a primary partition (dos or otherwise) Same as linux winnt etc.

P.S. I have used OpenBSD in production (firewalls mostly) for years now.

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

It's not FUD. There are plenty of cases where dedicating a HDD is not an option, requiring a separate disk is unacceptable. I installed slackware from zero non-windows experience, hadn't used any disk partitioners at all, ever. When I nuked that (that was my learning not to run as root stage, but that's another story) I had an openbsd cd around, so I tried to install it. Had a windows partition on the disk I couldn't get rid of, but enough free space if I could figure out how the hell to partition it. Never managed to.

Re:How's the install?

[DrSkwid]

yes perhaps I should

no, wait a minute, I run BSD on Sparc & plan9 on x86

I only run Linux by force !

Re:How's the install?

[rpdillon]

Someone mod this offtopic; we're talking about OpenBSD, not FreeBSD. =)

Re:How's the install?

[mnmn]

Heres a mistake I made from a recent 3.7 snapshot....

In the fdisk program, if you press a key to reset the partition table, it resets it AND writes it. Most other partition changes require 'W' to write before exiting, so you can back off your errors... but the reset partition table resets and writes permanently... at least on amd64.

I tried it to check if it was completely zeroing out the table, or fixing the MBR, like fdisk /mbr in DOS... and I had to shift-pgup and write down the partition table display, and manually reconstruct it.

Re:How's the install?

[ACNiel]

I was going to make a cynical joke about simply reading the man pages or the other fine documention, as a joke.

You actually say that, with a straight face, and get modded informative. That in and of itself is funny.

That being said, I hope I get my wire frame Puff shirt. I ordered it several weeks ago, before I realized it was a pre-order. The anticipation is killing me.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

pretend he is a foreigner, and repeat what you just said a third time, but this time louder, and slower.

You don't need to add any explanation, just repeat yourself louder, and slower. Every time after, a little louder, a little slower. Don't add anything, just repeat louder, and slower.

Re:How's the install?

[whois]

Just ignore fdisk and use disklabel.

Here's the process we use for pxeboot/custom cd installs:

echo "Wiping drive.."
echo y | fdisk -i wd0 > /dev/null

echo "Running disklabel.."
disklabel -E wd0 /dev/null
d
*
a
a

400M

a
b

400M
swap
a
d

2G

a
e

w
q
EOF

echo -n "Creating filesystems.. a "
newfs wd0a >/dev/null
echo -n "d "
newfs wd0d >/dev/null
echo -n "e "
newfs wd0e >/dev/null
echo "done."

This creates 3 partitions and a swap partition, then puts the fs on them. You can mount them whereever you like.

Re:How's the install?

[SquadBoy]

I did it a few weeks ago for the first time. Had to read and think about the docs but there is nothing really hard about it. Of course I more and more think that the ability to read and think is a almost lost art so you must might have a point.

Re:How's the install?

[SquadBoy]

Did you read the install docs? Can't speak to back then but now they cover that scanario in *detail*. All you have to do is read and think. Oh wait that'll never be mainstream.

Re:How's the install?

[sn0wflake]

OMFG you're right :) Hope you all get my point anyhow :)

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

Good for you! Why are you still confused? You must have put quite some effort to have plan9 up and running.

Re:How's the install?

[someonehasmyname]

Like, OMG. You're so right. I bet back in the day, more people would have been running DOS if they didn't have to know what fdisk was.

How do they expect us to use this super advanced UNIX if we can't figure out how to install it?!

It's not like we're computer geeks or anything!1!!1

Re:How's the install?

[DrSkwid]

I'm not confused, the original poster was

plan9 is easy to install, it even boots from the CD into graphical desktop mode
I had it up and running the first day I tried it, when Ver 3 was announced here on /.

I have the auth server running on a stock VIA EPIA 5000 fanless board, my fileserver is a stock IBM Netfinity 5000 and my terminal is an Athlon with an nvidia gforce

I have put in quite a bit of effort in the meantime though, it is a bit to learn but being consistent, everything is a file, makes learning one aspect tranfer on to an other.

I did trawl ebay for suitable parts for a while but people's contributed drivers since ver 4 have made life much simpler, esp. the addition of the nvidia driver

Re:How's the install?

[sheriff_p]

I think you miss the point here. As a veteran OBSD user, I can confirm that:

a) The install process is really really easy
b) Except the disklabel part, which is really really hard

+Pete

Re:How's the install?

[Caligari]

It's only "hard" if you don't understand what you are doing.

Of course, OpenBSD is not for people who don't understand what they are doing.

Read the docs so you understand properly, and it is no longer hard :)

Re:How's the install?

[Caligari]

I'll assume you meant OpenBSD and not FreeBSD.

Thats cool if you don't like reading documenation. Stick with MacOSX/Windows/Linux/Whatever.

Nobody says OpenBSD is for everybody.

Re:How's the install?

[scatters]

Pah! Real men don't click!

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is by far the easiest OS I have ever installed. It took my about ten minutes start to finish today in a VMWare VM on my laptop. I have installed more Windoze boxen than I can remember (from 3.1 through Server2k3), many of the linuxes, all of the BSD's, Solaris, and many more. It is clean, simple, elegant, fast, secure - the best server OS (other than OS/390) I have experienced.

Yes, in order to optimize security and recoverability, you should (but don't have to) create separate partitions for /, swap, /tmp, /var, /usr & /home. It is all EXTREMELY well documented (a hallmark of OpenBSD for those of us who actually RTFM when building mission critical servers).

Boot from a floppy (yes, a SINGLE floppy), a single CDROM, netboot via PXE, or a swap partition, and install from a CD, NFS, FTP, disk, etc, and you are done. Read man afterboot and you are set.

Compare that with XP or 2k3 (not even including all those SP's and security patches), or one of the linuxes (on three to five CD's) and you will not regret your switch. The entire OS is much less than 100MB (unless you like X-Windows, in which case it might add another 50MB or so).

Try it, you'll like it. And not only does the install work great, the OS is clean and cruftless. The packages will let you seamlessly install most applications of worth. I can build a complete OpenBSD/Apache/PHP/MySQL box that is secure, stable and functional in less than 30 minutes.

Re:How's the install?

[QuietLagoon]

If you're experienced you can do it,

The first time I ever installed OpenBSD I was able to do it. Yet I was not experienced. Paradox?

Re:How's the install?

[trewornan]

Much to my shame I recently managed to create an OpenBSD installation with a 500Mb root partition and a 79.5Gb swap partition. Whoops!

Whether that means disklabel is difficult or I'm an idiot I leave to the reader.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone mod the parent something other than funny. Whoever modded it funny in the first place has a weird sense of humor..

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

I don't mind the lack of graphics, but the installer doesn't seem to give any pointers about how to install. It tells me I need to make a primary partition for bsd and mark it as active, so I do that. Then I try to run install and it can't find a partition. I appreciate that reading the documentation is important, but it should be doable at least for basic common configurations (not just the entire disk) without needing the doc.

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

I know the basics, but prior to this thread I didn't even know about the existence of the disklabel program. The installer gives you no clues at all. A "you probably want to do this" message would make the world of difference without much effort.

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

It won't be. It won't even be popular non-mainstream. A program that requires reading the docs to use is a flawed program. If you're doing something really complex, sure, one should expect to read the documentation, but installing alongside an existing partition is not complex.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

then why cant you figure out how to doit noob?

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

Because the installer doesn't tell you how.

Re:How's the install?

[Michael_Ayoub]

It's really not that hard. I am 14 years old, and have done at least three installations of each *BSD. I'm "just a stupid kid." How hard can it really be?

Good!

[erimir]

Very fine! Always like new versions of UNIX..

Re:Good!

[MightyMartian]

BSD is direct Unix herritage, Linux is the bastard COPY.

William the Conqueror was a bastard too, and you'll notice that you don't have anyone on the English throne named Ethelbert or or Athelstan.

Re:Good!

[brontus3927]

Go William the Conqueror! One of my ancestors fought under him in the Battle of Hastings.

Re:Good!

[Skye16]

Why was William the Conquerer standing on your ancestor?!?

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not standing, sitting. His ancestor was a horse.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been watching too much Saxon TV.

iso image Torrent

[anandpur]

Time to test Trackerless BitTorrent Beta! May be not

Re:iso image Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe yes

Re:iso image Torrent

[trewornan]

I've been trying to get BitTorrent working with Tor on OpenBSD, but there seems to be a bug with the proxychains.so "_connect" function call. I'm not the only person who's found this it's mentioned in a couple of posts on Neohapsis.

Anonymous BitTorrent is the holy grail.

Cool.

[dadragon]

I like 3.7. It's been tagged in CVS for a while now, and I've been running it since not long after that. Very Nice Indeed.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to install this on all my servers with Adaptec RAID cards! Oh yeah... Damn dirty Adaptec! How's Theo's battle with them going, by the way?

BSD OWNS YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD.

The only choice when you are more concerend aboout secutiry and stability then being a fanboy.

Re:BSD OWNS YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD.

Because a few people actually use Linux now, and you are too l33t to use something that has a userbase of more than 100.

Re:BSD OWNS YOU

[trewornan]

I use Mandrake on my laptop and OpenBSD on my server. From your world view, does that make me too l33t, cool, a BSD fanboy, a linux fanboy or a luser?

Re:BSD OWNS YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

From my world view, it means that you have been trolled.

Growl

[iamdrscience]

OpenBSD, OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, CARP, PF, OSPF

Do BSD-folk have some strange aversion to pronouncable acronyms? Only 1 out of 7!

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

Which idiots try and pronounce acronyms? Just say each letter, for crying out loud. It sure as hell sounds a lot better, and makes you look less like an idiot, than saying:

WYSIWYG: WIZZY-WIG
SCSI: SKUH-ZI
MIDI: MIDEE

Knock it the fuck off, please.

Re:Growl

[fr2asbury]

Sure they're pronouncable:
Open-bee-ess-dee
Open-ess-ess-aitc h
Open-bee-jee-pee-dee
Open-enn-tee-pee-dee
Car p
pee-eff
oh-ess-pee-eff

No problem. ;-)

Re:Growl

[starm_]

oh yeah caus " double-yu wiy ess iy double yu wiy gee" is better.

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

pronouncable acronym is redundant. unpronouncable acronyms aren't acronyms at all...they're initialisms.

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Oh, you mean BSDFSATPA. YWAHT. Or at least a huge majority (or OALAHM, as we usually pronounce it).

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

Pf, whatever.

Re:Growl

[moranar]

"Openbuzzd"

"Openshhhhh!"

"Pfff"

Those three are easy :)

Re:Growl

[TheRealMindChild]

Pronounceable acronyms are rediculous (almost as much so as the multitude of worthles acronyms).

I want to MURDER people who say "Sequel" instead of S-Q-L, "Say-Taa" instead of S-A-T-A, and especially "ERRRRRK" instead of I-R-C.

If the acronym was intended to be pronounced, the author would have done something like the SAMBA project, where SMB was the acronym, but they filled in the blanks to actually MAKE it a word.

Re:Growl

[someonehasmyname]

Tell me about it... I have a client that tries to pronounce _every_ acronym. It makes me crazy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "da-nis" instead of D-N-S, or "fipt" instead of F-T-P.

Re:Growl

[Waffle Iron]

Pronounceable acronyms are rediculous

Actually, acronyms are supposed to be pronounceable:

Initialism originally referred to abbreviations formed from initials, without reference to pronunciation, but during the middle portion of the twentieth century, when acronyms and initialisms saw more use than ever before, the word acronym was coined for abbreviations which are pronounced as a word, like "NATO" or "AIDS". The term initialism is now typically taken to refer to abbreviations which are pronounced by sounding out the name of each constituent letter (e.g. HTML).

What you are really saying is you don't like people using initialisms as acronyms.

Re:Growl

[SolusSD]

well as far as SQL goes, the original project name WAS sequel. it is a predecessor to SQL. Also, I advise you to stay away from gnu/linux if you hate pronouncing acronyms. Heck The unix community actually finds names for programs that contain the letters of the acronym to give them more pronouncable names. eg SAMBA for the unix SMB implementation.

Re:Growl

[Excelsior]

I'm sitting in a training class this very minute where the instructor keeps saying "Earl" instead of U-R-L. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard every time I hear it.

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

what baout SQL ebing pronounced sequel?

i belive there wasa proprietary sql called sequel so that my have been why.

but siurely not seqeuel in this day and age?
c# isnt that bad

but i am sure its some secret code to check for those who merely read and athose who walk in teh correct circles!

Re:Growl

[Alioth]

Say-Tay? Eugh.

I call it Sahtah (ah as in the a sound in 'cat'). And Squil instead of Sequel.

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

"I call it Sahtah (ah as in the a sound in 'cat'). And Squil instead of Sequel."

It's actually called: I hope you get shot. :)

Re:Growl

[epine]

Let me read that back for you: oh-pee-ess-off

Re:Growl

[DavidBurns]

Expanding on a previous comment: A 1970's IBM project, System/R, developed "Structured English Query Language" shortened to "SEQUEL", and later changed to SQL. The CORRECT pronunciation of "SQL" is still "sequel". Saying "ess kew ell" is the sign of a newbie. Not that there's anything wrong with newbies, until they get fresh about things they don't know about. See e.g. http://www.faqs.org/docs/ppbook/c1164.htm

Re:Growl

[Dwonis]

It makes me crazy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "da-nis" instead of D-N-S, or "fipt" instead of F-T-P.

Yes, those are obviously "Dennis" and "Fingertip".

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the correct pronunciation (according to ANSI) is "es queue el.".

The original acronym was indeed "SEQUEL", but they had to change it because of a name conflict. So they changed the name to "Structured Query Language" (and, by extension, the acronym).

Hence, calling it "sequel" doesn't make any sense.

Re:Growl

[ThJ]

Reasonable people actually mix the two. I'd never say "sequel" instead of "ess-que-ell", but everyone I know will say "eerrk" (not "erk", I live in Norway where we actually pronounce the letters properly, i.e. roughly like the Romans did). "Koomm port" for "COM port" is pretty common. "Ledd" for "LED" as well, or "Mooss-fett" for "MOSFET". I find that people generally treat pronouncable initialisms as acronyms, and I find it perfectly acceptable. I'd want to strangle someone if they went "dunaah" instead of DNA or "hittippp" instead of HTTP, but people don't do that, so I'm content.

Re:Growl

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf is "rediculous"?

Re:Growl

[Tiger4]

The correct pronunciation of SQL is "skweel", as in "squeal like a pig". But this usage is rarely heard, due to the unfortunate but inevitable comparisons to the database admin's home life.

Re:Growl

[drwho]

I want to MURDER people who say "Sequel" instead of S-Q-L...

Yes, I know what you mean: Perfect solutions is to join in the fun. Use a different word each time "Suckel" "sequel" "squirrel", "sahtah" and "say-tay" and "sahtay" and "satan"

But "scuzzi" just sounds right.

Re:Growl

[Metzli]

I agree, those blasted pronunciations annoy me. Don't you hate people who call it "raydahr" instead of R.A.D.A.R. or "layzer" instead of L.A.S.E.R.? Don't even get me started on the "scuzzy" crowd. ;)

Re:Growl

[TheMysteriousFuture]

Don't forget to check out the OpenBSD release songs (http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html)

(posting here so this'll actually get seen...)

Try the Torrent!

[cjsnell]

Check out the Unofficial OpenBSD Bittorrent Page. If the torrent isn't here, it will be, soon!

Re:Try the Torrent!

[DoctorPhish]

Just to point out the not-obvious-unless-you-know-already situation regarding the official OpenBSD ISO images, it's not the same as it is for most freely available Linux distro ISOs. Theo reserves the copyright on the official ISO to provide a small revenue stream for the project. Anyone is free to FTP, CVS, or bittorrent the entire thing, but they ask you to pay a fee for the convenience of the official CD set.

For more info
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html#ISO

Re:Try the Torrent!

[hostyle]

Before I start, are those torrents iso's? Its far from obvious what OpenBSD_3_7_amd64-2005-05-19-1824.torrent might be. A CVS snapshot? A BoF? what ever happened to informing people what they might be downloading? Even OpenBSD_3_7_amd64-2005-05-19-1824.iso.torrent (or whatever) would be better. What exactly are the linked torrents?

Thanks in Advance

Re:Try the Torrent!

[Marillion]

Simple: Torrent != ISO

It's true, of course, lot's of ISO images are flung far and wide using bittorrent(BT). ISO has two primary features, they're bootable, and they're structured.

BT can't solve the bootable problem, but BT can manage the structure problem. As near as I can tell, these torrents are structured.

Forget that!

[Bobdoer]

Just download the new openBSD song. It's guaranteed to be 5 times more fun than the software!

That's irony, right?

[Medievalist]

Fanboy.

Re:That's irony, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is more sarcasm. It would be irony if it was unintentional.

The ironing is delicious.

DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but does DHCP work, yet? Last time I checked, it wouldn't work with Comcast's servers.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

DHCP is deprecated in all BSDs. It has been since 1997.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The client? Works fine for me and I have Comcast. I have what came with version 3.4. Yes, I know I need to upgrade. One of these days I'll get around to it.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

DHCP is for Linux and people who use Comcast. Get a static IP and be a real man.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worked flawlessly for me on Comast since I started using it from 2.9 on. I can't comment on previous versions.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you had another problem with your network interface configuration, and you thought it was a DHCP problem?

DHCP has worked forever. I have my box running as a DHCP server for 2 network interfaces.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Stop making shit up.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine for me and I have Comcast.

Strange. I always get "No DHCPOFFERS", even though my wireless router and my Linux box will successfully get an address. I tried searching the web for answers, but didn't get any that worked. I even tried upgrading to the latest client available in CVS, at the time.

I guess I could try again with 3.7...

Re:DHCP?

[compass46]

The DHCP client included has always worked. There was a problem in some Comcast markets including my own though. What you probably saw has been fixed, I believe as of 3.5 or 3.6. Essentially some markets were sending back DHCP responses out of spec causing the hosts client to disregard the information.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a problem getting a DHCP lease from the Cayman 3000 DSL modem/router at work because it sent back a hostname containing a forward slash. It gave an error something like "invalid host name". I hacked the dhclient code to accept the forward slash and it worked fine. I meant to file a bug report but haven't gotten arround to it yet. Debian works fine with the Cayman.

Re:DHCP?

[n3v]

Works very well and has worked for me since 2.5/2.6

This OS owns.

Re:DHCP?

[lyberth]

as far as i remember there was a flaw with the dhcp client in 3.3 or 3.4. it has long been corrected, and was corrected in a patch quickly

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you just don't know what you're doing. It's always worked for me. DHCP is DHCP... if it doesnt work with a real dhcp server, then it's not really a dhcp client.

Re:DHCP?

[Michael_Ayoub]

Post under a signed in name and "be a real man."

*some* Zauruses

[Anonymous Coward]

SL-5500, can keep the depenguinator in the closet.

I've had it for weeks, and its GREAT

[Anonymous Coward]

I picked up a media set and one of the new puffy Tshirts and cansecwest.. Bought Theo a beer later. I think this is by far the best OpenBSD yet.

Another song

[MetalliQaZ]

Oh boy, I can't wait for another song for this release.

NOT!!

-d

Re:Another song

[sleighb0y]

It was already released.

DUH!

Link

ccd mirror vs. raidframe

[Anonymous Coward]

The OBSD 3.7 ccd man page says it now supports mirroring. What
advantages/disadvantages does it have in comparison to raidframe
in a raid1 configuration? (Note: I'm ONLY interested in RAID-1)

Which is more reliable/robust?

Which uses less OS resources?

Which is easier to recover after a hard system crash or disk failure?

Can ccd mirror the / partition? (raidframe can but I think you can't
boot directly onto the raid, so a separate boot partition is needed)

The ccd driver is already included in GENERIC, but raidframe is not and
requires a bit more work to setup. Is it worth it, or is ccd just as
good?

Which would YOU use to protect your data?...

But, but...

[Shadow Wrought]

Netcraft just confirmed BSD's death. How can this be possible?

In all seriousness tho' I'm looking for a free/OSS platform on which I can write, teach myself coding, play with graphics, and that's about it. Currently I'm using Morphix Light, but I'm not yet entrenched in it. Is OpenBSD a better choice?

Re:But, but...

[hobbesx]

Is OpenBSD a better choice?

Maybe. What color is your mouse?

Re:But, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you want to learn, yes it's a good choice. The man pages are much better than Linux. The shell (ksh) is less bloated than bash, but feature-rich enough to satisfy me. The userland stuff is standard Unix fare. The OS even comes with Apache pre-installed and chroot'ed. Ditto with named and a few other things (like sendmail, SSH). Generally it's a piece of cake to setup and admin an OpenBSD box. I moved to it after 9 years of Linux because I didn't want to keep sending lots of time patching the Linux kernel with grsecurity and the other patches I need. A lot of stuff is already setup with sane defaults in OBSD. I think it makes a good Unix for learning with, or for experienced users. So yeah, give it a shot!

Re:But, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue, no TEAL! (Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee)

Re:But, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Netcraftr say it's dead, then why do they use FreeBSD?

Re:But, but...

[ArbitraryConstant]

I prefer to code C on OpenBSD because the man pages for the C library calls are better. I can port it to Linux later if necessary. I don't use OpenBSD as a desktop OS, so I don't know what graphics support is like. They seem to be running a recent X.org, so it can't be that bad...

I like OpenBSD better in general, but Debian is a lot less work as a desktop OS and I'm lazy. OpenBSD runs my firewall/server and Debian-testing my desktop.

The documentation is MUCH better than any Linux I've used, which may be an edge if you're starting out.

Re:But, but...

[styrotech]

I like OpenBSD better in general, but Debian is a lot less work as a desktop OS and I'm lazy. OpenBSD runs my firewall/server and Debian-testing my desktop.

Sounds just like me :)


The documentation is MUCH better than any Linux I've used, which may be an edge if you're starting out.

Yeah the docs are better (ie correctness, completeness etc) but can be a bit terse and unforgiving for a newbie. Not to worry though, if you relax and take your time they will make sense and even a newbie can work their way through them.

I hope

[Knights who say 'INT]

.. the song is good.

"Systemagic" and "E-railed" are still my favorite ones. They went sillier after that. "The Ballad of Puffy Hood" is okay-ish, anyway.

"Systemagic" is really a nice song to chant, drunk, with nerd friends."Cracking the bedroom, HEY, cracking the vault, cracking the bedroom HEY SECURE BY DEFAULT. CAAAAAAAAAAAAAN'T FIIIIIIIGHT THE SYSTEMAGIC. ÜBER TRAGIC. CAAAAN'T FIGHT THE SYSTEMAGIC! SYSTEMAGIC!.

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

This kid was mod'ed 1??? WTF!?

Re:I hope

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Yeah, Systemagic was the coolest one.

But "ding dong the lawyer's dead" doesn't sound too bad for a patent-hater like me ;)

Re:I hope

[Adam Avangelist]

People who sing this song don't have friends, period.

Re:I hope

[Rylz]

The song is already out... http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html

Re:I hope

[Caligari]

The new song has been out for a while, you can get them all on the lyrics page.

If you like Pink Floyd you'll like this one!

Re:I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Disproof by contradiction:

* I sing these songs somewhat regularly (have them on my playlist).
* I have friends.

QED. Jerk.

Decent firefox port ?

[DrSkwid]

3.6 is stuck on 0.8

does my head in

I know a page where one can get a patchset against 1.01 and compile but I like my systems and vanilla as possible, ports & packages only, then I can reliably install a new box via script

Re:Decent firefox port ?

[raddan]

Follow -current or upgrade to 3.7 and you'll be happy. It's really not that hard.

3.7 comes with 1.0.2 if I'm not mistaken.

Re:Decent firefox port ?

[DrSkwid]

it's the follow part I'm trying to avoid

i like -stable =)

Re:Decent firefox port ?

[ArbitraryConstant]

I don't use OpenBSD as a desktop system so I don't know how well this works, but it might be worth a shot to set up Linux binary emulation and just using the Linux binary from mozilla.org. That might work better anyway for flash and stuff.

I use Debian-testing as a desktop and I avoid apt for the small number of things that I want to be 100% up to date with, including Firefox.

Re:Decent firefox port ?

[dolmant_php]

3.7 comes with 1.01. Current version is 1.0.4.

Re:Decent firefox port ?

[Anonymous Coward]

For that sort of stuff, you're better off using the Linux binary.

Getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon it will reach the crucial watershed version 3.11

Re:Getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood how .10 is a higher version than .9 mathematically, .10=.1=.100 So which is the higher versions supposed to be 0000000000.1000000000 or 0000000000.9000000000 It's what we call a DECIMAL system. If you don't like it, use a different system. in binary 3.11 would be 11.1011 and 3.5 would be 11.101 11.1011 is obviously a higher value than 11.101 whereas 3.11 isn't obviously higher than 3.5.

And further, why the hell did Microsoft go from 3.1->3.5->3.11 I seem to recall there being a few other numbers in the arabic numeral set.

Re:Getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood .10 is a higher blah than .9 blah, .10=.1=.100 So which is the higher blah 0000000000.1000000000 or 0000000000.9000000000 s blah DECIMAL system. If you don't blah 3.11 blah 11.1011 and 3.5 would be 11.101 11.1011 blah 11.101 whereas 3.11 blah blah 3.5.

And further, why the hell did Microsoft go from 3.1->3.5->3.11 I seem to recall there being a few other numbers in the arabic numeral set.

[Stares blankly]

"But you see, this one goes to eleven"

Re:Getting closer

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't.

Microsoft Windows 3.x went 3.0 to 3.1, to 3.11 and 3.11 for Workgroups.

Microsoft Windows NT 3.x went 3.1, to 3.5, to 3.51.

So mathematically the numbers were fine. Microsoft saw 3.11 as a minor upgrade to 3.1 and relatively few people saw it (which generated a lot of confusion as many people thought 3.11 was WfW and wondered why it had such a minor upgrade number on such a substantial update. Windows 3.11 was a different product from Windows for Workgroups 3.11)

Re:Getting closer

[eneville]

"But you see, this one goes to eleven"

Are you sure it won't be 3.0x0B

Intel Wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the new features is Intel Wireless support. I think that's very significant.

I must say that OpenBSD is a joy to work with. It is much cleaner and more consistently designed than everything else out there, including Linux. I have an old OBSD box that acts as a router and wireless access point, hasn't been updated in years, and I know I'll be giving it 3.7 to keep it up to date.

Now that it has Intel Wireless support, I might just switch to OBSD from Debian on my laptop.

Re:Intel Wireless

[Nimrangul]

Just make sure you've got the firmware somewhere handy, it doesn't come with the system.

Re:Intel Wireless

[gtoomey]

I tend to agree.

eg the Netgear MA111 wifi usb adapter is recognised on boot. Its configures just like an ethernet card, except you can add a WEP key.
Nice and orthogonal.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to know how to install OpenBSD, then you will *gasp HAVE TO READ!

http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/openbsd/installation .html

Hmm

[rsax]

I wonder what's the reason for not signing the checksums.

ftp://mirror.sg.depaul.edu/pub/OpenBSD/3.7/i386/

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a Linux user. This question has been asked and answered before. Check the mailing list archives.

Re:Hmm

[RenoRelife]

Also weird, why aren't any of the packages for X in the cksum or md5?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

---
You must be a Linux user. This question has been asked and answered before. Check the mailing list archives.
---
Yes, the official answer "But if the machine is hacked, the md5's could be modified". Wait I thought this was OpenBSD with no remote exploits in 8 years. Looks like not even Theo buys his own line of bullshit.

Re:who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Because unlike all that other crap openBSD is good

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[manifest37]

ftp://rt.fm/pub/OpenBSD/3.7/i386/
Is it really that hard to click your arch to find the iso?

Neither irony nor sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

The only choice when you are more concerend aboout secutiry and stability then being a fanboy.

First you are concerned about security and stability THEN you become a fanboy.

The real question is: was his use of "aboout" intentional or not, OpenBSD being Canadian.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the whole post was concocted to include the maximum number of trollish references in as few words as possible.

The first trollish reference was to the fact that OpenBSD is much more secure by default then any distro Linux. The second was to the fact the OpenBSD is much more stable then any disto of Linux. The third was a double edged sword which implies that only a "fanboy" would choose Linux because OpenBSD is just plain a better OS while also underhandedly insulting the same OpenBSD fanboys who point out that fact each and every time and BSD flavor is mentioned.

The aboout was just a spelling error.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

The first trollish reference was to the fact that OpenBSD is much more secure by default then any distro Linux. The second was to the fact the OpenBSD is much more stable then any disto of Linux.

How is this a troll? It's true. Anyone who is suffuciently familiar with the innards of both will tell you that, no question.

I'm primarily a Linux user who does some OpenBSD on the side. I don't use GUIs that much, I configure everything by hand, and I do a lot of coding. I've written kernel stuff.

I can tell you that it is clear that OpenBSD is simpler, more consistent, and just plain makes more sense than Linux. Coming from Linux, OpenBSD is more than a joy to work with.

Linux is very ad-hoc. It just sort of "grew." It was developed in many places by many people, few of them working together with the big context of "the Linux system" in mind. The pace of development is very rush-rush-rush, and for example many times, the approach of the kernel developers is "let's shove this out to userland and let distributors worry about writing a script to make sense of it."

OpenBSD is the opposite. People working on OpenBSD core packages have a specific kernel, userland, config script, etc., etc. in mind. There is a concept of "the OpenBSD system" and it is fairly consistent. People are working together to acheive that goal. The pace of development is more relaxed, and the people working on the userland are some of the same folks writing the kernel. So you don't get the sort of ad-hoc interfaces that make no sense to anything but a shell script (i.e. iptables), you get something which at every level, the user can get an idea how it works (i.e. pf).

Or take wireless. Until recently I had a Linux box set up as a wireless access point. To do that I had to play around with different kernel modules, some of them shipping with the kernel, some of them not, ad nauseum until something worked. This was very annoying.

Awhile ago I put the very same wireless card in an OpenBSD box whose software had not been updated in a few years. The card just worked! Without rebuilding or changing any config files, the card was detected.

Then, I put a 2-line file in /etc, made some changes to the DHCPD config file, and much to my surprise, it functioned as a wireless access point. Effortlessly. Having struggled with this in Linux (where it is much more painful to do), I had much appreciation for this.

The fact is, OpenBSD just does things the Right Way. People say OpenBSD's big strength is security, but that's slightly missing the point. OpenBSD's strength is correctness. From correctness yields stability, security, and all around ease of use.

You can call me a fanboy, but I say OpenBSD wins hands down against any Linux distribution, with the only exception being that Linux generally supports more hardware, quicker.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[guitaristx]

MOD PARENT UP!!! The parent makes a very good point. Correctness is an often-overlooked quality that should exist in every piece of widely-accepted FOSS. I hope for the day that high muckety-mucks in the FOSS community actually start caring about correctness.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this a troll? It's true. Anyone who is suffuciently familiar with the innards of both will tell you that, no question.

I know it is true, it is trollish because this is /. If I poseted a similar claim elsewhere, well people would realize it was true, but here on /. Linux is god so.... Thus the "trollish". It was more flamebait but....

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[grub]

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html#ISO

You can't get them (officially). If it's that much trouble to do that once for an OS that is truly a joy to work with then you're priorities are screwed up.

Buy the official CDs and support the project, roll up your sleeves and make your own or use another OS. It's a free world.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall (rather vaguely), there are no OpenBSD .isos to download; anyone wanting the system install media prepackaged can order the offical CD. The lack of .isos is to encourage this.

TFOAE

SMP

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I haven't followed openBSD in quite some time and the answer wasn't apparent from the "features" link...but... Did Theo get around to supporting SMP yet? Given the avalanche of "cheap" multicore processors coming down the pike, SMP support sure would be nice.

Re:SMP

[jcgf]

Yes, on i386 and possibly other architectures but not on all of them.

Jared

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, OpenBSD supports SMP now. IIRC since 3.6 or some fairly recent release.

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD has supported SMP since 3.6 (i386 and amd64 platforms.) Here's the page confirming this.

SMP in OpenBSD is slightly different to normal implementations for security reasons. Generally when one processor is in use, the other suspends itself to avoid race conditions. That way you get the full advantages of SMP, not wearing out a single CPU for instance, without the possibility of race conditions causing some kind of security hole.

Re:SMP

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

smp on i386 and amd64 is in-tree. smp for macppc is on a developers box, but hasn't made its way to the real tree. I do not know the status of any other architecture.

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

'Tis a joke right?

Oh, you were serious. I pity you.

(/me goes laugh hard behind a tree)

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. OpenBSD are steadily moving towards the ultimate goal of completely stealing NetBSD's SMP implementation. Since NetBSD is evil and...

Wait a second here...

Re:SMP

[trewornan]

stealing NetBSD's SMP implementation

Isn't the point of the BSD licence to encourage code sharing?

Re:SMP

[DashEvil]

Isn't the point of the BSD licence to encourage code sharing?

It is, but it isn't the developers you see whining, it's the users with a bone to pick. OpenBSD takes NetBSD's SMP implementation, NetBSD takes PF, FreeBSD takes PF, NetBSD takes UFS2, etc, etc.

Re:SMP

[Huge Pi Removal]

Don't you mean,

"that way you get one small advantage of SMP - not wearing out a single CPU - without any of the speed advantages which is mostly what people buy multicore/multiprocessor systems for."

Don't get me wrong, I love OpenBSD, and I can see the sense in their move, but I wouldn't call it "support" for SMP, more "yes, we'll run on it".

Re:SMP

[ArbitraryConstant]

OpenBSD is biglock; that is, only one of the processors can be in the kernel at any given time, the entire thing is protected by one big lock. The other processor can be running something in userspace no problem.

This isn't a problem when using a limited number of CPUs (say 4 or less) because the probability of contention is low enough that it's not a big hit on performance for most tasks. For example, Linux 2.4.x and FreeBSD 4.x were biglock and people seemed pretty happy with their performance. People even complain about performance regressions compared to the older versions.

Linux and FreeBSD have moved on to finer grained locking. It's an advantage on systems with more CPUs, but the advantage is questionable on 2-4 processors because there's a lot of overhead, it's a HUGE amount of work, and it takes a long time to get right.

The post you replied to might have been joking and it was certainly wrong.

Re:SMP

[Anonymous Coward]

and DragonFlyBSD rewrites everything from scratch because the old BSD code is crap :)

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should forget Linux too and just stick to Windows - unless of course you're kidding about being that dumb? Seriously! I'm a Linux user myself, I love a good GUI admin interface to everything and point and click install cause I'm not smart enough to know what I'm doing, but when it comes to making a simple ISO, I'm not that dumb.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[jcgf]

http://openbsd.sabotage.org/

This should help you out. It is also possible to download the floppy and install over nfs or by having the installer fetch the files directly over the web. You can also use your method, which is no where near the hassle of linux from scratch.

Jared

OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[Yannic]

Here's the plan:
1. Set up High Availability router with pfsync. (using computers rescued from the trash)
2. Set up a HA Network RAID system using DRBD or something similar. (using more computers rescued from the trash)
3. Build a Kerrighed or OpenSSI Single System Image cluster. (using the latest and greatest computers one can rescue from the trash)
4. ???
5. Profit! (and thus, have enough money to actually buy equipment)

I've already set aside Tuesday evening to upgrade my bandwidth throttling OpenBSD router. I set it up the day before 3.6 came out, so I didn't feel like upgrading until now. I'm tired of the typical hardware failures you tend to get out of computers people throw out (maybe that's why they threw them out in the first place) but mostly I'm looking forward to getting a learning experience hundreds of times more valuable (personally) than getting my MCSE 2003.

\/\/\/

Re:OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I don't follow. Please elaborate. (Profit comes from where?)

Re:OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh..

Profit comes from '???'.

Re:OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[doc modulo]

Great post and good links, thanks.

I'm also learning how to build a clustered server one step at a time.

You might want to look at my post about Erlang. It's a functional programming language with all the advantages that come with it. In your case you might be interested in the features:
- It has an automatically clustered database and webserver.
- No buffer overflows
- It can automatically use symmetrical multiprocessing.

Questions for you:
- With the clustering sofware links you posted, do you still need ECC memory or will RAM redundancy be handled by the cluster software?
- What do you think of C-JDBC? It's like RAID-1 for databases instead of drives. I like Java because it has no buffer overflows either.

Good luck with getting the skills, at least we know we're on the right path, like Google.

Re:OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[Caligari]

Um, that stuff is cool and all, but you realise that
pfsync(4) is the only component of all those you mention which works on OpenBSD?

Re:OpenBSD clusters make my heartbeat faster...

[doc modulo]

OpenBSD has a Linux compatibility system, won't it work on that?

Rebirth

[gers0667]

I'm just pumped about this release because I bring my SGI O2 back to life. It will be my first full 64-bit OS!

It's also a nice change from the highly insecure (or just a pain to make secure) IRIX to the locked down goodness of OpenBSD.

I believe an Octane port is in the mix as well... How nice would that be for me.

Re:Rebirth

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just pumped about this release because I bring my SGI O2 back to life. It will be my first full 64-bit OS!

The O2 is a 32-bit architecture.

Re:Rebirth

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that: "A 64-bit port supporting O2 machines with R5000, RM5200, RM7000, R10000 and R12000 CPUs". I suppose that 64 bit operating system is going to work poorly there.

Re:Rebirth

[Anonymous Coward]

The O2 is technically a 64bit platform. However the IRIX kernel supplied by SGI for the O2 was always 32bit. Think of it like way you can run 32bit WindowsXP on an AMD64 PC.

OpenBSD for a linux user

[3mp3r0r]

I have been a linux user for the last three years. I would like to give openbsd a try. How different is it from linux? I want to to use it mainly as file/web server. I'd like to hear from other linux users who have tried OpenBSD.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[sleighb0y]

If your use is a file/web server, here are my comments to you:

Install is simple. You can find a quick step-by-step on their site that helps you.

Apps in the ports system install easily

Startup scripts are run in a manner I enjoy more than the common linux style.

The pf firewall is great, and simple to setup!


I have not gone graphical with it yet, soley text-based and I love it. If you are experienced with the linux command-line interface and understand the core basics of how a unix OS works, you'll be right at home.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Go for it. It just reaks of quality and simplicity. A truly beautiful OS. A while back I checked out -current from CVS and compiled it, every two weeks for a year and never hit a single bug.

Now I have a life, but it was amazing to see how solid code could really be.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[crazyhelmut]

The big difference is that OpenBSD it uses GCC 2.9X. Linux ports usually won't work. I haven't looked at 3.7 - but this was the case in 3.6 and prior versions. Compile from source, and there are no functional differences. There are also very few "wrapper" scripts to start and stop daemons, which major linux distros have.
Once you get past that - you probably won't notice you're on a BSD box.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[ArbitraryConstant]

My setup: I use OpenBSD 3.6 (no upgrade for me yet, mirrors are totally) as a firewall and server (NFS, web, SSH, DHCP, that sort of thing). I use Debian-testing as a desktop on a different machine.

The documentation is second to none. That includes all the Linuxes I've tried as well as the BSDs. The fact that it's actually worth reading the docs means you do it early and often, which is nice.

Installing things out of ports is about as easy as any of the other good package managers I've used on Linux. The one thing to be aware of is that pkg_add can take a filename argument in the form of a URL to the FTP site. It's better to do that because it can resolve dependencies from the FTP site instead of you having to download them manually.

DO NOT ROLL A CUSTOM KERNEL. The generic one supports virtually everything that has been tested properly. If you have a problem with generic, report the bug because they'll want to fix it.

The firewall, PF, rocks. It's easy to set up and very powerful.

Overall, the differences between distros are as big as the differences with OpenBSD. I had to go through a lot of distros before I found the one I was happy with, and if you can wrap your brain around, say, both Slackware and Suse, you'll be fine.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[canofbutter]

DO NOT ROLL A CUSTOM KERNEL. The generic one supports virtually everything that has been tested properly.

There are some very relevant cases where a custom kerenel is needed. For example: ccd and raidframe require one. Take a look at Section 5.7 of the FAQ - Building a Custom Kernel. It states that a reason to build a custom kernel is for raidframe support, which is too large to include in a stock kernel. The FAQ does say you probably don't need a custom kernel, so to agree with the parent post, don't compile a custom kernel on a production machine unless you need ccd, raidframe, or boca support (or if you're just nuts, which is fine too). Section 5 of the FAQ contains very useful information about building the kernel.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[n3v]

I _was_ a [Slackware] Linux user for quite some time between around 1995-2001. I discovered OpenBSD because all my 'elite' friends were using it or FreeBSD. I did my homework and chose OpenBSD for my firewall, web, dhcp, nntp, db, app server.. I started to use it at home and was instantly impressed. The 1st time I ever touched it I had my server up in 30 minutes!! It seems more to be more mature and consistant. It is well documented and works great! I haven't used Linux since ;p Not to say Linux doesn't have it's place, but it's not with me right now. One thing you'll find though, you usually won't we using '0day' software. This is because it takes time to create something of quality, that has been checked and balanced.

We use it at my work now, we have about 10 OpenBSD servers at different locations all over North America, we don't need the newest software, we have no problem waiting a few months sometimes. We need something that is easy to manage and works consistantly.

OpenBSD!

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[trewornan]

I'd been using Linux for about the same amount of time when I first used OpenBSD. If you've paid attention installing Linux and tried to understand what happens then you'll have very few problems.

OpenBSD assumes you have a basic understanding of how a computer operates, know what a disk partition is and a few other very elementary things. It also assumes that you can read and understand simple instructions.

OpenBSD is only unfriendly if you're a complete IT goober.

I want to to use it mainly as file/web server.

OpenBSD is perfect for this.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[DashEvil]

OpenBSD 3.7 on i386 uses GCC 3.3.

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you want to use a quad hme card on a Sparc you need to comment out ukphy and then rebuild the kernel. I got caught out on this one for many days!

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[chrysalis]

For a file server, it depends... If you don't need performance and high availability, why not.
But if you need speed and atomic or journaled filesystems, there is still nothing in the *BSD world. And even with UFS2 you are still limited in the number of links a directory can have. So for a file server, Linux is probably still the best choice.

There's some hope with DragonFlyBSD, though. A journaling layer has recently been added to the kernel and we can hope to get real high availability in DragonFlyBSD very soon (live offsite mirroring / point in time recovery).

Re:OpenBSD for a linux user

[TheRaven64]

The documentation is second to none

The documentation in OpenBSD is good, although I find that the FreeBSD documentation is better in some places. The main difference is that the OpenBSD man pages are the authoritative source of documentation. This makes an enormous difference when administrating a system - you don't need to search through man, info, the handbook, etc. to find the documentation, you just RTFM.

Crazy

[milimetric]

I'm not bad with computers, I've tinkered with Linux and I love Gentoo. I got really excited reading the news about OpenBSD 3.7 and I was hopping all around the mirrors to get me an .iso so I can start installing.

???

Where's the iso? Where's the friendly installation. I'm sorry but if you want people to use/contribute to your project, you've got to make it easy for them to try it out. There are like a gazillion different Linux live CDs even in Catalan.

I read through the installation files on the release for i386... um... am I missing something or is this thing ridiculously hard to install?

Re:Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

yes,you're missing something - it usually sits right behind your orbital sockets.

Re:Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISO is logically located with the properly maintained mirror FTP servers for FreeBSD, OpenBSD though I am not familiar with.

Re:Crazy

[SquadBoy]

Simple but likely painful fact. The BSDs don't really want you. RTFM and it's easy. If you can't be arsed to do that and/or want a livecd please stay away. The people who they want to use and contribute to the projects can and do.

Yes I *am* a elitist asshole and damn proud of it.

Re:Crazy

[Arctic Fox]

There's no ISO available online. It's to encourage you to buy the CD, which is well worth it. That being said, you can download just enough to do an FTP/HTTP install. It's pretty easy.

Re:Crazy

[niteice]

For OpenBSD, you have 2 options: Download the in stall floppy/CD and perform an FTP install, or buy the 4-CD set.

And there's no friendly installation. Make sure you have a backup in case you fuck up with fdisk.

Re:Crazy

[niteice]

Correction/clarification to myself: actually, since you've installed Gentoo, it's the same difficulty level, made unfriendly by fdisk and disklabel.

Re:Crazy

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! that was too clever by half.

Re:Crazy

[trewornan]

Yes I *am* a elitist asshole and damn proud of it

But you don't speak for everybody. I've found no problem with getting help for OpenBSD (I recommend www.bsdforums.org). I think you just need to make some effort to solve the problem yourself first. I can quite understand why people get annoyed with newbs who ask facile questions because they can't be bothered to try the most basic steps themselves. That's hardly unique to OpenBSD users though.

Re:Crazy

[trewornan]

Where's the iso?

I haven't checked with this release but up to now there's been a policy of not releasing iso images to encourage purchasing of the real thing. It's considered bad manners to post an iso of the install cd's online, despite them being freely reproducable and distributable.

Personally I download the floppy disk image and do network installs - why muck around with four cd's when you just need a floppy? I'd be happy to buy the cd's and contibute to such a great OS if I wasn't such a tight bastard.

Re:Crazy

[hhw]

There are ISO's but they only include the boot image and install program. With that said, it's easy enough to just create your own ISO using the boot ISO's. With a little shell scripting, you can totally automate pulling the install files off the FTP's and creating ISO's with them. Running my script makes me images for i386, sparc32, sparc64, and alpha all at once, including a copy of the source, ports, and all the packages I commonly use for each, which is read from a pkg_info dump.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[aschlemm]

Download the appropriate files from a trusted source and make an ISO yourself. I would never download a premade ISO without knowing who created it.

http://www.webengr.com/development/tools/openbsd/t ips/cdrom/

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to go through all that trouble, I would install linux from stratch.

Making your own ISO is too much trouble? Either you're stupid or horribly lazy.

What to expect if you use Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

If you already use one of the popular linux distros, here is what you can expect: OpenBSD install requires you to read and follow some easy steps. Once you install it, you are presented with a minimal system of less than 500MB. Configuration is done from the command line, but it is usually easy once you figure out what text file to modify. Packages are available for installing additional software, and dependencies are handled for you. Ports will allow you to complile things not in Packages. Security updates to the base system are only distributed as source code patches that require compiling. You should also keep an eye on package and port updates too. You will learn a lot about your computer. Read the FAQs, man pages, and list archives before you post questions to the email lists.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[__aaclcg7560]

Maybe you should forget Linux too and just stick to Windows - unless of course you're kidding about being that dumb?

Did I leave the smiley emoticon out again? I guess I was dumb enough to do that. ;)

Actually, the last half-dozen new OS releases I been downloading the .iso files and burning them to CDs. I was kind of surprise that there was no CD images to download. I forgot you need to get the "official" CDs for OpenBSD. Of course, it's been ages since I actually had to do "manual" work to get a system going.

How long is each release officially supported?

[LibrePensador]

I am trying to create a table of open source software with the respective support deadlines and it has proven difficult.

We are a small shop and in no position to do our own security updates for something like OpenBSD once it ceases to be supported. We are also fairly unfamiliar with the code. Nonetheless, I would like to try the OpenBSD waters, but before I do so, I would like to have some reliable info on how long security updates for each release are offered.

BTW: I know that OpenBSD has a very decent security record, which is why I am interested in it, but knowing how long a release is supported is still important to me.

Thanks.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically patches are only provided for the current and past release, and since releases are binannually that means 1 year essentially.

There have been occasions where patches have been supplied for another release back (so 3 releases/1.5 years) but that tends to be rather unusual.

The support cycle is dictated primarily by the number of developers available to work on the project, there simply aren't enough resources to devote to maintain old releases. Moreover, given the number of bug&security fixes that occur through the continual auditing within the tree, it's probably more reliable and secure using the current release rather than older versions. I know many people who run OpenBSD almost exclusively as -current or from snapshots.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[Nimrangul]

I am pretty sure when 3.7 was released 3.5 stopped being supported.

That's a year's span, as each release is a half a year apart.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[wk633]

Nobody is promising anything, unless you have a 3rd party support contract.

I see three options:

1) forget about it and keep paying Microsoft for the promise of support.

2) find a 3rd party to do your patches and upgrades for you.

3) invenst some time in learning how to keep up with latest stable versions.

Nothing is free as in beer. BSD is older than windows, and the patches/new versions will keep coming for a long time to come. If you want a feel-good promise, you'll have to pay someone for a support contract.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[shking]

...knowing how long a release is supported is still important to me

Then why didn't you go to the website and read the FAQ's? http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Flavors

The two newest releases are supported and a new "stable" version of the OpenBSD is released every 6 months. So, each release of OpenBSD is supported for one year.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[LibrePensador]

Well, now I know what to expect, which is not much. If there was/is, a third party that offers OpenBSD support for a minimum of three years, I might be interested in that, but I doubt that it would be as economical as going with Debian.

All of this is under consideration currently. I am honestly surprised that it is only a year, but hey, the OpenBSD developers certainly don't own me anything.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[tim_mcc]

OpenBSD always supports the current release, and the previous one. This means it now supports versions 3.7 and 3.6

You should note however that the OpenBSD systems are very easily upgraded from the install media. Simply choose the upgrade option and then follow the simple instructions to make other changes.

Remember though that only sequential updates are supported. Example 3.6 -> 3.7, if you're upgrading from 3.5 you'd need to: 3.5 -> 3.6 -> 3.7

Hope that helps you,

Tim

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare that to Gentoo, which doesn't even have a proper errata list, you have to scrounge for a patch.

Re:How long is each release officially supported?

[TheRaven64]

I installed OpenBSD 3.6 on a remote machine (talking a person on-site through the procedure) a week before 3.7 was released, and upgraded to 3.7 last week hands-off, so I can vouch for the fact that upgrading a system without install media is also relatively painless. It's non-trivial, but the documentation tells you what to type and in what order, so it's not that hard. It's a shame they don't roll up a simple shell script that does it for you though...

Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD 3.7, the absolute bleeding edge of what 1994 has to offer!!!

* No file name completion.
* No colored directories.
* Update the system by recompilation (yay!)
* Great for internationalization: 10 keyboards to choose from!
* World premiere: the FVWM Window Manager! (security risk: be aware that some graphics will appear in the monitor.)

Known bugs:

* pkg_add -r: It forces the machine to do some hard work for the user, which is against our most basic principles. A patch is available so you can get the package source by postal mail and type it yourself, for maximum security.
* Firefox 0.8: Forces the user to surf the web like a human instead of surfing like a 20 years-old BSD Unix machine. A text-based broswer has been added so you may stare for hours at a term window imagining today's leading tech.
* Guides or handbooks: Some users report seeing a FAQ in the website. We remind you that the proper way to find out something about OpenBSD is staring at man pages in term windows.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Man pages?!?!? I thought I had to RTFS! After all this time...

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[xbsd]

Your post really made me laugh, and you know what's even worse? When you compare it to Solaris or OSX.

In my opinion, OpenBSD users fail to distinguish between a security-oriented system and an archaic OS bloated with crypto. It is designed by paranoid amateurs reading security books, not by security experts.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[DrSkwid]

* No file name completion.
* No colored directories.
* Update the system by recompilation (yay!)

these are bad things ?

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[xbsd]

* No file name completion. * No colored directories. * Update the system by recompilation (yay!)
these are bad things ?

Yes my friend. We're not in 1976 anymore. Thirty years of CS development must be reflected in an OS. We have higher standards now.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[DrSkwid]

* No file name completion.

anyway you're wrong, even in rc I have readline compiled

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[DrSkwid]

> Yes my friend. We're not in 1976 anymore. Thirty years of CS development must be reflected in an OS. We have higher standards now.

file name completion is an admission that the VT CLI has failed

I use plan9, one day *your* standards may reflect mine

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[xbsd]

I use plan9, one day *your* standards may reflect mine

Funny, especially after reading your previous posts in this thread. What do you use it for?

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just showing how very little you know about openbsd (and linux, for that matter).

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloated with crypto? OpenBSD has the smallest functional install footprint out of every Unix I know, smaller than FreeBSD, 99% of all linuxes, Solaris, Irix, Tru64, HP-UX and MacOSX. Just a friendly suggestion, you may want to revisit your idea of what constitutes a bloated OS.

And as far as your touted security experts go, I would trust OpenBSD/stable more than Tru64 /w C2 security enabled, or so-called Trusted Solaris. I have validated this in theory and in practice, and its not a recommendation I make lightly.

How often would you say OpenBSD appears in CERT advisories compared to other unixes, hmm? Grow a pair and grow up, maybe you can venture into the real world some time instead of lurking in basements and under bridges...

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Metzli]

No file name completion? That's incorrect. There is no file name completion by hitting as in bash. If you're using the Korn shell, type "set -o vi" and then use "esc-\" for command completion. It works perfectly, just like every other Korn shell I've used. This behaviour is like ksh on commercial Unix variants, which I consider to be a plus. I have trouble remembering to use in Linux, as it seems so non-standard to a die-hard ksh user.

No colored directories? Personally, I consider that to be a plus. I detest the various colours when I do an ls -la in most Linux variants. I want a simple directory listing, not a rainbow of names. I can't remember which colour is which. If I want to see if it's a directory, then I look for a "d" at the far left. If I think it's a link, then I look for "->" in the listing.

Update the system by recompilation? That's an interesting complaint. Users of Gentoo Linux would say that it's no big deal. Users of Tru64 Unix would say that it's no big deal. Solaris users would agree with Linux (non-Gentoo) users that it's a big deal. Personally, I don't see it as a problem if I end up with a stable system that will just sit and run. This seems more of a statement about that with which you are familiar and not necessarily an indictment of this particulat OS.

"Thirty years of CS development must be reflected in an OS. We have higher standards now." Hmm...such as, what? One of the arguments is a misunderstanding of the shell environment. One is purely a cosmetic argument. The last can be argued to be irrelevant since this applies to more than one OS under thirty years old.

Call me a die-hard, but I like how OpenBSD is more like "classic Unix." I don't mean to sound condescending, but I see how it seems archaic and or/dated for those who came into Linux/Unix relatively recently (meaning within the past few years). For those of us weened on commercial Unix, it's like having an old friend on our desktops.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can boot an OpenBSD machine with 2MB of memory, and have a functioning TCP/IP network stack, shell, and memory left over to run programs in?

Because you can with Linux. And that's not even with a nommu architecture, which will further reduce memory overhead.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[DrSkwid]

What do you use it for?

My day to day programming work in php & python & shell
If it wasn't for the lack of modern web browser (a herculean programming task) it would be the only terminal I needed. As you may gather from my other posts I run OpenBSD and vnc into that.

It is worth using for the text edit alone : Acme
You can try it yourself on Unix likes with the plan9port or even just run the acme clone Wily. But with Wily you won't see the power of user space file systems.

% srvssh freddy
%

and now freddy's file system is mounted in my file tree at /n/freddy and all transfers ssh encrypted.
(and freddy is an OpenBSD box with u9fs in my ~/bin - no kernel frigging required)

% ftpfs -a drskwid@slashdot.org ftp.openbsd.org
%
and now ftp.openbsd.org is mounted at /n/ftp

once mounted I can use my normal shell commands such as grep awk sed etc. on the files in those directories

I have some scripts on freddy that I only need when connected to freddy. Simple : bind -b /n/freddy/home/matt/bin/plan9 /bin
and now the files on freddy appear in my /bin

this is the mechanism that enables one to boot a terminal on any of the supported architectures and have the same set of binaries available

at boot one has the following bit in one's profile :

bind -a $home/bin/$cputype /bin

thus whether I'm running on my AMD64 PC or my Arm IPAQ I have the same binaries in my path

I could go on about the plumber, secstore, factotum, venti,

want to look in a tar / zip file

fs/tarfs -m /n/somefile somefile.tar
fs/zipfs -m /n/somefile somefile.zip

ls /n/somefile

I'll leave the rest for you to read through

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing: OpenBSD 3.7 doesn't have filename completion or coloured directories. Neither does NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 5.4, nor the latest version of Solaris or any GNU/Linux distribution you want to mention, or any other operating system on the God damned planet.

File completion and coloured directories are not features of your operating system. They are features of your shell, which is just a program you run from your OS. And guess what? OpenBSD can, shock horror, run programs. Including shells. Which means that if you want to use OpenBSD and be able to make use of filename completion or coloured directories, all you have to do is install a shell that supports those things, like bash, for instance, which is available as an OpenBSD package/port, and has been for years. Nothing hard about it.

The default shell in OpenBSD may not have these features (or, more probably, is capable of them but doesn't have them on by default). If you take this to mean that it's impossible to do these things on OpenBSD, you're being kinda dumb. The OpenBSD philosophy is to give the user a minimal install and then let them add in what they want, when they want, how they want, as opposed to the philosophy of many (but thankfully) not all GNU/Linux distros, which might be expressed as "Install everything by default, then install everything else, twice, just in case".

I don't even use OpenBSD, but it annoys me to see people acting like it's inferior to some other UNIX when their arguments are utterly flawed and they don't seem to grasp, yet alone appreciate, the philosophy of a clean and simple minimalist system.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

You were making sense till this comment. Then you're just talking out your ass.
---
File completion and coloured directories are not features of your operating system. They are features of your shell, which is just a program you run from your OS.
---

Colored directory listings are not a function of your shell. It is a function of ls, which IS a part of the base system. OpenBSD's ls does support colored listing however it sucks since it does not have the color=auto switch that gnuls has. This is a very irritating problem when you do something like ls | less and less doesn't support the colors resulting in a screen full of garbage.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Touche! My bad, I was thinking of coloured shell prompts, for some stupid reason. I apologise for that, honestly. I guess you do have a valid complaint there (although, personally, I dislike coloured directories. They're fine at the console - trying to read them off an xterm with -bg black, though, is painful). Does the OpenBSD ls have that option that prepends a @ to directory names? Not quite as effective as colours, I'll admit, but should work fine with less etc.

Sorry again.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup it does, cant remember what the switch is, currently on a NetBSD box. I normally install the gnuls port and alias the hell out of ls. To be fair NetBSD has an even more irritating problem. The default TERM setting is vt200.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

"set -o emacs" and you get tab completion. And a subset of some csh style things that bash does as well (such as !,!!)

And you don't have to use vi; mg (a mini-emacs) is there by default. Of course if you need an IDE with an embedded lisp interpreter (or is that a lisp interpreter with an embedded IDE?) you'll be installing GNU Emacs anyway.

But all this that brings something else up: you want a lot of cool things installed? mount the cdrom and cd into 3.7/package/i386 and do "pkg_add *". Then it's a lot more like a Linux machine.

PS: coloured directories are available as a package. But coloured directories SUCK. Every I-make-a-living-from-it admin I know turns the colours off. (I was actually surprised when I realised this, I thought I was in the minority) The colours just make things hard to read.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[liamjfoy]

You really do talk some shit. I would class many of the OpenBSD developers as experts. Much more than OpenBSD has came out of Theo and his developers, most of which we all use.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[liamjfoy]

This sounds really useful!

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[liamjfoy]

You CAN have these things. Also check, https://bsdupdates.com/ and https://bsdupdates.com/download.php

Re:Features?

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

"(Score:-1, Troll)"

Look, like you payed indeed.

Probably not.

[arete]

Essentially anything will techically meet your needs, but somethings will make your life harder and some easier. Not to start a flame, but I think your description better suits Linux. If you want to try a BSD I'd try FreeBSD before OpenBSD.

The biggest difference is really in philosophy, because most really important things that any free OS has get shared.

Traditionally:
OpenBSD is ridiculously secure, sometimes at the cost of speed or similarity of structure. It is ideal for important routers and servers.
NetBSD is ridiculously compatible, but probably not better unless you're trying to run it on your toaster - which is probably supports.
FreeBSD is not quite as secure as OpenBSD, but generally faster and more compatible. It is probably the right choice for many serious server applications that may value speed or ease over a usually small increase in security.

Linux has a lot more people working on desktop/workstation applications and a lot more popular mindshare. The most important effect is that there are a lot more tutorials on how to do every little thing using the standard linux tools. BSD can run linux binaries most of the time. But a lot of times something you want to use might not work - or it might work if you know how to make one tiny fix, but it won't be mentioned anywhere because the developer forgot BSD existed.

So from your description I would use Linux because it is vastly more popular as a desktop.

T-Shirts? No thanks!

[YetAnotherName]

please support the project if you can by buying CDs and t-shirts, ...

I would love to, except Puffy the logo fish is horribly disfigured.

Linux shirts are out, too: Tux is overweight. No, I can't buy a FreeBSD T-shirt either: I live in Texas.

DOS Type... Informative?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't be more confusing, less accurate, and contain less content in this post, and it is modded informative.

I have never used a DOS partition in linux. I have used 82 and 83 a lot, linux type, and linux swap, respectively.

What is he talking about?

I've got it

[Cally]

I have here a shiny CD of 3.7, complete with Wizard of OS poster with oh-so-hilarious caricature of RMS with a pair of gnu horns... somehow the expression on his face just makes me laugh, it's a moment of cartoon zen's what it is. (And lest the wrong idea be given, tho' I bought an OpenBSD CD, I support the FSF financially too. A little bit). I ordered my CD on monday from the wonderful Holborn Books whose meatspace shop is a perilous void of stuff you want to empty your wallet for. And the CD arrived yesterday morning.

Trouble is, I just resusitated my trusty old v3.0 machine which has been dormant for 2 years after the PSU let the magic smoke out. For some reason networking's not happy talking to the new LAN, so I can't archive the bits I want to keep*, so I can't vape it with 3.7 ... but... must... run... newest... CODE!!!

* There's no CD burner - it's a Compaq Deskpro P166, c.1996, FFS! - and I only have one (CRT) monitor - & no KVM - switching the cable is a PITA and stressign the VGA socket on the back of my main computer, a relatuively-speaking gleaming new P2/233 from 1997.

I have not yet tried booting the Sun SS2 yet , since you ask.

Re:I've got it

[Alioth]

OpenBSD runs great on Sparc. I have probably the only 64-bit ADSL router for miles - my home firewall/fileserver is a Sun Ultra 5, running OpenBSD 3.6, with a USB-attached ADSL modem that came free with the connection.

Re:I've got it

[Cally]

Wow, how do you get a USB modem to work on BSD? My DSL connection arrived with one, I grepped around looking for a way to make it work on Linux before giving up and getting a proper router. (I say 'proper' but YKWIM in this context ;)

PF vs IPTABLES

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm planning to replace my Linux firewall with OpenBSD's PF, much better and easier to understand, anyone willing to port PF to Linux ??? (the iptables syntax really sucks!)

Re:PF vs IPTABLES

[chrysalis]

When pf was limited to basic filtering (in the OpenBSD 2.9-current days), a port to Linux could have been easy.

But now, pf has many features that are deeply tied with the BSD network stack, and it would require a lot of work :( Even other BSDs ship with incomplete or old versions of pf.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Anonymous Coward]

but we're illiterate /.ers no-one here can READ...

Great for your firewall, but...

[Dammital]

My home firewall is an (aging) OBSD 3.3 box that I really ought to upgrade one of these days... but it just runs and runs and runs. The pf stateful packet filter is compact and fast.

But OBSD is more problematic on my web/mail server. The ports collection is nowhere near as comprehensive as FreeBSD's (or Debian & Gentoo for that matter) and so you'll likely scrounge for upstream versions of more obscure packages.

Worse, OBSD's Apache is stuck at version 1 (Theo has issues with the Apache 2 license) and more and more software wants Apache 2. I guess you can fix that, but it's back upstream you go me bucko. Oh, and OBSD's default Apache installation is chrooted, which you'll probably defeat after your first CGI integration experience.

I like OBSD a lot, and I don't mean to suggest that it's only good for embedding in a router. But if your application requirements are remotely bleeding edge (and you want to save yourself some work at the risk of some unquantifiable security exposure) then you might want to look elsewhere.

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[Krunaldo]

Ummm? What problems do you have with CGI integration? Just simply do _all_ cgi stuff in the chroot enviroment? Well it isn't apache anymore, it's more like "OpenBSD über-secure-patch-set apache". Do you need anything apache 2 specific?

All the "widely" used mailingprograms are available for OpenBSD, what's your problem with them?
Sure there is some stuff missing in ports/packages but they're getting fewer by the day. If you miss something go a head an make a port of it.

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[Nimrangul]

If you need Apache 2, grab it, it's in ports.

Ports are often behind the most recent releases of things, which is kinda bothersome, but if you want to fix that then get involved and start talking on the ports mailing list. Take over the unmanaged ones and add your own.

That's the best part about a system like this, if you want to, you can change things.

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[Triumph The Insult C]

obsd's apache also has 6000+ lines of security diffs to upstream. dunno if that's important to you or not though ...

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[chrysalis]

Apache 2 is not in ports, but it can probably be compiled from source.

However, if you are looking for a real alternative to Apache 1, I'd suggest you try lighttpd (which is in ports).

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[Nimrangul]

Damn, it had been in ports at one time, I guess it's been too long since I cared enough to look for it, I never really changed much for the defaults on the system anyways.

lighttpd wouldn't be what most people are looking for when Apache 1 isn't good enough, which is stuff that runs Apache 2 modules. Though lighttpd should be good enough for most people.

mod parent up

[hostyle]

Its all conjecture. Not a single fact in sight. But its the subject line that matters. Right?

still no firewire support

[Skapare]

Bummer ... still no firewire support. I can still use Linux for this projects (digital video over firewire ... dv1394), but I would have liked to have another OS option (and OpenBSD is otherwise a great system).

Re:still no firewire support

[Anonymous Coward]

but I would have liked to have another OS option

I know FreeBSD 5.x has FireWire support, and am pretty sure NetBSD 2.x has it as well.

Re:still no firewire support

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf man just compile it in. it was ported from netbsd since 3.4.

its not completely stable, but thats by BSD standards. this means its probably more stable than alot of things that you think are "stable"

Since you insist.

[Medievalist]

You can call me a fanboy, but I say

OK, you're a fanboy.

Better yet, don't! (Re:Try the Torrent!

[algae]

Selling CDs is one of the ways that the OpenBSD project is able to make money, and as far as I know, they don't provide checksums for the general public to verify the integrity of downloaded .iso's.

So by all means feel free to download some J. Random bitTorrent ISO of OpenBSD, but keep in mind that you have no way of knowing if it's been trojaned, root-kitted, or otherwise compromised If you really need a free install, just use the freakin network floppy. It's super easy, and you download directly from official OpenBSD mirrors.

Have you ever tried it?

[Some Random Username]

The installer is very simple, you press "a" to add a partition, and it prompts you to put in the size, type, mount point, etc.

Then you say you are "done" and it creates the disklabel for you. The CD even has a handy step by step guide to using the installer on the sleeve.

Re:Have you ever tried it?

[m50d]

Of course I tried it. Boot, ooh, kernel messages, nice, hmm, hda is wd0, that's...interesting... right, NO I definitely don't want to use the whole disk. Right, cfdisk - not found, oh well, I can use fdisk if I need to. Read the help, add partition, primary, change type to BSD, set active, write, quit. Run install. Can't find the partition. What? I just made it. fdisk again to check, yep, the partition is there, why can't install see it. Run install again. Still not found. Bah. I give up.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[ArbitraryConstant]

"Buy the official CDs and support the project, roll up your sleeves and make your own or use another OS. It's a free world."

It's easier to just do an FTP install.

Well, once the mirrors calm down in a few days anyway.

Re:A tablespoon of RTFM

[infinityxi]

Yes, because the manual docs are in one big random text dump not catergorized by section. Have you even checked out the FreeBSD (and OpenBSD) docs lately. Go to the website, it is catergorized by what you want and need to do. Everything from setting up ipfw or pf to the installing of ports. This has to be FUD to an extreme. Anyway the BSDs is not looking to be your mother's OS, especially OpenBSD, read the first page, OpenBSD's goal is to be functional and secure, but the ease to install depends your level of knowledge and your willingness to read. As much as I hate hearing some people need a good dose of RTFM, it is actually helpful.

Horray

[Anonymous Coward]

The BGP and OSPF daemons are way, way beyond anything that Zebra and Quagga have ever released. Much faster, much lighter, and MUCH more stable.

Re:Features?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kinda thinking that he was going for the sarcastic approach. Him being not me, as i'm an anonymous coward too!

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[Alioth]

It is very easy to install OpenBSD without any official ISOs.

Method 1:
Download the boot ISO (there is a boot ISO available for download), burn to CD, boot, set up your hard disk, then tell it to do an FTP install.

Method 2:
Download the boot ISO, and also download all the basic packages (the ones in the form of base37.tgz etc.) Burn the boot ISO to one CD, then create a normal CD containing all the packages.
Boot the bootable CD, swap the CDs over, then tell it to install from CD.

Using the two CD method, I can go from a blank computer to a working OpenBSD system in less than 15 minutes.

SAMBA couldn't use the name SMB

[parvenu74]

Back when SAMBA was in 2.0 or thereabouts I looked at the samba.org site for the first time and found a bit on how the name "samba" came to be. The original intention was to simply call it SMB but there was concern about using a registered name so the name SAMBA was arrived upon by grepping a dictionary file based on the letters SMB in that order.

It was certainly not the result of an attempt to come up with some cute name for the software.

making themselves look lame

[xtermin8]

I think the point is to get "lamers" (MSCs maybe?) to be willing to install OpenBSD. They have to be willing to try it first, then you can criticize them.

Yes, you are a fanboy

[xbsd]

Linux is very ad-hoc. It just sort of "grew." It was developed in many places by many people, few of them working together with the big context of "the Linux system" in mind.

This is the typical response of a BSD fanboy when comparing his/her BSD with "Linux", not with a Linux distro. Let's do a real comparison. I'll use RedHat Linux and Debian in most examples.

OpenBSD is the opposite. People working on OpenBSD core packages have a specific kernel, userland, config script, etc., etc. in mind. There is a concept of "the OpenBSD system" and it is fairly consistent.

You can say EXACTLY THE SAME about the Linux distros I mentioned. Both RedHat and Debian have their own "generic kernels", core pkgs, etc.

The fact is, OpenBSD just does things the Right Way. People say OpenBSD's big strength is security, but that's slightly missing the point. OpenBSD's strength is correctness. From correctness yields stability, security, and all around ease of use.

Well, let see where's the hype...
Google, one (if not the most) popular search engine in the planet depends on Linux. So does Amazon.com, Earth's largest library, and MerrylLynch, one of the world's leaders in financial investments. In all cases, the stability and performance required are state of the art, and needless to say, these 3 institutions have more things to keep secure and more things to worry about than all institutions using OpenBSD combined. Just take a look at the testimonials in the OpenBSD website: http://www.openbsd.org/users.html

Now it's time to use the 2nd most popular argument of the fanboys: they use linux because of the hype.

Let's assume that three of the most powerful companies on the internet invest millions of dollars in a technology fad. Let's see what the experts are using:

The University of California, Berkeley, the alma mater of the BSDs does not use OpenBSD. Actually, they barely use FreeBSD because most computers use Debian Linux. So does the MIT, which uses mostly Red Hat Linux and Athena, its own distro. Same thing in Stanford and CMU.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses Linux to build better spacecraft and make accurate calculations, such as the on-board navigational computers of space probes and airborne Scanning Radar Altimeter to study hurricanes. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3936. They use it in the Institutional Navigation System Software (INSS) in all flight projects (Galileo, Cassini, Mars, DS1, Stardust, etc.) It contains 4.5 million lines of source code. Guess what? They use RedHat.

The U.S. Army manages personnel records for 1.2 million U.S. Army soldiers, and they access those records reliably and securely anytime, from any place via a Web interface. They use RedHat, not OpenBSD. http://www.redhat.com/solutions/info/casestudies/u sarmy.html

I can go on and on forever, but this is useless. Most of the OpenBSD fans are amateurs reading crypto books, not security professionals.

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the typical response of a BSD fanboy when comparing his/her BSD with "Linux", not with a Linux distro. Let's do a real comparison. I'll use RedHat Linux and Debian in most examples.

If you'll look at my post I said I'm primarily a Linux user. I use Debian mostly. I like it a lot. It's much better than most Linux offerings. But it's no OpenBSD. Part of the reason is because it inherits the problems of its upstream sources, including some of the design decisions of the Linux kernel.

You can say EXACTLY THE SAME about the Linux distros I mentioned. Both RedHat and Debian have their own "generic kernels", core pkgs, etc.

This is not the same. Red Hat and Debian mostly pull from upstream sources which do not develop together. For most of OpenBSD userland, the upstream is the same as the package maintainer.

Even the packages that ARE from external sources are better integrated.

(By the way: for every Linux distro I've used, the default kernel always lacks something or doesn't work in some way, and I always end up building a custom one. With OpenBSD, the default kernel is much better than any default Linux kernel I've seen.)

If you disagree with my accessments on integration, I encourage you to look at a base OpenBSD system, and a Debian base system, compare the two, and I think it will be very clear which is better integrated. Look, particularly, at the headers, and the interfaces between kernel and userland, some of the manpages for kernel features, and this is easily apparent.

And remember, I'm writing this all as a Debian user. I use Debian much more often than I use OpenBSD.

As for your last argument, about how many people use Linux: This proves nothing. I can just as easily say, "Look how many people use Microsoft Windows! Obviously, it must be better!"

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL! So nicely said and your reply just slams this idiot in the mouth, with his own foot! Couldn't agree with you more. ROFL, Look how many people use Windows, LOL!!! Nice come back to this moron, LMFAO. Good job man.

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[xbsd]

This is not the same. Red Hat and Debian mostly pull from upstream sources which do not develop together. For most of OpenBSD userland, the upstream is the same as the package maintainer.

I think you need to learn a bit more about the way Red Hat or Debian are integrated and how much they influence and contribute to the "upstream sources". Alan Cox is one example, he's a key kernel developer and he serves Red Hat interests, just as many other Red Hat employees or Debian devs helping out Linus. The same applies to different projects.

By the way: for every Linux distro I've used, the default kernel always lacks something or doesn't work in some way, and I always end up building a custom one. With OpenBSD, the default kernel is much better than any default Linux kernel I've seen.

That's cool, but I hope you concede that your situation it's not common. That the vast majority of Linux users do not need to recompile kernels and, as a matter of fact, kernel recompilation is way more common in BSDland, http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/kernelconfig-custom-kernel.html

As for your last argument, about how many people use Linux: This proves nothing. I can just as easily say, "Look how many people use Microsoft Windows! Obviously, it must be better!"

You missed the point. I never said that Linux was better because more people use it, I said that experts and corporations that really need performance, security, and overall a well written OS choose Linux over OpenBSD and I gave you plenty of examples that you are free to compare against the testimonies in the OpenBSD website. http://www.openbsd.org/users.html

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to learn a bit more about the way Red Hat or Debian are integrated and how much they influence and contribute to the "upstream sources". Alan Cox ...

Yes, companies like Red Hat fund and employ influential hackers such as Cox. And Debian, for example, has many cool scripts that were specifically written for it. This does not change the fundemental development model of Linux: "release something, and let distributors figure it out." Read LKML and this is a pretty typical attitude. Also, Debian wouldn't need so many cool/complicated scripts if the kernel interfaces were cleaner. And lastly: that these people are involved in upstream does not change that for the vast majority of packages, this is not the case.

kernel recompilation is way more common in BSDland, http://www.freebsd.org/doc/....

I don't know anything about FreeBSD, but as I understand it the kernel is quite different. All I can say is that my experiences with OpenBSD-GENERIC have been nothing but positive.

Anyway, I've had it with this thread.

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[synthespian]

This is not the same. Red Hat and Debian mostly pull from upstream sources which do not develop together. For most of OpenBSD userland, the upstream is the same as the package maintainer.

I'm a Debian and OpenBSD user too. I just am tired of the argument the Debian community puts forth, that they're always late on releases because "they're all volunteers",and they "have problems with upstream", "it's a huge amount of software to port", etc, etc. Well, OpenBSD guys too are all volunteers. Sure, guys like Theo develop it full-time, but that's because he set out to organize OpenBSD.org in such a way that he can. OTOH, OpenBSD folks hack kernel and protocols, not just userland.
OpenBSD is a much more cohesive system and Linux fanboys would know if only they looked at the source code, which is clean and nicely written. Ever tried to read the code for dpkg? If you had, you would know (and you would also want to know what void ohshit does...)
The only problem i have with OpenBSD so many people in the free software community accept proprietary software like Java, or are just smug with their binary drivers, and also that so many developers forget they should be writing software for Unix and not for Linux (which makes some software impossible to compile without a huge ammount of work), which is the whole point of POSIX standards.

Just email them and BEG them to ship...

[alexhmit01]

Without fail, their bi-annual schedule results in shifting by a few weeks either way, and ALWAYS comes out right around the time I am reconfiguring the OpenBSD machines (currently the Firewall/VPN machines, used to be our web and DB servers too but performance wasn't great, keep considering moving to a RHEL DB Server and an OpenBSD Web Server solution), but they sometimes take FOREVER to ship. What's really frustrating is no binary releases of patches, so you upgrade every 6-12 months, and NO REMOTE UPGRADE capability. That's what kills me now, I have servers all over the place, and I can't remotely upgrade them, and they release 2/year.

With RHEL, I have my subscription, and a major release only comes out ever 2 years and they support the old one with patches for a while. By the time I'm frustrating from not having the newest features available, they are beta-testing a new RHEL version and I can always grab the Fedora SRPMs and rebuild if I can't wait (I like to grab SRPMs when pulling from Fedora, in case an underlying change would create a compatibility issue with the binary one).

OpenBSD is great, but its an amateur project and it shows. We usually by 2-3 CDs each release, depending how I'm feeling, and I LOVE the stickers, but the release process and upgrading is annoying. However, the ports collection is great and supports most common applications. I MUCH prefer ports to SRPMS if I need to customize the install (adding things like Kerberos, LDAP, SSL, etc. to various projects) then mucking around in the SRPMs.

However, the software is AWESOME, I just wish they had some corporate backing to offer something like RHN.

Alex

Re:Just email them and BEG them to ship...

[Tuck]

NO REMOTE UPGRADE CAPABILITY

If you have a serial console it's trivial to do a remote upgrade: download "bsd.rd" into /, then reboot and at the boot> prompt, type "boot /bsd.rd". You can then enter the installer and upgrade as normal. The filesets can be sourced from wherever is available (the network if it's up, a local directory if you have the disk space and download them in advance, or a CD if you have someone local to the machine to feed it).

I've done this many times (for values of "remote" equal to "downstairs" but as long as the console access is there then in theory it could have been anywhere).

If the upgrade goes pear-shaped for some reason then it might get tricky, however that's true of most remote upgrades (particularly if the machine doesn't have remote management hardware).

Seriously, its amazing

[alexhmit01]

The first time I installed it, it took a few attempts. Had to figure out the networking, etc. (I had problems with Redhat 6.2 as well, the installer was great, but no tools that I could find to edit them until I learned my way around the text files).

However, after 3 attempts when we got the hang of it, I looked at my partner (it was our first webserver for our little company) and we were like COOL. Once you get the handle of the installer and ports, its a DREAM, much EASIER than the Redhat what do I want and where is it problem.

That said, RHEL 4 is pretty slick, but nowhere near as impressively simple as OpenBSD + Ports. The installed OpenBSD system is SO FUCKING clean its not funny, and then you add the few ports, nice and customized, that you want.

One day I build 4 OpenBSD machines. Build the (customized) packages on one and distributed, and it was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nice).

It's a great system, but you gotta really be a Unix-lover. If you want the click-click install, the Linux distros are great, but with OpenBSD I understand what is going on with my system.

That said, you can just TRY to get my OS X Powerbook away from me... :)

Alex

Re:Seriously, its amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you on this. OpenBSD installs the minimum system necessary and makes for running light, efficient servers.

However I have one beef with the 3.7 install. As a result of their beef with Adaptec, the cd37.iso does not have the Adaptec FSA drivers compiled in bsd.rd kernel.

I don't particularly care for Adaptec, but it would be nice if the OpenBSD team would not have removed support for their drivers in the default bsd.rd kernel so that I can upgrade my servers without having to customize the kernel.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[__aaclcg7560]

Using the two CD method, I can go from a blank computer to a working OpenBSD system in less than 15 minutes.

Thanks for the info. I got a vmware session up in 30 minutes. The fdisk/disklabel thing threw me for a loop until I figured it out.

Mod Parent DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't bother to check what the torrents are. They are a mirror of what is on the official ftp sites. I just downloaded them and verified their MD5 checksums with the MD5 file on a second level mirror.

No, openbsd has linux binary compatability.

[Some Random Username]

Which means you can run linux binaries. It doesn't mean the openbsd kernel can load and use linux kernel modules.

Re:Features

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'll bite - The kids at OpenBSD developed OpenSSH that is why it exists in an FOSS "state" and it seems either you really are trolling or you misunderstand the features and functions of SSH - it is like saying that a release that mentions major TCP stack upgrades, isn't worth more than a patch. SSH/scp/sftp is/are a complex group of functionality that deserve attention. Most of the internal traffic for my production systems uses ssh for transport, so it is a notable feature for me.

IHBT

I can't hear you very well through that hat

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you are really aware of it, but note that the link you gave mentions the story behind the acronym SQL, which certainly used to be SEQUEL before and had to be changed for legal reasons, but doesn't mention the pronunciation of SQL at all. Actually it _is_ "Es Queue El": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL.

If you read the documentation of popular relational databases, it's quite possible that you find a paragraph regarding the pronunciation, and in that case you'll find they follow the ANSI convention. [1] [2]

I know when I started using RDBMs years ago I read about it, and ever since whenever I see someone pronouncing SQL as "sequel" the first thing that comes to my mind is "newbie". I suspect from now on one more thing will come to mind: a prick who wants to sound clever when he's actually an ignorant.

Re:I can't hear you very well through that hat

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of post is exactly why Slashdot comments are worth reading. Citing two sources and carefully skewering the parent just before plopping them on the bbq (that's bar-bee-queue). Good work.

At least the fish is open about it now

[MrSmithers]

See? I told you. I told all of you. I told you FOUR YEARS AGO but nobody believed me.

Now take a look at the OpenBSD web page. Just try and tell me the fish didn't finally come out of the closet with this release. The raised eyebrow, the pouty lips, the rainbow background. I told you.

Sigh, I hate people.

These features don't exist -- yet

[Yannic]

Yes, you're right. You've caught me. I admit it, I'm a Karma Whore. I was worried I'd get modded Off Topic because of all the OpenBSD-relevant chatter I cut out to avoid making my post appear as an essay-length diary entry.
The truth is, while Linux may have the bells and whistles that often gets me excited, OpenBSD just feels so right. Every time I come across some exciting feature, I wonder "...does it run on OpenBSD?" That doesn't curb my hopes of building an application-transparent cluster with hot node addition/removal without touching a single line of code as the third-to-last step in my plan for world domination. We can always dream.

Besides, I would never miss an opportunity to impress the ladies by talkin' cluster talk.

\/\/\/

"All Riiight!" - Quagmire, Family Guy

Re:These features don't exist -- yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Pointless quotes belong in sigs, where readers can opt to leave them out.

license angst-free

[Anonymous Coward]

I welcome each release of an OS + tools that does not have any long term and long shot 'we may force you to open your source code due to GPL violations' threats.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[zaft]

Um, you shouldn't have to create two CDs. Just put all the files in an 3.7/{arch} dir. It's really pretty simple. For i386 you can use cdrom37.fs as your boot image, for the others it's basically a floppy disk image if I remember correctly.

Disco Stu doesn't advertise

[Nonesuch]

xbsd wrote:

...compare against the testimonies in the OpenBSD website. http://www.openbsd.org/users.html

Except that perhaps many of the largest users of an OS designed as "proactively secure" might maybe be paranoid enough about security not to announce their choice on a public web page?

Re:Disco Stu doesn't advertise

[DashEvil]

I don't even understand why you're fighting with this guy. I use OpenBSD, you use OpenBSD, we both think it's great. If they want to troll in OpenBSD related slashdot threads that's their social problem, not ours. I'd prefer if the trolling/negative crap went ignored and got modded into oblivion.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

zsh builds fine here. Apart from that zsh is also available as a prebuilt package.

A couple of download fails since the tarball is not available on the site, but it is available on ftp.openbssd.org.

zsh 4.2.4 is only 1 minor version older than the current release.

I assume you have changed something in your system that makes it fail. Or maybe the download of the tarball failed because the ftp server is a bit overloaded.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

ERROR 1? WTF? I've used OpenBSD since 2.1 and I've never seen anything called "ERROR 1". I've run it on i386, Sparc, and Alpha. And I've seen a lot of bugs. Parent is PEBKAC, broken hardware he reservces for trying OpenBSD on, or troll.

(You do know that the way they test the ports tree is by "make" at the top level, and then hounding the maintainers for anything that breaks? That this is done *all the time*. I think ERROR 1 is your particular problem (if you're not just making it all up.)

3.7

[crappy]

So we have a new release of the best free operating system in existence, and clueless people start whining about disk-partitioning? i mean ROFL....

It's all relative...

[alexhmit01]

Well, given that two of the machines are in different locations 1500 miles from my office, that's a long serial cable. :)

We used to have them in a colo facility (rackspace, found through a Slashdot banner ad), but we changed those machines to RHEL because they will support them and do the upgrades, and up2date will pull down binary patches without my needing to upgrade from CD every 6 months.

Alex

What are you talking about?

[Some Random Username]

That has nothing at all to do with disklabel, does it? Disklabel is where you create partitions and set their mount points. Fdisk is where you create a slice for your partitions to live in (a DOS partition). Obviously cfdisk isn't going to be there, its not linux. And if you can't follow these simple directions: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Disks then nobody is really going to care that you can't manage an install.

If people who have never used unix before can do it on their first try with no help just by reading the simple directions, then perhaps the simple directions are good enough.

Re:What are you talking about?

[m50d]

But why doesn't the installer tell you that? There's no web browser on the install cd, is one expected to do each stage and then reboot to the old OS to see what to do next?

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[kernelpanicked]

Never seen ERROR 1? Anyone that has ever used any BSD has seen this, although on Free and Net it is a rare occurence.

I'd also hardly call a new dual P4 with 1.5GB RAM broken hardware.

Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images...

[zaft]

While building the i386 ISO is pretty well documented, I'm having a hell of a time trying to build one for sparc64, especially without an existing OpenBSD installation. Can anyone tell me how to make an OpenBSD sparc64 install CD? Not just the install kernel but a complete standalone install CD?

Huh?

[Some Random Username]

Why doesn't the installer tell you what? If the very simple and easy installation is too hard for you, then follow along with the walkthrough on the inside of the cd case, or print the instructions from the website before you start.

Re:Huh?

[m50d]

Why doesn't the installer tell you you're supposed to run the disklabel program

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, how do you get ERROR 1 then? I tried grepping through /usr/src; but there's too many uppercase "ERROR"s there. How do I trigger it, or what would I be doing when it was triggered?

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I made zsh. On a P200 Dell Inspiron. Worked, no errors.

You are very confused.

[Some Random Username]

You aren't supposed to run the disklabel program, so it would be pretty dumb if the installer told you to. The installer asks you simple questions, you answer them. It runs disklabel for you.

Perhaps you were intoxicated when you tried to install openbsd? Read the walkthrough I linked to, its very straightforward.

Re:You are very confused.

[m50d]

I can't remember the details, it was a long time ago, but I do remember following all the instructions I got from the actual program, and it not being able to find the partition.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh do you mean "Error code 1"? That's not the same as ERROR 1 you know. You screwed up somewhere: something wrong with the dist file, didn't do "make clean" after a previous build, something like that.

Re:T-Shirts? No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the Bible Belt (The South).
Too many idiots.
(Yes, I'm from Texas... southeast Texas... farkin sad)/

Re:Features

[Anonymous Coward]

The kids at OpenBSD developed OpenSSH that is why it exists in an FOSS "state"

Duh. I know that. What makes you think I didn't? I'm talking about bothering to mention what the developers themselves call a bugfix release of OpenSSH.

it is like saying that a release that mentions major TCP stack upgrades, isn't worth more than a patch.

No, it wouldn't, because that would be a major upgrade. My whole point is that this isn't a major upgrade. Did you even read my comment, or did you just kneejerk like a fanboy because I said something negative?

Most of the internal traffic for my production systems uses ssh for transport, so it is a notable feature for me.

So exactly which changes to OpenSSH affect you? If you actually _look_, I think you'll find that the difference is negligable. Which was my point. Which seems to have flown over your head making a loud whizzing sound.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[chrysalis]

I'm using BSD every day for 4 years (OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, NetBSD and Darwin), and I've never ever seen any "ERROR 1".

So your post is probably an useless troll about an imaginary error. Or if you think you hit a real bug, please fill a bug report.

Some days, I really think that maybe there is a "Troll on forums" step in the FreeBSD installation HOWTO.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[kernelpanicked]

did any of you bother to read my initial post? to generate an error 1 all you have to do is attempt to build a port where they have not bothered to update the dependencies in the last year or so. Not hard to find on OpenBSD. As soon as it hits the server and the distfile is no longer there (no shit its a year old) it errors out.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[chrysalis]

export FORCE_UPDATE=Yes
make update

Sure, this is very difficult.

Re:Yup Still Sucks

[kernelpanicked]

ahhh yes because FORCE_UPDATE will magically make the mirror administrators put the tarball back on the server....dumbass

Re:T-Shirts? No thanks!

[zr-rifle]

About that last story about the girl and the freebsd daemon, isn't it peculiar that id Software is from Texas. I wonder what kind of stares John or Adrian Carmack usually get.