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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."

30 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Try the Torrent! by cjsnell · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  2. Re:iso image Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Maybe yes

  3. Re:How's the install? by ignorant_coward · · Score: 4, Informative


    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.

  4. Re:How's the install? by Caligari · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

    --
    The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
  5. Re:How's the install? by Homology · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

  6. Re:How's the install? by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  7. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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

  8. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by grub · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  9. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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

  10. Re:How's the install? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  11. Re:SMP by Geekboy(Wizard) · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  12. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by aschlemm · · Score: 2, Informative

    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/

  13. Re:How's the install? by arete · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
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  14. Re:DHCP? by compass46 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  15. Re:Growl by SolusSD · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:How long is each release officially supported? by shking · · Score: 3, Informative
    ...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.

    --
    -- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
  17. Re:I hope by Rylz · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    --
    Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
  18. Better yet, don't! (Re:Try the Torrent! by algae · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    Causation can cause correlation
  19. Re:Decent firefox port ? by dolmant_php · · Score: 4, Informative

    3.7 comes with 1.01. Current version is 1.0.4.

  20. Re:Great for your firewall, but... by Nimrangul · · Score: 2, Informative
    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.

    --
    I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
  21. Re:OpenBSD for a linux user by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
  22. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 1, Informative

    "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.

    --
    I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
  23. Re:Where did the devil put the .iso images... by Alioth · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  24. SAMBA couldn't use the name SMB by parvenu74 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  25. Re:Growl by DavidBurns · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  26. Re:How long is each release officially supported? by tim_mcc · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  27. Re:Rebirth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  28. Re:Yes, you are a fanboy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    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!"
  29. Re:Crazy by trewornan · · Score: 2, Informative
    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.

  30. I can't hear you very well through that hat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.