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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."
Check out the Unofficial OpenBSD Bittorrent Page. If the torrent isn't here, it will be, soon!
Maybe yes
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.
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.
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.
If you want to know how to install OpenBSD, then you will *gasp HAVE TO READ!
n .html
http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/openbsd/installatio
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,
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
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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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.
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
3.7 comes with 1.01. Current version is 1.0.4.
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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
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
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!"
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.