OpenBSD 3.8 Released

Cowards Anonymous writes "OpenBSD 3.8 is out. It comes with improved hardware support, some improvements to the OSPF daemon, some new RAID management tools, among many others. Even if you plan on installing via FTP, why not order a CD copy, tshirt, or poster as well? "

Comments

Nothing to see here...

[giorgiofr]

NetCraft confirms it: BSD is NOT dead!
It has just turned into an invisible super-natural being that will come and bite you in the ass, YOU FAT PENGUIN!
Eh, I'm joking. Don't mod into oblivion please, pretty please...

Re:Nothing to see here...

[bhtooefr]

http://www.oook.cz/screenshots/takeittux2.png

Beastie stabs Tux in the heart, you insensitive clod!

T-shirts for us total nerds

[totallygeek]

I am a big guy and I love ordering shirts from OpenBSD over some other places because they have XXXL on their site!

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[FinestLittleSpace]

lose weight?

*ducks*

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[grub]

I love ordering shirts from OpenBSD over some other places because they have XXXL on their site!

That's why I order condoms from them. [/rimshot]

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

they have them at think-geek as well..

click on the outdoor camping tents, or circus tent section.

I strongly suggest you take up smoking and a cocane habit. It's better for your health and the current lifestyle you are living.

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> I strongly suggest you take up smoking and a cocane habit.

That's the [Chet] Atkins diet.

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[nfsilkey]

OMG ITS BITS! VTX4EVA!

Re:T-shirts for us total nerds

[level_headed_midwest]

Don't take up smoking crack unless you want to be a Big 12 basketball coach. Right, Quin?

OSPF daemon?

[dsginter]

OSPF daemon? That's the name of my dog!

OpenBSD is cool

[debilo]

I used to run OpenBSD on my router/firewall, and I quickly grew to love it. Installing OpenBSD was one of the most painless installs I have ever experienced, although there is no graphical installer. The FAQ located on the OpenBSD web site is a very thorough and priceless guide, and there are quite a few books on OpenBSD that have been released recently, so the old argument that there's no documentation for OpenBSD to be found doesn't hold any water anymore.

Eventually, I ditched it for FreeBSD, because that's what I use on my desktop machine and on my notebook, and it feels more familiar. Also, I find patching and keeping the system up to date easier on FreeBSD than on OpenBSD. But don't let that discourage you, OpenBSD can be fun to use, just try it.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

the old argument that there's no documentation for OpenBSD to be found doesn't hold any water anymore.

Anymore? When did it EVER hold water? OpenBSD has to be the most well documented OS out there.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[compass46]

"Also, I find patching and keeping the system up to date easier on FreeBSD than on OpenBSD."

There's been a lot of work done on the pkg_* tools to make updating easier. I'm still on a 3.6 box at home so I can't wait to see what's been introduced since then. The pkg_add man page for 3.8 says the -u switch will be a true update switch after 3.8. Portupgrade is a great tool to use on FreeBSD and I can't wait for similar functionality on OpenBSD.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[kbogert]

Installing OpenBSD was one of the most painless installs I have ever experienced

Ever installed DOS?

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[Minwee]

Ever run a network server on DOS?

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[jpkunst]

Absolute OpenBSD: UNIX for the Practical Paranoid
Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF, 2nd Edition
Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security
Secure Architectures with OpenBSD

JP

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[kbogert]

Sad to say, yep. And a bbs sometimes too

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[LurkerXXX]

You shouldn't need a book. The man pages are very well written. Much better than for most other OS's.

But if you really need a book they aren't hard to find.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[LurkerXXX]

oops, copying and pasting too many links. The last one should be http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321 193660/qid=1130858098/sr=8-4/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-7353 399-4047146?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[Minwee]

You have my sympathies.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[the_maddman]

The OS that's the most fun to install (when it likes your hardware) is OS/2. The installer dumps you into the desktop right off the bat, and things just start appearing. First program installed is solitare too, and you can play while it installs the rest of the OS. That was so cool coming from DOS and Win 3.1 on my 386sx/25.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[tyen]

I don't do mail order. If its not in a bookshop then as far as I'm concerned its not out there.

Any bookstore worth their salt will be more than happy to special order any in print book in exchange for prepayment, and take the order over the phone so you don't have to make two trips to the store; just pick it up on your next trip to the bookstore. If you are worried about someone nicking your credit card number when you give it out over the phone, just get a credit card that lets you generate one time use numbers (Citibank offers this service, for example). Now if you insist upon being able to saunter into J. Random Bookstore and walk out with said book, well, you're mightily limiting your choices in the technical field, not to speak of books in general.

Or you could have the book delivered to your office if you have one.

Or you could rent a private mailbox where they will sign the package for you and place it in your secure box; there are private mailbox places that are designed so their patrons can securely get in after-hours to get at the boxes. These are cheap, and open up mail order for you.

Bottom line, there are many ways to order these or any other books that should address your earlier bad experiences with mail order.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[dohcvtec]

I'm talking about books I can find in a shop

I've seen Absolute OpenBSD in a brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[greginnj]

I don't do mail order. If its not in a bookshop then as far as I'm concerned its not out there.

I know what you mean. I don't do that newfangled Internet stuff - if I can't type it up on my Leading Edge D and send it in to a BBS, it's not really communication.

Re:OpenBSD is cool

[incabulos]

Patching and support for OpenBSD installs isnt a process thats discouraging, or even time consuming. For the 6 month window during which OpenBSD 3.7 was the most recent stable release, there were just 5 patches released! Errata list for OpenBSD 3.7.
 
Only one of these was a kernel patch, so even if you are patching the system religiously ( as all security-aware admins should be ), only one reboot was needed in 6 months. Which wouldnt even cause an outage if you are using OpenBSD + CARP + pfsync. Enterprise-grade features in a free OS!

New Security Features

[RAMMS EIN]

To see some of the current and new security features in OpenBSD, see this presentation by Theo.

And it runs on the Zaurus!

[wiredog]

The 3000 and 3100 Zaurii. Installation instructions.

Fairly impressive list of supported hardware, too.

Re:And it runs on the Zaurus!

[Halfbaked Plan]

Actually, I am more interested in running it on my MicroVAX 3100.

(which it will run on)

Too late for DotGNU

[RAMMS EIN]

Alas, the release comes too late for the DotGNU project (their website has just been defaced).

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[tomhudson]

So dotgnu.org confirms it - BSD died.

A snapshot - for when they have it fixed:

;- DigitalMind -;

Just Do it.
DigitalMind Crew
We are: DigitalMind , unknown , [code] , matrizz, N3ur0tic
You Have Been Hacked...
Contact:
irc.gigachat.net
#DigalMind

knowledge is power, knowledge shared is power lost

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[mwvdlee]

Wow, are children still doing that nonsense nowadays?

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[tomhudson]

Perhaps they should rename it "dot dot dot pause dash dash dash pause dot dot dot.gnu"?

What the heck, never did like .NET or mono anyway.

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[MyIS]

It also seems that they run a virtual host setup. The same server hosts http://wiki2.dotgnu.info/, which appears to be fine. It was probably some web-app 'sploit, localized to dotgnu.org; nothing too special.

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[gregorlowski]

Here's what they're running:

Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 20:01:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) (Gentoo/Linux)

Really, Gentoo is NOT the distro to be running for a webserver. What if there's a security hole in a basic library on which multiple apps depend (probably not the case here, but...). Do you recompile the whole system on your production server while everything is down?

I don't think Apache on GNU/Linux is really less secure than on OpenBSD, but use something STABLE like debian stable or centos stable. Maybe they're running gentoo stable, but still, I don't think it receives the same amount of security testing as some other distros. But I'll admit that I've only run Debian and RH in production, so maybe I'm talking out of my ass here.

They probably just did a horrible job of security with their apache or the dynamic pages that they're running on it.

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[MyIS]

My mistake - it redirects to wiki2.dotgnu.info. The actual server knows itself as wiki.dotgnu.org - all the stuff I said about virtual hosting is still true. That is, only www.dotgnu.org virtual dom

Re:Too late for DotGNU

[Just Some Guy]

What if there's a security hole in a basic library on which multiple apps depend (probably not the case here, but...). Do you recompile the whole system on your production server while everything is down?

Assuming you're not in the 0.001% of the population that compiles everything statically for some very specific reason, you'd compile that one library, and possibly reboot so that every single service dynamically linked against it gets the updated version.

I don't think Apache on GNU/Linux is really less secure than on OpenBSD

It is. OpenBSD maintains their own patch branch of Apache, and while they make their patches readily available, I don't think they're widely used elsewhere.

One of the most important things

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most important things new in this release is the mmap(2) based malloc(3) implementation. I can't believe the submitter didn't mention it. It has huge implications, in terms of added security and increased code quality overall. Already, important off-by-one bugs have been found and fixed in X.org which had been sitting there un-noticed for years. These bugs could cause the X server to crash on many systems, but OpenBSD exposed them reproducibly so they could be fixed.

Read more about it in this Security Focus article titled Security-related innovation in Unix and in Theo de Raadt's post to misc@.

Re:One of the most important things

[DaPoulpe]

Sounds great but do we have some figures of performance hit for these new features ?
I mean it's a must have whilst you're bug hunting, but could be an overkill on production servers/desktop ?
Didn't have time to dig into TFA yet, just thinking out loud... (aka don't squash me like a bug :-)

Re:One of the most important things

[Dan Ost]

Performance is not an OpenBSD priority, but the interviews with
OpenBSD developers that have been popping up the last couple of
weeks seem to imply that the performance hit of the new malloc()
is minimal.

Re:One of the most important things

[DaPoulpe]

After reading Heap Protection Mechanism I thought it could have quite a noticeable inpact.

To be honest from the quote we can just guess the slowdown should be somewhere between 0 and 50% (with 0 being quite unlikely) :-)

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of services run on your servers and how busy are they ?

Re:One of the most important things

[ChrisA90278]

Solaris has "mapmalloc" which is mmap based malloc and it has "watchmalloc" which uses something like a breakpoint that you can have watch for reads and writes to the "wrong" places. Basically two independent malloc replacements. With watchmalloc being the more sophisticated of the two. These will find errors in stuff that has worked for years. Solaris man pages for mapmalloc and watchmalloc are on-line for anyone who wants them (see google) Solars now is Open Source too. From my experiance using it and linux daily both thier intial releases (I remember Linix 0.x and I went into a Sun office see Solaris before it hit the street) Opinion: The Solaris kernel and related utilities is the most adavnace there is on the X86 patform. It is Very stable and will servive things like pulling a CPU looseout of a socket and will scale to over 100 processors. However it is the worst *NIX desktop OS on the plannet. I should know it use it as my desktop every day all day

Re:One of the most important things

[lotzmana]

There are performance gains as well. In the current libc malloc (GNU libc, the one we use on linux and the old OpenBSD) the method of asking the kernel for memory is brk(). This means that the application's heap is one contiguous entity. The free heap memory is a linked list and it occupies virtual memory and potentially some swap space on disk.

The fact that the unused heap is swapped to disk is usually a false argument that brk() works -- you free heap memory and later on when the OS swaps this out you free the physical memory also. One additional problem with this scheme is that the free heap is a linked list, sometimes walking this list requires bringing the free heap memory back from disk!

The changes in the OpenBSD were in the implementation of the libc, freedom denied to the Linux developers -- Linux is only the kernel. BSDs are entire OS packages, changes in the kernel are accompanied by the necessary changes in the libc, this is not the independent GNU libc.

The forementioned improvement in malloc(), which was not detailed in the post, is based on a departure from the old fashioned heap paradigms. No use of brk(), but direct mmap/unmap(), thus reducing the size of the virtual memory. Second, the free heap is no longer a linked list but is kept lumped together in one single place, which brings two benefits. No swapping in of free heap from disk and no danger of unwanted user stepped-over writes that might destroy the list.

Re:One of the most important things

[Shanep]

Performance is not an OpenBSD priority, but the interviews with
OpenBSD developers that have been popping up the last couple of
weeks seem to imply that the performance hit of the new malloc()
is minimal.

Yes, because from memory, they have been working on it for years, specifically trying to get the performance hit down.

Re:or you could give us a torrent link...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD don't do ISOs.
You have to use the FTP sites: http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html

And yeah, they openly admit that this is becasue they want people to buy the CDs.
Please stop whining.

Re:T-Shirts are Dandy and All..

[CyricZ]

PWC does, apparently.

http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/17 8253&tid=201&tid=7&tid=218

Re:When you say "out"

[arosas]

OpenBSD tends to have a new release every 6 months which is more than I can say for most development projects.

Re:T-Shirts are Dandy and All..

[LurkerXXX]

Lots of folks use it. But many use it in a place you'd never detect it. Firewalls. Your 'netcraft' numbers won't report those, because in the vast majority of cases those will be totally invisible.

Re:When you say "out"

[hey!]

Which is why F/OSS is so wonderful if you're a decision maker. There is no death, so long as somebody out there with the skills is willing to maintain it. And by the law of large numbers, any sufficiently high profile project like this is a close to immortal as any software project can be.

We are dorks

[Work Account]

Well not me because I do not care one bit about point releases for operating system kernels, but you people reading this comment :)

Honestly though, anyone here not care?

I personally enjoy UNIX/Linux/Solaris/BSD but to be honest they are all pretty much the same to me as a developer.

The same utilities exist on all, and generally you just build your code and run your app and that's that.

Windows I might care about a point release or Service Pack because it might have a new DirectX library to play Everquest or CStrike with, but for these workhorse operating systems I often wonder who cares :)

Re:We are dorks

[(startx)]

As a developer you should care about this release. The malloc/free implimentation has been changed to release memory immediately to the OS, causing any read-after-free bugs to immediately throw a SIGSEGV.

See theo's post to misc@.

Re:We are dorks

[LurkerXXX]

This is a BSD we are talking about. The number refers to the whole operating system. Not just a kernal as in Linux. The same team that works on the kernal works on the rest of the system as well.

Re:We are dorks

[RAMMS EIN]

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, of course, but I personally think this release is a big deal. Contrary to what is usually the case with point releases, this one actually improves the state of the art - namely in security of Unix-like operating systems.

Some important security features have gone into this release (see, for example, this presentation), security that are almost certainly not found in any operating system you can mention. Besides the obvious benefit of making OpenBSD more secure, these features help catch bugs, and already some years-old bugs have already been caught. When these bugs are fixed, other systems using the software the bugs were in becomes more secure, too.

Personally, I am very impressed with how many security features the OpenBSD team manage to put in their system, without great sacrifices in standard-compliance and performance. I'm much more impressed by that than what great new features for games developers Microsoft has integrated, or how their new GUI toolkit makes their interface less ugly, or how Linux supports yet another hardware gadget, or how yet another distro promises that they will cause Linux to topple Microsoft.

In today's world that is run by computers, we need security. Worms, botnets, trojans, automated and directed break ins, website defacements, spam, and information theft demonstrate that we aren't there yet. OpenBSD seems to be the only OS project that seems to fully realize this _and_ have a production-ready system available. There is still much to be desired, but they're much further than the competition.

Re:We are dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bothered to read the release notes you'd see that this release is very important, since it comes with a new malloc/free system that returns memory to the kernel as soon as mem has been free()'d, eliminating another source of bugs. The OpenBSD coders never cease to amaze me in their search for the most secure OS. OpenBSD is the current leader when it comes to security (has been for some years) compared to other Unices. Windows doesn't even play in the same league.

Re:We are dorks

[kv9]

another delicious feature which we shouldnt overlook.

Re:We are dorks

[mkh]

The number refers to the whole operating system. Not just a kernal as in Linux. The same team that works on the kernal works on the rest of the system as well.

Kernal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KERNAL

Re:We are dorks

[eggnet]

I believe allocations less than 1 page don't get that benefit, but yes... the large buffer type allocations would. Allocations less than 1 page are handled internally by malloc still, and I don't see that changing.

Re:We are dorks

[Sloppy]

I personally enjoy UNIX/Linux/Solaris/BSD but to be honest they are all pretty much the same to me as a developer.

They're not the same to you as a developer, if your app consistently coredumps on the new OpenBSD while only subtly misbehaving once in a blue moon on the other OSes.

Another release song!

[Gathers]

I've never used OpenBSD, but I really like their release songs!

I wish Ubuntu also had that tradition..
(and no, "Badger badger badger badger" is to my knowledge not an official Ubuntu release song)

--
"One doesn't need a large rocket to send a probe to Uranus." ~ Oscar Wilde on Space Travel

Re:Another release song!

[just_another_sean]

(and no, "Badger badger badger badger" is to my knowledge not an official Ubuntu release song)


No, you're right, it's not. It's what coworkers do to you when they need something. (At least when the IT department is as small as mine).

Re:Another release song!

[evilviper]

I've never used OpenBSD, but I really like their release songs!

Be careful. The next OpenBSD release song is likely to be humppa music!

.

For those of you not laughing, it's impossible to explain: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=2005073 0093752&mode=expanded
Don't follow that link if you enjoy sanity.

Re:Another release song!

[Gathers]

After carefully listening to the first 10 minutes of the humppa show I can only say one thing:

NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoo ooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Argh, I have to stop listening before I start enjoying it! :)

--
"One doesn't need a large rocket to send a probe to Uranus." ~ Oscar Wilde on Space Travel

Ofcourse there's a new OpenBsd song too.

[HansF]

Get it on the bsd Release song page OpenBSD 3.8 CD2 track 2 is an uncompressed copy of this song.
MP3 song (4:24 minutes, 8.1MB)
OGG song (4:24 minutes, 5.6MB)
MP3 accoustic version (4:22 minutes, 8.0MB)
OGG accoustic version (4:22 minutes, 5.5MB)

ONTOPIC: T-shirts

[ehack]

I want a T-shirt with that politically-incorrect image of the BSD-demon and the penguin, after -hours.

Maybe we could have a post from the peng.cx guy ?

Note: This post is on-topic as T-shorts were specifically discussed in the original item.

part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[SuperBanana]

Guys, I'm not trying to be snippity or troll (haven't been modded that yet, but heading it off at the pass based on the two replies I've seen so far.) It's a little frustrating when I want to try OpenBSD, and I can't because there's no ISO to FTP or torrent. It takes a fair bit for me to try even a new distribution of linux, and making barriers to keep me from trying out a new OS is a sure fire way to make me find something else to do with the free time I had. I want to quickly download, install, poke around. Not spend $X on a CD, wait for it to come in the mail (why am I explaining this to fellow techies...? :-)

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[myspys]

Two ways:

1. Make your own ISO (http://www.pantz.org/os/openbsd/makingaopenbsdcd. shtml)

2. Download an inofficial ISO (http://www.hup.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=arti cle&sid=9953)

Both of these steps should of course be followed by buying at least something from the OpenBSD store at http://www.openbsd.org/orders.html

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[Minwee]

So why not just quickly download and install it? Nobody is forcing you to buy the official CDs.

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[Fezmid]

Have you even TRIED installing OpenBSD? It's simple. Download a 1M install disk, burn to CD, boot off the CD, select install, and it downloads everything that you select to install automatically. No need for an ISO, no need for a torrent.

Quick and painless. Try it, you'll like it. :)

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[compass46]

This barrier is in place I believe for a reason. If you won't (not can't since creating a boot floppy or CD is in the FAQ) get past that hurdle then they don't want you. OpenBSD is not the Linux community where they actively want you to join. You learn that quick and it can be refreshing at times.

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[freshman_a]

I want to quickly download, install, poke around.

I can download the OpenBSD install CD, burn it, install it, and have a working system in less time than it takes me to download most Linux distros, especially since distros like Fedora, Mandriva, and SUSE (or OpenSUSE, whatever it's called now) have 3+ ISOs @ 650-700MB each to download.

(I don't know, maybe that's a slight exageration, but that's sure the way it feels .)

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[EvilNTUser]

The others have already mentioned the boot CD + FTP, but I'd like to add that OpenBSD is even easier to install entirely over the network. There's no need to waste time and natural resources burning anything to a CD.

This is very easy to do, and all you need is DHCP and TFTP on another machine. The rest of the process is exactly the same. See PXEBOOT(8).

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[tyen]

It's a little frustrating when I want to try OpenBSD, and I can't because there's no ISO to FTP or torrent...I want to quickly download, install, poke around. Not spend $X on a CD, wait for it to come in the mail...

If your sole purpose is to just "poke around" and try out OpenBSD, there are plenty of people offering workable unofficial ISOs that are functionally equivalent. Sabotage.org has one that I've used; if you have requirements that demand a feature only available in the latest version, you are well beyond the stage of "poke around" and a budget request is in order. If you want something for free that is one of the project's ways of making ends meet...well, sorry, can't help you much there.

If you are that much a stickler for getting the "official" CD image, then that goes quite a ways beyond the "poke around" level of interest, and whoever is dictating the requirement for the official image either needs to pony up more money or more training/education to close the gap between bringing up the "official" OpenBSD and an FTP-based install (for just playing around, there is no difference). As any number of OpenBSD folks will attest, getting any of the unofficial images will more than suffice to satisfy your curiosity about the OS, and you won't have to retrain if you switch to the official CD's later. Personally, if I were you I would simply just follow the FTP-based install instructions; to really "play around" with a new OS and get any reasonable feel for it you're going to spend a week with it, so doing the FTP install is a fine way to introduce yourself to the OS (if for nothing else than how it lays out devices, for example) and install it at the same time. The instructions are extremely detailed and specific, certainly easy enough for people like yourself who dabble with different OS's and distros. Actual time spent messing around with the installation modulo the download time (which you would have spent anyways) will probably total no more than 1-2 hours.

Finally, note that for disaster recovery purposes, installation from FTP/HTTP/rsync/etc. repositories is one recovery mode that should be supported. You cannot absolutely count upon the availability of the discs, so any production-level interest that has any disaster recovery component (and if that component doesn't exist, you're playing with fire) should require familiarity with the FTP-based installation.

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[greginnj]

It's a little frustrating when I want to try OpenBSD, and I can't because there's no ISO to FTP or torrent. [...] I want to quickly download, install, poke around.

Have I got a tip for you. Here's a provider of free OpenBSD accounts you can SSH to:

http://www.metawire.org/about.php

All you have to do is send in an email request explaining that you want to learn about OpenBSD, and they'll set you up with a free account. (It may take a day or two; that's the price you pay for a free shell). Enjoy!

Re:part 2- not trolling, just a little frustrated

[juanaguas]

It doesn't take even that much. A single installation floppy and an adequately fast network connection is all you need to install OpenBSD on most hardware. Installing additional packages using pkg_add over FTP is very straightforward. If ISOs were available, downloading them wouldn't necessarily be the best use of bandwidth. Where connections are slow or expensive (or both) the installation sets are well worth buying; one disc set will allow you to install the OpenBSD base system on any number of machines and on a useful variety of platforms.

Re:When you say "out"

[chroot_james]

To say openbsd has risen from the dead makes no sense. It's only been getting stronger. With FreeBSD basically dying (sorry, a new website won't save you guys) and DragonFlyBSD not catching on as fast as it'd prefer, I'd say OpenBSD is the strongest of the BSD's. It continually pushes security ideas forward and continues to be the best foss network border operating system. It works fantastic for many things most people use Linux for. Web serving, file sharing, firewalling, database serving, etc...

Re:When you say "out"

[/ASCII]

Seeing how OpenSSH, pf and several other 'OpenBSD Spinoffs' have made it to Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, I'd have to say that at the very least, OpenBSD is by far the most interesting project in the BSD world for non-BSD:ers.

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[freshman_a]

I have to download a whole bunch of packages, make FLOPPIES

No, you don't. There is an install CD available. http://www.openbsd.com/faq/faq4.html#MkCD-ROM
Download the install ISO, burn to CD, ta-da! Very difficult, indeed...

As someone who has installed OpenBSD before, I can tell you, it's really not that difficult. Download the install CD ISO and follow this: http://www.openbsd.com/faq/faq4.html#Install

Would you trust?

[aurb]

Would you trust an operating system that had a remote hole 8 years ago?...

What would make me try it..

[BerntB]

I'd love to use something with Open BSD's security focus on my desk.

What would really make me try it would be good support for virtual machines.

Then I could fall back to Linux if I got a problem and run the two programs where I still boot to Win. Easy transfer -- and I could transfer my parents' machines. Less questions.

Re:What would make me try it..

[RAMMS EIN]

OpenBSD can run Linux binaries, and WINE is available, too. I don't use either facility, so I can't comment on how well it all works, but it might just work. NetBSD has this page with screenshots, among other things demoing Linux and Windows apps running under NetBSD. NetBSD and OpenBSD are closely related enough that if something works on one, chances are it will work on the other, or can be made to work without too large an effort.

Of course, there's always VMWare and the likes. QEMU also runs on OpenBSD. And, of course, the bulk of the popular open source software.

Still, not all is well. I run Linux on my laptop, and there's a reason for that: hardware support (especially power management). The server is happily on OpenBSD, though.

Re:What would make me try it..

[RLiegh]

I can't speak to OpenBSD, but with regards to NetBSD there really isn't VMWare or Qemu. I suppose technically you can get binaries for both; but VMWare is a nightmare to install under NetBSD and even then it only supports old versions (version 2 and 3, if I remember right) --good luck getting a license for those, btw-- and qemu lacks the kqemu module and that lack of functionality makes it almost as slow as bochs.

NetBSD might be ok for virtualisation if someone ports the kqemu module, which I hope they do, honestly. I like the OS -- but not when I need those specific apps.

Re:What would make me try it..

[LurkerXXX]

VMWare does not run on OpenBSD. You can install it as a guest system, with no support and no VMWare tools for it, but you can't use it as a secure host OS. I've been bugging VMWare for support for it for a long time. I hope anyone else interested will write them as well.

Re:What would make me try it..

[LurkerXXX]

I believe that is for VMWare *3*. The same antique version that used to run on FreeBSD as a host. It hasn't worked that way since the 3.x series. There was no support in 4.0, 4.5, or the current 5.0. I've also heard of no support upcoming in version 5.5 that's currently in beta.

Re:What would make me try it..

[LurkerXXX]

for an ancient 3.x version of VMWare. That won't work for 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, or the upcoming 5.5

Re:What would make me try it..

[RLiegh]

Unless there's something I'm not aware of, you aren't using Kqemu on OpenBSD. ;)

Re:What would make me try it..

[RLiegh]

I didn't write clearly enough, but I did address that when I said

and qemu lacks the kqemu module and that lack of functionality makes it almost as slow as bochs.

That's my bias showing through, sorry; to me without the kqemu module it's abuot as bad as not having it at all. That's no excuse for my unclear post, but that's the reason for it.

Sorry about that. :|

Re:What would make me try it..

[code shady]

Actually, I have successfully managed to install X windows on OpenBSD using VMWare 4 and 5 workstation edition. It did use VMware tools as well. You just have to follow the instructions found here: http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/tools_insta ll_lin_gsx.html(freebsd version) and then the ones found here: http://frogger974.homelinux.org/

With a minimal amount of tweaking, you should be able to get it to work no problem.

Make your own bootable CD then...

[aschlemm]

I've used instructions similar to this to make my own bootable CD for OpenBSD before. These instructions were for OpenBSD 3.4 but they've worked for me for both OpenBSD 3.5 and 3.7. The package names for OpenBSD 3.8 will have a "38" in them rather than 34.

http://www.pantz.org/os/openbsd/makingaopenbsdcd.s html

If you don't like these instructions do a quick Google search or something and you'll probably find a few more URLs showing the same thing.

Ladies

[Tashmire]

I got so many nice comments today. The Ladies love the OpenBSD 3.8 tees. And once I get them back to my dorm to check out my OpenBSD 3.8 poster, next to my SQL server, UNICA, and Flock of Segals poster, i'm sure i'll be getting some major action. Right Fellas?

Re:Ladies

[0racle]

Chicks dig OpenBSD

Re:Ladies

[Shanep]

Chicks dig OpenBSD

In all seriousness, all those years of wearing Linux t-shirts just got me silly looks. But I often get stopped with comments about my OpenBSD shirts, usually by chicks and gay dudes.

Re:Secure Heap Implementation

[/ASCII]

I've read that the Glibc heap implementation will also be implementing functionality similar to the guard pages in OpenBSD malloc. Should help shake out quite a few memory allocation bugs...

I wouldn't dream of trying a new flavor of *BSD...

[sootman]

... until I read a review of it on Slashdot. You know, one where someone who has never used it before gives it a spin for two days and writes a 5 page review: 3 pages on the installation, 1/2 page talking about how the default theme looks, 1 1/2 pages complaining that it didn't work with his sound card or run his monitor at the right resolution, and then concluding by saying Mac OS X is better.

That's not the whole OS.

[nuxx]

Just FYI, that's not an ISO of the whole OS. That CD is a cd image of the boot floppies, but not the whole OS. This can then be used for an FTP (or NFS or HTTP or whatever) install.

The OpenBSD folks copyright the layout of the CD they make so that it can't (legally) be freely made available and must be purchased. This doesn't prevent someone from building their own CD set and making it available, though.

Re:That's not the whole OS.

[freshman_a]

You are correct. I suppose I should have been a little more detailed about that...

Re:That's not the whole OS.

[nuxx]

That said, I still think it's damn useful. :) I just pulled down the three floppies for the replacement firewall at my house. I was waiting until today to get it set up.

I wrote a guide....

[Nazadus]

I wrote a guide on how to make your own CD from FTP in Linux.
I'm in the process of writting for how to do it in Windows.

Check it out and lemme know if something sucks:
http://etherpunk.com/knowbase/index.php/OpenBSD:_M aking_A_CD_From_FTP

Re:I wrote a guide....

[Rxke]

I liked your explanation/HowTo so much, I registered and fixed some little typos.

Aren't Wikis great?

Re:I wrote a guide....

[Nazadus]

For those intersted, I also ported the Gentoo Virtual Mail Server guide to BSD, but this one uses LDAP instead of MySQL. I also have it doing virtual web serving as well. http://etherpunk.com/knowbase/index.php/OpenBSD_3. 7_Guide Why did I choose OpenBSD? Becuase many moons and seasons ago I didn't update my Gentoo boxen. So I decided to update and found nearly a gazillion things (ok, not really, but more than 1 screen's worth) of updates. What's worse, is I let it automagicallyupdate my conf files (I was smart enough to back everything up before theupdate) but it replaced them with default settings (of course, we can't expect anything smart, now can we? although it does get awfully complicated). That day I decided I wanted something that I didn't have to update that often. My desires weren't that complicated, I don't need bleeding edge -- in comes OpenBSD. Fin.

Re:When you say "out"

[raffe]

pf is not in linux, but is is in freebsd. BUT a pf port to linux would be nice....

What does this have to do w/ OpenBSD, you ask?

[RLiegh]

I'm assuming that if that's the case with NetBSD, it would be the same for OpenBSD as well (it seems that the order of application porting seems to be Linux or Windows first, then FreeBSD, then NetBSD, then finally OpenBSD).

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[iggymanz]

actually, you can install from a single floppy, that downloads the rest. As other posters have pointed out, there's plenty of x86 ISO for CD install out there too.

Debian/OpenBSD?

[david.given]

I love OpenBSD. I think it's an amazing OS for people who know what they're doing: secure, consistent, amazingly documented...

OTOH, I also love Debian. I think it's the best userland package management system I've ever seen. It's less flexible than BSD's roll-your-own userland, but far easier to manage.

What I'd really like is to be able to run Debian on top of the OpenBSD kernel. That would give me the best of both worlds: OpenBSD's stellar kernel, and Debian's amazing package management. I know there used to be projects underway to port Debian to FreeBSD and NetBSD, but they seem to have died, and frankly I'd rather use OpenBSD.

Oh, well...

Re:Debian/OpenBSD?

[juanaguas]

Debian + OpenBSD sounds like my ideal combination too.

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[smooc]

If you do not have the time to create a cd, you should buy one. Your reasoning is analogous to the developers telling you "O we did not have the time to fix it as we did not want read through the documentation"

Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD is over rated

[rubycodez]

you must be joking, Sun's Solaris can't keep up with opensource OS, so they open sourced it to try to get some free developer mindshare. The biggest clusters on the planet don't run Solaris, and half the exciting features promised for Solaris 10 are still vaporware at this point. Sun has jumped onto the Opteron bandwagon, because UltraSparc lags in performance. Once Opteron gets to 16 or 32 way with dual cores, there's no compelling reason to use UltraSparc for any application.

And the best thing...

[MonoSynth]

You can install it without asking your boss!!!

OpenBSD 3.8 is not a kernel, it's an O/S.

[israfil_kamana]

BSD's are not kernels, they are operating systems. OpenSBD 3.8 is not the OpenBSD 3.8 kernel, it is the kernel, the base system, the utilities, the compiler, the hardware support, the new server software, etc. Therefore when OpenBSD (or the other BSDs) say "new, 3.14159 is released, you should actually care if you run that system. It means new features, new hardware support, and sometimes new whole pieces of software... just like when windows or mac release a new version.

I really hate it when linux watchers forget that their world is not like other worlds...
.

Re:Why not? I'll tell you why not.

[John Nowak]

What are you talking about? The install is a piece of cake! No harder than Ubuntu for crying out loud...

Re:or you could give us a torrent link...

[ajs318]

Given that it's released under the BSD licence, which everyone on Slashdot knows is so much better and freer than the GPL, who exactly do you think is likely to stop you creating your own ISO images?

Although seeing as it's OpenBSD, which is famed for being para .... er, security-conscious, almost nobody is going to want to download it if you do create one .....

50 bucks

[zogger]

50 bucks for the de-luxe version, or ftp over a flaky dialup? Hmmm

easy decision - no open bsd here! One way is unobtanium, the other is nonobtanium

Perhaps if they offered a "lite" version, just the disks in paper sleeves in a one dollar mailer for a lot less, say 10$? Way way WAY too many distros out there that you can try for the first time cheaper. I understand it's a whizz bang secure OS, designed primarily for servers, and etc, but sheesh. A lot of folks just like trying out new things, but at those prices, well.... it's nice to support your distro of choice, or a few, that they get some actual money in their pockets for thieir efforts. Buying from clone vendors cheap doesn't translate to much for the OS distributors, and a lot of various distros charge too much directly (IMO & relatively speaking, Y economic MMV most likely), but seems like a middle ground price setup would be a nice option, not only for these guys but a host of other OSes.

Re:50 bucks

[LurkerXXX]

It's easy to ftp, even over a flaky dialup. The default install is pretty small. Get it up and working and play. If you want to add more suff later, pkg_add is extremely easy to use.

Totally invisible is the right phrase

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

One thing people like to do with pf is to implement a filtering bridge. These can be transparent to an extent that routers can not.

Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD is over rated

[Alioth]

I've been using OpenBSD on sparc64 for about a year and found it entirely satisfactory. It also does something that Solaris cannot: it supports my Alcatel SpeedTouch USB modem.

Re:Why not? I'll tell you why not.

[Alioth]

So no installer gui makes it somehow _bad_?

Sure, it's not newbie friendly (however, installed in conjunction with the Install Guide, a newbie can install it - I was an OpenBSD newbie once and I didn't have a problem with it). Once you've installed it on a couple of machines it is EXTREMELY fast to install. These days I typically PXE boot the installer, and I can go from a blank machine to a working OpenBSD system in around 5 minutes. This is something that cannot be done with a GUI installer.

OpenBSD is not a system for non-technical desktop users; it is a server operating systems for system administrators or clued people. As such, certainly I'd prefer their efforts to be focused on things like the new malloc(3) implementation than making eye candy installers.

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[dubbreak]

As someone who has installed OpenBSD before, I can tell you, it's really not that difficult.

I definitely agree. The install is easier than most linux installs and a lot quicker (well the minimal system is pretty small, but it's all you need for a router). Within an hour you could have a box setup and have PF working thanks to the FAQs and guides.. heck the man pages are even VERY well written.

Gentoo/OpenBSD

[amightywind]

OTOH, I also love Debian. I think it's the best userland package management system I've ever seen. It's less flexible than BSD's roll-your-own userland, but far easier to manage.

If you like debian you'll love Gentoo. emerge, rc-update, etc-update can give you a fully up to date distro every day. The whole idea of major releases goes away.

Re:Gentoo/OpenBSD

[david.given]

If you like debian you'll love Gentoo. emerge, rc-update, etc-update can give you a fully up to date distro every day. The whole idea of major releases goes away.

I tried Gentoo once... thirty-six hours later, it was still compiling, so I gave up. Sorry, but binary packages are just far too convenient.

Re:Gentoo/OpenBSD

[Halfbaked Plan]

Upgrade to a '486.

*rimshot*

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[FiDooDa]

hummm...what do you actually do the last 45 minutes of that one hour install? ;)

Album covers!

[matt me]

Even if the CDs aren't free to ship, they still have ultra-sexy CD covers styled around different themes. http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsd38_cover.gif this release is INDY JONES! what is the audio track? wow bsd sounds so fun. http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsd37_cover.gif yellow brick road http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsd36_cover.gif western http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsd35_cover.gif http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsd32_cover.gif goldeneye!

Re:Album covers!

[chrisopherpace]

The "western" one is in fact Monty Python themed, it appears.

Re:Album covers!

[eluril]

No - his comments come after the link, so the Python one is the one without a comment - 3.5

Re:There's no downloadable image - YET

[dadragon]

You can still downloda the OPENBSD_3_* cvs branch and compile it...

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[dubbreak]

haha good point.. getting the system up and running is about 15mins (I've never gotten any linux distro up that quick, well maybe zipslack.. but a base debian install takes longer).. but then testing any filter rules takes up a bit of time and playing around for a bit before leaving it and basically forgetting it.

OpenBSD and Drivers

[zymano]

I understand they have to go through driver code very thoroughly to spot errors(overruns).

My question is couldn't they use the available drivers and put some code inbetween the kernel and driver to spot any buffer overruns and security problems.

Almost like sandboxing.

Re:OpenBSD and Drivers

[Nimrangul]

They do use available drivers, they port drivers from NetBSD and FreeBSD all the time. They also read through that code and modify it to run with the kernel.

If you mean Linux-kernel drivers, no, because all drivers in OpenBSD are a part of the kernel and GPL code does not get added to the OpenBSD codebase.

Bits

[totallygeek]

OMG ITS BITS! VTX4EVA!

Who is this? Private message me (totallygeek) on VLE. I am running through a list of who left here in 2000 for UT.... Drawing a blank.

All OpenBSD users....

[Not The Real Me]

(all seven of them, that is) should upgrade right now!!!
Seriously!

Re:All OpenBSD users....

[LABarr]

As one truly dedicated OpenBSD fan, I have already upgraded to 3.8 from my CDs that arrived last week. If you'll take the time to visit www.distrowatch.com, you'll find that OpenBSD is currently ranked 37th on their top 100 list. That sounds to me like there are far more installs than the 7 you mentioned. Seriously!

I sleep very soundly at night knowing my servers are running OpenBSD and protected with pf. Performance and stability are equally fantastic. The servers only come down for infrequent patching. And the daily visits to the log files that show all attempted attacks on the server that OBSD has stopped cold never cease to amaze me either.

A hearty congratulations to Theo and company! ***OpenBSD rocks my world!!!***

no , anonymous jerk

[zogger]

If you READ what I wrote, getting it from some duplication place DOESN'T make the original releaser very much money. The clone outfits buy it one time, or download it for free, and that's it, which means ONE SALE or NO SALE instead of many sales to the official distro place. I would PREFER to give the original place the loot, just not as much, preferally for a lite version without all the extras. I am FULLY aware of all the clone outfts, an that's where I get the bulk of my "tryout" distros. If it's something I really, really like, then I would go to the full priced version from the original companies. Like when I first started out, free cloned tryout redhat disks, I liked it enough, worked well enough, so I went to their 60 buck model to support them, thought I was being a righteous dude there. When they dropped that and went to OM freekin G prices, I went to fedora, bought for a few bucks from clone vendors. The result, redhat gets ZERO money from me when they could be getting "some" money yearly. Their call. Now it's OpenBSDs call on that. I want the whole shebang on disks, I despise downloading tons of crap, I can barely keep up with patches and updates. Most other distros, same deal, they want ridiculous prices to get the disks from them,, forcing people to go to the clone vendors. I think it's *nutz* and a bad business move. I prefer to order disks through the mail, DLing over dialup (all I can get here) is just not happening except for mini distros.

It's very similar to music or video disks, the **AA folks just don't get it on volume sales with a cheaper price. They could have nipped file sharing and napster in the bud if they had dropped from $15-20 and up a disk to 5$, sold millions and millions more copies and actually made more money at it, but NO, that makes too much sense.

    I do not know what it is with companies, whether data or entertainment, these places that slap crap on disks then charge out the ying yang for it, it must affect the brain or something, but if they bought three clues they would find out that most people are more than willing to pay a reasonable price for whatever, and "reasonable price" to "freekin cheap" can be brought into the equation *easily* with what-have-you on CDs or DVDs now-a-days, and they can still "make money" at it, lotsa money.

Re:Debian/OpenBSD? - GNU/kFreeBSD

[ecliptik]

Isn't that what Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is?

"Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD's kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set."

It even has apt repositories

Oh, no you don't

[Just Some Guy]

With FreeBSD basically dying

Sorry, but you don't get a free pass on that one. We're rolling out FreeBSD 6.0-RC1 (release candidate) servers this week. Dying OSes tend not to be under active development and wide deployment.

Re:Oh, no you don't

[chroot_james]

How about you guys get your act together then and start being innovative like back when you guys were v4.x. FreeBSD has had nothing interesting going on since 5. 5 was basically a joke as far as I'm concerned. I don't need a free pass. I was freebsd guy for a long time and paid my dues, which allows me to say the OS is boring and stagnant now. Have fun with that.

Re:Why not? I'll tell you why not.

[HungSquirrel]

Slightly harder than Ubuntu. Try having a newbie sit at the keyboard for the partitioning and disklabeling and see what I mean. (Better hope you don't have any important data, first!) Apart from that, the install is very quick and painless.

Do you miss Jordan?

[chroot_james]

Yeah... yeah, you do!

Re:Debian/OpenBSD? - GNU/kFreeBSD

[isthisnickinusetoo]

Well he said OpenBSD, not FreeBSD.

some improvements to the OSPF daemon

[mnmn]

" some improvements to the OSPF daemon"

What improvements? OpenOSPFD has not been released yet. I cant download it from anywhere. I cant find it.

I'd really like to take a copy of its zipped file, try to compile it for mingw and linux and solaris and install it on ALL my systems. I'd like to make MSI files of it and roll it out on all the WindowsXP machines here. Being OpenBSD, it must be reliable, portable and simple... ...if it existed.

Re:some improvements to the OSPF daemon

[Nimrangul]

This is the second release of OpenBSD that the daemon has been available in. The deamon hasn't had a portable release yet, that's all.

Since noone has been bothered to try adding the portability goop to the daemon and send in patches there hasn't been one. You going to step up and give out some code?

Re:Why not? I'll tell you why not.

[John Nowak]

Provided they printed out the instructions it is very easy. Just a few keypresses. As for the partitioning, it is the same thing with Ubuntu: If they don't want to wipe the whole drive, it gets rather tricky.

Okay, perhaps not *as* easy... but certainly easy enough!

Re:When you say "out"

[evilviper]

With FreeBSD basically dying

That's just trolling bullshit. FreeBSD is doing fine.

DragonFlyBSD not catching on as fast as it'd prefer

How do you know how fast the developers would prefer it to catch-on? It hasn't been around very long at all, it's impossible to say if it will get a strong following. I know as soon as I hear they've started using a microkernel, I'll be taking a real close look at it.

I'd say OpenBSD is the strongest of the BSD's.

If your only interest is security or a firewall, you could say that.

Of course you didn't bother to mention NetBSD at all.

Web serving, file sharing, firewalling, database serving, etc...

I don't think I'd suggest OpenBSD for running a database. FreeBSD's SMP support is much more advanced, as well as the filesystem, etc.

FreeBSD is the operating system for anyone comming from Linux. Great hardware support, performance, features, etc. OpenBSD is very strong in it's niche, but weak everywhere else.

Torrents

[Santana]

There are torrents too:

Re:Torrents

[zogger]

thanks for the information, nice additional link to the main article.

Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD defcon4

[rubycodez]

haha, using bad langauge in lieu of brain cells, way to prove a point. Ever wonder why Solaris patch sets are so big they're are called "monster patches"? I work with huge metro and county government Sun datacenters and have seen kernel panics, kernel bugs stopping production, exhuastion of kernel resources due to config values, etc. Interesting Sun's UFS isn't used on SAN data disks, usually Veritas file system. So you've one hard working box that's doing ok, good for you. Get hundreds of them and you'll start seeing the issues I've mentioned. Solaris does have more security issues than OpenBSD, and locking a box down has quite a few more steps.

Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD defcon4

[rubycodez]

safe admin using binaries? At least with checksumed source codes and make files you can see how the software was built, blindly loading binaries with no idea how flags & config values are set does make things easier for a lazy admin, I suppose. The BSD do keep the filesystem in a consistent state, unlike the more popular Linux default ones, and XFS on Linux does too. The city/county/muni data centers I work in use Veritas anyway, no Sun UFS on their SAN disks for whatever reason (also they use it with Linux) But looking at Solaris' huge list of patches, you can see many bugs that cause kernel panics, and if you get enough Sun boxes in one place you'll actually see them on production machines at times, even other neat problem with resource exhaustion, hardware failures, firmware issues (even had to downgrade Sun's own qlogic card one time to make it work with Solaris 9 on Ultrasparc). In short, you've somehow got the silly notion that Solaris is other than the kludge of bsd, sys v, sun java toys, tons of jacked open source, and 3rd party licensed crap that it is.

Re:When you say "out"

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I know as soon as I hear they've started using a microkernel, I'll be taking a real close look at it."

Their plans don't include microkernels. They're using messaging because they think that is easier to maintain and will possibly perform better than the finely grained locking you see in FreeBSD, Linux, and most other OSes designed to use large numbers of processors. The kernel will still be in one address space.

Re:Calm. The. #$@!. Down. It's not that I'm cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not computer literate (e.g., I have no idea how
to run Word or Excel), so perhaps I am missing
something. I don't own a cd burner or a floppy
drive, but I was able to write a file called bsd.rd
to a swap partition, boot off of that, and install
OpenBSD over ftp. The whole procedure was
trivial, and I had a working desktop in about
half an hour. (Caveat: I am first and foremost
literate, so I can't speak to the problem of playing
movies or sound files.)

Re:When you say "out"

[evilviper]

This "troll" mod is completely ridiculous.

Every complaint I stated about OpenBSD are/were known-bugs, all of which I experienced first-hand over the years.

If anyone has a problem with what I've said, speak-up and I'll respond. Post AC if you don't want your moderation reversed.

Re:Theo's an asshole and OpenBSD defcon4

[rmrfken]

Not to rain on your parade, as Sun has been a daily source of irritation
for me for the last 18 years, but a lot of your facts are a bit skewed.
There's plenty of good reasons to hate Sun/Solaris and you missed every one.
Each of your listed beefs aren't anywhere near what matters.

Datacenters (Sun shops) have been using veritas's vxfs in place of UFS
because until recently ufs lacked journaling. UFS is a perfectly fine and
fast filesystem, though of course not as advanced as AdvFS which HP
incompetantly killed after buying Compaq for it (by trying to integrate it
into HP-UX *after* firing all of their experts).

Sun Solaris is a true SVr4, you can tell because of how it handles the
runlevel scripts. The BSDish behaviour is only found if you are compiling
executables originally developed on a bsd/bsd-like box that need to link
against the compatibility libraries (which became usable in Solaris 2.4)
Since Solaris 2.5.1 the compatibility libraries have been stable and even
somewhat elegant. I'm not so happy with Solaris 9 as sun's growing
dependance on the OS software is leading to non-consistant behavior, though
Solaris 10 is addressing some of those issues.

Sun also has an edge in scalability, in our current DC we have a few
E20k & E25k's running relatively peacefully in active production. It's
hard to argue with a box with over 200GB of memory. (though I do have
a serious beef with Sun about how it handles that specific feature)
There are no Opterons or intel/intel-like systems existing anywhere
in the world that can approach the raw throughput of a box with
72 processors. Network based clustering is not an acceptable solution to
very many real-world problems. But bringing up SMP in this thread isn't
even close to fair as openbsd's SMP is in its infancy.

In terms of security, Sun does in fact have a "trusted" package which
renders the box very secure (at the cost of being very non-unixlike)
Though I would definitely agree that OpenBSD is far more secure out of
the box.

But I'd have no second thoughts on putting a blueprint secured Solaris
box naked on the internet.

In any event, I'm sure nobody cares about my rant so cheers.

-Grumpy Old Admin