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...

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

Too late for DotGNU

[RAMMS EIN]

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

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

[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

[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..

[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.

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: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: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: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

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.

Would you trust?

[aurb]

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

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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: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: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 .....

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: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: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.

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: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?

Torrents

[Santana]

There are torrents too: