Farewell sparc32. You will be missed by the retrocomputing geeks.
Still supported by NetBSD.
Not supported, "supported". Big difference.
OpenBSD 6.0 released
91–100 of 139 posts
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#92This is a good opportunity to ask: Can anyone recommend a laptop I could put OpenBSD on and be fully functional for busy workdays (i.e., when I need to spend 100% of the day being a knowledge worker with a reliable tool I don't have to think about, and 0% being a sysadmin trying to get their tool to work)? On one hand I've seen threads on HN and Reddit saying how OpenBSD works flawlessly, esp. on various Thinkpads. O…
Same question, for desktop server/workstation?
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#93It's good that they have their priorities straight. No more Linux binaries support (who need compatibility anyways?), but instead you get 5 songs sung by the project leader.
How dare they remove the code for a "feature" that hasn't worked in several years! The horror!
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#94This is a good opportunity to ask: Can anyone recommend a laptop I could put OpenBSD on and be fully functional for busy workdays (i.e., when I need to spend 100% of the day being a knowledge worker with a reliable tool I don't have to think about, and 0% being a sysadmin trying to get their tool to work)? On one hand I've seen threads on HN and Reddit saying how OpenBSD works flawlessly, esp. on various Thinkpads. O…
I used OpenBSD CURRENT on the Thinkpad Carbon X1 for 3 months earlier this year, and my experience has been that hardware support is not a problem for a "knowledge worker" (I am assuming you don't need things like HDMI audio for that).
The main problem is software that is outdated, unavailable, or buggy on non-Linux platforms.
I came crawling back to Linux in the end.
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#95Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gets PF for free, complains.
Gmail is free, would you be happy if they updated it and your email didn't work anymore? I love OpenBSD but they constantly change the rule syntax for pf, which invalidates huge swaths of forum posts and other online documentation, even published books. The man page doesn't contain every conceivable explanation and example for every scenario either, nor could it, so that is also not a solution. Whether or not the pri…
> Gmail is free
Perhaps this is a bit doctrinaire, but it's an important distinction:
You pay for Gmail with your privacy and personal information (you can say they are worthless to you, but you do pay). OpenBSD is truly free-as-in-beer.
You also have no end-user control or 'freedom to tinker' with Gmail. OpenBSD is free-as-in-speech, also.
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why you're being down voted. We've had ASLR in Linux for years and various attacks have been successful. The string format attack is the one I remember most clearly which basically renders ASLR useless.
Attacker-controlled format strings are very convenient bugs, but they can't do everything. Consider the program: int main() { char buf[20]; fgets(buf, sizeof buf, stdin); printf(buf); return 0; } An attacker writing to the program's stdin can read at offsets to the stack (e.g. "%42$x"), read the contents of arbitrary non-null memory (e.g. "ABCD%5$s", where ABCD is a 32-bit memory address, and 5 is the positional para…
Kudos for the worked example!
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#98This is a good opportunity to ask: Can anyone recommend a laptop I could put OpenBSD on and be fully functional for busy workdays (i.e., when I need to spend 100% of the day being a knowledge worker with a reliable tool I don't have to think about, and 0% being a sysadmin trying to get their tool to work)? On one hand I've seen threads on HN and Reddit saying how OpenBSD works flawlessly, esp. on various Thinkpads. O…
I used OpenBSD CURRENT on the Thinkpad Carbon X1 for 3 months earlier this year, and my experience has been that hardware support is not a problem for a "knowledge worker" (I am assuming you don't need things like HDMI audio for that). The main problem is software that is outdated, unavailable, or buggy on non-Linux platforms. I came crawling back to Linux in the end.
Thanks. Though a knowledge worker sometimes does need to connect their laptop to a TV for collaboration and presentations.
> The main problem is software that is outdated, unavailable, or buggy on non-Linux platforms
What kinds of applications could you not find a good solution for?
Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#99Re: OpenBSD 6.0 released
#100Talking about security, I'm hoping for a bound-checking memory-safe C compiler to eventually made it into something like OpenBSD or FreeBSD and be used by default for all ports and packages. Almost no software there would suffer from the overhead, and OpenBSD doesn't even promise or try to be very fast, it's a perfect place for it.
Is a "bound-checking memory-safe C compiler" even possible in the general case without implementing a new Rust-like language?
Yes, there's been many produced over time. Here's two that are in prototype form, one in LLVM, that could use extra attention from OSS community:
https://www.cis.upenn.edu/acg/softbound/
https://github.com/santoshn/softboundcets-3.6.1
http://safecode.cs.illinois.edu/
https://github.com/jtcriswell/safecode-llvm37
When overhead is too high, there's also tools like CPI to at least stop code injections:
http://dslab.epfl.ch/proj/cpi/
There were also safer variants of C to make rewrites for safety easier:
https://www.cs.uic.edu/pub/Main/PhDQualifyingExam/Sample4.pd...
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~lwittie/research/Clay.pdf
Note: Clay was used in device drivers and garbage collectors in partnership with Microsoft Research. Some Cyclone techniques were adopted in Rust.
So, the tooling has been around in different forms for a long time. OpenBSD presentation even mentioned a few. They avoid safer languages and these tools on purpose in favor of C, a review process aiming to find all vulnerabilities before hackers, and their after-the-attack mitigations for when they don't. Improving something like Softbound with checks disabled on known-good modules for performance gain would be so much better in terms of time invested and benefits gained. Plus, even average app developers could make memory safe code with same tool.
Not going to happen, though. It's not how mainstream "security" works. They default on using worst tools for the job for what seems to be political/social reasons more than anything. CompSci and private sector innovations long knocked out the technical ones. There's at least niche projects like Redox, GenodeOS, and Muen applying different aspects of best, known methods.