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I Stopped Using OpenBSD

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Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#51

Post by jmclnx »

andrewflnr wrote: post #12
jmclnx wrote: post #5

Sorry to see Solène Rapenne move on, I wish her success going forward. She has been a great asset to the OpenBSD team. But glad she will still try and help them out a bit. But in a way she has a point :( Just a few weeks ago I had a panic with 7.6 and half my files in /home disappeared. In the past I never lost data on an fsck, plus I never had a panic in many years. But glad I clone /home to another device daily :)…

That's insane. Note to self, never use openbsd where I can't reconstruct the system from scratch.

Well crap happens :)

There are many issues that can cause problems, I have seen worse things happen at work over the decades. In this case, I fully believe it is a one-off occurrence.

On my other Laptop, and old T420 with only OpenBSD, I never had a panic or lost files. Even after moving to 7.6.

But was saying, I can see her point when your professional livelihood depends upon what system you use.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#52

Post by lcall »

Another recent discussion (fewer comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42201302

Also FWIW, I use OpenBSD as my daily driver, and I like it especially due to the security (I separate user-level activities, including net browsing, by account), and have not had the crashing or filesystem issues, fortunately. Her points are probably valid though, as my demands of the system are less than hers.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#53

Post by k_roy »

This was interesting to me.

> I have grievances against OpenBSD file system. Every time OpenBSD crash, and it happens very often for me when using it as a desktop, it ends with file corrupted or lost files. This is just not something I can accept.

Doesn’t openbsd use a fancy-ish ZFS type file system?

I have the same grievance with XFS on Linux though. For as much as people say how awesome it is, the few nodes I have running XFS are the least reliable pieces of garbage on a hard power off and a pain to get back up (if I don’t just nuke it anyway)

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#54

Post by from-nibly »

k_roy wrote: post #53

This was interesting to me. > I have grievances against OpenBSD file system. Every time OpenBSD crash, and it happens very often for me when using it as a desktop, it ends with file corrupted or lost files. This is just not something I can accept. Doesn’t openbsd use a fancy-ish ZFS type file system? I have the same grievance with XFS on Linux though. For as much as people say how awesome it is, the few nodes I have…

I wonder if xfs caused all of my disk reliability issue when I used it inside longhorn. Never again will I trust my data to either of those systems. Maybe one of them is innocent, but I don't care.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#55

Post by prmoustache »

Croftengea wrote: post #3

TL;DR: OpenBSD is bad as a desktop (no bluetooth, limited gamepad support, etc).

I can't argue about gamepad support although I would say it is less desktop territory than console/steam machine territory. But for bluetooth support there are definitely good workaround with those usb class compliant soundcards that autoconnect to nearby bt headset/speakers.[1]

[1] I assume you would want to use bluetooth for audio only because anything else usually sucks and can be done better/faster/more reliably with wifi or USB.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#56

Post by 1oooqooq »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #49
1oooqooq wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most setups nowadays do full disk encryption outside of the FS, so the journal doesn't help much. If you have SSD->LUKS->GPT->LVM->Ext4, then a bug on any of the (newer, buggier) components before your journaled FS means you lost data.

> If you have SSD->LUKS->GPT->LVM->Ext4, then a bug on any of the (newer, buggier) components before your journaled FS means you lost data And yet it's never happened to me. Dozens upon dozens of systems. Linux or Windows or Mac for that matter. I've toted around a laptop with whole disk encryption for > 15 years and never lost data. Not once. Even after a forced power off. I have, however, lost data to major FS corr…

> I've toted around a laptop with whole disk encryption for > 15 years and never lost data.

me too. Until I did. Negative anecdotes in a discussion about rare events are unhelpful.

My point is not that journaling is useless and should be dropped (I only use openBSD in things that are either readonly storage or virtualized on a host which does have proper FS). My point is that the "new setup" used by most distros introduced a lot of things that are above the journal. We have been rocking FDE for over 10yr, but the mass of people with crappy hardware and who just unplug their computers are only exposed to FDE for the past couple years.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#57

Post by p_l »

technofiend wrote: post #29
p_l wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was starting to stupidly lag for those use cases by 2007, because after some point you start care about firewall/router performance too...

I adore OpenBSD because it's so lightweight, but I dropped it for FreeBSD when the same hardware couldn't max out a 1 gigabit connection running OpenBSD but could with Free. Since then they have made network changes so I'll probably try again even though the bar's moved and now I need 2.5 gigabit connections to be saturated. Happy to give it a chance anyway.

I just remember considering it for routing/firewalling duties about 2007, grabbing then-current performance optimization guide, and finding whole chapter in how to force irq sharing so that interrupts from any NIC will trigger driver code from all NICs...

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#58

Post by sillywalk »

microtonal wrote: post #21
cenamus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a lot just comes down to manpower... While extremely important the FS currently works "good" enough (although there were/are efforts to port HAMMER2). But I share the frustrations, all these little papercuts really add up and I only use OpenBSD in server settings nowadays

Good enough? As far as I could gather, they never implemented FFS/UFS journaling and removed support for soft updates. If that’s incorrect, I apologize for this comment. So, they basically have a filesystem that operates like it did in the ninetees, unclean shutdown and you have to go through a full fsck and hope for the best. Most people who used some Unix before journaling would never want to go back.

> removed support for soft updates

Yes, back in July 2023[0][1]:

"Make softdep mounts a no-op

Softdep is a significant impediment to progressing in the vfs layer so we plan to get it out of the way. It is too clever for us to continue maintaining as it is."

From OpenBSD developer Marc Espie, :

"The big issue with softdep is that it has tendrils everywhere, and since we didn't convince Kirk* to move over to OpenBSD, it tends to be a big hindrance in fixing everything else instead of helping.

The buffercache, the pagedaemon, the swapper, unlocking subsystems.

Hopefully, all these have a chance of being done by a human with softdep gone."

* Kirk being Marshall Kirk McKusick (FreeBSD) developer and creator of Soft Updates

A quick check of openbsd-cvs shows they're still removing softdep/soft updates stuff a year later. [2]

[0] https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230706044554

[1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=168856997929968

[2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=172060271505315

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#59

Post by jwrallie »

The name is familiar, I learned a couple of things from Solène in the Qubes OS forums. Many thanks in case you see this.

I think OpenBSD has a big advantage (to me at least) that it’s the OS I really want to use, but I could never find a place for it for the reasons described. It just doesn’t fit my use cases except on the philosophy department!

In fact I had to leave Qubes OS for different reasons: strange behavior with USB devices, perceptible latency, would not sleep properly when running on battery, Windows VM would freeze on wake up from sleep. Small things but very annoying.

Maybe I just got bad luck with hardware (Thinkpad X260), or I just don’t have the time to troubleshoot it anymore.

Anyway, I’m having a great honeymoon period with OpenSuse now. I’ve chosen it mainly for great filesystem snapshot support. It seems this time everything missing on the repositories are covered on flatpak, and things that usually give me trouble (for example IME support) simply worked. I loved the Xfce theme. I’ll probably be staying for a while.

Re: I Stopped Using OpenBSD

#60

Post by k_roy »

from-nibly wrote: post #54
k_roy wrote: post #53

This was interesting to me. > I have grievances against OpenBSD file system. Every time OpenBSD crash, and it happens very often for me when using it as a desktop, it ends with file corrupted or lost files. This is just not something I can accept. Doesn’t openbsd use a fancy-ish ZFS type file system? I have the same grievance with XFS on Linux though. For as much as people say how awesome it is, the few nodes I have…

I wonder if xfs caused all of my disk reliability issue when I used it inside longhorn. Never again will I trust my data to either of those systems. Maybe one of them is innocent, but I don't care.

XFS on longhorn is double trouble for me. And mostly what made me realize XFS is trash.

I use longhorn on ext4 and never have issues at all

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