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FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

vez.mrsk.me

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Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#11

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

egwynn wrote: post #6

The author writes: ############################################################################### daily_status_security_pkgaudit_enable="NO" ############################################################################### I most certainly don't want pkg (running as root, remember) going out to the internet every night to fetch a list of vulnerable ports. Who thought this was safe? I’m confused. Why is this unsafe? Is…

> Is it because the author doesn’t trust `pkg` to do the auditing job safely as root?

Even if one asks the question and arrives at "yes, I trust this program", there is value in eliminating the question itself.

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#12

Post by dwarman »

My personal aphorism (for at least 20 years now):

Warman's Law: That which _can_ be configured _must_ be comfigured,

Corr.: Defaults Aren't.

Impl: running any program on its defaults will get you in trouble somewhere down the line. This is no different. Configurations are there precisely to accommodate each users' individual needs, and we are not all the same. Typically defaults try to achieve useability by naive users, and usually do so in a way that is wrong for the sophisticated users. As well as often not chosen very well and really wrong for everybody. Then there is code written by naive programmers who code the naive default and do not provide any configuration because they are unaware of any other way to use the system. And the other extreme of course - Windws anyone? Multiple places to configure different aspects of a specific vehavior, and selection dialogues that "help" by not showing sub-options not used by the current settings, making it impossible to know the full set?

At least the /etc paradigm lets us get a canonical view of everything, explorable with a simple text editor. This article actually shows the advantages.

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#13

Post by craftkiller »

daenney wrote: post #10

It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

I'm not the OP but OpenBSD is missing some pretty key features. My reasons to use FreeBSD over OpenBSD are:

  - Virtualization (jails, bhyve)
  - Filesystems (ZFS)
  - beadm (which requires ZFS)
  - Linuxulator
Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#14

Post by cm3 »

craftkiller wrote: post #13
daenney wrote: post #10

It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

I'm not the OP but OpenBSD is missing some pretty key features. My reasons to use FreeBSD over OpenBSD are: - Virtualization (jails, bhyve) - Filesystems (ZFS) - beadm (which requires ZFS) - Linuxulator Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

And let's not forget that OpenBSD doesn't make use of modern hardware as well as Linux and FreeBSD or DragonflyBSD. SMP incompleteness is one of the issues.

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#16

Post by Touche »

craftkiller wrote: post #13
daenney wrote: post #10

It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

I'm not the OP but OpenBSD is missing some pretty key features. My reasons to use FreeBSD over OpenBSD are: - Virtualization (jails, bhyve) - Filesystems (ZFS) - beadm (which requires ZFS) - Linuxulator Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

> Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

The friendliness of the FreeBSD community is why I wouldn't even consider going over to OpenBSD.

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#18

Post by zippergz »

daenney wrote: post #10

It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

I use FreeBSD for a fileserver because it has rock solid ZFS support. At least at the time I set it up (I haven't looked recently), neither OpenBSD nor Linux supported ZFS nearly as well.

Re: FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults

#19

Post by teamhappy »

craftkiller wrote: post #13
daenney wrote: post #10

It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

I'm not the OP but OpenBSD is missing some pretty key features. My reasons to use FreeBSD over OpenBSD are: - Virtualization (jails, bhyve) - Filesystems (ZFS) - beadm (which requires ZFS) - Linuxulator Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

Also:

  - LLVM
  - Arm support
  - The handbook
I do envy OpenBSD's pledge() and arc4random() though.
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