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OpenBSD 6.5

openbsd.org

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Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#141

Post by CameronNemo »

whalesalad wrote: post #72
ernst_klim wrote: post #68

>HOWTO upgrade >Remove files no longer included in the current release of perl(1): Do they consider this a production-grade operating system or a toy one? Why couldn't it be done with a package manager?

Funny you say that. I can see your perspective but at the same time the beauty of Unix is that the OS is really just a bunch of files you can see and manipulate yourself. The system doesn’t have convoluted registry systems for instance to hold state. So for me, deleting a few files is as good as or better than asking a package manager to do it. It proves to me that the OS is simple. I think we have become so accustom…

Wow this is gatekeeping if I have ever seen it before. A package manager that tracks all files installed by a distribution of software is an excellent tool, and in no way incompatible with the Unix philosophy.

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#142

Post by infiniteseeker »

gbrown_ wrote: post #37
pimeys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenBSD does not yet have kvm support, so you can run qemu, but it'll be very slow.

OpenBSD has its own hypervisor these days https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html

Do you know how VMM performance compares to something like KVM2?

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#143

Post by MisterTea »

Accacin wrote: post #115

As a long time Linux user, I keep thinking about trying a BSD variant, but I get hung up on two things. 1) Which do I pick? NetBSD? OpenBSD? 2) Hardware? I'm thinking about an old ThinkPad for programming, and it looks like OpenBSD at least should run fine on that. What's hardware support like overall?

You won't know until you try them out. My best advice is to download them all and fire up some virtual machines and get installing. Build each of the systems to meet your needs and see how you feel about the admin process.

For my more basic needs which is development I chose OpenBSD based on their simple, pragmatic design coupled with tight security practices in coding. Their documentation is excellent and their man pages are easy to grok and can get you 80% of the way to your goal most of the time without resorting to a search engine for help. Their FAQ pages are also full of simple, straightforward information and how-to guides that are very newbie friendly. I'm not an IT expert or unix admin, I do this for fun and as a semi serious hobby. So it's really comforting when you can type 'man networking' and figure out how to assign a static ip to an ethernet interface without having to resort to a search engine.

Hardware support is pretty good and I have it running on an older athlon x4 system, IBM T40 laptop, and my APU2 board from PC Engines (No problem installing to the SD card). Everything just works and I've yet to find a machine that can't properly run OpenBSD.

The rub is the system is more old school unix than "modern" Linux desktop. So don't expect things to be "Linux Gnome desktop easy". But it is by no means difficult to install, configure and use if you are somewhat knowledgeable with the comand line. If this intimidates you, perhaps you could go with a more desktop oriented BSD like TrueOS, a FreeBSD fork and start there. That's how I got familiar with the unix world; start with a hand holding distro and work your way down to the engine rooms ;-)

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#144

Post by CameronNemo »

rooam-dev wrote: post #19

Sorry for noob question, but why would one use OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD? I like latter, but also hear good things about former, although there are some limitations (e.g. no ZFS). Thank you in advance.

Strengths of OpenBSD:

* security -- the code is audited and hardened to a greater degree than any other general purpose OS on the planet (embedded safety critical microkernel systems would be the exception)

* routing suite -- one of the most well integrated open source routing suites out there (alternatives include BIRD and free range routing / quagga)

* firewall -- their firewall is flexible, fully featured, and easy to configure. It has been adopted by other BSDs, but development and new features happen in OpenBSD first.

Weaknesses of OpenBSD:

performance -- security is valued over optimized code, so the OS will not be as efficient or handle as many connections as a Linux or FreeBSD server could

* lack of ZFS

Compared to OpenBSD, FreeBSD has a slightly worse firewall implementation (originally sourced from OpenBSD), better networking and computing performance, and ZFS.

What type of device are you considering using OpenBSD or FreeBSD for?

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#145

Post by Spivak »

CameronNemo wrote: post #139
throw0101a wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems odd to praise the BSDs for developing everything in a single repo but faulting systemd for the same approach. I think it is more accurate to say that the (supposed) problem with systemd's approach is actually tight coupling as opposed to a single repo. OpenSSH, OpenSMTP, OpenBGPD, LibreSSL, Mandoc, the recent Unwind, etc, may all be in the same repo, but none depending on each other. Try taking systemd-resolv…

Chrome OS runs systemd-journald on top of Upstart. Not that such a setup is supported or encouraged. One of my main gripes about resolved is the D-Bus interface. Lennart needs to remove his lips from that protocol's ass.

> Lennart needs to

And replace it with what? I genuinely don't know anything that exists right now that could replace it. Linux and ecosystem have a lot of IPC primitives but very few usable systems: I know of dbus and ip.

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#146

Post by ivanbakel »

pimeys wrote: post #125
makz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious about what you consider a “travel OS” and how is that different from regular OS.

Travel OS, so I basically browse the Internet, watch some videos, listen to some music and do some hobby projects. Also it's nice to have a not so expensive laptop for travels, so it's not such a big deal if it gets stolen. And of course the travel machine uses full disk encryption. Size is important here: I prefer 12" for travels and 14" for work, when I want to view multiple files at the same time. OpenBSD has hard…

That sounds like a hefty OS. My Arch install is currently using 4Gb, and this is a full desktop.

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#148

Post by nine_k »

asveikau wrote: post #96
mikece wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really enjoy how simple the system is after all these years with Linux. I still shake my head when I think back to the 90s and how Linux managed to overtake the BSDs. Good to see they are still very much alive and moving forward.

The weird thing, though, is that 90s Linux felt a little more like the BSDs than Linux usually does today. I mean, the BSDs were always a bit more coherent, but the default install of a typical Linux distro felt a lot less "heavy" in the past. You can switch from Linux to one of the *BSDs and feel like you are bringing back the glory days. Maybe this is a complaint about Ubuntu, or gnome, or systemd.

> about Ubuntu, or gnome, or systemd

Looks like it. I'm running Void Linux without all these, and it feels simple and lightweight. Also fast.

(OTOH when I have to work with BSD userland utilities that are part of macOS, I often miss the GNU extensions, e.g. to `date` or to `awk`.)

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#149

Post by ben_bai »

dcbadacd wrote: post #73
tedunangst wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical approach of sliding the kernel around only offers limited benefit. One leaked address and you're done. The current approach, called KARL, relinks the kernel so that while it may load at the same address, symbols internally do not have the same offset. Learning the address of printf will not reveal the address of malloc and so forth. In the context of kernel defense, I would argue this is more effective. A…

Why not both KARL and KASLR though?

KARL also includes a random offset in front of the kernel, and the bootstrap code is unlinked once the machine has booted.

    |---------------kernel-----------------|
    |-boot-|-rnd offset-|--running kernel--|

Re: OpenBSD 6.5

#150

Post by AndyMcConachie »

floatboth wrote: post #95
Hello71 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> new recursive resolver instead of using unbound or dnsmasq systemd-resolv e d is a non-recursive resolver. so is dnsmasq.

What's the correct word for "something local that talks to 8.8.8.8/whatever and caches responses" if not recursive? Forwarding?

   Stub resolver:  A resolver that cannot perform all resolution itself.
      Stub resolvers generally depend on a recursive resolver to
      undertake the actual resolution function.  Stub resolvers are
      discussed but never fully defined in Section 5.3.1 of [RFC1034].
      They are fully defined in Section 6.1.3.1 of [RFC1123].
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8499
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