OpenBSD 6.3 released • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#31

Post by ComputerGuru » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:14 PM UTC

Panino wrote: post #8

Busy upgrading machines now, lots of nice new things. Looking forward to checking out the new execpromises in pledge. I use pledge in all my C stuff and have added it to a few other apps. Thanks OpenBSD devs!

What type of machines do you run OpenBSD on, out of curiosity? Routers, workstations, web servers, embedded devices?

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#32

Post by ComputerGuru » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:16 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #17

equalunique wrote: post #13

From the release notes: > o Support the sun4v hypervisor interrupt cookie API, adding support for SPARC T7-1/2/4 machines. Who is running OpenBSD on a big expensive SPARC T7 and why? I'm genuinely curious as to what possible use cases there are which make this a desirable combination.

In general, OpenBSD support for Sparc helps with testing - the Sparc is architecturally quite a bit different from other CPUs: https://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html "The other architectures that OpenBSD supports have benefited because some kinds of bugs are exposed more often by the 64-bit big endian nature of UltraSPARC."

That’s the same reason I include Solaris as a target in my automated build system. It’s arcane enough and independently developed enough to expose incorrect assumptions in C code.

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#33

Post by alecco » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

dptd wrote: post #29

I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.

BSD people, usually networking. And people who like security (though OpenBSD has detractors). It was used a lot as firewall for critical infrastructure a few years ago, perhaps still is.

Also, installation was quite fast if you knew what you were doing.

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#34

Post by blitmap » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:32 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #33

dptd wrote: post #29

I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.

BSD people, usually networking. And people who like security (though OpenBSD has detractors). It was used a lot as firewall for critical infrastructure a few years ago, perhaps still is. Also, installation was quite fast if you knew what you were doing.

This may seem like a ridiculous comment but I love that a lot of work on Linux has been to make it easy-as-pie to install/setup quickly and I feel like it's happened in the last couple years (cgroup + systemd stuff mostly). I praise docker for making immutable services commonplace, but I also love projects like cockpit from redhat + netbox + coreOS. There used to be so much technical debt that went into getting a server off the ground and monitoring it.

I'm weird, dunno if others agree ~

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#35

Post by sverige » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

alecco wrote: post #33

dptd wrote: post #29

I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.

BSD people, usually networking. And people who like security (though OpenBSD has detractors). It was used a lot as firewall for critical infrastructure a few years ago, perhaps still is. Also, installation was quite fast if you knew what you were doing.

It has been my daily driver on laptops and desktops for eight years. I have run home servers with it as well.

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#36

Post by Panino » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #31

Panino wrote: post #8

Busy upgrading machines now, lots of nice new things. Looking forward to checking out the new execpromises in pledge. I use pledge in all my C stuff and have added it to a few other apps. Thanks OpenBSD devs!

What type of machines do you run OpenBSD on, out of curiosity? Routers, workstations, web servers, embedded devices?

Routers, workstations, servers (DNS, web, mail, backup).

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#37

Post by milcron » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:10 AM UTC

dptd wrote: post #29

I apologize for being an ignorant for so many years but... who is the OpenBSD target audience? In which areas it is the most popular OS? I worked with Windows, GNU/Linux and macOS (OSX) but never tried OpenBSD.

OpenBSD is great if you enjoy rooting around in the innards. I find the code simple and easy to read. Man pages are extraordinarily complete and accurate. OpenBSD devs go out of their way to delete unused and crufty code.

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#38

Post by ams6110 » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:23 AM UTC

sverige wrote: post #35

alecco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD people, usually networking. And people who like security (though OpenBSD has detractors). It was used a lot as firewall for critical infrastructure a few years ago, perhaps still is. Also, installation was quite fast if you knew what you were doing.

It has been my daily driver on laptops and desktops for eight years. I have run home servers with it as well.

It's my primary desktop as well. I like it because it's low churn, everything I need just works, and most of the configurations have sane defaults so config files tend to be short and simple or not needed at all.

I don't hack on the internals or build my own ports, I just use it. It stays out of my way and I like that.

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#39

Post by nickpsecurity » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:38 AM UTC

captn3m0 wrote: post #25

brynet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably for testing, but that platform supports partitioning up the hardware through LDOMs, which OpenBSD supports as both a host and guest. https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/OpenBSD-on-a-Sun-T5120 (Not expired, Ted runs his own CA) http://man.openbsd.org/man8/sparc64/ldomctl.8

unrelated, but I found his post about running his own CA quite interesting: https://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/moving-to-https

For a while, every article from his site on Lobste.rs had someone complaining about that. It got old. I eventually came up with a theory about what the prankster was really up to:

https://lobste.rs/s/rboyfz/books_chapter_nine#c_p7mv5p

Re: OpenBSD 6.3 released

#40

Post by kiwidrew » Tue, Apr 03, 2018, 12:40 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #27

Panino wrote: post #8

Busy upgrading machines now, lots of nice new things. Looking forward to checking out the new execpromises in pledge. I use pledge in all my C stuff and have added it to a few other apps. Thanks OpenBSD devs!

> Looking forward to checking out the new execpromises in pledge Interesting that they just changed the interface from `int pledge(const char * promises, const char * paths[]);` to `int pledge(const char * promises, const char * execpromises);`. I guess that is the power they have by being a BSD and integrated system, they do not worry about userland compatibility.

The pledge(2) manpage for 6.2 and earlier states:

"BUGS. The path whitelist feature is not available at this time."

So the second argument was previously unused, and thus could be repurposed without hurting backwards compatability.