OpenBSD 3.7 Released

pgilman writes "It's official: OpenBSD 3.7 has been released. There are oodles of new features, including tons of new and improved wireless drivers (covered here previously), new ports for the Sharp Zaurus and SGI, improvements to OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, CARP, PF, a new OSPF daemon, new functionality for the already-excellent ports & packages system, and lots more. As always, please support the project if you can by buying CDs and t-shirts, or grab the goodness from your local mirror."

BSD OWNS YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD.

The only choice when you are more concerend aboout secutiry and stability then being a fanboy.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

buy the CD. Dedicate 1 HDD to OpenBSD. Then follow the printed instructions. i avoided OpenBSD for a lond time because of FUD like this. Found out that it is probably one of the best *nix distros there is. Simple, well documented, and WORKS. Also the pors tree is clean and smooth. Almost as easy as apt-get.

Re:How's the install?

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. If you're dedicating a disk to OpenBSD and don't care about how you lay it out, you can do a very simple install with just swap and / , though of course you're better off splitting this up. And for many of the options for disklabel the default works fine. It's not pretty nor pointy clicky, but if that's what you're after the bsd's probably aren't for you.

Re:DHCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The client? Works fine for me and I have Comcast. I have what came with version 3.4. Yes, I know I need to upgrade. One of these days I'll get around to it.

Re:How's the install?

[Homology]

aw come off it partitioning HD's is Computer Building 101 spend an evening to understand it and it will put in good stead for the rest of your life

Perhaps you should widen your experience beyond i386 and Linux. It's confusing because the same word partition (on i386) is used to refer to both DOS partion (fidsk) and filesystem (disklabel).

Re:But, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you want to learn, yes it's a good choice. The man pages are much better than Linux. The shell (ksh) is less bloated than bash, but feature-rich enough to satisfy me. The userland stuff is standard Unix fare. The OS even comes with Apache pre-installed and chroot'ed. Ditto with named and a few other things (like sendmail, SSH). Generally it's a piece of cake to setup and admin an OpenBSD box. I moved to it after 9 years of Linux because I didn't want to keep sending lots of time patching the Linux kernel with grsecurity and the other patches I need. A lot of stuff is already setup with sane defaults in OBSD. I think it makes a good Unix for learning with, or for experienced users. So yeah, give it a shot!

Re:Growl

[TheRealMindChild]

Pronounceable acronyms are rediculous (almost as much so as the multitude of worthles acronyms).

I want to MURDER people who say "Sequel" instead of S-Q-L, "Say-Taa" instead of S-A-T-A, and especially "ERRRRRK" instead of I-R-C.

If the acronym was intended to be pronounced, the author would have done something like the SAMBA project, where SMB was the acronym, but they filled in the blanks to actually MAKE it a word.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

The first trollish reference was to the fact that OpenBSD is much more secure by default then any distro Linux. The second was to the fact the OpenBSD is much more stable then any disto of Linux.

How is this a troll? It's true. Anyone who is suffuciently familiar with the innards of both will tell you that, no question.

I'm primarily a Linux user who does some OpenBSD on the side. I don't use GUIs that much, I configure everything by hand, and I do a lot of coding. I've written kernel stuff.

I can tell you that it is clear that OpenBSD is simpler, more consistent, and just plain makes more sense than Linux. Coming from Linux, OpenBSD is more than a joy to work with.

Linux is very ad-hoc. It just sort of "grew." It was developed in many places by many people, few of them working together with the big context of "the Linux system" in mind. The pace of development is very rush-rush-rush, and for example many times, the approach of the kernel developers is "let's shove this out to userland and let distributors worry about writing a script to make sense of it."

OpenBSD is the opposite. People working on OpenBSD core packages have a specific kernel, userland, config script, etc., etc. in mind. There is a concept of "the OpenBSD system" and it is fairly consistent. People are working together to acheive that goal. The pace of development is more relaxed, and the people working on the userland are some of the same folks writing the kernel. So you don't get the sort of ad-hoc interfaces that make no sense to anything but a shell script (i.e. iptables), you get something which at every level, the user can get an idea how it works (i.e. pf).

Or take wireless. Until recently I had a Linux box set up as a wireless access point. To do that I had to play around with different kernel modules, some of them shipping with the kernel, some of them not, ad nauseum until something worked. This was very annoying.

Awhile ago I put the very same wireless card in an OpenBSD box whose software had not been updated in a few years. The card just worked! Without rebuilding or changing any config files, the card was detected.

Then, I put a 2-line file in /etc, made some changes to the DHCPD config file, and much to my surprise, it functioned as a wireless access point. Effortlessly. Having struggled with this in Linux (where it is much more painful to do), I had much appreciation for this.

The fact is, OpenBSD just does things the Right Way. People say OpenBSD's big strength is security, but that's slightly missing the point. OpenBSD's strength is correctness. From correctness yields stability, security, and all around ease of use.

You can call me a fanboy, but I say OpenBSD wins hands down against any Linux distribution, with the only exception being that Linux generally supports more hardware, quicker.

Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD 3.7, the absolute bleeding edge of what 1994 has to offer!!!

* No file name completion.
* No colored directories.
* Update the system by recompilation (yay!)
* Great for internationalization: 10 keyboards to choose from!
* World premiere: the FVWM Window Manager! (security risk: be aware that some graphics will appear in the monitor.)

Known bugs:

* pkg_add -r: It forces the machine to do some hard work for the user, which is against our most basic principles. A patch is available so you can get the package source by postal mail and type it yourself, for maximum security.
* Firefox 0.8: Forces the user to surf the web like a human instead of surfing like a 20 years-old BSD Unix machine. A text-based broswer has been added so you may stare for hours at a term window imagining today's leading tech.
* Guides or handbooks: Some users report seeing a FAQ in the website. We remind you that the proper way to find out something about OpenBSD is staring at man pages in term windows.

Re:How's the install?

[m50d]

It's not FUD. There are plenty of cases where dedicating a HDD is not an option, requiring a separate disk is unacceptable. I installed slackware from zero non-windows experience, hadn't used any disk partitioners at all, ever. When I nuked that (that was my learning not to run as root stage, but that's another story) I had an openbsd cd around, so I tried to install it. Had a windows partition on the disk I couldn't get rid of, but enough free space if I could figure out how the hell to partition it. Never managed to.

Re:Neither irony nor sarcasm

[guitaristx]

MOD PARENT UP!!! The parent makes a very good point. Correctness is an often-overlooked quality that should exist in every piece of widely-accepted FOSS. I hope for the day that high muckety-mucks in the FOSS community actually start caring about correctness.

Great for your firewall, but...

[Dammital]

My home firewall is an (aging) OBSD 3.3 box that I really ought to upgrade one of these days... but it just runs and runs and runs. The pf stateful packet filter is compact and fast.

But OBSD is more problematic on my web/mail server. The ports collection is nowhere near as comprehensive as FreeBSD's (or Debian & Gentoo for that matter) and so you'll likely scrounge for upstream versions of more obscure packages.

Worse, OBSD's Apache is stuck at version 1 (Theo has issues with the Apache 2 license) and more and more software wants Apache 2. I guess you can fix that, but it's back upstream you go me bucko. Oh, and OBSD's default Apache installation is chrooted, which you'll probably defeat after your first CGI integration experience.

I like OBSD a lot, and I don't mean to suggest that it's only good for embedding in a router. But if your application requirements are remotely bleeding edge (and you want to save yourself some work at the risk of some unquantifiable security exposure) then you might want to look elsewhere.

Re:Great for your firewall, but...

[Krunaldo]

Ummm? What problems do you have with CGI integration? Just simply do _all_ cgi stuff in the chroot enviroment? Well it isn't apache anymore, it's more like "OpenBSD über-secure-patch-set apache". Do you need anything apache 2 specific?

All the "widely" used mailingprograms are available for OpenBSD, what's your problem with them?
Sure there is some stuff missing in ports/packages but they're getting fewer by the day. If you miss something go a head an make a port of it.

Re:How's the install?

[Caligari]

It's only "hard" if you don't understand what you are doing.

Of course, OpenBSD is not for people who don't understand what they are doing.

Read the docs so you understand properly, and it is no longer hard :)

making themselves look lame

[xtermin8]

I think the point is to get "lamers" (MSCs maybe?) to be willing to install OpenBSD. They have to be willing to try it first, then you can criticize them.

Re:Growl

[ThJ]

Reasonable people actually mix the two. I'd never say "sequel" instead of "ess-que-ell", but everyone I know will say "eerrk" (not "erk", I live in Norway where we actually pronounce the letters properly, i.e. roughly like the Romans did). "Koomm port" for "COM port" is pretty common. "Ledd" for "LED" as well, or "Mooss-fett" for "MOSFET". I find that people generally treat pronouncable initialisms as acronyms, and I find it perfectly acceptable. I'd want to strangle someone if they went "dunaah" instead of DNA or "hittippp" instead of HTTP, but people don't do that, so I'm content.

Seriously, its amazing

[alexhmit01]

The first time I installed it, it took a few attempts. Had to figure out the networking, etc. (I had problems with Redhat 6.2 as well, the installer was great, but no tools that I could find to edit them until I learned my way around the text files).

However, after 3 attempts when we got the hang of it, I looked at my partner (it was our first webserver for our little company) and we were like COOL. Once you get the handle of the installer and ports, its a DREAM, much EASIER than the Redhat what do I want and where is it problem.

That said, RHEL 4 is pretty slick, but nowhere near as impressively simple as OpenBSD + Ports. The installed OpenBSD system is SO FUCKING clean its not funny, and then you add the few ports, nice and customized, that you want.

One day I build 4 OpenBSD machines. Build the (customized) packages on one and distributed, and it was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY nice).

It's a great system, but you gotta really be a Unix-lover. If you want the click-click install, the Linux distros are great, but with OpenBSD I understand what is going on with my system.

That said, you can just TRY to get my OS X Powerbook away from me... :)

Alex

Mod Parent DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't bother to check what the torrents are. They are a mirror of what is on the official ftp sites. I just downloaded them and verified their MD5 checksums with the MD5 file on a second level mirror.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloated with crypto? OpenBSD has the smallest functional install footprint out of every Unix I know, smaller than FreeBSD, 99% of all linuxes, Solaris, Irix, Tru64, HP-UX and MacOSX. Just a friendly suggestion, you may want to revisit your idea of what constitutes a bloated OS.

And as far as your touted security experts go, I would trust OpenBSD/stable more than Tru64 /w C2 security enabled, or so-called Trusted Solaris. I have validated this in theory and in practice, and its not a recommendation I make lightly.

How often would you say OpenBSD appears in CERT advisories compared to other unixes, hmm? Grow a pair and grow up, maybe you can venture into the real world some time instead of lurking in basements and under bridges...

Re:Disco Stu doesn't advertise

[DashEvil]

I don't even understand why you're fighting with this guy. I use OpenBSD, you use OpenBSD, we both think it's great. If they want to troll in OpenBSD related slashdot threads that's their social problem, not ours. I'd prefer if the trolling/negative crap went ignored and got modded into oblivion.

Re:Yes, you are a fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to learn a bit more about the way Red Hat or Debian are integrated and how much they influence and contribute to the "upstream sources". Alan Cox ...

Yes, companies like Red Hat fund and employ influential hackers such as Cox. And Debian, for example, has many cool scripts that were specifically written for it. This does not change the fundemental development model of Linux: "release something, and let distributors figure it out." Read LKML and this is a pretty typical attitude. Also, Debian wouldn't need so many cool/complicated scripts if the kernel interfaces were cleaner. And lastly: that these people are involved in upstream does not change that for the vast majority of packages, this is not the case.

kernel recompilation is way more common in BSDland, http://www.freebsd.org/doc/ [freebsd.org]....

I don't know anything about FreeBSD, but as I understand it the kernel is quite different. All I can say is that my experiences with OpenBSD-GENERIC have been nothing but positive.

Anyway, I've had it with this thread.

Re:Leading technology for tomorrows computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing: OpenBSD 3.7 doesn't have filename completion or coloured directories. Neither does NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 5.4, nor the latest version of Solaris or any GNU/Linux distribution you want to mention, or any other operating system on the God damned planet.

File completion and coloured directories are not features of your operating system. They are features of your shell, which is just a program you run from your OS. And guess what? OpenBSD can, shock horror, run programs. Including shells. Which means that if you want to use OpenBSD and be able to make use of filename completion or coloured directories, all you have to do is install a shell that supports those things, like bash, for instance, which is available as an OpenBSD package/port, and has been for years. Nothing hard about it.

The default shell in OpenBSD may not have these features (or, more probably, is capable of them but doesn't have them on by default). If you take this to mean that it's impossible to do these things on OpenBSD, you're being kinda dumb. The OpenBSD philosophy is to give the user a minimal install and then let them add in what they want, when they want, how they want, as opposed to the philosophy of many (but thankfully) not all GNU/Linux distros, which might be expressed as "Install everything by default, then install everything else, twice, just in case".

I don't even use OpenBSD, but it annoys me to see people acting like it's inferior to some other UNIX when their arguments are utterly flawed and they don't seem to grasp, yet alone appreciate, the philosophy of a clean and simple minimalist system.