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What's New in OpenBSD 4.2?
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 01, 2007 01:32 PM
from the new-footloose-and-fancy-free dept.
from the new-footloose-and-fancy-free dept.
blackbearnh writes "OpenBSD 4.2 was released today, and has a host of new features. O'Reilly's ONLamp site has a pretty thorough overview of the release. 'Even though security is still there, this release comes with some amazing performance improvements: basic benchmarks showed PF being twice as fast, a rewrite of the TLB shootdown code for i386 and amd64 cut the time to do a full package build by 20 percent (mostly because all the forks in configure scripts have become much cheaper), and the improved frequency scaling on MP systems can help save nearly 20 percent of battery power. And then the new features: FFS2, support for the Advanced Host Controller Interface, IP balancing in CARP, layer 7 manipulation with hoststated, Xenocara, and more!'"
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Where to get it... (Score:5, Informative)
Since the submitter didn't bother linking to their site (!!?), if you want to try out some of these amazing new features and improvements instead of just reading about them, you should head over to the OpenBSD 4.2 page [openbsd.org] and snag a copy!
Re:Where to get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Jun-ichiro "itojun" Hagino (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jun-ichiro "itojun" Hagino (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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I need to try BSD (Score:2)
The only problem I run into on OS X is some of the GNU tools aren't there, and the BSD version of stuff like ls and such are different. But you can port install that stuff, so really that issue is mute. I think I'll fire up a virtual server and try out BSD
Re:I need to try BSD (Score:5, Informative)
portupgrade -Nf sysutils/gnutools
echo "
alias ls='gls --color=always'
alias cp='gcp'
alias mv='gmv'
" >> ~/.bashrc
Something similar will probably work on OpenBSD
(oh, and for those who need their [modified] meems... OpenBSD is Undead, netcraft confirms it!)
Parent
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With 'ls', at least, you can skip a step. Replace:
with:
What GNU extensions to you use to 'cp' and 'mv' so often to alias them? In a decade of using Linux and FreeBSD interchangeably, I've never noticed a significant difference in those very basic tools.
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That's called a feature
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Love! (Score:5, Funny)
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
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known for LSD and BSD.
Coincidence? You decide
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What's BSD?
It stands for Bisexual Satanic Daemon. That's a service for Linux that filters packets from the internet and replaces the text from web pages with random extracts from the Satanic Bible and random occurences of '666', and replaces images with obscene pornographic depictions.
You can just ask Google if you don't believe me.
4.2BSD (Score:3, Informative)
(OpenBSD 4.2 seems somewhat less exciting to me.)
How dissapointing- they didn't include Xen (Score:2, Interesting)
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Request for information (Score:3, Interesting)
If anyone is running Adaptec SCSI 2940 controllers with more than one SCSI hard drive and it works then I'd like to know... if anyone is having problems I'd like to know.
The issue is that I have one 2940 fast narrow card and it won't boot... says there is no O/S. In the same machine... swap that card out to a 2940 fast wide and it boots just fine. Perhaps this is a firmware card issue. I have so far only tested these two cards... I plan to go get a handfull more.
Next issue. With the fast wide all seems 100%. Then I start an rsync from another machine and within seconds I get a kernel panic. There is a bug report here: http://paste.lisp.org/display/49908#1 [lisp.org]
Is OpenBSD bug report # 5616
I'm not at this point asking anyone to debug this. I want to know if others have a similar setup and it works.
This machine is a Pentium I, with two fast narrow SCSI disks and in this case an AHA 2940 FW card. There is nothing else on the bus.
O/S version was 4.1 and now I can try the new version. Since OpenBSD is such a great O/S I sure would like to get to the bottom of this without wasting people's time. If we have a problem we need to know about it and potentially fix it. If its an isolated issue then I need to know this so I can shelve the hardware if in fact it is flakey hardware.
Note: With that fast wide controller... dd if=/dev/sd1 of=/dev/sd1 bs=2048 will run 100% and never glitch at all. But try that rsync on the system.. kernel panics 100% of the time within seconds.
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The issue is that I have one 2940 fast narrow card and it won't boot... says there is no O/S. In the same machine... swap that card out to a 2940 fast wide and it boots just fine. Perhaps this is a firmware card issue. I have so far only tested these two cards... I plan to go get a handfull more.
I use a couple of 2940 narrow and wide "in production" under NetBSD (without problems) and sadly I cannot test this issue under Open. however, I do have anecdotal evidence of the situation you are describing being true (friends with same config as yours tried and failed to boot OpenBSD on the thing -- install works fine and so do other operating systems).
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3d graphics cards, anyone? USB->serial adapters? Wacom graphics tablets? External USB DVD burners? I've seen reports of all of them failing with OpenBSD, where they work well under Linux, even with live Linux CD's.
all these have no purpose in a server orientated OS. OpenBSD supports lots of hardware and people that check if their hardware is supported before whining are known to be running it as a workstation (not a "desktop"). OBSD is exciting because of its PF goodness, various other network magics and security, not because it supports the latest tablets.
Unless there's been a huge influx of driver support, which seems unlikely with Theo in charge and insulting polite GPL developers
judge a man by his deeds, not his attitude.
I see it stuck in supporting network security applicances, not desktop use.
I don't see that as "stuck". not everyone is trying to make the next point-click-drool Noobuntu, you know?
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Just a thought.
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I'm not a kernel guru and I've not written or even looked at drivers. It takes so much time to even get into this that for me I'd have to be granted another lifetime before I can get seriously involved.
One question that comes to mind is that I've personally never run into an issue with linux on similar h/w and with the same cards. Linux drivers are OSS so it would seem that any issues the linux and other *
Good Desktop OS (Score:5, Interesting)
Stable branch, still from source only? (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case they have done a lot of good work. Copyleft vs OSS ideology disputes aside. ; )
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I haven't played with OBSD for a couple of years, but I remember starting a build at night and having it done when I got up the next morning (on hardware that was, even then, considered old). I can't imagine that things haven't improved since then.
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One of the things that has put me of OpenBSD is the need to compile from source if you want to use the stable branch. I realise this is partially due to limited resources and priorities, but I would argue that this is probably one area where there is room for improvement.
no you do not. stop spreading FUD. there are binary sets for multiple archs [openbsd.org] in every release. this also goes for the ports. it is clearly stated in the FAQ that if you want stable you should use binary packages. the only time when you have to compile is when you make changes to the kernel (or are tracking -current system or ports).
Package auditing? (Score:2)
Never got the hang of patching it (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I never really figured out with OpenBSD is why errata patches [openbsd.org] are handled the way they are. Why doesn't OpenBSD offer binary updates? For example, here are the instructions to fix errata entry 009 ("Fix possible heap overflow in file(1), aka CVE-2007-1536."):
Given that I installed from binary packages as do most users, and I might not even have a compiler installed, the startup cost of following those steps is fairly substantial. It seems like it would be easier for someone at OpenBSD to run those commands, see which files changed, wrap them up into a tarball, and distribute those - at least for the most popular architecture or two.
Now, I'm not saying they should do this or that they owe it to us end users to do it. I just mean that it'd be amazingly convenient with a seemingly minimal amount of extra work. Am I wrong about what would be involved?
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I actually think this is a good thing. This keeps development focus on improvements that benefit the whole OBSD community rather than on developer's pet projects.
Because... (Score:3, Insightful)
...the OpenBSD philosophy is security through openness. When you receive a security patch as source code, you can see exactly what is being done. If the patch were to include a binary image, verification would be slightly more difficult.
There have been binary patch projects (I used to use one at openbsd.org.mx), but since I have resigned myself to installing a compiler and the whole of the OS source code into /usr/src, I find the binary patches to be superfluous.
OpenBSD does cling to some of the other B
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It would be a pain to devote one of each arch's build machines to -stable instead of -current.
Assuming FreeBSD's tools with a few options over OpenBSD's for simplicity:
It is also generally considered a stock response that an administrator should be doing the patches, so that they understand what's happening in their machine.
I don't know what's on the machine in the first place beyond what the OpenBSD folks said is there; I certainly haven't audited it myself.
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I don't really know if Theo is the one who compiled the ISO I just downloaded and installed, either. At some point there's a leap of trust.
what is new? the answer is... (Score:2, Informative)
Oh boy! (Score:4, Funny)
And the bifflespaf WTF has more pargodoogen XRR! But what about the Garblerackin' snarkenlugey 533p?
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's
sp1? (Score:5, Funny)
But what is the cute code name? (Score:2)
I'm just strollin' (Score:4, Funny)
I assume BSD has other, more useful features though.
BSD License (Score:3, Interesting)
There are SO many 1U security "black boxes" that obviously rip off OpenBSD for 95% of their product it's just pathetic. I don't recall many of them touting that they used OpenBSD or ever hearing some of the "cool" features they SAY they have ever being contributed back to the main code repository for OpenBSD.
Re:BSD License (Score:4, Interesting)
There are SO many 1U security "black boxes" that obviously rip off OpenBSD for 95% of their product it's just pathetic. I don't recall many of them touting that they used OpenBSD or ever hearing some of the "cool" features they SAY they have ever being contributed back to the main code repository for OpenBSD.
On the other hand, they also have a great deal of Linux based products. And whenever they need to fix any Linux bugs or add features, they always contribute them back. Doing otherwise would be a breach of the license and expose them to legal liabilities.
The point is that as a rule, large corporations aren't going to do anything that they aren't legally obliged to do. You would probably call RMS a political zealot and an unrealistic idealist. But at the end of the day he's not the one that expects commercial enterprises to change their nature and act altruistically just because it would be nice. If they give those "cool" features back, they're also giving them to their competitors. Which is probably not a career extending move for the person responsible.
If these realities offend you so much, I would suggest that you avoid releasing any software under the BSD license.
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trolling is a stupid sport. copy&past trolling is even more boring.
let me be the first to say: "old post! [netbsd.org]"