OpenBSD 4.5 Released 118
portscan writes "OpenBSD 4.5 has been released. New and extended platforms include sparc64, and added device drivers. OpenSSH 5.2 is included, plus a number of tweaks, bugfixes, and enhancements. See the announcement page for a full list. OpenBSD is a security-oriented UNIX/BSD operating system." As per OpenBSD tradition, of course there's a song.
I wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it go (Score:5, Funny)
Oh BSD for server farms,
For blinking rows of lights.
For late night coke and deli runs
In those bitter winter nights!
NetBSD! FreeBSD!
Dick shakes his fists at thee
And hates much more the fact that you're
As dead as dead can be!
Re:I wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it (Score:4, Funny)
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Is this to the tune of 'O Caaaanada'?
Reminds me of "O Andy Tannenbaum".
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Is this to the tune of 'O Caaaanada'?
I was thinking "Jingle Bells".
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Just like Emily Dickenson's poetry (Score:2)
It also works for "The Yellow Rose of Texas".
-=Steve=-
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Seems like an interesting rorschach test.
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Nono, to the tune of this! [youtube.com]
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You can also bet that other *nixes (especially other BSD flavors) take hints on how to secure themselves from OpenBSD.
Use whatever OS suits your needs best, just don't try to bring other distros down for not following your vision.
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Isn't it UNIX? Couldn't you just run Ubuntu, and switch the kernel, or isn't UNIX a standard?
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Not on the level of binary compatibility, no.
Re:Not like that... (Score:5, Funny)
isn't UNIX a standard?
"It's a Unix system ! I know this !"
Re:Not like that... (Score:4, Informative)
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UNIX is a specification. It's defined by services the system offers and how user space programs access them. So, there's no guarantee that OpenBSD and Linux implement system calls the same way. There is just a chance that the same system calls exist on both systems.
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Sparkling clean, secure code is wonderful, but when it's years behind the times in basic software kits.
Perhaps the "basic software kits" have overreached their bounds? Too many irons in the fire isn't necessarily a good thing.
Tortoise, hare, whatnot.
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I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
But it has its small niche market and lives there happily. Additionally we all benefit from this project one way or the other (OpenSSH, etc.)
It's a bit similar to Minix: interesting and certainly helpful in its own way. But nothing for everyday usage.
Re:Not like that... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
You might be surprised. OpenBSD has good ACPI support now, has DRI in 4.5 (had it in 4.4 but it wasn't enabled by default). Sound support is good, and 4.5 introduces a simple sound daemon for userspace mixing. ARM support has also improved a lot recently, so it makes a good choice for handhelds.
Re:Not like that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am willing to claim that OpenBSD is more than comfortable for its intended use in routers and servers.
OpenBSD doesn't use GUI config tools, and complex package managers, but that is because they are not needed. It is simple and elegant like that.
It has some rough edges like the lack of utf-8 support in the base system and utilities but it isn't bad as a Desktop OS either, most desktop applications don't use libc for their encoding support anyways.
My home server and my laptop both run OpenBSD and I don't miss your real OSes at all. After all whatever I cannot do easily in OpenBSD Linux does through binary blobs and proprietary software. At that point I could be as well running Windows 7.
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After all whatever I cannot do easily in OpenBSD Linux does through binary blobs and proprietary software. At that point I could be as well running Windows 7.
So there is no reason to use Linux over Windows other than to have an entirely free software systems?
I hope you are using an open source BIOS and microcode as well, just to be consistent.
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I use Linux over Windows, but the version I use is unfree and I use it specifically for its unfree features(Namely Skype and legal DVD playback, not that I actually use the latter) so I really could use
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Also I'm by no means a virtualization master, but why would you run a set up like that? You can run OpenBSD from VMware server, which can then run XYZ OS.
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"And what kind of virtualization software do you have? Real virtualization, that that jails shit. You can't run other OS's in a jail. VMware? VirtualBox? Oh that's right, you don't have anything."
OpenBSD has a QEMU package that allows virtualization of an entire PC. Last I heard the Linux/KVM project uses the same software to achieve this end.
So there is your virtual solution.
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He's trolling because while his statement is true, it's very selective. OpenBSD may not have 3D nVidia support, but as of 4.4 has hardware accelerated GL on Intel and ATI [undeadly.org]. No mention of either of those in the grandparent post though (and ATI has closed-source drivers on Linux, too).
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So how awesome are the nVidia drivers on OpenBSD? You have 64-bit versions, right? Oh wait, I guess not. You'll have to stick with sucky 3D performance I guess.
Exactly what do you need 3d performance on OpenBSD with? I seriously doubt the person you were responding to was using OpenBSD as a gaming platform and as such they probably couldn't care less.
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Is gaming the only application that needs or benefits from high end graphics?
In the context of a home desktop (which was what the GGP was talking about) most likely it is one of the few if only places that you need high end graphics. Most people aren't using their home desktops as render farms or anything else that would require high end graphics card support.
Re:Not like that... (Score:5, Informative)
I would beg to differ. The package management is just as good if not better than what's available in Linuxland, so there's no great difficulty in setting it up as a good desktop system.
Having excellent support for many non-x86 platforms, as well as having a small footprint make it a great choice for older hardware. I currently have it installed on on my old UltraSparc and Alpha workstations.
OpenBSD contributes more than just OpenSSH to other OS'es. Aside from pushing hardware manufacturers to open up their documentation, they've also reverse engineered drivers that have made their way into the other BSD's and even Linux (remember the whole Atheros? issue last year). Whereas many Linux distributions and the other BSD's have made compromises with proprietary drivers and binary blobs, OpenBSD still pushes for true open source.
PF and CARP also make OpenBSD a superior router platform to any IPTables based setup any day. You may be surprised how popular it is in the data centre.
Unlike Minix, OpenBSD's niche has a place in real world usage.
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Yep. GPL talks the talk, but BSD walks the walk. Thanks and congratulations to all the BSD contributors throughout the years. This is a more FREE world thanks to your time and efforts.
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Nice Flamebait. If you look at kLOC (in actual use, mind you) under BSD and GPL you will see the real story. We all owe thanks to Berkeley for BSD and the BSD license under which the -lite versions came, and the BSD is still relevant today, but the GPL is the present and may well be the future (unless we find another more clever way to unfuck copyright law.)
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That does not necessarily mean that GPL is the right solution for all open-source software, and please don't suggest otherwise. Each project determines which license is right for them.
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That does not necessarily mean that GPL is the right solution for all open-source software,
Never said it was
and please don't suggest otherwise.
(-1, Attacking a Straw Man)
The people have spoken; whether they be users or developers, they prefer GPL to BSD. *BSD sat around languishing in obscurity for years, Linux comes along with a superior license and bingo! Eats *BSD's lunch. BSD is not irrelevant, but it is less relevant.
That doesn't mean that there's no use for the BSDL (well, now we have the Artistic license and others which are arguably better versions of the same) but it does mean that it's far less relevant today, and if use
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The people have spoken; whether they be users or developers, they prefer GPL to BSD. *BSD sat around languishing in obscurity for years, Linux comes along with a superior license and bingo! Eats *BSD's lunch. BSD is not irrelevant, but it is less relevant.
You must have selective hearing. Let's look at popularity:
Evidence says, users and developers seem to prefer closed source over either GPL or BSD. OS X (with a BSD/Mach kernel) is more popular than linux. FreeB
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The people have spoken. Windows beats-out everything else in the world. Linux is not irrelevant, but it is VASTLY less relevant.
1% vs 90% market share.
Clearly, the most popular option is the only one of any importance. That's why all car companies other than Toyota are irrelevant... Never mind that GM was the only relevant car company up until just a couple years ago...
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The package management is just as good if not better than what's available in Linuxland,
When's the last time you used Linux? Keeping systems up-to-date, both base system and userspace stuff, is much easier on Debian-based systems, IMO. It's straightforward on the BSDs, yes. But I wouldn't call it better. In fact, when I do setup an OpenBSD systems, I normally end up using pkgsrc over OpenBSD ports.
so there's no great difficulty in setting it up as a good desktop system.
No, there's not. But even a Wind
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Keeping systems up-to-date, both base system and userspace stuff, is much easier on Debian-based systems, IMO.
I upgraded to 4.5 this morning, and the package upgrade instructions [openbsd.org] were to run pkg_add -ui -F update -F updatedepends. Now, I'm typing this on Ubuntu, and I use FreeBSD on most of "my" servers, but that just about as convenient as it gets.
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Bzzt! You forgot to run apt-get update first.
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I upgraded to 4.5 this morning, and the package upgrade instructions were to run pkg_add -ui -F update -F updatedepends.
Odd. Why the hell doesn't FreeBSD's version of pkg_add support any "update" option?
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Odd. Why the hell doesn't FreeBSD's version of pkg_add support any "update" option?
Probably because we have portupgrade, which I like even better.
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I would beg to differ. The package management is just as good if not better than what's available in Linuxland,
I am not sure I agree. I use netbsd and ubuntu. I can see the benefits in the debian approach of being able to upgrade the whole system through packages. With openbsd and netbsd you have to run current for that which means the user has to do a lot of integration work to stay up to date.
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OpenBSD contributes more than just OpenSSH to other OS'es. Aside from pushing hardware manufacturers to open up their documentation, they've also reverse engineered drivers that have made their way into the other BSD's and even Linux (remember the whole Atheros? issue last year). Whereas many Linux distributions and the other BSD's have made compromises with proprietary drivers and binary blobs, OpenBSD still pushes for true open source.
Agreed. According the the OpenBSD project, NDA and blobs are _never_ considered acceptable.
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I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
Depends on what you mean by a desktop. I run ubuntu on my laptops but I have an amd64 machine running netbsd for serious work. I use it for network administration and software development. The environment is simple: X11, fvwm, aterm and applications like firefox and nedit. Its not gnome, but for some purposes it is much better. I haven't used openbsd at all but I am pretty sure it would be similar on the same hardware.
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I don't think that there are many people out there that would claim that OpenBSD is comfortable to use and would make a good desktop system.
There may not be many, but I am one. I use it on my desktop and laptop. There's nothing any other OS offers that OpenBSD doesn't have (well... I'll boot into Windows to play World of Warcraft, but that's it).
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Cancel mod
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Security is something we should get on top of the other features, not with the cost of other features. I am talking about usability and features here.
Security is not a feature. Thinking it is has led to most of the Internet's larger failings as present today.
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Famous OpenBSD developer Ben Franklin once said "they who can give up essential security to obtain a few features, deserve neither security nor features."
Or something like that.
Same day as Solaris 10u7 (Score:4, Informative)
Title says it all: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp [sun.com]
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And yet, the summary said so much more, like what was new in this release of OpenBSD, and why someone would want to involve themselves with it. I don't mean to troll, but there's even less reason to mess around with Solaris now than there was before the announcement of the Oracle acquisition, and unless you were in a SPARC shop there was little reason to mess with it before. Your link doesn't make it immediately apparent, so, what's new in this Solaris, and why should anyone bother with it?
oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
NetBSD 5 yesterday, OpenBSD 4.5 today and a three day weekend ahead.
*fap*
Re:oh goody (Score:4, Funny)
Re:oh goody (Score:5, Funny)
This, dear reader, is an example of when the male brain gets its priorities mixed up.
Re:oh goody (Score:4, Informative)
FreeBSD 7.2 is coming out on Monday, too. (The release source code has been tagged; now it's just a matter of waiting for ISOs to build and bits to propagate to the mirrors.)
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Interesting.. I have a cron script to update /usr/src to the latest on the RELENG_7 branch, and it's still sitting there as "7.2-PRERELEASE". But looking at the CVS log, RELENG_7_2 is newer than RELENG_7. Weird that 7-STABLE is behind 7.2 Updating to the 7.2 point now :)
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The RELENG_7 branch moves directly from -PRERELEASE to -STABLE. The -RELEASE is cut from the RELENG_7_2 branch.
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NetBSD 5 yesterday, OpenBSD 4.5 today and a three day weekend ahead
Better use that long weekend to secure your home against the zombie horde. No telling when FreeBSD will release their brain-eating abominations.
application security? = fail (Score:2, Interesting)
The one area where OpenBSD is let down on the security front is the packages/ports - basically the applications you might want to use. Those are not kept updated over the lifetime of a release. The only way to get the patches and security fixes is to run -Current, which may not be the best for most people.
Given the frequent updates needed for some apps, especially on the security front (looking at you Firefox!) - it seems a bit odd for a security focused project to expect it's users to run the same old stat
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Actually, they do provide a patch branch of the core release for 1 year post release, they just don't provide any application updates during that time. What they advise against is running a stable branch for the core OS, and running a current ports (don't cross the streams - that would be bad?).
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it seems a bit odd for a security focused project to expect it's users to run the same old static version for circa 6 months till the next version arrives.
Well... The thing is if you're running a jailed version of Firefox on OpenBSD the probability that someone could jailbreak it is really, really low.
Sure, I'd love to see faster/easier app patches release on OpenBSD, but the system is so secure to begin with that it's really giving headaches to any OpenBSD-malware-wouldbe-author.
Heck, on Linux my stateful
Re:application security? = fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if your browser is jailed? Someone who owns your browser also owns your online banking, stock trading, webmail... you get the picture.
security and ports & packages (Score:5, Informative)
"The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that the OpenBSD base system [openbsd.org] does. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of robustness and security"
The 80's called (Score:2)
Seems to be full of old stuff with known bugs? (Score:3, Informative)
A version of KDE that no longer gets any love from upstream; old Firefox, old Thunderbird. Hopefully there are security updates for the latter two and that someone is giving some TLC to the former.
Old, but scrutinized. That's the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
A version of KDE that no longer gets any love from upstream; old Firefox, old Thunderbird. Hopefully there are security updates for the latter two and that someone is giving some TLC to the former.
OpenBSD is on a 6-month development release, and remember the auditing and code-screening that goes into each release. Patches for these "optional" packages (OBSD default install primary use is a stripped down server environment) can be updated immediately. Just like any other installer, there WILL be updates available, even on day 1.
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Hopefully...someone is giving some TLC to the former
That would get you TiCKLED.
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Frankly, if you're running your desktop on OpenBSD, you are either crazy or simply more concerned about security than the latest and greatest. I consider desktops disposable and think that Linux is therefore a better choice; OpenBSD is a more-than-rational choice for a network and/or security appliance, or for most servers.
Where OpenBSD falls down... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the lack of RBAC and MAC, or any decent non discretionary access controls.
Solaris has RBAC, Linux has RSBAC and SELinux. OpenBSD staunchly refuses to add anything similar, and no, a system call interceptor does not count.
It's all well and good to have quality code and aim to get rid of vulnerabilities at the core, but a really secure system would be able to protect from attack, in the event it did happen.
As it stands, a system with SELinux or RSBAC is far, far more secure than OpenBSD, because of this fact.
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Except most large apps and all the expensive consultants immediately go "Turn off SELinux" as soon as _anything_ goes weird or not-as-I-remember-from-class, which teaches admins to also turn off that pesky security as soon as something important breaks. Then you reinforce that idea further, "SELinux is fine, especially when turned off" and you still end up choosing between the "far more secure" system that makes your boss want to fire you for not getting the app work, or a "normal" unsecure linux without an
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That's what the privileged separation and chrooting to an empty, non-writable folder is for, used by default in OpenSSH, Xorg, et al.
Yes, theoretically, RBAC could be more secure, but that assumes the kernel is perfect and bug-free as well. A microkernel could be much more secure still... In reality, though, have you ever
BSD vs. Linux (Score:2)
Watch this +10 Flamebait:
Men use BSD - boys use Linux.
Period. Next to trusted OS's(TrustedBSD, TrustedSolaris, etc.) OpenBSD is the only thing out there I would put on the public internet with confidential data. Not only that, OpenBSD is the _only_ thing I would trust to protect my internal networks.
Most security appliances have some Linux baked in - no thanks.
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Another thing: Theo may be a dick, but that is exactly the kind of person I want writing my kernel. Theo is sharp though he's not afraid to remind you.
Re:BSD vs. Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Another thing: Theo may be a dick
I have to say that I've never had problems with him or the other OpenBSD maintainers. I'm not part of their "in crowd" by any measure, but everyone's been decent to me when I've had problems or questions.
Bad approach: I can't do $foo. How do I do it?
Good approach: I RTFM about how to do $foo, but step 5 gives different results for me than the man page says it should. What should I try next?
They're busy people, and when I've been respectful of their time, they've been respectful of mine.
Using OpenBSD on my laptop (Score:2)
I've got a UltraSparc IIe laptop and the only OSes that will run on it are Solaris and OpenBSD. Newer versions of Solaris give an awful user experience no matter what you do; the machine does only have a 650Mhz processor. It had gotten so bad it was looking like I might actually have to buy a new laptop, instead of waiting like I want to for relatively inexpensive mobile quad core.
The OpenBSD guys, for whatever reason, decided that supporting this oddball laptop was something they wanted to do. No idea w
Via Torrent (Score:2)
There's an unofficial .iso torrent up on The Pirate Bay [thepiratebay.org], for those finding the mirrors slow. Not a lot of people using it at the moment, but we can change that.
Some of the MD5s are different; I haven't investigated why yet.
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That's a bad example - Apache is shipped as part of the core OpenBSD system and therefore a hole in Apache as shipped with OpenBSD *would* count.
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except that the Apache that comes installed with OpenBSD is far different than the one you'll find on apache.org. Last I heard, there are about 4000 lines of code difference. They maintain that as part of the base. It is more secure than the stock apache you'd find elsewhere.
And this isn't coming from some AC. I've used OpenBSD since 3.4. I've seen the implementation of wireless, bluetooth, WPA/WPA2 without the "linux_supplicant" bullshit. Massive changes to PF, bioctl for raid, sound upgrades, DRI fo
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I'm not sure why the OpenBSD people bother with marketing at all. It's most likely just tradition. From my experience, the type of audience they're interested in are hardcore enthusiasts or dedicated and thick-skinned newbies. They don't want users who can be persuaded to go with OpenBSD instead of, say, Ubuntu by a catchy tag-line. They just don't give a fig about newbie-friendliness, and I'm not saying that as a criticism. It seems to work for a lot of people who can break the barrier and become proficien
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How do you escalate privileges by exploiting grep?
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OpenBSD does ship with services turned on though - eg OpenSSH and a few other mostly minor ones. But it is more than just exposed services - how many remotely exploitable kernel vulnerabilities have other systems patched over the last 10 yrs?
I'm no OpenBSD zealot (I'm mainly a Linux user), but OpenBSDs security track record and attention to detail is impressive. Quite often exploits in 3rd party code are mitigated or ineffective on OpenBSD due to measures they have taken.
It's not all roses though - keeping
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Nearly dead is still partly alive!
security related channel (Score:3, Informative)
You could try looking over on the Bug Tracking System [openbsd.org] or the openbsd-bugs mailing list [kerneltrap.org]