BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too)

robotdreams writes "Once again BSDCon showcases the BSD community's long history of innovative research, open exchange of ideas, and collaborative work. Tutorials this year feature: an intensive code walkthrough of the new FreeBSD 5.x release, debugging kernel problems on live systems, advanced BSD system and network security, and FreeBSD's new GEOM disk I/O subsystem." Since BSDCon runs from September 8th through 12th, you're probably either already going or out of luck ;) On the other hand, you're still early for OpenBSD 3.4, now taking pre-orders -- details below.

An anonymous reader writes "Pre-orders for the OpenBSD project's latest release, 3.4, are now being taken. This release will ship around November 1st. Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including i386 switch to ELF executable format, further W^X improvements for i386, ld.so on ELF platforms now loads libraries in a random order for greater resistance to attacks, inclusion of a static bounds checker to the compiler for basic checks on functions which accept buffers and sizes, strcpy/strcat function audit to replace with safer strlcpy/strlcat, ProPolice stack protection in the kernel, further manual page cleanups, large number of bug fixes and optimizations to the packet filter (PF) including packet tagging, stateful TCP normalization, passive OS detection, SYN proxy, and adaptive state timeouts, and many other improvements to the rest of the system.

Order a CD from the OpenBSD store. Ordering a CD helps support the project, as a bonus you get cool stickers, artwork, and an audio track!"

The same reader sent links to more information on this release, including new features, and the changelog between 3.3 and 3.4.

Technical sessions start Sept 10

[cperciva]

The technical sessions start on September 10th, so there's still lots of time to register and book plane tickets.

Speaking of the 10th... I'd better start working on my slides.

Re:removing some utilities

[Tirel]

Theo has said many times before that they will only use GNU tools if there's nothing to replace them with. Infact, the good folks at @openbsd have been looking into replacing gcc with tunDRA (with little success atm) simply because of the GNU licence.

Basically, GNU licenced programs are only there if really necessary.

Re:FreeBSD filesystem

[Mr. Darl McBride]

So anyway, how does FreeBSD's filesystem stack up against Linux?

FreeBSD chose to address this problem by making fsck capable of running in the background. fsck cooperates with the kernel, checking all files/inodes, and when a file is requested that has not yet been checked, the file operation is held while that check is moved to the front of the unique "moustache ride-ordered" queue.

Journaling without sacrificing performance and clean algorithms simply isn't possible, and corruption is still possible on a journaling filesystem with out-of-order writes as done by many kinds of cache-enabled drives and controllers, leading to a false sense of security when fsck is bypassed. FreeBSD's approach catches every situation, and guarantees an intact filesystem on every boot.

Re:OpenBSD 3.4 song?

[Daniel_Staal]

Theo says it will be out in 'about three weeks.'

Ceren? attending?

[santiag0]

I hope so. Dust off the red daemon suit and get packing! For the few who don't know who Ceren is... nevermind, everyone knows who Ceren is!

Re:FreeBSD filesystem

[caluml]

I noticed that when I download a lot of files at the same time, like say with ncftp, netscape and wget all saving data to the same disk at the same time, I invariably end up with serious filesystem issues at the next fsck

Load of arse. ext2 is both fast and reliable. If you're having lots of disk problems, you should look at your hardware.

Re:huh?

[realdpk]

Make a superior version from the freely available codebase and refuse to release the modifcations back to the Community.

Inspire competition, the community creates a superior program to the corporation, etc etc. This cycle has been going on for a very, very long time.

Some of us are OK with sharing, even if it means someone else might make money off of it.

DragonFly at BSDCon

[m.dillon]

I will be attending BSDCon this coming week and will be setting up a BoF session on DragonFly as well as doing a quicky summary WIP (Work In Progress) talk. Some extremely interesting work is being done in DragonFly as well as in other BSD's (FreeBSD-5, OpenBSD, and so forth). But the conference is not for the weak of heart. If all you care about is the next K00l music UI don't bother to come {EVIL GRIN}.

Re:removing some utilities

[eht]

If anyone really does have a problem with a lockdown of BSD code, they could always take everything and re-release it under the GPL, they're quite welcome to do so as long as the BSD copyright notices remain intact in the source code.

gplBSD here we come.

Re:removing some utilities

[howardjp]

Actually, I was the original author of FreeGrep, and even if you pull out the text searchers in GNU Grep, FreeGrep is still only 1/3 the size (source lines).

FreeGrep is also FAR more extensible and, in general, better designed. It would not be difficult to add support for grepping bzipped files, other compressed types, or even new types of files. It's also easier to add new options and features, though I do think the entire alphabet has been exhausted.

Re:removing some utilities

[evilviper]

the good folks at @openbsd have been looking into replacing gcc with tunDRA (with little success atm) simply because of the GNU licence.

First of all, there has been a _small_ bit of interest in Tendra by just a few in the BSD community, but I don't think it's fair to say that they have been looking into replacing GCC.

Secondly, licensing isn't the only concern. An upgrade from GCC 2.9 to 3 is on the horizon, and at least one of the primary OpenBSD developers has said that they aren't happy with GCC 3. I don't think it's worth getting into detail, but it isn't licensing issues alone.

Re:Why so late?

[hegemon17]

The work that needed to be done to switch i386 to ELF has been ready for a long time. But doing such a switch is a huge pain for the developers and users, so it was delayed for as long as possible. Same thing was with other architectures. alpha switched to ELF when the alpha port was almost dead and was violently revived by redoing lots of code and completly changing everything. sparc switched to ELF after a bug was discovered in how the dynamic linker worked. The dynamic linker didn't map the code segments executable which didn't really work after the kernel was taught to honor the executability bit on memory mappings (that was done to get non-exec stack). And i386 swichted because that was the only way to get proper non-exec stack. OpenBSD does big disruptive changes only when it's really necessary and when those changes come, all disruptions are clustered thightly.

Re:non-executable stack?

[Schubert]

It has been in OpenBSD since at least 3.2 if memory serves (http://www.openbsd.org/plus32.html | grep non-exec)

Re:FreeBSD filesystem

[Mr. Darl McBride]

Come back with benchmarks.

That the FreeBSD filesystem blows the above away is one of its greater strengths. Sun is the only UNIX with a faster filesystem, but at nothing like the price point of course.

There's a reason why FreeBSD and Solaris are the only platforms where Oracle doesn't require a dedicated partition to create its own database filesystem. FreeBSD and Solaris can hack it. JFS, XFS, Reiser and friends are a fairly distant second.

Please do your research before posting. This kind of performance isn't about the desktop. Leave the replies to people with real server experience.

They want it to be "stolen"...

[anthonyrcalgary]

I've never quite understood how the BSD people can think they've got freedom when their work may be locked down and stolen by a corporation any time.

You don't understand the BSD license. It's impossible to steal something that's given freely. BSD has been such a seminal influence precisely because the code can be "stolen". That's the intent.

Besides, AT&T did try to steal (in the "you can't use it anymore" sense of the word) BSD's code. They lost.

If he thinks separating from the protection granted by GPL will further the survivability of OpenBSD, he's seriously mistaken.

BSD predates the GPL.

Links to ordering site & items --

[Anonymous Coward]

Support the OpenBSD developers by getting a 3.4 CD $40 [openbsd.org] or for Europe EUR 45 [openbsd.org]

There is a new Tshirt: 3.4 Tshirt $20 [openbsd.org] or for Europe EUR 20 [openbsd.org]

The new 3.4 poster [openbsd.org] is very nice too, get it for $10 US [openbsd.org] or EUR 14 in Europe [openbsd.org]

If you prefer OpenSSH, have a look at this new Tshirt OpenSSH 2 $20 [openbsd.org] or for Europe EUR 20 [openbsd.org]

thank you.