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BSD Operating Systems

Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run 199

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-picobsd-or-nanobsd dept.
LiquidPC writes "In this article Jeremy Reed of BSDNewsletter.com talks about installing MicroBSD, what features make it special, troubles and successes I encountered, and the beauty of the BSD license."
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Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run More

Taking MicroBSD for a Test Run

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  • The BSD license is pretty beautiful, if you are MS and you need a TCP/IP stack to steal.
    • If it's allowed by the license, then it's not stealing. Someone obviously made a concious decision to release the software under the BSD license. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?

    • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LiquidPC ( 306414 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @12:28PM (#4212443)
      You can't STEAL something that is licensed so people can use it anyway they want. Even if microsoft took the BSD TCP/IP stack, so what? What's the big deal if microsoft is using BSD's TCP/IP stack, it's not like microsoft took it and said BSD couldn't use it anymore. Microsoft should be allowed to take their TCP/IP stack and not having to release all their new source code; the original source is still available if you want to download it. You're making a big deal out of nothing.
      • succeed and thus helps sources be closed.
      • For me the big deal was that after years of development on such a critical network component by the 'best' software group in the world MS dumped it all for community code. They couldn't create anything of comparable quality. MS Winsock anyone?

        A side note, I browse at a two threshold and at this point I see two posts. How does such a pro-MS, relatively content-less post such as yours make it to +4 Insightful so quickly?

        • Perhaps because he makes a valid point?

        • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07, 2002 @01:15PM (#4212600)
          or me the big deal was that after years of development on such a critical network component by the 'best' software group in the world MS dumped it all for community code. They couldn't create anything of comparable quality. MS Winsock anyone?

          So?

          What you need to understand: it isn't your code, they can do what they want with their code. release your code with whatever license you want.
          The developers of code released under BSD style license are just fucking generous. plain and simple.
          It's not that they have never considered "Gee, what if someone uses this in a closed source system? Gee, what if someone or some Corp. rips off our code and we get nothing back?". They have considered that possibilty, and they dont care.

          Here is the flaming part of this post:

          Ideally: "we release completely free source"
          Realistically: "People rip off our shit"

          BSD style license is Ideals living despite Reality. GPL is Ideals living to confront Reality. You decide what the right lifestyle is for you and let me live the way i want.

          • I suspect that part of the difference is that the BSD license reflects more of a research focus where the primary criteria for winning is recognition. Some innovations are best released into the public domain because the public is best served by the maximum number of implementations, commercial and open. The openess of stories from the brothers grim permits hundreds of interpretations.

            In this scenario Microsoft is no worse a freeloader than any other entity that uses the software.

            But this is one inconsistancy w/ gpl advocate logic. Copyright should not be used to create artificial scarcity for ideas because they are nonrivalous resources but public domain should be discouraged because ideas are rivalous resources.
        • Because some of us have grown up and realized that not everything related to MS is bad. I can only hope that one day you will shed your revolutionary, world domination, Linux zealot ways. I think they even have group therapy for your type. Good luck man, you're going to need it.

        • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          A side note, I browse at a two threshold and at this point I see two posts. How does such a pro-MS, relatively content-less post such as yours make it to +4 Insightful so quickly?


          I hate to break this to you, captain, but nearly half of slashdot crowd use Microsoft products one way or another. I know people who never even installed linux, but read /. on a daily basis. Not everyone is a zealot.

          I give credit where it's due.

      • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stripes ( 3681 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @01:07PM (#4212573) Homepage Journal
        You can't STEAL something that is licensed so people can use it anyway they want. Even if microsoft took the BSD TCP/IP stack, so what?

        At the time MS (and even AT&T) were accused of taking code the BSD licence had one more clause then it has now. Basically a credit clause, you had to acknolage BSD in your documentation (and maybe on screen).

        What's the big deal if microsoft is using BSD's TCP/IP stack, it's not like microsoft took it and said BSD couldn't use it anymore.

        The big deal is BSD asked for one very small and specifc (and fair!) form of payment, and they were denyed. That makes it theft.

        Fairly serious theft in my book. The university put in a pretty impressave motion for "injunctave prayer for relief" diring the AT&T vs. BSDI lawsuit on those grounds too, something about "irreparable harm to the reputation of the University"....

        • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:4, Informative)

          by adadun ( 267785 ) on Sunday September 08, 2002 @05:32AM (#4215143) Homepage
          At the time MS (and even AT&T) were accused of taking code the BSD licence had one more clause then it has now. Basically a credit clause, you had to acknolage BSD in your documentation (and maybe on screen).
          The BSD license still states that you have to acknowledge the copyright holders in the documentation. And Microsoft does that, actually. Look at the copyright section of the Windows XP release notes [microsoft.com]; there are several acknowledgments to people who have released their source code under the BSD license. It gives credit to Berkeley and other univesities that have large portions of code released under the BSD license, and also to people like Luigi Rizzo how have written a lot of BSD licenced code for the FreeBSD project.

      • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07, 2002 @02:04PM (#4212780)
        Do a few google searches . . . here is what happened with the BSD license and TCP/IP stack and Microsoft:

        MS had ignored the internet for a while, and suddenly found themselves behind. They wanted TCP/IP in the next NT bad. So they went and bought a TCP/IP stack from a small company somewhere, and planned to partly rewrite it with each release as needed. But this third party just handed them the BSD stack. At that time, the BSD license had the advertising clause in it, so not putting that notice in there constituted not meeting the terms of the BSD license, i.e., distributing a work without holders permission . . . "piracy" as MS likes to call it. Note that we don't know that MS knew about it, they could have been hoodwinked by the company they bought the stuff from. Taking BSD code and selling as your own is pretty sleazy.

        How was this discovered ? Well, MS NT 3.something had all the same bugs as the BSD stack. What's that, you say ? The vaunted BSD stack had bugs ? Again, hit google and see for yourself.

        What was the end result ? Well, before the end of the NT line MS had modified the stack until it was their own, or re-written it from scratch, we don't know. MS gave a lot of money to the Califonia university system and the Reageants changed the BSD license to not have the advertising clause.

        Let's reveiw all the lies and misconceptions, on both the pro-BSD and anti-BSD side:

        1) MS choose the BSD stack because of the BSD license. No, MS probably thought they were buying all copyright to the code outright, and didn't even know about the BSD aspect; or maybe some engineers did and management / legal didn't. But if MS loved the BSD license, why didn't they just copy the code for free ? So, one may conclude that MS's use of the BSD code cannot be used to argue the BSD license is better than the GPL.

        2) MS choose the BSD tcp/ip stack because it was a perfect implementation superior to linux or other alternatives. Well, it certainly had a few bugs. It was faster than the linux one. But likely MS was going to buy whatever came close to working that they could get fast; they only minimally cared about quality. Quality was something they would inject as needed in future vesions, they just wanted tcp/ip in windows NT now.

        3) BSD licensed code is in windows till this day. Well, it's in NT 3.something and maybe one version of NT 4, and after that we don't know. One of the gifts the BSD community gives the world is viral code that can sneak into anything and can't be tracked because it's all closed.

        4) This episode shows how the BSD license is better for the world because closed source can benefit from the work as well as free software. Well, it's true that non-free software can incorporate BSD licensed code, but the benefit to MS in this particular case is questionable. THEY PAID FOR IT. So saying "BSD was used by MS and MS saved money and thus all of us saved money through cheaper windows licenses and a more stable, faster, windows" is just wrong. There are other examples of BSD use in non-free software that make this point more clearly.

        5) Microsoft is a proven hypocrite because they pirated other people's code. No, as in the case of MS piracy in France, what happened was that MS bought code that someone else had pirated, and MS probably bought that code unknowingly (else they would have downloaded it rather than pirate it, right ?)

        There are a couple of other common spins on this story that also don't hold up under examination of the facts, but I can't remember them now -- search usenet for some of the flame wars.

        Summary: the BSD tcp/ip stack in windows has become a misunderstood proxy for all sorts of messages which it doesn't support.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:beauty of the BSD license. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by dinivin ( 444905 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @02:20PM (#4212825)

          We've already established that MS ignored the advertising clause of the BSD license when it used the BSD TCP/IP stack. What makes you think that they wouldn't just ignore all of the clauses of the GPL?

        • The GPL would have required Microsoft to GPL any of their own software that linked with the TCP/IP stack. They would not have done so, and would not have used it to begin with. Thus by using the GPL you have limited the role of the software. If that's your goal, fine, but it wasn't BSD's goal.

          Sometimes you get better results if you don't automatically assume everyone is a thief.
        • If it was GPL, Microsoft would have been forced to release the source for Windows, Office and any other applications that link with Winsock.

          Geee...that makes a heap of sence. Now I know why GPL is 'viral'.
        • Technically: If the license were GPL'ed, the same microsoft would have been forced to "release" any enhancements they made. Thus, a GPL has a way of getting improvements back into the main release.. and is likely to win out over a BSD in the long run.

          Depending on the your definition of the word "win" above, I think you missed the point of your own argument. If the TCP/IP stack was GPLed, then MS would never have used the code to begin with. This of course assumes they wouldn't have just stolen the code without any credit or redistribution of the code back to the community, which I wouldn't put past them (as companies like SonicBlue are so fond of lately). This would have caused MS to either A) find a TCP/IP stack which would allow them to make the code proprietary (as is the case with the BSD license, the advertising clause that was recently removed nonwithstanding) or B) write their own TCP/IP stack and not release any source. In either of those cases, a GPLed TCP/IP stack would NOT have made it into any MS products, and with the current market realization of MS products, would have severely limited distribution of this said GPL TCP/IP stack to non-proprietary products.

          In any case, I believe that BSD-licensed software has just as much, if not much MORE, a chance to live-out its existance as GPLed software. Chances are BSD-licensed code will get more use than GPLed code, as both free software developers and (gasp!) comemrcial companies can both use the code to their liking. You just won't see it as much, as not all of the products that use BSD-licensed code will release that code for others to see. Whether this is a good or bad thing is really up to each indivdual, which is why arguments about GPL-vs-BSD licensing on /. is just a way to bring out the trolls for a day.

          (Note that I don't think the previous poster is a troll, but arguments like these often fail to recognize both sides of the coin)
    • The BSD license is pretty beautiful, if you are MS and you need a TCP/IP stack to steal.

      I think it's great that Microsoft can and does use the BSD stack. At least now they are using something that is well designed and follows the RFCs to the letter. Anything cooked up and "optimized" by M$ themselves would in all likelyhood have brought down the Internet in a catastrophic congestion collapse.
    • But it's also a great help for all the rest of us, who have to network with microsoft software.

      Just imagine the problems that could ocour if
      Microsoft used a bad tcp/ip stack insted of the bsd one. I mean we got enough problems with dos attack due to buggy web servers.

      So the day microsoft take apache, modify it a bit and call it IIS 7 will be a great day for all of us internet users.

      Sourcecode want to be usefull not free :-}

      Martin Tilsted
    • Dude, if something is free you can't steal it. You can take it or not but you just can't steal it.

      Yes, I know. Some of you think that freedom is a bad, bad thing...
      • Freedom can be bad. Suppose you make really cheap guns that work really well, and you decide to give them away completely free. Then some terrorist comes along and takes a few thousands of your guns, for free.

        The BSD license allows companies like MS to take the code for free, and close the source, and possibly hurt the industry by extending the standard with proprietary, closed source, extensions, and then forcing people to use them through monopolistic practices.

        So yes, the obvious conclusion is "If You Support BSD You Are Supporting Terrorism (TM)"

        Of course this post is partly joking, but the analogy is somewhat fair I think.

        BSD licensing has a place, but in my mind, that place is very limited. A small program that you don't care if people use for whatever reason, like something that is mostly educational as a code example, or a launching point for building another app that isn't very useful in and of itself, that is fine for BSD.

        If you don't care about what MS or other companies are doing with your code, then by all means use the BSD. That is what it is there for. If you would rather guarantee that your code stays open source no matter what, then GPL. If you don't mind closed source people linking with and using your code, so long as they don't extend it without giving back to the community, then LGPL. If you don't want people to use your code at all, then use a more restrictive license, or close source it. It's all very simple.
        • Yet again...

          If someone wants to take *BSD and add proprietry crap, and try and sell it:

          a) It will be closed, have no benefits - it will die
          b) It will be closed, compatible, and have support - it may flourish. You pay for the support.
          c) It will be closed, have additional features, and if it is worth the money, people will buy it. If not (ie, its just *BSD with a name change) people wont bother.

          I don't see the problem.

          Not everyone who develops software wants to control the use of it. Some people just want to advance the industry.

          I mean, so what if MS steals the entire FreeBSD codebase, and calls it Windows NG (new generation) for example. The public gets an OS that doesn't suck, with proper industry support - and people who don't want to use it can continue to use the open-source version.

          Its a more generous mindset, and I for one, am all for it.

          smash.

          • d) It will be closed, not compatible, and forced upon a unsuspecting public through monopolistic practices and lawsuits, and become the de facto standard that is a moving target for people trying to interoperate through contant forced upgrades, and patented extensions.

            You forgot that option.
            • You are assuming that Microsoft is the only proprietary software developer. Microsoft may indeed do what you suggest, but that's not the fault of the license, since Microsoft has already demonstrated that it will break the law in spite of court orders forbidding it to.

              The typical proprietary software developer knows that they can't successfully fork a Free Software project into a proprietary one and get away with it in the long term.
        • > Freedom can be bad. Suppose you make really cheap guns that work really well, and you decide to
          > give them away completely free. Then some terrorist comes along and takes a few thousands of
          > your guns, for free.

          Yeah, you are right. I should sell those cheap weapons to those evil terrorists and make money that way. And I should do the same with the cheap bread I made to feed the hungry.

          Sorry, I can't take someone serious who writes up such stupid unrelated nonesense like you. (I stopped reading after the second paragraph BTW).
    • You are a moron. They didn't "steal" any TCP/IP stack. When NT was first being written, they needed a TCP/IP stack, so they purchased a third party stack. Of course, that turned out to be the BSD stack. Well, soon after that MS wrote their own TCP/IP stack from scratch, and replaced the BSD stack with it.

      What's that attribution in the Windows release notes to Berkeley, you say? That's for utilities like ftp, telnet, nslookup, etc -- the legacy console Unix tools that are still in heavy use in NT, taken from BSD code to ensure compatibility with Unix users.

      Why don't you shut your cake hole when you don't know what you're talking about, and quit spreading FUD? No wonder you're on my freaks list... afraid of the truth, are we, Mr. Zealot sir?

  • Micro? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dbrower ( 114953 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @12:24PM (#4212433) Journal
    [i was going to moderate, but there was nothing worth anything in the discussion so far]

    I don't see what is 'micro' about the distro. The default installation takes 160M. Back when I have my AT&T 3b1 running, the whole thing fit on a 10M disk with 3M left for my files. No tcp/ip tho, but does that really take 150M?

    -dB

    • 160M default install is a lot better than a 400-600M install with other *Nix and BSD flavors. Be a lot easier to get this distro down below the 50M mark I think.

      • Re:Micro? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by friscolr ( 124774 )
        160M default install is a lot better than a 400-600M install with other *Nix and BSD flavors.

        install OpenBSD using only base31.tgz etc31.tgz and bsd, you'll have an install that takes about 96mb and has more than enough tools to run pf, bridging and altq (all for setting up a very useful firewall), and even has pop server, sshd, apache, perl - plenty for a basic server.

        • Freesco does most of that and fits on a 1.44mb floppy. Linux based. Web server, bridging, routing, dial in, web management interface, plenty for a basic server. Takes about 4 megs of RAM. What were you saying again?

          • Re:Micro? (Score:2, Informative)

            by friscolr ( 124774 )
            Freesco does most of that and fits on a 1.44mb floppy. Linux based. Web server, bridging, routing, dial in, web management interface, plenty for a basic server. Takes about 4 megs of RAM. What were you saying again?

            i was saying...

            [Linux] file /sbin
            file: no such file or directory
            [Linux] which file
            which: No such file or directory
            [Linux] uname -a
            uname: No such file or directory
            find worked *very* different too, and even ls was different (not alpha order, try `ls /bin`)

            I'm sure Freesco has a very definite, good place.
            What i was saying is that a base OpenBSD install, with full range of commands that you will already be used to, takes less than 100mb.

            • What i was saying is that a base OpenBSD install, with full range of commands that you will already be used to, takes less than 100mb.

              Yes, of course, they all have their place, but I agree with the earlier poster, microBSD is sort of a misnomer. compactBSD or smallishBSD seems better. :)
    • Putting pico in front of a unit is simply easier than writing 0.000 000 000 00x (or twelve figures before the decimal point) before your number and putting micro in front of a unit is a short way of writing 0.000 00 (or 6 figures before the decimal point) before your number. So one micro has 1 000 000 or one million pico units in it. [
      source [sciencenet.org.uk]]

      So as you can see, MicroBSD [microbsd.net], referenced in this article, takes 1,000,000 times more space than PicoBSD [freebsd.org]. Using compiled-assembly /bin utils, combined into one executable which checks $0, such as busybox [busybox.net]--one is able to strip down the OS to fit on a 1.44Mbps floppy disc. I would suppose MicroBSD is aimed to fit on a 700MB CD-RW, with the ~600MB left over for user files thanks to the rewritability of RW media. As you can see, there is a large gap between Micro and PicoBSD, each fills their own niche.

    • emBSD [embsd.org] does it better in IIRC under 32MB

    • Re:Micro? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From their Web Site

      Seems someone decided to /. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
      This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.

      641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
      36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
      37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
      21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
      125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
      24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
      12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
      22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
      14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
      1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
      9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
      4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
      4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
      2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
      184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
      128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
      1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
      1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
      1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
      558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
      440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
      37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
      424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz
  • So basically the author says that MicroBSD is a great developing OS which is basically FreeBSD and OpenBSD somewhat combined with a few patches and a search and replace performed to put MicroBSD all over the place.

    What a waste of an OS and a waste of an article. Why was this even posted on Slashdot?

    • Re:Search and Replace to create your own OS (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So basically the author says that MicroBSD is a great developing OS which is basically FreeBSD and OpenBSD somewhat combined with a few patches and a search and replace performed to put MicroBSD all over the place.

      What a waste of an OS and a waste of an article. Why was this even posted on Slashdot?

      Well, it's not so much an OS as a 'distribution,' in the sense of RedHat versus SuSE. Same basic kernel- OpenBSD's, in this case- and the idea is to merge all the 'heavy' security features (ACLs, etc) from TrustedBSD et al. onto the fairly 'light' and proven OpenBSD core. It's no worse than Yet Another Linux- and there are quite a few distros in that market that seem wastes of effort to me, but... it's the maintainers' prerogative.

      That said, while it's a very nice attempt, I don't think 'Outback' is up to maintainership. He seems like a nice guy with some nice dreams, but from his mailing list posts, it's obvious he doesn't have a lot of familiarity with... anything. I wish him well- and think the project will be a great learning experience for him- but I wouldn't dare run this beast without seeing some 3rd-party audit action, if and when the merged features get running. I think it's his inexperienced perspective that's making it happen at all- it's an "innocent" approach to free software- "Hey, FreeBSD and NetBSD have all *these* great features, while OpenBSD has this really audited and sane-ified base install, let's install X under Y"- but the issues of actually making it run and avoiding stupid problems (overflowable buffers and other holes) in the 'glue' required make it fairly daunting for even the most experienced maintainer. (Theo gets a lot of crap for *his* architectural decisions, and compared to Theo, Outback is a MCSE.)

      So... let's see if he gets anywhere. If he does, let's jump in, learn how to properly audit a project, and create the wonderful feature-complete distro that is his intent (or cross our fingers and hope a consultancy or similar does it for us)... No need to knock a man for trying, but no need to put your network at risk with his software based on his good intentions, either.

  • otherwise it will take tens of thousands of megabytes to install it - simple mathematics. pico --> micro we got around 100 times, so we can expect what would happen
    if the trend is linear...
  • From a quick look at the fdisk and fdisk manual, it was just the same OpenBSD unintelligent fdisk (where a calculator would be handy).

    Sigh, OpenBSD install procedure is annoying, there's little or no documentation available throughout the installer. Hopefully MicroBSD will move on from this archaic and elitist installer used by OpenBSD.

    • Re:fdisk (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It takes two tries to get right at first, but it's still my favorite installer. The only thing I'd reallly like to see different is the ability to assign swap more flexibly, but getting around that is as easy as finishing the install (you likely won't need to swap while installing) and editing fstab.

      Really, they've done well for what they're doing. It fits on one floppy, it's no-bullshit, and is the general equivalent of MS-DOS format /s. If you aren't familiar with the BSD mindset at all (fdisk+disk slicing, which is about the only hard thing there), OpenBSD isn't your distro- FreeBSD should be, and yes, their sysinstall is broken and sucky (nice menus... but when you can't get back to partition your second disk, they aren't of much use), hence the 'libh' project to eventually allow a serious revamp of sysinstall.

      Check out NetBSD's installer sometime; IMHO, it's a bit of the worst of both worlds, but it's basically an OpenBSD installer that's more self-documenting.

      • I concur. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bishop ( 4500 )
        It agree on all three counts. OpenBSD could be easier for first time users, but is simple and fast the second and nth time around. FreeBSD and its menus can be confusing. You need the Handbook right in front of you. Even then I seem to install something a little different each time. Haven't used NetBSD recently. I had trouble with the installer, but that was a while ago I hope things have changed.

        OpenBSD is my favorite *nix. It is perfect. It is a simple clean install that comes with everything that should be in a default unix install. (Except BASH! :-) The installer is not friendly to the first time user. My first install was wiped in about 3 minutes as I started my second install. My second install worked well. My third and nth installs are great. The install is very quick. The defaults are sane and not a lot of questions are asked. There are only a handfull of packages that I install from precompiled instead of ports. When I need a *nix I install OpenBSD.

        OpenBSD may be for a more advanced user. Anyone willing to learn, read a little, make some mistakes, should have no trouble working with OpenBSD. I encourage any *nix admin to make some time and learn OpenBSD. Call it professional development. I am sure that you won't turn around and install OpenBSD everywhere. However I am confident that you will find uses for OpenBSD where its quick and simple install will save you time and stress.

        • Re:I concur. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by snake_dad ( 311844 )
          (replay for lack of mod points) I fully agree with Bishop. I remember my first steps into OpenBSD as a fun learning experience. Not at all difficult, just make sure you read about disklabels.

  • BSD license (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrm677 ( 456727 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @04:12PM (#4213180)
    I'm reading a Computer Networks textbook right now. The author frequently points out that the success of the TCP/IP stack can be largely attributed to the BSD license because companies had access to a well-engineered network staff for free. Otherwise, OSI protocols might have been chosen as they were the "hot" research/development topic of the 80's.

    • Re:BSD license (Score:2, Interesting)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 )
      I'm reading a Computer Networks textbook right now. The author frequently points out that the success of the TCP/IP stack can be largely attributed to the BSD license because companies had access to a well-engineered network staff for free. Otherwise, OSI protocols might have been chosen as they were the "hot" research/development topic of the 80's.

      Out of curiosity, would that necessarily have been a bad thing? Granted, it would have meant that today's world would look quite different from the way it does now, but would it necessarily have been a change for the worse?

  • I thought it said "Taking Microsoft BSOD for a Test Run". :)

  • Looks Like 0.6 Will ROCK! less then 64Megs (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From their Web Site

    We are going to give you all a little preview of exactly where we are with the 0.6 release and whats been going on here. Right now our tree is current as on 9/06/2002 and all code/updates/patches have been applied, and our modifications integrated. These include fixing up of some erroneous errors in the documentation, up to date Network Port ACL code, File Systems ACL code provided as of 9/6/2002. This also includes the stripping of all uneeded system binaries, the framework of integration of packages installed during the installation process as you desire. The base system is now below 25 Megs installed so we can now fit nicely on a 32Meg CompactFlash with room to spare. The first packages in the server installs will be IPSec, PPP, PPTP, IDS, MySQL, HTTP, DHCP, and Sendmail with other additions to follow. We are also testing now an AutoUpdate/Binary Upgrade process to centralize this for users. More will show up on that later. Our Downloads will be alot smaller for the full and mini versions of the ISOs. We may even drop the mini and create a combined for those that wish to install a compiler. This release does include the previously mentioned major code updates and functionality like TCP/IP mods, further privacy protection, the non-exec stack modifications and systrace functionality updates, GCC compiler mods of Stack Smashing protection, restarting of the TCP/IP counter at 0 for each new connection. plus fixes for the reported problems with file system ACL binaries. We are moving forward with this build and are looking for testers to pound out the bugs before the release.
    We have gotten further additions for the 0.6 release integrated into the system along with the previously mentioned fixes and updates. If you are interested in joining the testing phase email us @ dingo@microbsd.net

    FTPD Security Hardening
    This makes ftpd run 99% non-root, while remaining 100% functional. Root privileges are dropped immediately after a successful authentication, and never regained later.

    Human-time Resource Limitations
    Traditional Unix semantics defines inheritable per-process resources limitations : memory usage, CPU time usage, stack size, file size, descriptors, max subprocesses and core dump size. It lacks something that can be really useful : human-time, ie. the real (not CPU) number of seconds a process is allowed to run. So even if the process is waiting forever without taking CPU time (dead lock, something waiting for data that nobody sends, etc), it can be automatically killed after a maximal time.

    Signal Logging
    With this the kernel will log important uncatched signals sent to processes. It will help to track down hardware and software bugs, processes that mysteriously crashed, and possible attacks.
    Output in the log files looks like :

    Sep 5 20:26:46 mserver /bsd: signal 11 received by (qmail-smtpd:13657) UID(1006) EUID(1006), parent (tcpserver:11016) UID(1006) EUID(1006)

    Seems someone decided to /. us this morning which is okay. Though those of you now reading this 0.5 is in two different ISOs the full ISO, and the miniISO. As they say 160megs installed on the Full ISO for 0.5, it is less then 64Megs for 0.6 which is due out soon. Also note that 0.6 contains all the cleanups and additions, fixes for 0.5 and actually is alot more usable. Looks like everyone is going to be about 7 days to early. Wait for 0.6 and then take a look if you really want to see what we are doing. The differences between 0.5 and 0.6 are too large to list but size, configurability and features are the largest points.
    This is a Size preview for the full Release for 0.6, other additional packages will include IDS, PostFix, MySQL, and a couple of others. Base install less then 64 Megs, and a heavily modified installation system.

    641 Sep 2 15:33 CKSUM
    36654 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.ata
    37658 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.chs
    21797 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.dbr
    125042 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.i386
    24017 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.linux
    12465 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.mbr
    22558 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.os2br
    14522 Sep 2 15:33 INSTALL.pt
    1155 Sep 2 15:33 MD5
    9376463 Sep 2 15:49 base06.tgz
    4432422 Sep 2 15:33 bsd
    4252465 Sep 2 15:33 bsd.rd
    2949120 Sep 2 15:33 cdrom06.fs
    184670 Sep 2 15:49 dhcp06.tgz
    128796 Sep 2 15:49 etc06.tgz
    1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppy06.fs
    1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyB06.fs
    1474560 Sep 2 15:33 floppyC06.fs
    558766 Sep 2 15:49 ipsec06.tgz
    440998 Sep 2 15:49 ppp06.tgz
    37500 Sep 2 15:49 pptp06.tgz
    424264 Sep 2 15:49 sendmail06.tgz

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