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Security Operating Systems Software Unix BSD

BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too) 332

Posted by timothy from the such-euphony-from-three-little-letters dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too) More

BSDCon '03 Nearly Here (OpenBSD 3.4, Too)

Comments Filter:

  • The important question (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will that hot FreeBSD devil babe be there?!

  • Buzz Buzz Buzz (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CEHT ( 164909 )
    I can't wait for new OpenBSD music!

    • Re:Buzz Buzz Buzz (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hmm, it is usually the cover-art for me. The cover-art and the music make OpenBSD release CDs (which also come with entertaining stickers and comic artwork inside the CD case) the most collectable in OSS. It is interesting they don't even attempt to dressup their software in formidable-looking packaging; they aren't even trying to win-over business IT departments. The releases are targeted at fandom....

  • Technical sessions start Sept 10 (Score:5, Informative)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:30PM (#6893957) Homepage
    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.
    • Replacement of GNU diff(1), diff3(1), grep(1), egrep(1), fgrep(1), zgrep(1), zegrep(1), zfgrep(1), gzip(1), zcat(1), gunzip(1), gzcat(1), zcmp(1), zmore(1), zdiff(1), zforce(1), gzexe(1), and znew(1) commands with BSD licensed equivalents.

      Anyone know why OpenBSD is removing GNU tools ... other than the licensing issues ?

      • Re:removing some utilities (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tirel ( 692085 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:41PM (#6894024)
        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:removing some utilities (Score:4, Informative)

          by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @05:32PM (#6895262) Journal
          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.
      • Anyone know why OpenBSD is removing GNU tools ... other than the licensing issues ?

        While I'm greatful I have these tools for free, and they have served me well, they are not without brain damage. For example, I found to my horror that 'patch' will, under certain circumstances, seek out and change my original files used to generate a patch, instead of what a reasonable reader would think to be the target files (the ones marked with "+++"). This is in fact documented behaviour, presumably thought to be go
      • licensing, less gpl is always better if possible. we also now maintain the tools entirely ourselves. cleanliness -- they don't even know how to indent properly. :) in the case of grep, it was a major improvement in size of the binary (think floppy installs) because we use libc regexp, not 3 different special edition text searchers made just for grep.
        • 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.

  • FreeBSD filesystem (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I keep hearing that FreeBSD has a kickass filesystem. Is it more reliable than ext[2|3]? Because frankly, I think Linux filesystem is not all that great. 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 (and yeah, I use ext3, but you still have to fsck it to fix duplicate/corrupt inodes).
    So anyway, how does FreeBSD's filesystem stack

    • Re:FreeBSD filesystem (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:43PM (#6894035)
      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.

      • FreeBSD's approach catches every situation, and guarantees an intact filesystem on every boot.

        I dunno, have you see the previous article [slashdot.org]? I'd like to see FreeBSD catch this [datadocktorn.nu]!

        Now that would be impressive!
      • Journaling without sacrificing performance and clean algorithms simply isn't possible

        Say it to IBM and SGI. They would like to hear your arguments just to discover that years of research and practice were useless.

        • 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

    • Re:FreeBSD filesystem (Score:2, Informative)

      by caluml ( 551744 )
      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:FreeBSD filesystem (Score:5, Interesting)

        by realdpk ( 116490 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:16PM (#6894250) Homepage Journal
        If ext2 is so reliable, why does it, by default, insist that I must fsck after X days or Y mounts?

      • ext2 is both fast and reliable.

        Bull! I've had many-a-time that my Linux system lost power, and an ext2 partition was corrupted. Usually my /home partition.

        I can give you a 100% guarantee that is was not my hardware for two reasons. First of all, I had the exact same experience with a handful of different hard drives. Secondly, I'm still using all of those hard drives, and they haven't lost a single byte of my data, even with numerous power-outages, heavy-duty writing, and uprades from version to versi

  • Soothing break (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:37PM (#6893997)
    We'd like to interrupt this BSD story for a bit of pro-BSD propaganda.

    Tell me you don't want BSD on your laptop now [madchat.org].

    Further persuasion available here [madchat.org]. This is definitely +1 Interesting material to any heterosexual male. Mod me down if you are the sendmail author or otherwise uninterested.

    • Re:Soothing break (Score:1, Interesting)

      by pirodude ( 54707 )
      THIS [madchat.org] is a much better reason. I'm just wondering, does she come in the box or as an upgrade?
    • Holy hot tamales! How 'bout a few pickup lines?

      Hey baby, you can do my security audit anytime!

      Hey, wanna go out for a FreeBSD install and a fsck?

      Hey baby, bet you can't install a rootkit in my homedirectory!

      Ouch, ouch, I know... well back to hungover slumber then :-)

    • Re:Soothing break (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Tell me you don't want BSD on your laptop now.

      +5, serious; I want BSD on top of my lap. Is that the same thing?

  • one issue that should be hot on the table (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:37PM (#6893998)
    is ximian compatability.

    Any linux related (binary compat in this case) that wants to move or shake should investigate ximian compatability....

    I for one welcome out new ximian overlords.

    Imagine a schimick GUI interface, FreeBSD underneath, all you'd need is a cheese grater aluminum case......

  • Soon? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JamesTRexx ( 675890 )
    Will soon be widly placed on desktops... I think that's a bit much very premature. So far it's still Windoze, and the hype is Linux, so I think *BSD won't grow that much on the desktop market. Although I would like to see much more articles on using *BSD for the regular consumers. In the meantime *BSD will keep the important parts of the internet running. Oh, and no *BSD is dying comments please. It's getting really old and tired to hear that from close minded people...

    • Re:Soon? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nyteroot ( 311287 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:14PM (#6894240)
      I would like to see much more articles on using *BSD for the regular consumers


      Why, god. Why is it that an OS must be usable "on the desktop", "by mom", or by "the regular consumers" in order for it to be considered "good"? First we had Linux, and then they mom-ified Linux. Now you want them to mom-ify *BSD too? Fuck that shit!


      There are server OSs. There are desktop OSs. Any attempt at combination is bound to fail miserably at one or the other and quite likely both.

      • I didn't say it isn't good, in fact, I use it for my servers and I hope to get my new workstation soon so I can install the latest FreeBSD on it.
        The trouble is, (most) managers only see what's in the pc magazines so they don't know about the power of *BSD or other OS'.
        I'm all in favor of seperate OS versions for server and for desktop uses. I still curse everytime I see totally useless junk installed on a Windoze server like Imaging, Pinball, etc...
        Hell, if we had our way at work there would have been on

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

        by MrHanky ( 141717 )

        Why, god. Why is it that an OS must be usable "on the desktop", "by mom", or by "the regular consumers" in order for it to be considered "good"? First we had Linux, and then they mom-ified Linux. Now you want them to mom-ify *BSD too? Fuck that shit!

        I don't know. FreeBSD is a fine desktop/workstation OS. I use it on my laptop. However, it's not quite mummified yet (sorry, but we all have to have a reference to '*BSD is dead', don't we?). I recently installed it on my desktop as well, and wantet GDM as a

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

        by evilviper ( 135110 )

        There are server OSs. There are desktop OSs. Any attempt at combination is bound to fail miserably at one or the other and quite likely both.

        OpenBSD has been working fine as my desktop for years. I'm using Mozilla on OpenBSD on my Laptop to type this message right now.

        It's really quite easy to install, and you only need the tiniest bit of knowledge to setup X and install applications. I wouldn't say it's for "the regular consumers", but only because those people are horrified if they have to type-in a s

        • I think that's the beauty of the BSD's. I haven't yet tried Open or Net, but I can either let FreeBSD handle things automatically for the most part, or download and compile whatever I need.
          It's that kind of choice that would have given Windoze a big extra. At one point those OS will come together, when the BSD's can be as simple to install or use as Windoze, and Windoze can be customized as good as the BSD's. Then we can really make a choice on OS.
    • I thought MacOSX was the desktop freebsd.
      • Yeah, except, or maybe it's just me, it doesn't run well on AMD, VIA, and other x86 compatibles like Intel. ;-)

      • Personally... I won't use it. It isn't just the desktop BSD (FreeBSD/Mach/etc), it's also the closed-source BSD. There are many good reasons people use Open Source software, and they apply to the desktop as well as the base OS, and additional applications.

        I would recomend it over Windows to people that aren't very technical, but that's about it.

        Don't mind me, just ranting here.
        • Hmmm... I don't see how *BSD could be less technical than Linux, presuming that's what you're using.
          *BSD is just as open too, except the license is different, maybe less intruding. It gives everyone a chance to make some money from the software they write/enhance upon.
          I recommend BSD to people so they don't have to go through all the different distributions of GNU/Linux to find the one that might suit them best. With the three big flavors of BSD you make more of a choice between security, portability, and o
          • You misunderstood my post, and are preaching to the converted here. I'm a BSDer, and verymuch recomend it over Linux (you replied to another of my comments here as well, I guess you don't notice usernames too much). What I'm saying, is that I wouldn't recomend Mac OS X to anyone that knows enough to use an open source OS.
      • Darwin (and therefore MacOS X) is based on the Mach kernel. It probably has FreeBSD code, and they make efforts to make it FreeBSD compatable in some respects, but it's only loosely related.
        • Darwin (and therefore MacOS X) is based on the Mach kernel.

          Yes.

          It probably has FreeBSD code, and they make efforts to make it FreeBSD compatable in some respects, but it's only loosely related.

          http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/darwin.h t ml [apple.com]

          The stability of Mac OS X begins with Darwin, an Open Source, UNIX-based foundation. Darwin is a complete BSD UNIX implementation, derived from the original 4.4BSD-Lite2 Open Source distribution. Darwin uses a monolithic kernel based on FreeBSD 4.4 and t
    • After my hard drive's partition table was erased the other day, I installed FreeBSD 5.1. It was a painless install (less the pain that I'd felt to no cause of it) and I'm running it on my desktop right now. I recompiled the kernel to get sound working -- via adding one line, "device pcm", to /sys/src/i386/CUSTOM and recompiling and installing -- and it detected my school's network automatically. I'm doing fine on it.

  • OpenBSD 3.4 song? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MADbull ( 705032 )
    when will the next song be out? http://openbsd.rug.ac.be/ftp/pub/OpenBSD/songs/ i don't see it there yet...
    • Theo says it will be out in 'about three weeks.'
      • Mod parent as troll!

        The "about three weeks" he sarcastically quotes is how long Theo had said his wife would be in the hospital from surgical complications just before she passed away early this spring. "About three weeks" is a troll used at every opportunity on the OpenBSD mailing lists, and it's twice caused Theo to have to take time away from the lists.

        This is neither informative nor funny. Come on, people -- whether you like Theo or not, Angie had nothing to do with the BSD project, and this is just c

    • I didn't know about any songs. There seems to be a "songs" directory on each OpenBSD mirror, I've never noticed it before. Perhaps because I'm always inside "3.3".

      Maybe I can download them later.

  • Don't go! (Score:4, Funny)

    by in7ane ( 678796 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:40PM (#6894017)
    Please don't go to either of these, and if you already are - come back now. I hear there is a good change of dying at either of these two conventions.
  • Sounds too good to be true. I wish there would be similar stuff in Europe. But unluckily, I haven't found anything like this at this side of the Atlantic. Only things that come to my mind are targeted to corporate type of people, who can pay - let's say $1000 and more for a weekend for absolutely "nothing", like Kevin Mitnick's keynote.

    Anyways, you guys have fun!

  • DragonFly at BSDCon (Score:5, Informative)

    by m.dillon ( 147925 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:24PM (#6894299) Homepage
    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}.

    • Request?

      Hey Dillion, I was wondering if you had plans to make drivers for cams on Dragonfly? I am sick and tired of those who say FreeBSD is deing, look at driver support, you should try Gentoo, etc. I noticed my usb keyboard had support from FreeBSD long before Linux, contary to what the trolls tell me.

      Just a request since I love my logitech quickcam and hate using Windows all the time. I know kernel work is alot more important to you but I figured its worth a shot to ask.

  • OpenBSD Journal is dying (not a troll) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:57PM (#6894481) Journal
    deadly.org, which was previously the premiere place for OpenBSDers to learn and communicate has now disabled comments completely. Comments, 90% from intelligent and informed users, happened to be the highlight of the site, but now it's all over because the admins are very unhappy about a pair of trolls, and aren't willing to do anything anti-troll. instead, they shut the door completely.

    So, I wonder if anyone here knows of another site that will take-over? BSD-specific, with knowledgable users, and plenty of comments... BSDforums has a large number of factors working against it, keeping it from becomming anything really good, so rule that one out.

    The BSD section here at /. has EVERYTHING working against it... VERY infrequent stories, few commenters, even fewer informed commentors, and nearly as many trolls as BSDers.

    Any suggestions?
  • Are the BSDs working on this? It seems it would be a "good thing," since most of the cracks hope to smash the stack and execute some mal-code. Solaris may have had this feature, but not sure.

    -Rock

  • Very interesting, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @06:49PM (#6895707)
    Significant enhancements have been made in this release, including i386 switch to ELF executable format, further W^X improvements for i386...

    Yes, but what *I* want to know is whether the BSD babes are going to be there. :D

    Mmmm. Mondo cleavage and red latex!
  • I notice that the keynote speaker is Michi Henning, and he is delivering the "Computing Fallacies" talk again, presumably in an updated form.

    Since this very presentation was discussed on /. previously [slashdot.org], it might be interesting for an attendee to take notes so that we can compare with last time. Does he believe things have improved, or not, and why?

  • Links to ordering site & items -- (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:28AM (#6898415)
    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.

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