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BSD Operating Systems

Review: OpenBSD 3.4 SPARC64 Edition 39

Posted by michael from the die-hard dept.
'It's me' writes "Tony Bourke is reviewing OpenBSD 3.4 for SPARC-64. He discusses installation, the feel of the OS, its desktop, its performance, a MySQL problem he stumbled on, development tools and hardware support, firewalling and more."
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Review: OpenBSD 3.4 SPARC64 Edition More

Review: OpenBSD 3.4 SPARC64 Edition

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  • Dupe (Score:1, Redundant)

    by henrik ( 98 )
    It's a dupe.

    • Re:Dupe (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by henrik ( 98 )
      Well, looks like it was FreeBSD before.
    • A review of 3.5 (release announced at midnight GMT - 4PM PST today) would have been more useful. And since we've known for 5 years that 3.5 would be coming out around now (3.9 will be 5/1/2006) a review of a recent snapshot would seem actually useful.

      I'm so upset, I'm going back in time to stop running X, KDE, GNOME and the festival of apps I've used on BSD since 1994. Did Linux have a network stack yet then? /me forgets.

  • OSNews Article Overview (Score:3, Funny)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Friday April 30, 2004 @10:40AM (#9018523)
    OpenBSD is great.

    It recognized my NIC and worked very well.

    The firewall features are very valuable and robust.

    Conclusion: Linux is not ready for the desktop.

  • Not a Dupe! And an OK review (Score:4, Informative)

    by bhima ( 46039 ) <Bhima.Pandava@DE ... com minus distro> on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:21PM (#9019658) Journal
    I found the article rather interesting! And if anyone had bothered to read the previous article they would realize that this guy is doing a series of articles based on the same Sparc box and a variety of operating systems (perhaps all the ones that will run on it and are freely available). To bad his doesn't seem to be a developer because he doesn't touch on anything at all in that arena and I would have been mildly interested in comparisons.
  • From the article:
    I had assumed that like FreeBSD and NetBSD, that desktop/graphics would not be supported. That assumption turned out to be incorrect.
    Not sure where he got that warped idea about "desktop/graphics"; *BSD supports these things just fine, thank you.

  • Sparc64. . . (Score:5, Informative)

    by bplipschitz ( 265300 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:51PM (#9020655)
    I run OpenBSD 3.4 on an Ultra1 and an Ultra2 with no problems whatsoever. Granted, they are machines at home that the kids use [for doing homework, playing games, surfing the web], but they hold up well, are relatively quiet, and aren't going to get easily hacked.

    The main reason I run OpenBSD on these machines, is that the graphics support was superior to NetBSD [which I run on an old SS20], and FreeBSD doesn't support the SBUS [yet].

  • Few errors (Score:5, Informative)

    by the morgawr ( 670303 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @02:07PM (#9020849) Homepage Journal
    Though it's not the author's fault entirely (he is in a hurry), some of the bad experiences he had could have been avoided if he had followed the documentation and not assumed that OpenBSD is the same as Net and Free.

    For example he tried to run the various X configurations utilities. The FAQ clearly states that there is a WORKING example configuration that you should start from in /usr/X11/README .

    Furthermore the FAQ also states to not compile from source unless absolutely nessessary. If he had used packages, he might not have had the problems with the databases that he had. However there was a MySQL glitch in 3.4 (I think, it could have been 3.3) that was fixed in stable. Also, the 3.5 snapshot from the 29th had some serious problems (people were told not to use it). Doing a little more homework would have avoided these problems; it's all documented.

    While overall the article was very interesting, I am disappointed that his haste caused him to have problems where he should not have.

    • Re:Few errors (Score:3, Informative)

      by tokki ( 604363 )
      For example he tried to run the various X configurations utilities. The FAQ clearly states that there is a WORKING example configuration that you should start from in /usr/X11/README .

      The FAQ does not state this at all. Which FAQ are you refering to? ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/doc/obsd-faq.tx t

      While it was odd that starting up X11 with a non-working config crashed the system, I was able to get X11 working, as you can see in the screenshot.

      Furthermore the FAQ also states to not compile from sou

      • Re:Few errors (Score:4, Informative)

        by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:23PM (#9022315)
        It didn't crash the system because of an invalid XF86Config file, it crashed because he tried to start X one a Serial Console, you can't do that.

        As far as the MySQL problem, its very well known and has been in OpenBSD for some time, the MySQL Manual has it listed for as far back as 2.8 if I recall correctly, just for some reason not everyone hits it.

        On a side note, it was nice to see my name in a review, even though I was for all intents and purposes no help at all.
        • You were of great help :)

          I just checked the manual, and found this:

          OpenBSD 2.8 problem [mysql.com]

          Interesting, I hadn't seen that before. It's for 2.8, but it seems to be the same issue I had. When I get back from Hawaii I'll run MySQL with that tweak, see if that resolves the problem.

        • It didn't crash the system because of an invalid XF86Config file, it crashed because he tried to start X one a Serial Console, you can't do that.

          As I stated in the article, I figured it probably wouldn't run and die with an error. What I was surprised about was that it actually caused the operating system to crash.
      • Sorry it took me so long to get back to you (was out of town...)

        > The FAQ does not state this at all.

        Wow, you've got me there. The faq doesn't seem to have that information anymore. I'm pretty sure it or some man page (X, startx) used to because I remember reading explicitly to start with the example in the README file instead of running the config when I set OpenBSD up on that Blade 100.

        > There are no packages or even ports for MySQL 4.0

        Well, while I don't use MySQL, this [openbsd.org] does look like 4.

        • Also if you want to go back and use the patch (stable) branch instead of the current branch, you can use your current system to check out the latest OPENBSD_3_5 branch of ports, src, and XF4 from cvs and make a "release" ( see release(8) ) of the patch branch. Then you would use the files it makes to install the software again (use install not upgrade b/c upgrade doesn't work in the other direction...).
        • Well, while I don't use MySQL, this does look like 4.0 to me. According to the make file there is a package available via ftp and on the CD-ROM. I also doubt you bothered to apply all of the patches in the patches directory when you made it from source yourself. That's proably why it doesn't work. On a general note if you ask on misc@ they are going to tell you to just use the package and only to use the port if you need a special flavor (and it doesn't sound like you do).

          They've just added MySQL 4.0 for

          • >Well, it booted up as 3.5

            Yeah -current will tell you it's 3.5 (because it's 3.5-current). Does it have the -stable or the -release tag after the 3.5 at the top of the dmesg? I guess that's possible since you did get the snapshot back in March.

            >However, I was able to find a solution.

            I'd strongly suggesting using 3.5-stable (or release) and the MySQL package when you do your addendum. The MySQL problem should be fixed in one of the patches and should work for you "out-of-the-box" (but I'll make no g

  • Hardware support problem in ALL BSDs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @04:13PM (#9022187) Homepage
    Part of the reason why Linux is so popular is it supports almost all hardware out there. BSD is great and preferable for me in many places because if its simplicity and its more standard.

    I tried OpenBSD in my Ultra5 a while ago, before the first of these two reviews came out, and it ran much faster than Solaris. I have a SCSI disk in there, so it was an impressive firewall, except it didnt see the ATM card.

    Also needed to install OpenBSD (I'm used to OpenBSD's simplicity) on my spanking new VA Linux 1000 webserver, but I was using a Promise SATA card in there to run the SATA disk. Only Linux can read the SATA, so I had to revert back. BSD is great but (1) You have to have the hardware it supports (2) You should only need the functions your version of BSD supports.

    I'd love to see FreeBSD support SATA cards (Promise TX2plus) and have facilities like Linux UML or Solaris zones, unlike chroots. In the short run, Linux is there, in the long run BSD will be used unless Linux becomes real stable, and is standardized, or the Slackware development is continued.
    • I'd love to see FreeBSD support SATA cards

      WTF? FreeBSD does support SATA cards. My workstation does not have any IDE harddrives, yet I've had FreeBSD on it for a year. This machine does not have Linux on it because at the time I purchased the system Linux only had SATA support as a patch. At the last time I tried to install Linux on it, none of the shipping distros included SATA support on the install media.
      • It didnt support Promise TX2plus. Plus you have to admit Linux supports many more devices than any of the BSDs, there are more devices supported exclusively by Linux than there are ones supported exclusively by FreeBSD.

        The fact that Linux is becoming an OS standard, with vendors releasing drives for it along with Solaris win2k, and not BSD, Plan9 etc, doesnt help the situation.

        For now we're thankful at least one free OS is supported by many hardware vendors.
    • you will probably always see less support for exotic hardware in *BSD because the volunteers who contribute to *BSD are less willing to compromise their beliefs by signing NDAs to get documentation. *BSD is free-free for a reason, and a good part of it comes from that (non-polluting code)

  • "the feel of the OS" (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    cold and stiff

  • Again? (Score:2, Funny)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 )
    Tony Bourke is reviewing OpenBSD 3.4 for SPARC-64.

    Would someone please give this guy a Solaris CD already?

    He's reviewed _everything_ else that runs on his eBay-purchased US5. Let it go.

    --saint

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