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Open Source Operating Systems Security Unix BSD

Celebrating 20 Years of OpenBSD With Release 5.8 (openbsd.org) 158

badger.foo writes: 20 years to the day after the OpenBSD source tree was created for the new project, the project has released OpenBSD 5.8, the 38th release on CD-ROM (and 39th via FTP/HTTP). This release comes with four release songs instead of the usual one, and a long list of improvements over the last releases. (Probably a good time to donate to the project, too, even if you don't use it directly, because of all the security improvements that OpenBSD programmers contribute to the world.)
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Celebrating 20 Years of OpenBSD With Release 5.8

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    really all that needs to be said.

  • I recently saw a video review of a new computer in a box that was too small have a CD-ROM drive but came with the drivers on a CD-ROM. *face palm* Fortunately, the drivers also came on a USB stick.

    I still have a few spindles of blank CD and DVD discs lying around, but I haven't burned a disc in three or four years. Have USB sticks, will travel.

    • If they are small enough, you'll have to go micro SD instead of USB sticks
      • I had SD slots on several of my computers but I never bought an SD card to put one in. Probably because I associate SD cards with cameras and not PC boot devices.
        • I'd use it if the density of an SD card was too small for my cameras. In those cases, that memory was useful on a computer. Nowadays, SD cards have been replaced by micro SD cards, and you just have an SD card form factor adopter in which to insert them. Mainly for that backward compatibility.
    • by fnj ( 64210 )

      I recently saw a video review of a new computer in a box that was too small have a CD-ROM drive but came with the drivers on a CD-ROM. *face palm*

      There are such things as USB CD/DVD-ROM drives, you know. They are very compact and can be powered right via the USB cable. Everybody I know of has at least one.

      • That's like the USB FLOPPY drive that I have in the back of my closet? I don't need another one of those.
        • That's b'cos floppies are practically extinct - you can hardly find files that would fit into a 1.4MB floppy, and all USB sticks would be a handy replacement.
  • by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Sunday October 18, 2015 @11:44AM (#50753857) Journal

    It's worth checking out in a VM. I've been enjoying GhostBSD quite a bit and have been thinking of installing it on bare metal instead of just using it in a VM. I will miss Opera though. At any rate, congrats and thanks - I'll have lots of fun poking at it. I've only played with FreeBSD and GhostBSD so I might as well give this one a shot too.

    • by spauldo ( 118058 ) on Sunday October 18, 2015 @02:48PM (#50754613)

      I've been using OpenBSD and FreeBSD for years.

      They're different, but not horribly so. Most basic configuration is similar, and they both have excellent documentation. FreeBSD does have a lot of features that OpenBSD lacks, but I think that's a good thing; I use OpenBSD for network services (firewall, DHCP, DNS, etc.) and it's dead simple to deal with. That simplicity can make unusual things easy - getting my firewall to run diskless and boot off the DHCP server, for instance.

      My basic rule of thumb: if I need ZFS or jails, I use FreeBSD - otherwise, I use OpenBSD.

      I tried to set up NetBSD as a backup server (since it can act as a ISCSI target), but the monitor I use in the server room freaks out every time I boot it. It does it with OpenBSD too, but if I boot it with the KVM somewhere else and switch after boot, it works with OpenBSD. Oh well, maybe next upgrade cycle, I'll get a better monitor for in there.

      I've never tried GhostBSD, nor heard much about it.

      • I've installed NetBSD more often over the serial console than with a monitor. Old Sparc hardware usually doesn't show up in my life with a monitor or keyboard.

        I suspect there's probably a way to install it headless on Pee Cees, too.

        • by spauldo ( 118058 )

          OpenBSD can install off the serial console on a PC, so I assume NetBSD also has the capability.

          The machine in question was a little booksize box with no serial ports though, and while I've got USB to serial converters, I've had bad luck with them as serial consoles (at least on FreeBSD). I would have had to dig around in the closet to find one, and the ISCSI idea was just a whim anyway.

          I'd like to use a Sparc as my firewall, but unfortunately I don't have any sbus network cards.

      • by KGIII ( 973947 )

        I kind of like Ghost, it's been stable in a VM for... Err... 68 days without a reboot. I thrash on it once in a while just to see if it breaks. It's only got 4 GB of RAM dedicated to it. It's seemingly pretty light and speedy. I'm really interested to see what it does on bare metal. What I need to do is just sit down and take the plunge and install it and use it exclusively for a few months in a row instead of playing around with it in VM.

        *sighs*

        I think I might do that this week. I'll try Open and Net too.

      • by chihowa ( 366380 )

        As a very longtime Linux user, my introduction to the BSD world was through Mac OS X. Since then, I've gained a great appreciation for it. More of my new servers end up being FreeBSD and OpenBSD lately.

        If you're familiar with Linux (or Mac OS X), I definitely recommend checking it out. It's a very accessible and very rewarding environment.

      • by ashpool7 ( 18172 )

        I use both, but my criteria is that if I need complicated pf rules, I use OpenBSD. OpenBSD is too "early 2000s" without something like:

        * freebsd-update
        * portsnap
        * pkgng

        Life is too short to do all the steps to update OpenBSD all the time.

  • by MalleusEBHC ( 597600 ) on Sunday October 18, 2015 @01:20PM (#50754287)

    As an engineer who knows the pain of debugging someone else's locking problems, I lost it when I read this release note:

    Acquire the kernel lock in pmap_remove(). The reasons for this can't be stated as the committer has been asked to be polite in his commit message.

  • Linux is better because it had the 20 years ago today [iki.fi] moment over 4 years ago.
  • Apparently the "upgrade" program on the CD twiddles with your routing tables, in case you're having problems getting packages to download. By default my system wouldn't connect to the network, so I chose the shell option, cleared the tables, used dhclient on a different interface, and then restarted the process by running "upgrade." This *still* didn't work and was kind of confusing. Control-C out of the program shows that the routing tables got changed somehow (it sets the default route to the _external

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