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Article on OpenBSD and Theo de Raadt 71

Posted by Hemos from the make-it-secure dept.
Marcos Lopez writes "Good article on Theo de Raadt and his developement of the OpenBSD system and why he is based in Canada due to crypto laws in the US. Well written article/interview, was printed todays in the Calgary Herald, Theo's home town. " A generalist overview of OpenBSD and its security-conscious direction.
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Article on OpenBSD and Theo de Raadt More

Article on OpenBSD and Theo de Raadt

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  • OpenBSD Installer (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have all of OpenBSD downloaded onto my computer. I was going to duel boot between Linux/OpenBSD. I figured the installation would be a breeze. But when that fdisk/label editor came up I was lost. Normally I would mess around with it till I figure it out. But due to having 2 gigs of stuff on my Linux partitions that I dont want to lose i opted not to fsck around with it. I've looked around and not found any decent documentation on OpenBSD installation. Its ashame, I was really wanting to give OpenBSD a try. I've heard a lot of good things about OpenBSD. Anyone have any similar stories or solutions? Links to some good documentation?

  • Re:OpenBSD rocks.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    um no sir. the openbsd is no secure, it is highly insecure and has no place in internet.

    if you used openbsd you would knows this. installer no has X install, what is that? no color ls..how you secure that?

    only the redhat linux is most secure os out of box. is virtually unhackable. and real internet security specialist knows this.

    also, i hear theo darat has spit on many the linux users. he should be in jail, no writing crappy BSD os.

  • Linux "beat" FreeBSD?? In what sense? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Firstly, you are misquoting Jordan Hubbard.

    Secondly, Linux has only beat FreeBSD in terms of popularity, not quality (don't reply that popularity -> quality, as I will simply reply that Win95 installs still outnumbers linux 50 to 1).

    Yes, I'll grant you that Linux has far outpaced FreeBSD when it comes to little installation gizmos where an animated Papa Smurf tells me all about disk partitions...but thats about it.

    Security (OpenBSD), performance (FreeBSD), and portability (NetBSD) are much better in *BSD land than in Linux.

    I could care less if FreeBSD is sold at Fry's.

  • FreeBSD lost the PR battle. Thats what Jordan said. FreeBSD isn't going anywhere, it will always have a nitch in the foreseeable future, but its clear that the momentum is with Linux. Don't kid yourself.

    I can't believe I'm even replying to an anonymous coward who flamed Linux.
  • I didn't HEAR anything, I read in the article that this story is about that DeRadt was critical of the development of Linux. I'll quote the original article so as not to inconvieniance you to actually read what you are talking about.



    De Raadt has earned a reputation for not mincing words. He's openly critical of the process by which Linux has been developed.


    In my original posting, I asked,


    I was curious about the comment that Theo has been openly critical of the development of Linux. Does anyone have any information about this?



    Its very clear from the article and my posting that I was refering to the development of the OS, not the actual technical merits. Both you and the Coward seem to have not seen this.

    What I was looking for was a quote or further information on how DeRaadt has been critical of the development model of the os's, and how openbsd is differently and supposedly better developed than Linux.

    I wasn't putting out a call for DeRaadt to defend himself. I never accused him of anything. I want to hear what he has to say instead of third person rumors.

    Seems to me like you anti-linux people are a little defensive and quick to take everything as a personal attack.
  • I was curious about the comment that Theo has been openly critical of the development of Linux. Does anyone have any information about this? I think Theo reads slashdot, so whats you beef with linux theo?

    One of the reasons I like Linux more than BSD (other than the GPL), is that in the past the development of Linux has been more open and distributed than that of the various BSDs. I know that Jordan Hubbard has said that this was a mistake of the BSDs and a big reason why Linux beat freebsd.

    kfort

  • Yes we see that. They problem is that if you break
    laws they try to put you in *JAIL*. And I don't know about you but when they ask where do you want to go today the Federal penatentery is not on the top of my list.
  • Realize that de Raadt's notion of a "vulnerability" is somewhat different than a lot of people's ... there was a thread on Bugtraq maybe 6 months or a year ago (? I'm too lazy to look) where Theo was trying to convince the list that an OpenBSD exploit which allowed unpriveledged users to crash the system was really a minor matter and was *not* an "exploit."

    Of course, not to minimize OpenBSD - what they've done is certainly impressive and the most secure system out there. But, take anything Theo says with a grain of salt.
  • "In two and a half years, we haven't found a vulnerability. That means in the first six months, we managed to get rid of them all."

    Is this true? No OpenBSD exploit?

    Impressive.

  • > FreeBSD is in turmoil in several areas. It is common knowledge
    > that BSD marketshare is in an ongoing decline, and it is
    > irresponsible to to pretend otherwise. But the big news is that

    Nope.

    > FreeBSD is *not* free. A big scandal is currently brewing.
    > FreeBSD is now proprietary. It turns out that the FreeBSD

    Nope.

    > trademark is owned by Walnut Creek CD ROM. Their lawyers have
    > been working overtime trying to quash a new user friendly
    > FreeBSD distribution which has been organized by Brett Taylor
    > and a prominent investment group. The new FreeBSD is to include

    Heh, nope, nope and nope. :)

    First, the trademark is jointly owned between Walnut Creek CDROM and FreeBSD, Inc. and will be transferred fully to FreeBSD, Inc. just as soon as we complete the paperwork. Second, none of our lawyers have
    been working on anything, much less quashing new releases of FreeBSD, and Brett Taylor has no plans to do any such distribution. This FUD-monkey here can't even get his facts straight given that it was Brett GLASS considering such a distribution and nobody has made any attempt to "quash" his proposed distribution. I recently spent some time on the phone talking to him about how to go about doing this, in fact, and, as far as I know, he's still working on it.

    > smart installation procedure. Unfortunately, Jordan Hubbard, a
    > Walnut Creek employee, is threatening legal action against
    > anyone who wishes to make a new FreeBSD distribution. Walnut

    Complete and utter FUD. I have threatened no such thing and I'd love to see this guy show me where I have. Where do people come UP with this crap?

    > Creek is determined to maintain a monopoly on ownership of
    > FreeBSD. Anyone who uses the code to create a new FreeBSD
    > distribution will be threatened with lawsuit. A terrible legal
    > battle is in the offing for the BSD world, and it will make the
    > USL lawsuit look like child's play.

    This is the purest idiocy I've seen in a long time and I don't even think that the poster is naive enough to believe it. No lawsuits have been threatened and any threat of same exists purely in the poster's FUD-spreading mind. I hope that anyone who's actually tempted to believe these kind of chicken little tactics will at least try to contact us first and get the REAL story since it bears no resemblance to this one.

    - Jordan

  • Hahaha. Well, thanks for bringing a smile to my face. Rave on, dude.. :)
  • Ah, moderation abuse at it's finest. Did some Linux advocate get angry at the fact that somebody actually *likes* an OS other than *insert random Linux distribution*.
  • I am also from Calgary and perhaps he is not doing it for 'Celeb' status. Perhaps he doesn't care about words printed..

    Its not always about being a 'celeb', he does good work and is respected in the industry that matters to him. Calgary has lots of technology and perhaps you could focus on the positive and not the negative.. Ever heard of Jaws.. They get lots of print in the local paper.

    If you purpose is to be a pessimist then so be it, if that tickles you fancy. Some of us are doing cool work in Calgary even if your not.

    -7021
  • At one point, on a mailing list, someone pointed out a recent (at the time) OpenBSD security fix that fixed a problem that had never been in the original *BSD source tree.

    I mentioned this. I got flamed by Theo for spouting FUD. I quoted the original message, including the specific pointer to the specific bug. I never heard back.

    I'm not really convinced it's all that much more
    secure. I hear a lot of things that have the sound of FUD to them; I don't see a lot of solid, empirical, evidence.

    Curiously, someone told me never to say anything like this in public, or people will attack my machines to show me how important security is. Well, if they do, it does send a message, but the message is "we need to get rid of assholes", not "security is important".

    :)
  • I did part of my undergrad at U of C way back when Theo was hanging around there. He's never been the type that really valued self-promotion, at least not directed at people who he didn't consider smart. To say he often comes off abrupt or arrogant is an understatement.

    If the "oil and gas" crowd are willing to spend the time talking with the media and helping them to deliver stories, and the open source hackers aren't out looking for opportunities to talk, at least until the people they're talking to are deemed worthy of talking to, what would you expect the stories to be about?


  • I found the installer easier to use than Mandrake 6.0 and what's more, I simply got it over FTP, something that isn't supported by most linux distributions.

    Of course to get a good system, you need to ditch OpenBSD's standard tools (sh, ls, etc) and get the GNU versions.

    Of course, OpenBSD's port system makes this ridiculously easy (cd /usr/src/ports/whatever; make)

    Overall, it kicks ass.
    ~~~~~~~~~

  • OpenBSD usually requires a little more unix knowledge than linux. I find it a lot easier to install open/netBSD. If you know whats going on, then the install is really nice and doesnt get in the way. If you don't, they don't care just like linus doesnt care about the install. Someone else has to "fix" it.
  • The *BSD's are all very well, thank you very much.
    Check out the replies to the troll (if you could find the original, please do post a _real_ link to it...).

    Nice attempt at flamebait, tho :)
  • The paper insert that comes with the OpenBSD CD has some documentation and examples. FreeBSD has a much nicer install program. The OpenBSD install program is user hostile.
  • Hmmm ... as I said last time you posted this (over the Win2K thread IIRC!) I asked you to post some sources for this ... which you haven't!

    I also asked you how Walnut Creek could expect to violate the BSD license and the GPL ... again, no response!

    In short, you are a troll - get back under your bridge and stop bothering us with irrelevancies ...
  • Cool I am moving today!. Less taxes and free health care!. I wonder if I would miss the Cold winters in Montana or the wackos holed in cabins tho.
  • There is a FAQ on OpenBSD installation [openbsd.org] linked to from the main page of openbsd.org [openbsd.org]. There's also an install walkthrough [openbsd.org] which steps you through a typical OpenBSD 2.5 install.
  • They all support FTP based installation.
    ...
  • First off in Canada the conservitive views are actually more liberal (confusing, but it should make sense). Of course we have oil money, but thats not why we have such conservitive(eg right wing economics) views. In fact in the west our conservitism is more based on freedom then tradtion, and is thus far more liberal on the ture political system. We want freedom and democracy. We do not want to be told what hospital to go to, or what daycare our children should attend (public daycare, not here, but comming).

    As far as a tech town, Calgary is one of the best in Canada, this is because of our low taxes, the only problem is that the US is still lower. When us Calgarian are pushing for a less representitive system of government, then the negitivly toned conservitives.

  • The oil and gas sector is what made Calgary what it is today. I have worked for oil firms since graduating cs at the UofC. Without it we would be a slightly warmer version of winnipeg.

    Second, Conrad Black does not control the entire newpaper industry, he is the major source, but it is not overwellming. His papers tend to be better quality reporting, with more represntaion of the west, but you can still get the globe and mail. It's just that in Calgary the only real paper is owned my him

    Not to mention that he is the largest publisher of dailies in the world.

    The Calgary Hearld is an excellent paper, it provides excellent, fair coverage. I have been reading it as long as i can read, and i've never had a problem with it.
  • This comment just about sums it up for me.

    D'oh! The link gives me a blank page now. Serves me right for trying to ref an archived comment.

    Here's a copy:

    [BEGIN QUOTED COMMENT]
    BSD failing (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 02, @12:56PM EDT (#177)
    I agree that FreeBSD is dying. And while FreeBSD is beset with its own internal strife, it is not the only BSD to be affected by this cancer. NetBSD and OpenBSD are dying too.
    I read that T.Deraadt email thread when I first looked at OpenBSD, and my initial impression was that Theo had a real baaaaadddd attitude. I do know for a fact that a lot of the NetBSD folks were upset to see him leave and fork off his own version of the OS, and to lose him as a developer. But in reading his email he obviously has a problem with taking any criticism, and had no problem with jumping down someone's throat with a flamethrower and foul language. Denial, its not just a river in Egypt...
    Not that I wouldn't use OpenBSD, or any other operating system that met my technical needs, whatever the personality of the people involved. I've dealt with enough bad attitudes from commercial OS vendors in my years in the industry to be able to deal with it if I have to. It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
    If you *really* read that email thread, you would see the attitude loud and clear. "We don't think that it helps anything for you to tell someone he's a f**khead when he's posting a message trying to help with the OS development." "F**K YOU, *I* want control of the source and if you don't like it I'll fork my own off!"
    That's my impression of it... He sounded like an immature little upset kid to me. The development of any of the O.S. OS's is a group effort, and having one person think they have all the answers and have to be the one in control is dead wrong. So, now he *has* control of his own fork of BSD, and lost the ability to maintain many of the various platform ports because he has no developers. Thus, the OpenBSD page says that for a Vax port, for instance, "support can be easily ported over from NetBSD". Why these problems are so prevalent under FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD remains something of a mystery. These systems seem to be self selective in their attraction to weirdos and big egos.
    The split had nothing to do with the quality of his coding work, and everything to do with his nasty attitude towards people... and NOT just the people of NetBSD Core, but other people who were just civilians trying to help out, or looking for help. No wonder BSD is on the skids. Which BSD will be first to go under is anyone's guess but The culling has already begun.
    [END QUOTED COMMENT]
  • This comment [slashdot.org] just about sums it up for me. No, I didn't write it.

  • My impressions stem from these links:

    The original slashdot article [slashdot.org] entitled OpenBSD, Security, and Theo De Raadt dated Sept. 01 1999

    The above quote is from comment number 177 [slashdot.org].

    Responses numbered 103 [slashdot.org] and 136 [slashdot.org].

    I notice while previewing this posting that the above comment links still don't work, but the article link does. Just go to the 09/01/99 article and read about De Raadt's exploits, and the behavior he has exhibited.

    From what I can tell, there weren't any responses to what you call 'the troll.' Although perhaps not as obvious as it could have been, my posting is critical of De Raadt (as he, not openBSD, is the subject of the newspaper article).

    My criticism is not aimed at openBSD or FreeBSD. I am glad the *BSDs are around, and don't dispute their quality despite my lack of experience with these UNIXen.
  • Does the fact that some moron was viewing the page at the time Rob was updating it - mean that the same moron is cool or what!?



    No... But since I reloaded 3 times before posting that I figured I might as well... Humph, I wanted to be marked 'Flamebait' or 'Troll' though, it's kind of demeaning to have the first post of the first thread marked 'Redundant'.... Oh well.

    Now, for an on topic blurb:
    Do you think this guy enjoys some kind of 'celebrity' status in his home town? Or did he just happen to catch a blurb in the local paper?

    Kintanon
  • You can install them all. OpenBSD even has a single floppy disk install.

    For workstation I like it best, for performance maybe FreeBSD, for extreme portability NetBSD.

    FOR SECURITY OpenBSD

  • OpenBSD's security audit was NOT applied to NetBSD AFAIK

    Theo posted on bugtraq a couple of times about net/free securitybugs that where already fixed in OpenBSD. But hey I do respect other BSDs. They have their strengths too:

    FreeBSD -> speed of light (say yahoo.com/cdrom.com)
    NetBSD -> more plataforms than any other else.

  • BSD (Score:1)

    by frizzo ( 71512 )
    I work for the worldslargest web hosting company. We have over 280 thousand websites in 45 states(besides providing bandwidth) 50 thousand in Europe.

    We host in NT and all *.nixes. We keep all sorts of statistics on reliability and needed tech time by OS. The main reason we keep these is because we want to forecast our need for techs for certain OS's as we grow. Well, the most stable and economical has been *.BSD. Yes, you can rent a linux box from us or even co-lo your own.

    I run Linux at home and love it. It is very stable and it has been a great intro into the world of Unix. But we manage 8,000 customers in my state on Free-Bsd and there is nary a problem. Did I mention we have three Unix techs? Only three.

    My frontline two cents.

    Frizzo

    "you can take the chicken and put it between your knees"
  • They don't offer any but use Lycos's FTP Search [lycos.com] and you'll find what you are looking for. :-)
  • Assuming you will install onto a x86, I would start with FreeBSD because it will be the easiest to learn. Most help, most friendly.

    Besides, the iso is available from ftp.freebsd.org [freebsd.org]. :-)
  • I read the article, yes. Nice assumption. Let's also include the rest of the paragraph you quoted, shall we?

    I think Theo reads slashdot, so whats you beef with linux theo?

    If you don't think that statement is adversarial, then perhaps you'd do well as a public relationist for the LAPD.

    Now, for MY point, let's see your final statement:

    Seems to me like you anti-linux people are a little defensive and quick to take everything as a personal attack.

    Since when am I "anti-Linux"? I said I don't like Linux. The absence of "like" is not concurrent to the presence of "dislike". I don't CARE enough about Linux to be "anti-Linux". I don't like cashews either... am I anti-cashew?

    This whole "if you're not FOR us you're AGAINST us" thing gets old fast.
    --
    Brandon Hume
    hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
  • That was the first, and only mention I ever saw in the paper about Theo! I first read about Theo - online. First found out he was local - online. This city prefers to verate people who start schools for getting a MSCE rather than people who are intellegent. When I was in school, maybe two people I knew had heard of OpenBSD, and one of them because he had met Theo.

    This city is an over-grown hicktown. This city was founded by Ranchers who found oil. This city is more interested in large dividends and big profits than ideas. If I was to go downtown to the office buildingd today, I bet I would find maybe a dozen people in thier it departments that would know about the existance of OpenBSD. It is not a big money making venture!

    I want to move, perhaps after I go back to school and get my degree, I will go to place where ideas are more important than if your grandpappy was a cattle baron who happened to find oil.


    --
  • I am glad of the young people who have ideas locally. And I am glad the University and Mount Royal are still teaching computer science on Unix based system (MRC was using redhat 5.2 when I was there).

    This city though can not pick up on idea when they see them.

    Case in point:
    Back in the early to Mid 90's - my mom and her boyfriend had a computer bbs, and after all the late nights talking to the kids online about thier problems, including a couple suicide attempts, they changed the focus of the bbs to a teen help bbs. They made the bbs free, and got government funding. The funding only lasted a year, although thier plan was to slowly port it to an internet based teen help system and to hopefully find other cities to co-ordinate a larger project like this with.

    Funding ran out, the goverment thought that this new fangled idea of using a computer to help teens to talk anonymously wouldn't work. They missed out on a great idea.

    Foundation/Cybercrisis BBS was great while it existed, we even got some local press. My photo was in the paper for that! :) A thanks to so many of the volunteers, and others who made the BBS work! I miss some of you. :)

    Later on, I went back to school, (MRC) to start my computer science degree. I got a summer job with NOVA Gas Transmissions Ltd. This company was not bad at all. The main server was AIX, and NT was for the workstations. I had fun there until Transcanada pipelines took over. Not a soul there who I knew, knew about OpenBSD, linux or any other free OS's. Perhaps the Unix guru did, but I was a grunt, I didn't get much of a chance to chat with him.

    Oh well - I have blabbed enough. :)

    --
  • I must admit Calgary is getting better, definately better, but I think there needs to be some shifts in attitude. There are a lot of great little software companies locally, but what I have a problem with is the local press.

    Actually it is Canadian press in general. The Canadian press is controlled almost exclusively by one man Conrad Black - and this to me - leads to a singluar minded press that does not notice smaller companies, inovators and the like.

    Don't get me wrong, I love this country, I love this city, I love that only in Canada open BSD thrives, and that new software and hardware is starting to come alive in this city.

    Theo is an example of how things can change in this city - and how there can be a shift from the oil and gas business to something new.

    After I get my degree I will hopefully be doing some cool work too - I know since I am not officially in the industry yet, I can not criticise it in all confidence - yet from summer co-op positions I have only seen the Oil and Gas side.

    Perhaps I should have held on longer, and not taken the first co-op position, and maybe I am a bit of a pessimist, but just as Calgary has been slowly changing from the one horse town founded on oil it was 10 - 15 years ago, I have been slower in seeing the changes.

    It says alot for this city though that Theo would choose to live here in comparison to Vancouver or ever Toronto. This city is changing and Theo is one of the forces enacting that change.


    --
  • Damn skippy... this is definitely flamebait :-)

    I actually like the installer... I find it easy... of course I've done it a number of times..

    and redhat *definitely* is not the most secure out the box... if any Linux distro is I would think it would be Debian or Slackware(but I don't know for sure)
  • Ah... I have been dragged way off topic... but Calgary was not always a Microsoft town. I remember the days when geophysical data was crunched and displayed with SGIs (pre-O2 and Octane time). At the time I worked for a great company that was innovative and cutting edge. What happened? Well, Microsoft walked through the door flashing money and said "We'll sponsor a project using our technology." From that moment on it was less and less about finding the best solution for the project and more about using "our new partner's innovative" technology. On the up-side, Calgary has the western Canada Java development center and a decent CompSci program at the UofC where James Gosling did undergrad. Oh, please don't flame me because I love Java... I love Linux too!

  • If cryptography were good enough, laws wouldn't matter!

    Don't you people see that these laws are just a way of restricting the production of software? It's an invasion of privacy if the government says that you can't hide something well enough to where we can't find it, see it, read it, or change it. It's as bad as Microsoft's EULA./P.
    Brad Johnson
    Advisory Editor

  • > In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open
    > bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially
    > oil and gas money.
    I think that you will see more of these articles as the writer is young and isn't blinded by the money of oil and gas. I think he also realizes that technology in our city isn't limited (anymore) to oil and gas companies...especially since most oil and gas companies are no where near the leading edge, let alone bleeding edge of anything technology releated.

  • Re:Isn't this provoking cracks? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A local DOS is *not* an exploit. Come one, there are hundreds of ways local users can make life hell to the host OS, no matter what precautions you take. It's hard to stop people from abusing whatever you are offering, unless of course you are offering nothing. The essence of security is not only in minimizing those DOS's (I said minimizing, there is not way of removing them all). It's in getting a system out of the box that is secure. It's not that hard. OpenBSD has been doing it for two years in a row now. Why can't Linux distros do it? Why are there so many overflows and race conditions in a fresh Redhat install? Cause nobody cares about security. Because nobody minds getting screwed over every once in a while. These distros are giving UNIX a bad name. There is no excuse... having a fancy install is not a reason for having remote root holes.
  • OpenBSD also takes some of the userland enhancements from FreeBSD and includes them in their package. To some, it means that you get the best of both worlds (NetBSD and FreeBSD).

  • Hu? (Score:2)

    by mcolin ( 14379 )
    The Calgary Herald is his hometown?
    I would imagine, it's a bit cramped in there.
    What happens to him, when I fold up the paper or burn it?
  • The government has police, soldiers, judges, guns, tanks, jails, etc. Microsoft only has lawyers.

    Microsoft's EULA is a voluntary agreement between Microsoft and you. The government on the other hand can involuntarily bind you to a law and throw you in jail if you violate it. This is hardly equivalent. If I don't like Microsoft's rules I can always go to Mac, Linux, OS/2, BSD, etc. If I don't like the laws, however, I'm SOL.

    But you argue, Microsoft can still sue you. So what? I can sue them as well if they violate the EULA (my chances are slim, but I can do it). What Microsoft does NOT do is come to your house with guns.
  • While it's true that we are much less fettered by export regulations than our neighbours to the south, we still do have some restrictions on the export of software here in Canada. For more information, see the following web pages:

    Canada's Export Controls [mcmaster.ca]
    Excerpts from the Export Control List of Canada [physics.ubc.ca]
    The Wassenaar Arrangement [fitug.de], which Canada has signed
    Crypto Law Survey of Canada [cwis.kub.nl]

    And, more generally,
    Electronic Frontier Canada [mcmaster.ca]
  • Before you fall off that high horse of yours, try re-reading your own original comment. You HEARD (rumors) that Theo has been critical of Linux. So you basically demanded that he come forward and defend himself.

    Is it that shocking that some people might NOT like Linux? Does any person who has anything non-glowing about Linux automatically have to justify their opinion to you? I dislike Linux, will you expect me to explain why?

    And just so you know, Theo has been critical of just about EVERY OS that isn't OpenBSD. He isn't exactly a person who holds back his opinion on things. He's even critiqued MY favorite OS, Solaris, but I haven't asked him to stand forward and defend himself yet.
    --
    Brandon Hume
    hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
  • I can't believe how long it took a local paper to recognize a local innovator.

    I am a Calgary resiedent and actually I am not too shocked. The majority of the classified ads under technology are for Microsoft based products. Calgary, lately has been trying to pretend it is no longer an oil and gas town but a new technology mecca. I don't believe it.

    The conservative attitudes of the aging oil elite prevail. The tone of the article was more a statement that OpenBSD exists rather than the glowing writing about another twit opening up a school to give people MSCE certificates for a really sick price. (That article I think was last week some time).

    In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially oil and gas money.



    --

  • Re:OpenBSD Installer (Score:4)

    by NickHolland ( 91075 ) on Thursday September 30, 1999 @09:48AM (#1648497)
    I have near zero experience with OpenBSD so far, but I did try a couple installations.

    Yeah, the OpenBSD disk layout program is really bizzare, at least to those of us who have used MS-DOS systems too much. When reading through the FreeBSD documentation that came with the Walnut Creek package, they shed some light on the *BSD disk model -- it appears to have been developed absolutely independantly of the IBM PC's HD layout, and they have different ideas about how things are done. When BSD was ported to the PC platform, the disk partitioning model was ported, too. Knowing FDISK probably hurts when laying out an OpenBSD system.

    As I understand it, you basicly create a IBM/MS style partition which reserves space for OpenBSD. THIS becomes the BSD "disk". Now, this "disk" is partitioned. Kinda like "Extended partitions", but totally different 8)

    My first attempt to load OpenBSD was on a generic clone, empty IDE hard disk, 3Com network card, FTP install. Worked great. I then tried putting it on a machine which I wanted to have it run on (Compaq Deskpro XL 575). Had more problems, as there was the infamous Compaq system maintence partition on the drive already, and a small DOS partition. But, the install appeared to go well. Until reboot. At which point, the system refused to boot, and upon investigation, the disk was blank, except for the OpenBSD boot loader. No OpenBSD partition, no DOS partition, no Compaq system partition (and those are a pain to reload).

    I went back to FreeBSD after that. I'll try OpenBSD again, esp. once I found the explaination of the BSD disk concepts in the Walnut Creek FreeBSD book, but yes, for newbies, it would be best to practice on a BLANK hard disk at first. And of course, your backup are up to date, aren't they??

    As someone else said, FreeBSD has a much nicer disk preparation program.

    Nick.

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