OpenBSD 5.8 released | Hacker News Reader

OpenBSD 5.8 released

openbsd.org

171 pointsprotomyth34 comments

Nice:

  > Found my way upstairs and read hackernews
  > whining about comic sans and CVS.

Track 2, A Year in the Life. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#58d

Also happy 20th birthday OpenBSD! The other email from Theo today: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=144515087006177 and/or http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/225844.

from the e-mail:

  Chuck and I also worked on setting up the first 'anoncvs' to make sure
  noone was ever cut out from 'the language of diffs' again.  I guess
  that was the precursor for the github concept these days :-).  People
  forget, but even FSF was a walled garden at the time -- throwing tar
  files with vague logs over the wall every couple months.

Do remember to apply the patches after the install http://www.openbsd.org/errata58.html

Does anyone have experience with the mtier binary update packages?

https://stable.mtier.org/

Looks interesting to us casual users with our 'dime Thinkpads'.

I use them all the time. Highly recommended. Especially when your system isn't powerful enough to compile things on it's own.

A thinkpad X60 with a 120Gb disk managed to compile the kernel, base and xenocara ok in 5.5 release, but it took a fair time (some hours). If you use the default partition layout which defines separate slices for a lot of subdirectories of /usr, you run out of space in the src directory trying to compile, so I tend to select a custom layout and have just swap and a / directory.

The mtier binary update packages will save the fan and some electricity though. Thanks to all who commented with their experience.

Making one big partition isn't the best idea because OpenBSD defaults the way it does for stability, data integrity and, a big surprise... security reasons[0].

That said, you shouldn't run out of space in the default partitions when building the system (ports are another story).

As far as I know the installer defaults to giving you around 2GB in /usr/src (which is more than enough to hold the source and build everything) and if the disk isn't big enough to do that, it won't partition it (60GB is big enough to get a separate /usr/src so 120GB is surely enough).

This assumes the instructions[1] are followed so everything is put in the right places and all the object files aren't dumped into the partition. Other than that, I don't know what could have went wrong.

[0] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Partitioning

[1] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#BldUserland

OK, I'll have another go with the installer's 'default' partitioning scheme this time around as I intend to use the mtier binary upgrade packages. Last time I tried the compilation I had something like 75Kb free after the compile completed. It worked though.

Your first reference mentions the idea of leaving a part of the hard drive unformatted to allow for making new versions of partitions if necessary - I might try that as I keep little user data on this machine.

The problem in that thread was caused by building ports, which will fill up /usr. If you're going to build ports, I'd recommend changing the working dirs[0] to a different partition (I use /home).

Because of how the auto-partitioner decides the sizes, a 120GB disk should get the same partition sizes as a 256GB disk (the 256GB will just get more /home space). My 256GB disk has 2G each for /usr /usr/obj and /usr/src, and with that I can build kernel, userland and xenocara with no problems (unless I've filled up /usr by building Firefox from ports).

[0] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#PortsConfig

If you want to build ports on a machine, you should add a large (several dozen GB at least) /usr/ports partition. Keep in mind that monsters like firefox and libreoffice have insane space requirements.

Diverting ports builds to /home is a hack that works around the wrong choice made during install (which will invariably happen when you first start out, that's ok -- be prepared to reinstall with better parameters once you learn more about what you need).

Definitely a learning experience.

I have built Iceape on gNewSense linux on an X60 and I can say that under linux you need at least 20Gb of space and 6 hours on the core-duo with 2Gb RAM.

I always plan on a throw-away install when first playing with an operating system and repeat the install when I know what the 'rules' are. I shall be encrypting my /home just for peace of mind if I leave the laptop on the bus, so that is another thing to research.

Congratulations, according to google you are the first person in the world to use that phrase to refer to thinkpads: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22dime+thinkpads%22&ie=utf-...

It was an allusion to these lyrics...

http://forum.tfes.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=d2186vii9bsmjvhk45...

...so credit where credit might be due.

Seriously, a recycled core-duo Thinkpad in good clean condition without broken plastic round the PC card socket can be had for the price of a reasonable restaurant meal (with wine) for two in the UK. And that is at the neighbourhood family-run Italian, not the posh ones in Town.

An allusion to another one result wonder thinkpad phrase;) As far as the quality of old thinkpads[1] go you are preaching to the choir. My thinkpad fetish is actually why I googled your "globally unique dime phrase."

[1] Don't get me started on my new T550, I get depressed when I look at my old T41 and then have to use the T550.

I got suggestion here to use that site and it worked for me without problems. I have very weak VPS, so self-compiling probably would took ages and a lot of precious disk space.

Why are these patches listed there instead of applied directly to the distribution?

The CD's shipped a while back

The install58.iso files on the mirrors that have them date to late August. A reminder about lead times on actual physical products.

The worm(6) now grows at a rate proportional to terminal size.

Finally...

Glad they added sed -i, that should save some time. For me anyway.

Just the demanded mandatory comment to complain about CVS and Comic Sans. Whiiiiiiinne whine whine.... ;)

Shows you how times have changed, years ago it would have been a song lyric about slashdot and the "BSD is dying" meme.

You only see the website in Comic Sans, because you actually installed Comic Sans onto your system. The font isn't embedded, and those who didn't install it just see plain sans.

frakturfreund is responding to one of the release songs which dfc point to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10408606

Didn't I see an extension that would change a reference to Comic Sans to some other font? People do go to the extremes.

> Added pvbus(4) paravirtual device tree root on virtual machines that are running on hypervisors.

Which hypervisors are supported, e.g. is AWS an option?

From the man page: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-current/man4/...

  Supported hypervisors

  KVM
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine
  Hyper-V
    Microsoft Hyper-V
  VMware
    VMware vSphere Hypervisor and ESXi
  Xen
    Xen VMM

I don't believe OpenBSD on AWS is supported by Amazon, but there are several VPS providers that either provide direct support for OpenBSD VMs, or let you upload the ISO and install it yourself.

And since Linode is now switching over to KVM and has a direct-disk boot option, that should mean you can run OpenBSD on them as well, which should give Theo a nice case of indigestion.

We've gotten a few people say they got it running now. More choices for everyone :)

Is the network performance of using OBSD as a guest on KVM similar to a linux guest with paravirtualized device drivers?

This network performance question, phrased in the way you did here, comes up a lot. I heard it a couple of times during q&a after talks at EuroBSDcon.

I wonder what answer you expect. A "yes"/"no" answer?

How could anyone answer this question in a meaningful way? How are people supposed to know what kind of performance you need, and for which application? How are people supposed to even judge whether the proposed reference point (Linux) performs well for you?

In the end, the best answer you'll get will always be "try it and see for yourself"...

https://arpnetworks.com/ is a pretty good provider, and has supported OpenBSD for many years now.

On DigitalOcean you are able to install FreeBSD, with some custom "hack" you are able to use OpenBSD too since some time. Not sure if the 5.8 release changes something for this though.

http://www.tubsta.com/2015/04/openbsd-on-digital-ocean/

Other than the version number change, I don't think you need to download CURRENT anymore.

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