On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 05:23:59PM +1200, Matthew Gregan wrote: > On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 03:31:45PM +1200, Ben Aitchison wrote: > > The default kernel image doesn't use much memory for caching your disk > > - 5% of ram. This is easy to change, you can run: > > config -e -o /nbsd /bsd > > cachepct 25 > > > mv /bsd /obsd; cp -f /nbsd /bsd > > And that'll give you 25% percent instead, which is a lot nicer. I > > think I use 60% on my desktop system which has 512 MB of ram, and > > never seems to be able to actually use up all of it's free ram let > > alone swap. > This is a real shame. OpenBSD's caching behaviour is fairly antiquated > nowadays, but this will improve once Chuck Cranor's NetBSD UVM code is > merged into the tree.
Yeah, that's what prompted me to try FreeBSD out a couple of years ago. But I got disk corruption under FreeBSD for some reason. And then I decided to do an OpenBSD install instead, and never looked back. I don't actually find it to be a problem of a serious enough nature to care. > > There's some low limits on system resources by default - you can't > > suddenly run 1000 xterm processes on a default install like you can on > > Linux 2.4. > This is done for security reasons. It is? I thought it was because of having static versus dynamic limits. > > root's shell defaults to /bin/csh, which is icky. You can login as > > root and type chsh and change the line that says /bin/csh to /bin/ksh > > and then you'll have a decent shell that isn't bloated, but still has > > tab completion, support for vi key bindings, and I think emacs key > > bindings too, but I don't use them. > No need to change the root shell, use sudo(8). Also note that csh is > still a decent shell, and has command completion and other modern > features. And csh is not bloated, either. Yeah, I was thinking of in comparison to bash, zsh etc. I don't mind csh that much. Most other people seem to find it harder than me, and I was trying to inculude what other people don't like. I do prefer ksh, though. I actually use zsh as my user shell - which *is* rather bloated, but nice and flexible :) (and ksh as my root shell) > $ size `which csh` > text data bss dec hex > 249856 16384 25140 291380 47234 > $ size `which ksh` > text data bss dec hex > 299008 12288 23928 335224 51d78 > > (From an OpenBSD 2.9 system) >From OpenBSD 3.3.. zsh 3132 % size `which zsh` text data bss dec hex 372736 16384 20080 409200 63e70 zsh 3133 % size `which bash` text data bss dec hex 499712 32768 4052 536532 82fd4 zsh 3134 % size `which ksh` text data bss dec hex 303104 12288 25136 340528 53230 zsh 3135 % size `which csh` text data bss dec hex 253952 16384 25620 295956 48414 Hmm, it seems that it's smaller than bash at least. > > There's no NZ mirror that's up-to-date that I know of. I've got the > > base system i386 tarballs, and source tarballs and I can make them > > publically accessible if anybody's keen. (but you'd still have to get > > packages). There is a mirror that's about an extra 50 msec away in > > Australia, on www.wiretapped.net/pub/OpenBSD, and there's also > > PlanetMirror (Australia again) - which seems to go fine sometimes, and > > pretty slow other times. > The i386 directory from the June 5th 2003 snapshot of OpenBSD-current is > 154MB. Not a huge download, but it is a shame there is no OpenBSD > mirror, particularly for the likes of CVS. I'd be happy to provide the > hardware if there was somewhere to connect it to the net. I might be able to host one. I have hardware and net connectivity. I'm not sure how much bandwidth it'd use though. zsh 3141 % du -ks openbsd3.3/i386 133823 openbsd3.3/i386 It's even smaller for OpenBSD 3.3. I was kind of scared off running a cvs server, by the fact that the documentation said that it wanted lots of resources. My server only has 256 megs of ram. Not that it's anywhere near to running low on RAM - I had 64 megs for ages, and I only tended to go into swap by about 10 megs - screen, epic, and mutt are all memory hogs. > > Single floppy install. I've done this many times, on many different > > computers, and it's easy, fast, convenient, and flexible. > The install is very quick once you're used to it. Very little mucking > around. Yeah, it's my favourite install by far. I got used to it very quickly. > > installed by default, apache just needs: httpd_flags="" instead of > > httpd_flags=NO set in rc.conf, or httpd_flags="-u" if you don't want > > to chroot. (apache defaults to chrooting, which means that if the web > A few other services are also chroot()ed by default. The list of > set[gu]id is reviewed regularly by the developers and reduced where and > when possible. I think the number of setuid=0 binaries is well below 10 > now, but don't quote me on that. Yeah, I wasn't really empathizing security, as I kind-of thought that everybody knew that OpenBSD was good for security. I was trying to point out that it's not just crippled, and only good for security. > Don't forget the other nice stuff, like systrace. I haven't actually played with systrace yet, but it sounds very exciting :) > > The filesystem layout is quite different to any Linux distribution > > that I've used, but I like it. Apache lives in /var/www, locally > > installed packages live in /usr/local, the base system lives in /usr. > In addition to this, the installer will set noexec, nosuid, and nodev on > your filesystems where it can. Yeah, that rocks. My webserving et cetera box is set like: /dev/wd0a / ffs rw 1 1 /dev/wd0f /home ffs rw,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2 /dev/wd0g /other ffs rw,nodev,nosuid,softdep 1 2 /dev/wd0d /usr ffs rw,nodev,softdep 1 2 /dev/wd0e /var ffs rw,nodev,nosuid 1 2 > > Manpages are well written, and very useful. Everything in general is > > documented properly. New features don't get included without > > documentation. > The documentation is excellent. As you mentioned, the man pages are > good, and there is also the OpenBSD FAQ [1], and the PF FAQ [2]. Yead, the FAQ is definitely cool. > > PF (packet filter) works really well, and is clear and concise in > > functionality compared to ipchains/iptables. There's a simple > > /etc/pf.conf file where you make your changes. > PF with integrated ALTQ is very nice. I haven't actually been using altq since it merged with pf. It looks good, but I haven't got a suitable network configuration for traffic shaping currently. I need an ethernet DSL modem that I can connect to an OpenBSD box. :) (I'm using Windows DSL at home at the moment) And my telehoused can't shape to my home connection any more as jetstart won't give me a static ip. <sigh> > > top is nicer, and it loads instantly :) > OpenBSD's top is faster because it uses /dev/kmem rather than /proc like > the Linux top. Yes, it loads faster, but reading kernel memory is a > somewhat ugly way to extract this information. Though, having said > that, reading /proc is quite possibly even more ugly. I don't actually ever mount /proc in OpenBSD. > > You don't have to define kernel images, like you do in Lilo. (I know > > GRUB fixes this issue) > To clarify this, the OpenBSD boot loader understands FFS aka UFS, the > BSD filesystem, and therefore works more like GRUB than LILO. The *BSDs > have had this for quite a while, and GRUB is a welcome addition to > Linux. It'd be nice if GRUB would load OpenBSD kernels actually. I once had my own OS kernel that loaded from GRUB (and over network - very convenient for testing). > I use OpenBSD on a few machines, and I have all of the files required to > perform an installation on an i386 or ppc machine from floppy or > bootable CD. I also have many versions of OpenBSD on CD, but since Heh, my only OpenBSD CD is OpenBSD 2.6 - that said I did use it once, just to ftp some files onto a box. OpenBSD 2.6 is the first release I've used. > these are official CDs produced by OpenBSD, I don't believe you're > entitled copy the images for other people, since the CD layout is > copyrighted. Oh yeah, I have OpenBSD 3.3 for Sparc at home, as well. I installed it on a Sparc 1, it worked .. but XFree86 is very bloated, and thus it swapped a lot running X. It took up 12 megs of ram, on a machine that had 8! It's pretty easy to make your own CD up. I seem to recall doing it once, but I find ftp over ethernet is fine for installs. > If anybody would like a copy of OpenBSD, I can help them out. Do you want to transfer me all the packages for OpenBSD 3.3? :) Ben.
