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. > 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. > 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. $ 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) > 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. > 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. > 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. Don't forget the other nice stuff, like systrace. > 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. > 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]. > 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. > 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. > 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. 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 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. If anybody would like a copy of OpenBSD, I can help them out. [1] http://openbsd.org/faq/index.html [2] http://openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html Cheers, -mjg -- Matthew Gregan |/ /| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
