Re: why BSDs got no love (and why security gets no love)
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 03:17:05PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: On Tue 29 Dec 2009 at 14:51:23 PST Chad Perrin wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:39:01PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: One question, however. Are we prepared to back up the claim that the sexy bits of PC-BSD are the least secure? Your argument depends on that claim, since it's also implied in your description of development team's priorities. Define we. As I'm not a core developer for FreeBSD, nor anyone in a position of official representation of either the OS development project or the Foundation, my statements in the article should not be taken as necessarily indicative of anyone's opinions but my own. I said we rather than you because I agree with your argument. :) Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. The claim about the sexy bits of PC-BSD is based on my experience with tarted-up GUIs and feature-rich software. It is intended as a generalization rather than a categorical statement of absolute truth. All stuffy pedantry of mine aside, though, if you want to expand on your concerns, I'd be happy to read about them. I was wondering if anyone has done a study of reported security holes and if that data supports the assertion that the sexy GUI stuff PC-BSD adds was more likely to be involved than the base OS. The only studies I know of that even come close to addressing these issues are the studies that show there tends to be a semi-constant rate of bugs per so-many lines of code for software projects within particular subcultures. That being the case, the sheer weight of lines of code involved in KDE (the default GUI of PC-BSD), for instance, implies substantial increase in total number of potentially security-damaging bugs on the system. More to the point, though, kitchen sink style installs also tend to run extra services, redundant server processes, auto-run a bunch of stuff, and so on -- and I don't really feel I personally need a study to tell me that's a recipe for security failure somewhere down the road. I totally understand the desire for some kind of statistical study that supports that claim, though, whether for your own edification or for that of others. But even if there hasn't been any such study, I think it would be worthwhile to flesh out your assertion with a few examples of the kind of security problems that arise when the sexy stuff is used. I don't recall off-hand whether I've written previous articles on that subject. I may write some in the future that address that in more depth. Since that point in particular seemed somewhat outside the scope of the article to try to support in depth, I kinda left it where it lay. Nobody has challenged the point in the discussion thread following the article, last I checked. . . . As I said above, I think the argument stands or falls on our ability to defend this point. Given an obvious need to do so, I'm happy to offer what support I have for the point. You're the only person who has asked, though. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpcJdf9nrMx7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: why BSDs got no love (and why security gets no love)
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:56:51 -0700, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: Update: I confirmed that the scheduled publication date for my article will be Tuesday the 29th. It's up at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=2888 pgpQ4MKFzCBPF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: why BSDs got no love (and why security gets no love)
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:39:01PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: On Tue 29 Dec 2009 at 06:38:23 PST Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:56:51 -0700, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: Update: I confirmed that the scheduled publication date for my article will be Tuesday the 29th. It's up at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=2888 Well done, Chad! Thanks! One question, however. Are we prepared to back up the claim that the sexy bits of PC-BSD are the least secure? Your argument depends on that claim, since it's also implied in your description of development team's priorities. Define we. As I'm not a core developer for FreeBSD, nor anyone in a position of official representation of either the OS development project or the Foundation, my statements in the article should not be taken as necessarily indicative of anyone's opinions but my own. The claim about the sexy bits of PC-BSD is based on my experience with tarted-up GUIs and feature-rich software. It is intended as a generalization rather than a categorical statement of absolute truth. All stuffy pedantry of mine aside, though, if you want to expand on your concerns, I'd be happy to read about them. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpx31crd6Ayq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: why BSDs got no love (and why security gets no love)
On Tue 29 Dec 2009 at 14:51:23 PST Chad Perrin wrote: On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:39:01PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: One question, however. Are we prepared to back up the claim that the sexy bits of PC-BSD are the least secure? Your argument depends on that claim, since it's also implied in your description of development team's priorities. Define we. As I'm not a core developer for FreeBSD, nor anyone in a position of official representation of either the OS development project or the Foundation, my statements in the article should not be taken as necessarily indicative of anyone's opinions but my own. I said we rather than you because I agree with your argument. :) The claim about the sexy bits of PC-BSD is based on my experience with tarted-up GUIs and feature-rich software. It is intended as a generalization rather than a categorical statement of absolute truth. All stuffy pedantry of mine aside, though, if you want to expand on your concerns, I'd be happy to read about them. I was wondering if anyone has done a study of reported security holes and if that data supports the assertion that the sexy GUI stuff PC-BSD adds was more likely to be involved than the base OS. But even if there hasn't been any such study, I think it would be worthwhile to flesh out your assertion with a few examples of the kind of security problems that arise when the sexy stuff is used. As I said above, I think the argument stands or falls on our ability to defend this point. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
There is absolutely no reason to change the default FreeBSD installer in my opinion, when the PC-BSD one will suffice for the 'snazzy' desktop installs. I won't say that sysinstall couldn't benefit from at least *some* renovation. ;) The interface is fine, sure, but what I'm primarily talking about is the download mechanism. Apparently when certain files get downloaded with it, they actually get copied in-place during the transfer process, which means that if you abort it, you can end up with partially digested conf files (my /etc/passwd got hosed once) all over the place. What I'd propose would be caching whatever files the system needs to download until everything is cached locally, and then installing the lot after that, rather than doing both downloading and installing/copying in the same step. That way you can safely abort during the process if you need to. A scenario where individual files that are to be rewritten, get temporarily backed up until the setup is complete would probably also really help. So as said, the interface is fine, but I think the internal mechanism could definitely benefit from being made a bit more robust. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
it will be nice make sysinstall use the port tree, since a lot of applications in the dvd use to fail the install because dependencies that can be resolved in the ports (as portinstall/portmaster does whena package dependency is not fulfilled). On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 14:59, Petrus petr...@tpg.com.au wrote: There is absolutely no reason to change the default FreeBSD installer in my opinion, when the PC-BSD one will suffice for the 'snazzy' desktop installs. I won't say that sysinstall couldn't benefit from at least *some* renovation. ;) The interface is fine, sure, but what I'm primarily talking about is the download mechanism. Apparently when certain files get downloaded with it, they actually get copied in-place during the transfer process, which means that if you abort it, you can end up with partially digested conf files (my /etc/passwd got hosed once) all over the place. What I'd propose would be caching whatever files the system needs to download until everything is cached locally, and then installing the lot after that, rather than doing both downloading and installing/copying in the same step. That way you can safely abort during the process if you need to. A scenario where individual files that are to be rewritten, get temporarily backed up until the setup is complete would probably also really help. So as said, the interface is fine, but I think the internal mechanism could definitely benefit from being made a bit more robust. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- http://dfbsd.trackbsd.org.ar ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:43:35 +1000 From: Petrus petr...@tpg.com.au Subject: Re: why BSDs got no love To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Message-ID: 001001ca85c4$762faa80$0301a...@jim4fb89194d83 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=original I think what we're looking at here is that sysinstall should probably be replaced... but it works well enough that it doesn't *have* to be The virtue of sysinstall, however, is that it is console based. I for one would rather endure sysinstall's idiosyncracies, if it still means that I'm going to be able to reliably install on whatever ancient, eldritch hardware I happen to have with me at the time. If someone wants to write something X based, with hardware detection a la Ubuntu, and all the proverbial bells and whistles and flashing lights, then by all means; (and I think they already have, with finstall) but I think FreeBSD absolutely needs to keep a console-based installer as a fallback for old hardware. I think PC-BSD does just fine with this portion of it - sysinstall is still there, version 8 can do a pure FreeBSD 8 install *or* a PC-BSD install (with the extra PBI bits and whatnot) and has a nice graphical installer as well as a LiveCD image. There is absolutely no reason to change the default FreeBSD installer in my opinion, when the PC-BSD one will suffice for the 'snazzy' desktop installs. -- Thanks, Mike Bybee ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Friday, December 25, 2009, 9:24:25 AM, you wrote: I think what we're looking at here is that sysinstall should probably be replaced... but it works well enough that it doesn't *have* to be replaced, and most people aren't bothered enough by it to write code to come up with something new. Certainly, having things like zfs support in sysinstall would be nice... but most of the people using zfs boot know the system well enough to do it from the Fixit/LiveFS shell anyway. Basically... if you really want to see this change, I think you're gonna have to do it yourself. Personally I would like to see something around the likes of shells/flash menu shell implemented with some modular scripting and drop-in binaries for other tasks that cannot be accomplished through the use of shell scripts as elegantly as they would in C. As for licensing of shells/flash I am unsure but it does bring the ease of scripting into play that can shield a user from some of the behind the scenes ugliness. Snip of the pkg-desc: Flash is an attempt to create a secure menu-driven shell for UNIX-derived OSes, while providing user-friendliness and easy configurability. An ideal situation requiring the use of flash would be a student-run telnet server which needs to: a) shelter the users from some of the nastiness of UNIX b) shelter the system from nasty users c) provide an easy way to launch applications d) support multitasking/job control as elegantly as possible e) support easy-to-get-right configuration by administrators In that type of menu it would be easy to drop a script that asks: A) Would you like a GUI install menu... B) Would you like a CLI install menu... C) Get me out of here... It also has a nice little notes side frame that could tell the user a little more about what is going on if they are confused about the choices that are selected. As for my self, I would be willing to contribute some bits bytes to see this happen. As for the GUI I would be willing to write the hooks for it in the menu system but that is as far as I am willing to go with it. I don't see any satisfactory need or gain in GUI for just-a-installer. Best regards. -- Saturday, December 26, 2009 10:59:02 PM jhell ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
I think what we're looking at here is that sysinstall should probably be replaced... but it works well enough that it doesn't *have* to be replaced, and most people aren't bothered enough by it to write code to come up with something new. Certainly, having things like zfs support in sysinstall would be nice... but most of the people using zfs boot know the system well enough to do it from the Fixit/LiveFS shell anyway. Basically... if you really want to see this change, I think you're gonna have to do it yourself. --- Harrison ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
I think what we're looking at here is that sysinstall should probably be replaced... but it works well enough that it doesn't *have* to be The virtue of sysinstall, however, is that it is console based. I for one would rather endure sysinstall's idiosyncracies, if it still means that I'm going to be able to reliably install on whatever ancient, eldritch hardware I happen to have with me at the time. If someone wants to write something X based, with hardware detection a la Ubuntu, and all the proverbial bells and whistles and flashing lights, then by all means; (and I think they already have, with finstall) but I think FreeBSD absolutely needs to keep a console-based installer as a fallback for old hardware. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 03:50:25PM +0100 I heard the voice of Julian H. Stacey, and lo! it spake thus: All of 4.11, 7.1 8.0 man sysinstall contain: This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventually be replaced. That's a kinder version of what it had in rev 1.1 in 1997, prior to 2.2.5-RELEASE This utility is a prototype which lasted approximately 2 years past its expiration date and is greatly in need of death. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fulle...@over-yonder.net Systems/Network Administrator | http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
+1 to a better installer, graphical or not. I can practically install FreeBSD blindfolded on the current one, but only because I've done it so many times. The first few attempts were extremely frustrating; the menu flow in the current installer makes little sense -- especially if something goes wrong. Please keep that in mind, everyone on this list knows the installer like the back of their hand, but do you remember the first time(s) you used it? Know a fairly seasoned linux user that has never used FreeBSD? Sit them down at a machine and watch them try to install it. First impressions are important! I won't go into the gui vs non-gui installer debate, but making the install process as slick as possible is definitely a good thing. On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Charlie Kester corky1...@comcast.netwrote: On Tue 15 Dec 2009 at 07:33:49 PST Jan Husar wrote: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 Others have pointed out that PC-BSD meets the need expressed in this article. As for FreeBSD itself, the question must be asked: do we WANT to get more love from people who judge an OS by whether or not it has a graphical installer? ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Exactly. That's what I meant when I said the installer is good but needs a little polishing. --Peer Am Dienstag, den 22.12.2009, 23:55 -0800 schrieb Shane Calimlim: +1 to a better installer, graphical or not. I can practically install FreeBSD blindfolded on the current one, but only because I've done it so many times. The first few attempts were extremely frustrating; the menu flow in the current installer makes little sense -- especially if something goes wrong. Please keep that in mind, everyone on this list knows the installer like the back of their hand, but do you remember the first time(s) you used it? Know a fairly seasoned linux user that has never used FreeBSD? Sit them down at a machine and watch them try to install it. First impressions are important! I won't go into the gui vs non-gui installer debate, but making the install process as slick as possible is definitely a good thing. On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 7:24 PM, Charlie Kester corky1...@comcast.netwrote: On Tue 15 Dec 2009 at 07:33:49 PST Jan Husar wrote: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 Others have pointed out that PC-BSD meets the need expressed in this article. As for FreeBSD itself, the question must be asked: do we WANT to get more love from people who judge an OS by whether or not it has a graphical installer? ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Matthew Seaman wrote: ... an installer as a CLI program that reads in a fairly simple fixed script or language to do the installation work, and have separate Curses and/or X based programs to al low users to create the installation script interactively. I admit being seduced at times by graphical interfaces, but bland blue screens hide a lot of action info CLI allows. I was told blind people need CLI, cos Braille output devices do one line of 40 chars, ( expensive; possibly mass production might lower costs / inrease resolution, but Braille is different for different languages, discouraging mass production ). Peer Schaefer peer.schae...@hamburg.de wrote: BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic backend, and (b) different frontend plugins, e.g. a curses-frontend or a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but surely difficult to implement). Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg Which could then be edited by all of Front end CLI (*) Front end curses GUI(*) (*) Maybe these 2 alternatives should be the first question the installer asks ? Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete - Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone would probably want to write one). vi - for editing, writing back to new boot media, to auto install on multiple identical new machines. All of 4.11, 7.1 8.0 man sysinstall contain: This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventually be replaced. Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com Mail plain text not quoted-printable, HTML or Base64: http://asciiribbon.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
2009/12/24 Diane Bruce d...@db.net: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 07:24:10PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: On Tue 15 Dec 2009 at 07:33:49 PST Jan Husar wrote: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 Others have pointed out that PC-BSD meets the need expressed in this article. I believe this is because of a common misconception of what FreeBSD is. In essence FreeBSD would be the equivalent of the Linux kernel, except we have a userland integrated. No one would claim that the Linux kernel was a 'distro' that needed a GUI installer, yet some think that of FreeBSD. I think of FreeBSD as kernel/base/ports, the equivalent in the Linux world would be a mix of Debian/Gentoo. In essence, FreeBSD is an operating system (the primary distro of the kernel) with derivatives that enable specific applications (FreeNAS, PC-BSD). I don't think anyone would claim FreeBSD is a kernel and userland that required arcane knowledge to install and run. I'd compare PC-BSD to Ubuntu, but even kernel/base has no real equivalent in the Linux world. I still wonder about the drive geometry messages though; but after many years, have learnt that I can safely accept what the bios is reporting. True, I'm ambivalent about a graphical installer, but I've bootstrapped installs from kernel and network drivers (for fun), and I don't think the current installer is clear or obvoius without the handbook (if only we could get people to read it!). As for FreeBSD itself, the question must be asked: do we WANT to get more love from people who judge an OS by whether or not it has a graphical installer? No, but it would be great if there were some offerings in ports for those who wished to roll their own 'distro' ;-). In many ways, the base/ports design is of itself a way to roll your own. Tony ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Randi Harper wrote: On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com wrote: Peer Schaefer peer.schae...@hamburg.de wrote: BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic backend, and (b) different frontend plugins, e.g. a curses-frontend or a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but surely difficult to implement). Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg Which could then be edited by all of Front end CLI (*) Front end curses GUI (*) (*) Maybe these 2 alternatives should be the first question the installer asks ? Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete - Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone would probably want to write one). vi - for editing, writing back to new boot media, to auto install on multiple identical new machines. I would sooner stab myself in the face. Not obvious at all which your personal revulsion applies to CLI ? ncurses ? install.cfg ?, X11 ?, vi ? I was trying to think of a unifying structure that would allow for variant personal preferences, inc. prefs to avoid some interfaces. (eg personally I've no use for X11 post install, or 'vi install.cfg` mass production install, but there's others it would attract). All of 4.11, 7.1 8.0 man sysinstall contain: This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventually be replaced. Sure, once someone writes something everyone can agree upon. Until then, sorry, you're stuck with sysinstall. :) Yes, All will never agree, it's schismatic, sort of thing attractive to PCBSD DesktopBSD or Yet-Another-BSD forks/front ends, or about as endless discussion as which brewery brews best beer :-) Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com Mail plain text not quoted-printable, HTML or Base64: http://asciiribbon.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com wrote: Randi Harper wrote: On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com wrote: Peer Schaefer peer.schae...@hamburg.de wrote: BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic backend, and (b) different frontend plugins, e.g. a curses-frontend or a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but surely difficult to implement). Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg Which could then be edited by all of Front end CLI (*) Front end curses GUI (*) (*) Maybe these 2 alternatives should be the first question the installer asks ? Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete - Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone would probably want to write one). vi - for editing, writing back to new boot media, to auto install on multiple identical new machines. I would sooner stab myself in the face. Not obvious at all which your personal revulsion applies to CLI ? ncurses ? install.cfg ?, X11 ?, vi ? All of the above. The bug list for sysinstall is not small. Even if this wasn't the case, I'm not even going to work on introducing that many options and obfuscating the code that much more. The mere thought of the rewrite involved in adding that kind of support makes my head feel like the knife is already in place. The only support I've been *thinking* about adding is a simple CLI in addition to the existing libdialog (ncurses) install. This would still be a not insignificant modification, but there are issues that make using a libdialog based installer problematic on some displays. It's a fun idea to kick around, but it's not a priority. I don't even know what you mean by vi, but it sounds confusing and unnecessary. This is what install.cfg is for - so you can define the parameters of an installation beforehand. -- randi ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Incidentally, I've contacted the author of this article and offered to correct/discuss some of his assumptions. Waiting to see if he decides to email me back. :P -- randi On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Jan Husar jan.hu...@skosi.org wrote: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 -- --- | Jan Husar | | doing what matters | http://tinyurl.com/ya4xlqe Earthcause - in the cause of the Planet #1 Mission to Kosovo (2009, 2010) #2 Mission to Cambodia (2010) #3 Mission to Galapagos (planning) ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:58:46 -0800 Randi Harper ra...@freebsd.org wrote: On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 6:50 AM, Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com wrote: Peer Schaefer peer.schae...@hamburg.de wrote: BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic backend, and (b) different frontend plugins, e.g. a curses-frontend or a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but surely difficult to implement). Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg Which could then be edited by all of Front end CLI (*) Front end curses GUI (*) (*) Maybe these 2 alternatives should be the first question the installer asks ? Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete - Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone would probably want to write one). vi - for editing, writing back to new boot media, to auto install on multiple identical new machines. I would sooner stab myself in the face. Editing disks in vi is fun apparently! :) All of 4.11, 7.1 8.0 man sysinstall contain: This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and will eventually be replaced. Sure, once someone writes something everyone can agree upon. Until then, sorry, you're stuck with sysinstall. :) What happened to the BSD installer? And finstall ... Ivan? Ivan *knock knock* ;) -- Tom Rhodes ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Tony Theodore to...@logyst.com wrote: Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg /usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg Which could then be edited by all of Front end CLI (*) Front end curses GUI (*) (*) Maybe these 2 alternatives should be the first question the installer asks ? Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete - Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone would probably want to write one). vi - for editing, writing back to new boot media, to auto install on multiple identical new machines. I would sooner stab myself in the face. Not obvious at all which your personal revulsion applies to CLI ? ncurses ? install.cfg ?, X11 ?, vi ? All of the above. The bug list for sysinstall is not small. Even if this wasn't the case, I'm not even going to work on introducing that many options and obfuscating the code that much more. The mere thought of the rewrite involved in adding that kind of support makes my head feel like the knife is already in place. The idea is that it simplifies the code by making it more modular. All the final sysinstall has to do is execute the specifics of install.cfg. It's just a text file, anything can modify it - of course, in a standardised way. The suggestion is to develop front-ends that can generate/modify such a file which the installer back-end will execute. Think of it as functional programming for installers - define the installations options in a declarative way, and let the installer take care of the rest. Yes, trying to implement such a thing may drive you to stab yourself in the face - you can do that with a toothpick, but the idea should cause you to sharpen a different blade. No one is asking you to do it, just think of some possibilities. The only support I've been *thinking* about adding is a simple CLI in addition to the existing libdialog (ncurses) install. This would still be a not insignificant modification, but there are issues that make using a libdialog based installer problematic on some displays. It's a fun idea to kick around, but it's not a priority. I don't even know what you mean by vi, but it sounds confusing and unnecessary. This is what install.cfg is for - so you can define the parameters of an installation beforehand. vi is an arcane, obscure text editor that is used by alpha/uber-geeks to modify *.cfg files ;) No one in their right mind would suggest the possibility of manually editing a text file, let alone the sysinstall .cfg file. Who knows what configuration options would be possible? Yeah... I know what vi *is*. I don't see how it's relevant as an installation option. And by the way, you do edit the install.cfg file by hand. We don't have a handy tool to automagically create one of these as far as I know. You know what options are possible by looking at the sysinstall man page, looking at the example install.cfg file, or reading sysinstall.h. Having cli/X11/ncurses/text interfaces to install.cfg seems ideal to me. The technical difficulty alone would in all likelihood ground it, it doesn't need to be shot down. I'm shooting it down as in I am not doing this because I'm currently the person working on sysinstall. ;) -- randi ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 4:34 AM, Peer Schaefer peer.schae...@hamburg.dewrote: On wednesday, the 23.12.2009, 08:38 + Matthew Seaman wrote: At the risk of being challenged to produce code (Which, alas, I don't have sufficient skill to do. Or sufficient time.) I'd design an installer as a CLI program that reads in a fairly simple fixed script or language to do the installation work, and have separate Curses and/or X based programs to allow users to create the installation script interactively. I think that would fulfil just about everybodies' requirements, from the people that want a *shiny* graphical interface to people wanting to do automatic unattended installs over serial lines. Of course, this sort of project has been attempted before, and been a complete failure. BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic backend, and (b) different frontend plugins, e.g. a curses-frontend or a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but surely difficult to implement). This is similar to how the BSD Installer project is organised: a non-GUI backend with various Text, GUI, and web frontends available. -- Freddie Cash fjwc...@gmail.com ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
Yeah... I know what vi *is*. I don't see how it's relevant as an installation option. And by the way, you do edit the install.cfg file by hand. We don't have a handy tool to automagically create one of these as far as I know. You know what options are possible by looking at the sysinstall man page, looking at the example install.cfg file, or reading sysinstall.h. I think that's the whole point, there are some people that can/would like to hand craft an installation file. I'm happy with the advice from the handbook, and am curious about the man pages, example and header files, but I've never looked at them (for sysinstall). Many don't even follow the handbook. As FreeBSD is a general-purpose operating system, I think it would be impossible to cover the needs of embedded hardware developers, desktops users, server admins, and the curious; with a single installer. Having cli/X11/ncurses/text interfaces to install.cfg seems ideal to me. The technical difficulty alone would in all likelihood ground it, it doesn't need to be shot down. I'm shooting it down as in I am not doing this because I'm currently the person working on sysinstall. ;) Kudos and thanks to you; through the growing tendency of installers to be ignorant and rude, sysinstall remains competent and polite (I have no other words to compare them). This is advocacy, noone is asking _you_ to do it, but if we could add friendly Tony ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
why BSDs got no love
Hello all: I'm recently new to FreeBSD (former Linux user) and I would like to share my thoughts in the matter. (1) I love *BSD, especially FreeBSD because of the way it is. I read the handbook before installing it and my first impressions with the installation process was fine. My biggest problem was understanding the whole concept of slices, partitions and the ports but once I got around that, everything was fine. I have to admit that the installer is a little bit confusing at first but once you have done it 2 or 3 times it is very easy to use and the handbook helps a lot. Also the FreeBSD mailing lists is full of very nice and helpful people so that really helped my move from Linux. Note that my installation was very straight forward so maybe I did not encounter enough situations to really provide an accurate opinion on the matter. (2) I AGREE that FreeBSD needs to make it easier for new people to FreeBSD. The reason why I believe that is because the more people you have using FreeBSD the more feedback the project would get. At the same time I don't think this effort should come from the core developers. I think the core developers should concentrate on building a base system that is stable, secure etc. and then have something on top of that done by someone else. In other words, provide the possibility for different type of installers to be built that target different audience. (3) I have a couple of questions so I could better understand the the whole installer business. --- How difficult it is to add a couple extra options to the menu that you are offered when first installing FreeBSD so that you can choose a particular installer? --- Assuming this installers where done, how difficult would it be to make it part of the installation medias (CD, USB, DVD etc). --- How difficult it is to test an installer? (VirtualBox or some other virtualization software comes to mind for testing). --- What kind of knowledge is required/recommended to take on this task? --- What kind of resources are there available to help with this task? Feel free to ignore points 1 and 2 since I'm new to FreeBSD and I probably should be getting involved in this sort of discussions but any input on point 3 would be highly appreciated. -r ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love (and why security gets no love)
Update: I confirmed that the scheduled publication date for my article will be Tuesday the 29th. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpep7nRt2VNr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: why BSDs got no love
Shane Calimlim wrote: +1 to a better installer, graphical or not. I'd settle for one that while installing packages you've selected, doesn't sit there saying to switch discs in what seems to be a very random order... I still think that would help a lot Why DOES the installer do that exactly? I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting there installing, walked away, and then saw that a package was on another disk, and it was either switch, or, not get it installed And I have decided to wait for disk switching sometimes, but I noticed the packages that get skipped for now generally don't install. So basically, it would be nice if the install was more in the way of installing packages in disk order. Like for example: You start installing, and instead of it saying you need to switch disks, it instead finds ALL the packages you're going to install that are in that disk, installs them, THEN tells you to put in disc #2 or #3 or whatever. Personally I'd be happy with the BSD version of the Slackware installation. Slackware looks a lot like FreeBSD's installation, but the disks and package installations go in order and it doesn't ask you to put another one back in because it installs all packages in groups on each disk, and so after the first disk is finished, you put the second in, and it continues, and so on, and the only time you would ever put the first back in, is when it was Kernel time, which now isn't even a problem either, because now it installs in disk order all the way. Sorry, I know that was a lot of text, but I use FreeBSD and Linux, and both are in use in my network, and I like having both. I would just really like to see some good changes to FreeBSD, and I don't think a GUI installer is the requirement. A GUI install could be like an option, maybe, like Linux, where you have the option to install either in text mode, or GUI mode, but I'd say get the disc switching sorted first. FreeBSD is a great OS, and once the install is done, you start up GDM or KDM, or whatever you like, and literally anyone including my Mom, can use it. I once set up a machine with Linux where it would auto boot into KDM, my Mom could log in, just like at work! and then I set up the desktop so that Firefox and something else was there on the desktop, and my Mom would go and use it like it was Windows. It was very simple, and securing it was very easy, and She asked why the anti virus wasn't constantly asking Her to update and taking up CPU time constantly at boot up, and I simply said it wasn't needed, nor were reboots. She Liked it. To make FreeBSD better, try this, as it's my opinion: 1. Sort out the order in which CDs need to be switched. 2. If the installer is to be changed, why not make it similar to the Slackware one? It's basically like FreeBSD, but goes in a specific order someone on here said would be nice. 3. Making it easier to install patches would probably help A LOT. I know if you could do things like you can in Linux or Windows where you just install patches with a few clicks, it would be much easier for new users. People who use Slackware, can use wget, and upgradepkg packagename.tgz and it's done. SuSE is basically easier than Windows, it grabs them for you, checks for you, everything. And if you want patches in a different way, you tell it not to check at all and you can then do it by hand. Debian has apt-get, and with one line of commands, I can update servers, then upgrade packages, and that's very simple, compared to FreeBSD, where you have to install updates for the base system, THEN updates for the ports, which is prone to breaking if you do something wrong. I think FreeBSD would benefit greatly from a simpler way of installing patches and things. freebsd-update and portupgrade are nice, but, what about something that has a GUI that checks a server for updates, or, you can tell it to check, and then it downloads and installs them for you? That would probably get more Linux users in, and some Windows users who feel like trying it. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
On Tue 15 Dec 2009 at 07:33:49 PST Jan Husar wrote: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 Others have pointed out that PC-BSD meets the need expressed in this article. As for FreeBSD itself, the question must be asked: do we WANT to get more love from people who judge an OS by whether or not it has a graphical installer? ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
why BSDs got no love
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 -- --- | Jan Husar | | doing what matters | http://tinyurl.com/ya4xlqe Earthcause - in the cause of the Planet #1 Mission to Kosovo (2009, 2010) #2 Mission to Cambodia (2010) #3 Mission to Galapagos (planning) ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
I disagree (partially). 1st: PCBSD has a graphical installer. But I don't think a graphical installer is needed. An installer with a curses-like menu-driven interface is sufficient for most techy users (and face it: aunt Jamie is not the target audience for *BSD). But I admit that some menus of the *BSD installers are a little bit cryptic. The installer also lacks a good help facility. Perhaps it needs a little polishing. 2nd: The lack of a live CD is a real problem. A live CD is crucial for testing hardware compatibility and for data rescue (accessing a UFS formatted BSD-slice from a Linux live CD should be theoretically possible, but I never got it working). 3rd: *BSD is a great server OS. It tried to switch my desktop machine too, but in the end two problems blocked that: (a) Automounting USB media never worked really good. (b) I have large amount of data on ext2/ext3 formatted media. I can't convert them online to UFS, and I never got the ext2/ext3 fs-driver for *BSD to correct work. Conclusion: A graphical installer is a nice add-on, but no must-have. An curses-like interface is ok. But perhaps the installer needs some polishing. The lack of a live CD is a real problem. And for desktop usage *BSD needs working automounting and a good ext2/ext3 driver. Best wishes, --Peer Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2009, 16:33 +0100 schrieb Jan Husar: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: why BSDs got no love
1. Graphical installers don't work over serial consoles. 2. There is a live CD. ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/8.0/8.0-RELEASE-i386-livefs.iso . Use FreeSBIE if you need a live cd with a graphical environment. 3. mount -t ext2fs Peer Schaefer wrote: I disagree (partially). 1st: PCBSD has a graphical installer. But I don't think a graphical installer is needed. An installer with a curses-like menu-driven interface is sufficient for most techy users (and face it: aunt Jamie is not the target audience for *BSD). But I admit that some menus of the *BSD installers are a little bit cryptic. The installer also lacks a good help facility. Perhaps it needs a little polishing. 2nd: The lack of a live CD is a real problem. A live CD is crucial for testing hardware compatibility and for data rescue (accessing a UFS formatted BSD-slice from a Linux live CD should be theoretically possible, but I never got it working). 3rd: *BSD is a great server OS. It tried to switch my desktop machine too, but in the end two problems blocked that: (a) Automounting USB media never worked really good. (b) I have large amount of data on ext2/ext3 formatted media. I can't convert them online to UFS, and I never got the ext2/ext3 fs-driver for *BSD to correct work. Conclusion: A graphical installer is a nice add-on, but no must-have. An curses-like interface is ok. But perhaps the installer needs some polishing. The lack of a live CD is a real problem. And for desktop usage *BSD needs working automounting and a good ext2/ext3 driver. Best wishes, --Peer Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2009, 16:33 +0100 schrieb Jan Husar: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1123tag=nl.e011 ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
