Re: just general questions about fbsd
Chad Perrin wrote: On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 08:09:19PM -0400, Tamouh H. wrote: On the other hand, Windows has the ability to change the administrator user or completely disable it. Something not available in Unix systems. For example, a cracker or hacker targeting UNIX system will automatically try to compromise the root user. It is 100% guaranteed to be there. On the other hand in Windows, good sys admins will rename or complete disable the administrator user hence making it more difficult to know the administrator user. Actually . . . technically, root users can be renamed and can, in many ways, be disabled. They can certainly be made inaccessible remotely. That can break many scripts though, can't it, if the dev improperly looks up the name, not the UID? -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: just general questions about fbsd
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 11:48:32PM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote: Chad Perrin wrote: On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 08:09:19PM -0400, Tamouh H. wrote: On the other hand, Windows has the ability to change the administrator user or completely disable it. Something not available in Unix systems. For example, a cracker or hacker targeting UNIX system will automatically try to compromise the root user. It is 100% guaranteed to be there. On the other hand in Windows, good sys admins will rename or complete disable the administrator user hence making it more difficult to know the administrator user. Actually . . . technically, root users can be renamed and can, in many ways, be disabled. They can certainly be made inaccessible remotely. That can break many scripts though, can't it, if the dev improperly looks up the name, not the UID? Probably -- if you're talking about disabling or renaming the root account for users. I've never personally done it, so can't really comment on that. I have, however, generally made the root account inaccessible remotely -- and that hasn't cause me any problems at all. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] MacUser, Nov. 1990: There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: just general questions about fbsd
On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 01:54:36PM -0300, Anton Galitch wrote: Hi Im writing an article about FreeBSD and want to ask some few question: The questions you ask can easily be answered by some basic searching of the FreeBSD web site, FAQ and email archives. Some of these are also answered in various online publications that I don't have time to look up for you right now, but you can easily find them. Onlamp is one that has covered FreeBSD features and comparisons with several OSen. Google is your friend. - Do the FBSD developers work for free? Generally yes. They are not paid by the FreeBSD foundation although some of them are fortunate enough to work for companies who view their contributions to FreeBSD as relevant to their company work and so allow them to consider the portion of their time spent on FreeBSD as part of their company work. - What advanced features it has that for example Windows, or MacOS dont have? It is reliable. MAC can claim that to a great extent too. MS cannot. It is relatively secure. Networking is fundamental in FreeBSD and a crowbar-ed addon in MS so it is inherently better in networking. It is truly multitasking and MS is not. There are many others. - What well knows companies use FreeBSD as servers? (I know that Hotmails used fbsd servers like 5 years ago). Last I knew Yahoo was using FreeBSD. THere are others. Many companies use FreeBSD for their network and backend service even when they have MS on people's desktops. I hope you will do a more complete job of research before handing in your paper just based on what I write. Your teacher is likely to be reading this list too and will see this. Thanks for help. I suggest you find a machine and install FreeBSD and become familiar with it. You will slowly begin to understand the advantages with experienve. jerry -- http://feudaltimes.com.ar - Webmaster, designer and programmer ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: just general questions about fbsd
Jerry Thanks for your reply, I will do more research in resources you mentioned. I suggest you find a machine and install FreeBSD and become familiar with it. You will slowly begin to understand the advantages with experienve. I have been using fbsd for about 3 months =) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: just general questions about fbsd
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 10:09:04AM -0300, Anton Galitch wrote: Jerry Thanks for your reply, I will do more research in resources you mentioned. Good. I suggest you find a machine and install FreeBSD and become familiar with it. You will slowly begin to understand the advantages with experienve. I have been using fbsd for about 3 months =) Good. You will learn many things. It is not a gimme, but the eventual product will be worth more than the ones that appear to be. The list gets lots of posts by students assigned to write a paper about relative merits of FreeBSD vs some other systems or something similar. Enjoy, jerry ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: just general questions about fbsd
Anton Galitch wrote: Hi Im writing an article about FreeBSD and want to ask some few question: - Do the FBSD developers work for free? Heh, you mean, at what job? Most of them work somewhere for money, I'm pretty sure. ;-) Occasionally companies will grant money to a certain developer to remain unemployed by others and spend more time on FreeBSD. IIRC, Poul Henning-Kamp got a good portion of a year's salary in a fund-raising campaign last year, mostly from some of the larger companies listed below. Some companies pay an employee a regular salary, but allow or even encourage them to work on FreeBSD as part of their job. However, the majority of developers work on FreeBSD in their free time, for the love of the system, without much more compensation than the satisfaction of a job well done. At least, that is what I think/hope/sincerely want to believe :-) - What advanced features it has that for example Windows, or MacOS dont have? advanced features should be defined. Stability and security are apparently advanced features, judging by my 10 years experience with those products from Redmond. FBSD's got a truckload of stuff Windows doesn't see the need for that should be standard issue on any operating system where Real Work needs to be done; starting with cat and grep and ending who knows where ... Windows uses *BSD code in their network stack ... IANAE, but maybe ACLs, MAC, software RAID (I guess Win has that now?), multiple virtual terminals, real shells are just a few things that come to mind. And, Mac OS X uses a non-BSD kernel, but most of the userland programs were taken from FreeBSD 4.X. some time back. The GUI stuff is original Apple, I believe The real issue, though, is that FreeBSD is about as modern a Unix[like] as you can get, and Windows and Unix like aren't apples and apples. With a BSD you get historically sound, useful software, along with other stuff. With other systems, you get sexy GUI apps that do some stuff, but doesn't jive with most of the UNIX paradigm, and, really, was mostly developed for reasons no one knows anymore and marketed in order that some executive could buy another house in Tuscany or on the Riviera. Or, something like that. - What well knows companies use FreeBSD as servers? (I know that Hotmails used fbsd servers like 5 years ago). Well, you missed Yahoo!, for certain. Pair Networks, New York Internet, Verio, are big in hosting, also serverpath.com, inetu.com, velcom.com, existhosting.com and lots more, as a Google search would show you. Check www.netcraft.com for more on the hosting business, including some reports on FreeBSD's stature as a top-notch hosting platform and record-setting high-availability leader. Some ISP's are listed at: http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/isp.html --- along with lots of other companies in software development, systems integration, and lots more underneath the /commercial/ folder. Then there's a lot of little companies. And probably some people who don't want you to know about them, with black helicopters and big white trucks and hidden laboratories under mountains or cactus or something. Thanks for help. It's not much, but you're welcome to it, of course. Oh, and Google is your friend. ;-) Kevin Kinsey ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: just general questions about fbsd
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Kevin Kinsey Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 3:19 PM To: Anton Galitch Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: just general questions about fbsd Anton Galitch wrote: Hi Im writing an article about FreeBSD and want to ask some few question: - Do the FBSD developers work for free? Heh, you mean, at what job? Most of them work somewhere for money, I'm pretty sure. ;-) Occasionally companies will grant money to a certain developer to remain unemployed by others and spend more time on FreeBSD. IIRC, Poul Henning-Kamp got a good portion of a year's salary in a fund-raising campaign last year, mostly from some of the larger companies listed below. Some companies pay an employee a regular salary, but allow or even encourage them to work on FreeBSD as part of their job. However, the majority of developers work on FreeBSD in their free time, for the love of the system, without much more compensation than the satisfaction of a job well done. I think the majority of developers have FreeBSD involved in some manner in their jobs, and a lot of times they need something put into it, or they need a tool to run on it. Not that their job description specifically lists working on the FreeBSD system but that they are given a lot of leeway as to how they come up with solutions to their employers problems. If I was, for example, an employer paying a developer a salary to write code to keep my business running, I would expect that whatever OS he preferred to use to run the programs he's writing for me, he would have source for it. Microsoft in fact has a specific program for developers to be able to access Windows source. Furthermore, I would also expect that if my developer ran into a problem that was due to a bug in the OS source, that he would have a channel to get this corrected. If it was a Windows platform, I would certainly inform my MS sales rep that continued payment and purchase of MS os licenses was absolutely contingent on them taking bug corrections from my employee that needed fixing in their code, bugs that were preventing my developer from building software that I needed. At least, that is what I think/hope/sincerely want to believe :-) - What advanced features it has that for example Windows, or MacOS dont have? Windows, even the server versions of Windows, are fundamentally desktop software operating systems that are at times pressed into being servers. FreeBSD and the other UNIXES are fundamentally server operating systems that are at times pressed into being desktops. Remember, UNIX came out of the multiuser environment, where you had a lot of people connected via dumb ASCII terminals to a single mainframe. From the beginning, concepts like reentrant code, and separation of user authority, have been ingrained in it. Consider for example the extreme difficulty that Microsoft has had with the simple concept of a superuser. A superuser is, as you may know, a userID on the system that has authority to do anything, change anything, and that the normal security mechanisms do not apply to. Under UNIX this is the root user ID. Well, with Windows, in the Win 3.1/win95/win98/winME series, anyone who booted the Windows system was automatically the superuser. This causes a lot of problems as you might imagine with programs, as if a program has a bug or goes out of control somehow, since the user it is running under has no security, the program can destroy anything on the system. With UNIX, normally, programs are not run under the superuser ID, they are run under a normal user ID. Thus programs cannot normally damage the system. Microsoft observed the value of this paradigm and so put it into Windows NT - although, under NT, they called the superuser the administrative user most likely, because they didn't want anyone to realize they were just copying how UNIX does things. But, administrator under Windows, and root under UNIX are essentially the same thing. The problem, though, is that because the concept of the superuser ID was grafted onto Windows, if you setup Windows so that when it boots, a person logs into it as a regular user, they have a lot of problems. They cannot install software, they cannot run a lot of different network software, they cannot make changes in simple things like the screen resolution, and so on. Both Windows NT and Windows 2K were setup by Microsoft out of the box like this - when you installed them, you had to tell them a regular userID and an administrator userID. But, due to the problems, Microsoft went to a model in both Windows XP and Windows Vista, where when you install and set it up, BY DEFAULT, you are put in as a superuser (administrator) This saves Microsoft a lot of support calls from people calling in demanding to know why the Windows OS won't let them do simple things like change screen resolution - but, it completely
RE: just general questions about fbsd
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Kevin Kinsey Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 3:19 PM To: Anton Galitch Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: just general questions about fbsd Anton Galitch wrote: Hi Im writing an article about FreeBSD and want to ask some few question: - What advanced features it has that for example Windows, or MacOS dont have? Windows, even the server versions of Windows, are fundamentally desktop software operating systems that are at times pressed into being servers. FreeBSD and the other UNIXES are fundamentally server operating systems that are at times pressed into being desktops. Remember, UNIX came out of the multiuser environment, where you had a lot of people connected via dumb ASCII terminals to a single mainframe. From the beginning, concepts like reentrant code, and separation of user authority, have been ingrained in it. Consider for example the extreme difficulty that Microsoft has had with the simple concept of a superuser. A superuser is, as you may know, a userID on the system that has authority to do anything, change anything, and that the normal security mechanisms do not apply to. Under UNIX this is the root user ID. Well, with Windows, in the Win 3.1/win95/win98/winME series, anyone who booted the Windows system was automatically the superuser. This causes a lot of problems as you might imagine with programs, as if a program has a bug or goes out of control somehow, since the user it is running under has no security, the program can destroy anything on the system. With UNIX, normally, programs are not run under the superuser ID, they are run under a normal user ID. Thus programs cannot normally damage the system. Microsoft observed the value of this paradigm and so put it into Windows NT - although, under NT, they called the superuser the administrative user most likely, because they didn't want anyone to realize they were just copying how UNIX does things. But, administrator under Windows, and root under UNIX are essentially the same thing. The problem, though, is that because the concept of the superuser ID was grafted onto Windows, if you setup Windows so that when it boots, a person logs into it as a regular user, they have a lot of problems. They cannot install software, they cannot run a lot of different network software, they cannot make changes in simple things like the screen resolution, and so on. Both Windows NT and Windows 2K were setup by Microsoft out of the box like this - when you installed them, you had to tell them a regular userID and an administrator userID. But, due to the problems, Microsoft went to a model in both Windows XP and Windows Vista, where when you install and set it up, BY DEFAULT, you are put in as a superuser (administrator) This saves Microsoft a lot of support calls from people calling in demanding to know why the Windows OS won't let them do simple things like change screen resolution - but, it completely defeats the security in Windows, and makes even the most modern Windows no better than Windows 3.1 in terms of security. This I think is one of the best illustrations of the different approaches of Windows and UNIX. With a server, since a lot of people are affected if an errant program crashes it, the security is never disabled by default, and the installer must deliberately choose to do it. With a desktop, nobody is really affected if it crashes except for 1 person, so since usability is more important than security, by default this is why security in Windows Vista is subverted this way, out of the box. There are a very great many people out there walking around who have setup Windows systems as servers, and not understood this, and as a result, caused their company to lose hundreds if not thousands of dollars of time and labor due to the Windows server crashing as a result of a virus knocking it down. A virus, I will say, that IF the Windows security had been properly enabled, would NOT have been able to take the Windows server down. Ted Not to change this to Windows vs Unix thread. But I think they are two different ball games. I work with both servers and have seen advantages/disadvantages in both security and non-security related. The SYSTEM user is considered to be the superuser on Windows. This is why many malicious codes that exploit a high risk vulnerability in OS automatically grant their application a service or run it as a system process. On the other hand, Windows has the ability to change the administrator user or completely disable it. Something not available in Unix systems. For example, a cracker or hacker targeting UNIX system will automatically try to compromise the root user. It is 100% guaranteed to be there. On the other hand in Windows, good sys
Re: just general questions about fbsd
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 08:09:19PM -0400, Tamouh H. wrote: On the other hand, Windows has the ability to change the administrator user or completely disable it. Something not available in Unix systems. For example, a cracker or hacker targeting UNIX system will automatically try to compromise the root user. It is 100% guaranteed to be there. On the other hand in Windows, good sys admins will rename or complete disable the administrator user hence making it more difficult to know the administrator user. Actually . . . technically, root users can be renamed and can, in many ways, be disabled. They can certainly be made inaccessible remotely. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] W. Somerset Maugham: The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
