Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
i386/amd64. Nothing else is realistic these days. Sparc64 is wonderful but is basically legacy - it's great for finding bugs and I use it for hacking but is not something I run in production. All my production gear is i386 or amd64 - with a few exceptions. Yes, the hardware sucks and the biosen were written by monkeys and have their fingers in everything making the machine even more stupid. There are no realistic alternatives. There might have been if Sun hadn'tbeen so determined to turn itself from a good hardware company into a company trying to compete in Microsoft's product space (selling bad bloated software) where they had no hope of doing as well except in crowds that would buy it because at least it's not Microsoft. 2009/11/9 Daniel Gracia Garallar danie...@electronicagracia.com: Hi there! Now that I have to change my little server farm and I'm able to choose a new platform, I would like to choose wisely. It's a matter of fact that Intel x86 is bogus-prone, and after experimenting a lot with OpenBSD and listening about the different archs since several years ago, I tend to think that most of the delevopers have a taste for Sparc derived machines as being more... predictable. But of course, no machine is bug free. So thinking about security and stability, what would be your OpenBSD platform of choice? Keep in mind that in this question price is not a factor. I'm just curious about preferences based on CPU features and their implementation on OpenBSD. Regards! Dani
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
Bob Beck wrote: There might have been if Sun hadn't been so determined to turn itself from a good hardware company into a company trying to compete in Microsoft's product space Ah! The benefits of hiring employees 'away' from Microsoft and putting them in your own company. Funny how the result is always the same. Stupid business decisions aside, you can get if you try Sparc from Sun or Fujitsu for server work. Tadpole was still around, at least as of last year, though suffering dreadfully from the above business model being emulated by their new General Dynamics owners. /Lars
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
2009/11/12 Lars Nooden lars.cura...@gmail.com: Stupid business decisions aside, you can get if you try Sparc from Sun or Fujitsu for server work Kind of, but I don't really think it's got a future. It's kind of like advocating necrophila with a fresh corpse.. or maybe just doing it with a really hot coma patient. It might be really good for a short time but you know there isn't much potential there for a long term relationship.
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
2009/11/12 Bob Beck b...@ualberta.ca: Kind of, but I don't really think it's got a future. It's kind of like advocating necrophila with a fresh corpse.. or maybe just doing it with a really hot coma patient. It might be really good for a short time but you know there isn't much potential there for a long term relationship. Or at least that is, unless you're into the old, messy, and unnatural. We have people like that..
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
We have people like that.. Take an ice bath and lie real still... I resent that webcam you installed in my bathroom. Please remove it, I like to be alone in my ice baths. Miod
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:41:35AM -0700, Bob Beck wrote: 2009/11/12 Bob Beck b...@ualberta.ca: Kind of, but I don't really think it's got a future. It's kind of like advocating necrophila with a fresh corpse.. or maybe just doing it with a really hot coma patient. It might be really good for a short time but you know there isn't much potential there for a long term relationship. Or at least that is, unless you're into the old, messy, and unnatural. We have people like that.. Now, that was a cheesy redirection if I ever saw one.
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:41:35AM -0700, Bob Beck wrote: 2009/11/12 Bob Beck b...@ualberta.ca: Kind of, but I don't really think it's got a future. It's kind of like advocating necrophila with a fresh corpse.. or maybe just doing it with a really hot coma patient. It might be really good for a short time but you know there isn't much potential there for a long term relationship. Or at least that is, unless you're into the old, messy, and unnatural. We have people like that.. As a coder I like using a sparc64 (Ultra 5) as my primary machine at home. Running at 400MHz w/ 256MB RAM makes compile time and bloat very apparent. Writing to work on big endian as well as little endian, 64 bit as well as 32 bit, helps me do fewer stupid things. Doing sysadmin for my own little purposes I run amd64 or i386 in production. Weighing price/performance/power/whatever it's the best choice. Depending on what other software you need you may have to rule out even amd64 (or live with pain). The necro analogy is funny, but there's a time and place for these machines. Production machines are not it. -- Darrin Chandler| Phoenix BSD User Group | MetaBUG dwchand...@stilyagin.com | http://phxbug.org/ | http://metabug.org/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ | Daemons in the Desert | Global BUG Federation
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
On Thursday 12 November 2009 12:11:35 Bob Beck wrote: i386/amd64. Nothing else is realistic these days. Sparc64 is wonderful but is basically legacy - it's great for finding bugs and I use it for hacking but is not something I run in production. All my production gear is i386 or amd64 - with a few exceptions. Yes, the hardware sucks and the biosen were written by monkeys and have their fingers in everything making the machine even more stupid. There are no realistic alternatives. There might have been if Sun hadn'tbeen so determined to turn itself from a good hardware company into a company trying to compete in Microsoft's product space (selling bad bloated software) where they had no hope of doing as well except in crowds that would buy it because at least it's not Microsoft. I have to agree with Bob. The Sun-4/670 I used for a bbs ran for 5 years straight, interrupted only by power outages and disk failures, but they are in short supply these days, and use a ton of electricity. I daresay it eats the cost of a raid enabled i386 system each year, if not more. An i386 alternative to new hardware are the white Optilex systems from Dell. They range from 400 or 450MHz to about 933MHz, but you can do a lot at 933MHz. These are *well* built computers and I have several that are approaching 9 years of service, and one test system that is 11 years old. They are cheap, and I have extras. At about 210W they aren't too bad in food department. Next to me at the moment are two Optiplex GX2?0 machines which seem to be pretty solid as well, but they don't yet have the flight time that the white Optiplexi do. For modern stuff there are scads of systems out there. For me, the power supply is the first thing I look at. If it goes ferral--and I've seen that--they can destroy everthing. Antec rules. --STeve Andre'
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Bob Beck b...@ualberta.ca wrote: 2009/11/12 Lars Nooden lars.cura...@gmail.com: Stupid business decisions aside, you can get if you try Sparc from Sun or Fujitsu for server work Kind of, but I don't really think it's got a future. It's kind of like advocating necrophila with a fresh corpse.. or maybe just doing it with a really hot coma patient. It might be really good for a short time but you know there isn't much potential there for a long term relationship. I agree. If you think about it a little more, even Intel couldn't kill off x86 - see what happened to Itanic? -- http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk This officer's men seem to follow him merely out of idle curiosity. -- Sandhurst officer cadet evaluation. Securing an environment of Windows platforms from abuse - external or internal - is akin to trying to install sprinklers in a fireworks factory where smoking on the job is permitted. -- Gene Spafford learn french: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30v_g83VHK4
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:15:37 -0700 Bob Beck b...@ualberta.ca wrote: this was absolutely disturbing to read. misc@ is always disturbing. most of the time it's just disturbing in the i-want-a-belt-fed-weapon-to-make-the-stupid-stop-burning kind of way... You can either be a disturber or a disturbee.. decide which s/stop/start/g -- J.C. Roberts
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
Alpha was the best. Which, of course, is why it's dead now. RIP DEC :( On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:31 +0100, Daniel Gracia Garallar danie...@electronicagracia.com wrote: Hi there! Now that I have to change my little server farm and I'm able to choose a new platform, I would like to choose wisely. It's a matter of fact that Intel x86 is bogus-prone, and after experimenting a lot with OpenBSD and listening about the different archs since several years ago, I tend to think that most of the delevopers have a taste for Sparc derived machines as being more... predictable. But of course, no machine is bug free. So thinking about security and stability, what would be your OpenBSD platform of choice? Keep in mind that in this question price is not a factor. I'm just curious about preferences based on CPU features and their implementation on OpenBSD. Regards! Dani
Re: OpenBSD platform of choice?
Why choose? If you're not going both ways you're missing half the action. Bob Beck wrote: this was absolutely disturbing to read. misc@ is always disturbing. most of the time it's just disturbing in the i-want-a-belt-fed-weapon-to-make-the-stupid-stop-burning kind of way... You can either be a disturber or a disturbee.. decide which
OpenBSD platform of choice?
Hi there! Now that I have to change my little server farm and I'm able to choose a new platform, I would like to choose wisely. It's a matter of fact that Intel x86 is bogus-prone, and after experimenting a lot with OpenBSD and listening about the different archs since several years ago, I tend to think that most of the delevopers have a taste for Sparc derived machines as being more... predictable. But of course, no machine is bug free. So thinking about security and stability, what would be your OpenBSD platform of choice? Keep in mind that in this question price is not a factor. I'm just curious about preferences based on CPU features and their implementation on OpenBSD. Regards! Dani
