32 ms·

OpenBSD: arm64 platform now officially supported, and has syspatch(8)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sverige 9y ago
I saw this last night, plan to order a Pinebook today. Edit: Registered for a Pinebook today, will have look for a board to play with. Any suggestions?
- eatonphil 9y ago
  Thanks for the reminder! Registered for one just now myself. I wonder how long the wait is.
- cat199 9y ago
  Don't have 1st hand OpenBSD/arm64 experience but I'd definitely expect the page https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html to be accurate as concerns device support, although I'd expect more drivers to be written. Not a committer but I think supported in this case is talking about system featureset on working hardware & project support (e.g. solid committers, build machines, etc), not meaning all hardware being supported. I'd probably read the last year-or-so of openbsd-arm list and check the recent commit messges for that part of the tree if that page isn't clear..
- justinclift 9y ago
  Looking through the Pinebook website and forum a few days ago, there are many reports of hardware problems due to what seem like poor manufacturing and QA. :( eg keyboards with keys that don't work, the GbE network pork actually only running at 100Mb/s, battery's that don't charge, screens with dead pixels * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5046 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5046 * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5025 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5025 * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4997 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4997 Not sure it's really worth the potential hassles at this stage. :( That being said, if you can put up with the potential issues then it probably wouldn't hurt to try it out. :)
st3fan 9y ago
Honest question: what is the big deal about syspatch? I see OpenBSD folks talk about it as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How is this different from what many distributions have had for more than a decade in the form of apt or yum?
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  Its not really, but previously you had to build from sources to apply security/reliability fixes between releases.
- rst 9y ago
  Just glancing at the man page, atomic rollback kinda jumps out...
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    Is that the same as using yum history to roll back?
- lima 9y ago
  Windows too! (sort of)
- swixmix 9y ago
  > what is the big deal about syspatch? It's not revolutionary, just very convenient. It's automatic, and I think M:Tier offers a similar service.[0] > How is this different from […] apt or yum? It's a "utility for security and reliability binary updates to the base system."[1] Syspatch is only for base system, not ported packages. [0]: https://stable.mtier.org/ https://stable.mtier.org/ [1]: https://www.openbsd.org/61.html https://www.openbsd.org/61.html [2]: Package Management https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html
- loeg 9y ago
  Can't use Linux distribution tools like apt/yum unless you package the update contents as rpm/dpkg files and distribute apt/yum with the base system. Neither of those is happening in OpenBSD, or likely any BSD. (I can go into more detail on why if you're curious.) In some ways, the BSDs are just catching up to Linux in terms of update distribution mechanism. They all have a history of being self-hosting compile-from-source systems, and some greybeards are still pretty attached to that idea. As someone who discovered Linux first and happily used it for many years before discovering the BSDs, I think there's a lot Linux gets right that BSDs will or should adopt to be relevant. (There are also many things the BSDs get right, of course.) This is a good example of that.
pingiun 9y ago
Isn't the official term aarch64?
- gabuzome 9y ago
  It's the official term from the ARMv8 architecture and also the name adopted by toolchains, but "arm64" was chosen for Linux: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/15/127 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/15/127
  - yuhong 9y ago
    Thanks to Linus Torvalds I think.
- Conan_Kudo 9y ago
  Yes, but like Debian, OpenBSD is ignoring that. Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, etc. use the official term. Debian and the BSDs use the informal "arm64" term.
  - lerax 9y ago
    The informal makes more sense, BTW.
    - pm215 9y ago
      True, but there's some merit to being consistent with the naming used by the toolchain (which appears in things like cross compiler binary names) and the name printed by the linux kernel in 'uname -a')...
    - lloeki 9y ago
      Well I misread it as amd64, thought it "can't be possible" and had to come down to this thread to realise the nature of my mistake. aarch32 and aarch64 are strictly ARMv8, while arm32, being informal, could really be a catch-all term for all the previous ones. I don't know of any aarch32 distro though, they all seem to limit to ARMv7hf, which is sad because on a Raspberry Pi 3 you can't get the VideoCore binaries and v8 instruction set: going 64bit means most hardware does not work (at least: no X/wayland, no 3D, no sound), and some benchmarks have shown that they bring up 15-20% performance improvements. Anyway, this is basically the same debate as x64 vs x86-64 vs amd64 and mostly bike shedding at the end of the day.
asgs 9y ago
so does this mean smart phones and IOTs can run on BSD?
- watersb 9y ago
  OpenBSD support list [0] at the moment: > The current target platforms are Rockchip RK3399, Allwinner A64/H5, Raspberry Pi 3 and Opteron A1100. That's a good list, it may cover a number of "Maker"-oriented single-board computers that are fun to play with. Note that most of the Raspberry Pi chip is its Broadcom Videocore IV graphics processor, which is not supported by the OpenBSD OS. You would have to hook up a screen to the GPIO pins, I think, rather than getting display out of the HDMI port. There are lots of LCD display "hats" on the market. (I am typing this on my iPad, which is an iOS device, which is a descendent of BSD.) [0]: https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
  - qubex 9y ago
    You can use an RS232/USB connector to hook it up to a VT100-compatible terminal or emulator. That’s what I plan to do this afternoon. Alternatively you can just SSH 59 it. It depends on what your objectives are.
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    Armbian and DietPI pages, although Linux oriented, contain a fairly long list of hackable boards, so you can look there for boards using supported platforms. https://www.armbian.com/download/ https://www.armbian.com/download/ http://dietpi.com/ http://dietpi.com/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

I saw this last night, plan to order a Pinebook today. Edit: Registered for a Pinebook today, will have look for a board to play with. Any suggestions?

eatonphil 9y ago
Thanks for the reminder! Registered for one just now myself. I wonder how long the wait is.
cat199 9y ago
Don't have 1st hand OpenBSD/arm64 experience but I'd definitely expect the page https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html to be accurate as concerns device support, although I'd expect more drivers to be written. Not a committer but I think supported in this case is talking about system featureset on working hardware & project support (e.g. solid committers, build machines, etc), not meaning all hardware being supported. I'd probably read the last year-or-so of openbsd-arm list and check the recent commit messges for that part of the tree if that page isn't clear..
justinclift 9y ago
Looking through the Pinebook website and forum a few days ago, there are many reports of hardware problems due to what seem like poor manufacturing and QA. :( eg keyboards with keys that don't work, the GbE network pork actually only running at 100Mb/s, battery's that don't charge, screens with dead pixels * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5046 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5046 * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5025 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=5025 * https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4997 https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4997 Not sure it's really worth the potential hassles at this stage. :( That being said, if you can put up with the potential issues then it probably wouldn't hurt to try it out. :)

st3fan 9y ago

Honest question: what is the big deal about syspatch? I see OpenBSD folks talk about it as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How is this different from what many distributions have had for more than a decade in the form of apt or yum?

throwaway2048 9y ago
Its not really, but previously you had to build from sources to apply security/reliability fixes between releases.
rst 9y ago
Just glancing at the man page, atomic rollback kinda jumps out...
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  Is that the same as using yum history to roll back?
lima 9y ago
Windows too! (sort of)
swixmix 9y ago
> what is the big deal about syspatch? It's not revolutionary, just very convenient. It's automatic, and I think M:Tier offers a similar service.[0] > How is this different from […] apt or yum? It's a "utility for security and reliability binary updates to the base system."[1] Syspatch is only for base system, not ported packages. [0]: https://stable.mtier.org/ https://stable.mtier.org/ [1]: https://www.openbsd.org/61.html https://www.openbsd.org/61.html [2]: Package Management https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html
loeg 9y ago
Can't use Linux distribution tools like apt/yum unless you package the update contents as rpm/dpkg files and distribute apt/yum with the base system. Neither of those is happening in OpenBSD, or likely any BSD. (I can go into more detail on why if you're curious.) In some ways, the BSDs are just catching up to Linux in terms of update distribution mechanism. They all have a history of being self-hosting compile-from-source systems, and some greybeards are still pretty attached to that idea. As someone who discovered Linux first and happily used it for many years before discovering the BSDs, I think there's a lot Linux gets right that BSDs will or should adopt to be relevant. (There are also many things the BSDs get right, of course.) This is a good example of that.

pingiun 9y ago

Isn't the official term aarch64?

gabuzome 9y ago
It's the official term from the ARMv8 architecture and also the name adopted by toolchains, but "arm64" was chosen for Linux: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/15/127 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/15/127
- yuhong 9y ago
  Thanks to Linus Torvalds I think.
Conan_Kudo 9y ago
Yes, but like Debian, OpenBSD is ignoring that. Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, etc. use the official term. Debian and the BSDs use the informal "arm64" term.
- lerax 9y ago
  The informal makes more sense, BTW.
  - pm215 9y ago
    True, but there's some merit to being consistent with the naming used by the toolchain (which appears in things like cross compiler binary names) and the name printed by the linux kernel in 'uname -a')...
  - lloeki 9y ago
    Well I misread it as amd64, thought it "can't be possible" and had to come down to this thread to realise the nature of my mistake. aarch32 and aarch64 are strictly ARMv8, while arm32, being informal, could really be a catch-all term for all the previous ones. I don't know of any aarch32 distro though, they all seem to limit to ARMv7hf, which is sad because on a Raspberry Pi 3 you can't get the VideoCore binaries and v8 instruction set: going 64bit means most hardware does not work (at least: no X/wayland, no 3D, no sound), and some benchmarks have shown that they bring up 15-20% performance improvements. Anyway, this is basically the same debate as x64 vs x86-64 vs amd64 and mostly bike shedding at the end of the day.

asgs 9y ago

so does this mean smart phones and IOTs can run on BSD?

watersb 9y ago
OpenBSD support list [0] at the moment: > The current target platforms are Rockchip RK3399, Allwinner A64/H5, Raspberry Pi 3 and Opteron A1100. That's a good list, it may cover a number of "Maker"-oriented single-board computers that are fun to play with. Note that most of the Raspberry Pi chip is its Broadcom Videocore IV graphics processor, which is not supported by the OpenBSD OS. You would have to hook up a screen to the GPIO pins, I think, rather than getting display out of the HDMI port. There are lots of LCD display "hats" on the market. (I am typing this on my iPad, which is an iOS device, which is a descendent of BSD.) [0]: https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html
- qubex 9y ago
  You can use an RS232/USB connector to hook it up to a VT100-compatible terminal or emulator. That’s what I plan to do this afternoon. Alternatively you can just SSH 59 it. It depends on what your objectives are.
- squarefoot 9y ago
  Armbian and DietPI pages, although Linux oriented, contain a fairly long list of hackable boards, so you can look there for boards using supported platforms. https://www.armbian.com/download/ https://www.armbian.com/download/ http://dietpi.com/ http://dietpi.com/