6 ms·

The setup of OpenBSD Amsterdam

64 points by RomanZolotarev 8y ago

Yuioup 8y ago
Can somebody explain what this is?
- vesinisa 8y ago
  Looks like an OpenBSD version of Docker.
  - popsickle 8y ago
    No, this is virtualization - vmm/vmd is a legit HVM.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      So it is better than systemd :p
      - dijit 8y ago
        it's really not comparable. SystemD is an init system (and you're conflating systemd with CGroups in Linux, which would be part of the kernel and not related to systemd at all) and a Hypervisor. More comparable comparisons could be: bhyve for FreeBSD, xhyve for OSX, virtualbox for... everything. Or QEMU/KVM on Linux.
        mbrumlow 8y ago
        Oh man, I did not mean to type systemd! I ment docker.
        dijit 8y ago
        Aha, that makes sense. But still. Docker is containers, vmm is full virtualisation. Docker can be compared to FreeBSD jails, Solaris Zones or.. actually, cgroups in linux (for masochists).
        mbrumlow 8y ago
        I know I know. It was a joke and a slight jab at docker :p
        DonHopkins 8y ago
        The Urban Dictionary also defines docker as someone who makes a slight jab.
- popsickle 8y ago
  They're a minimal/simplified VPS provider; OpenBSD VPSes hosted on OpenBSD's native hypervisor.
Fnoord 8y ago
This has nothing to do with an official OpenBSD or Amsterdam project, does it?
- popsickle 8y ago
  Nope. However, for very €60 you spend they will donate €10 to the OpenBSD foundation, so there's always that.
hoytech 8y ago
Perl's rand() is not a great way to generate values that should be unpredictable. It is seeded with only 4 bytes from /dev/urandom and is an LFSR like rand(3). The consequence is that the range of possible passwords is probably smaller than was intended, and furthermore seeing previous passwords (or the random MAC) may help in predicting passwords. Of course without seeing their entire setup it's hard to say to what extent that is the case here. This module may be useful (it even uses the same alphabet by default): https://metacpan.org/pod/Session::Token https://metacpan.org/pod/Session::Token
- dchest 8y ago
  Was thinking the same. Then remembered that OpenBSD's rand(3) actually returns result from arc4random() now. Then went to check and it seemed like Perl doesn't actually use rand(3) from libc? At least Perl's srand(N) and then rand() returned deterministic results, which shouldn't happen if it was using rand(3)...
  - hoytech 8y ago
    Yes good point. I was careful not to say that perl actually uses rand(3) because I think it may not for portability reasons. Also, I think this may have changed at some point so might be different depending on perl version.
    - notaplumber 8y ago
      OpenBSD's carrying some local patches, Perl rand appears to be using the libc drand48(3) on OpenBSD, which uses arc4random_buf(3) internally, unless Perl srand is called, then it uses srand48_deterministic(3)? Not sure precisely as it's also using arc4random(3) directly to seed something. This is slightly different from how it's handled outside the Perl software ecosystem, as all the srand* functions effectively became nops on OpenBSD in favour of strong random numbers, and userland ports had to be patched to use the deterministic variants if needed. I guess that would be hard with things like CPAN. https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-b1d655ef1da257a3f4c33327fb83bd0dR20776 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-6f239a14c0c4e792da78a0310d16d9a1R4652 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-9dc22d2e9511b13cd64378f8671179edR3133 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... Looks like upstream Perl also uses drand48 from FreeBSD, with its own internal RNG. But I guess this can be overridden with build options. I'd imagine something like pwgen would be better, but I doubt it matters here.
merlincorey 8y ago
I have one of these instances (thanks Roman and team), and I have to say it's been a lot of fun re-acquainting myself with OpenBSD. That said, I would consider this mostly a place for experimentation and hobby work, as I routinely am unable to connect or find that my VM has been unexpectedly rebooted. Now THAT said, I think they are figuring things out, because the issues have been a lot less frequent since the big hard drive failure a month or so ago. Anyway, if you want to learn you some OpenBSD, I highly recommend it as a place to experiment, and you help the OpenBSD community as well through their donation.
- smhenderson 8y ago
  I found Absolute OpenBSD[1] to be both informative and entertaining to read. Really anything by Michael Lucas is a good read for me. [1] https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#ao2e https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#ao2e
znedw 8y ago
If you need more convincing to try OpenBSD, these interviews are nice https://www.bsdjobs.com/people https://www.bsdjobs.com/people and similar to usesthis.com.

Yuioup 8y ago

Can somebody explain what this is?

vesinisa 8y ago
Looks like an OpenBSD version of Docker.
- popsickle 8y ago
  No, this is virtualization - vmm/vmd is a legit HVM.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    So it is better than systemd :p
    - dijit 8y ago
      it's really not comparable. SystemD is an init system (and you're conflating systemd with CGroups in Linux, which would be part of the kernel and not related to systemd at all) and a Hypervisor. More comparable comparisons could be: bhyve for FreeBSD, xhyve for OSX, virtualbox for... everything. Or QEMU/KVM on Linux.
      - mbrumlow 8y ago
        Oh man, I did not mean to type systemd! I ment docker.
        dijit 8y ago
        Aha, that makes sense. But still. Docker is containers, vmm is full virtualisation. Docker can be compared to FreeBSD jails, Solaris Zones or.. actually, cgroups in linux (for masochists).
        mbrumlow 8y ago
        I know I know. It was a joke and a slight jab at docker :p
        DonHopkins 8y ago
        The Urban Dictionary also defines docker as someone who makes a slight jab.
popsickle 8y ago
They're a minimal/simplified VPS provider; OpenBSD VPSes hosted on OpenBSD's native hypervisor.

Fnoord 8y ago

This has nothing to do with an official OpenBSD or Amsterdam project, does it?

popsickle 8y ago
Nope. However, for very €60 you spend they will donate €10 to the OpenBSD foundation, so there's always that.

hoytech 8y ago

Perl's rand() is not a great way to generate values that should be unpredictable. It is seeded with only 4 bytes from /dev/urandom and is an LFSR like rand(3). The consequence is that the range of possible passwords is probably smaller than was intended, and furthermore seeing previous passwords (or the random MAC) may help in predicting passwords. Of course without seeing their entire setup it's hard to say to what extent that is the case here. This module may be useful (it even uses the same alphabet by default): https://metacpan.org/pod/Session::Token https://metacpan.org/pod/Session::Token

dchest 8y ago
Was thinking the same. Then remembered that OpenBSD's rand(3) actually returns result from arc4random() now. Then went to check and it seemed like Perl doesn't actually use rand(3) from libc? At least Perl's srand(N) and then rand() returned deterministic results, which shouldn't happen if it was using rand(3)...
- hoytech 8y ago
  Yes good point. I was careful not to say that perl actually uses rand(3) because I think it may not for portability reasons. Also, I think this may have changed at some point so might be different depending on perl version.
  - notaplumber 8y ago
    OpenBSD's carrying some local patches, Perl rand appears to be using the libc drand48(3) on OpenBSD, which uses arc4random_buf(3) internally, unless Perl srand is called, then it uses srand48_deterministic(3)? Not sure precisely as it's also using arc4random(3) directly to seed something. This is slightly different from how it's handled outside the Perl software ecosystem, as all the srand* functions effectively became nops on OpenBSD in favour of strong random numbers, and userland ports had to be patched to use the deterministic variants if needed. I guess that would be hard with things like CPAN. https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-b1d655ef1da257a3f4c33327fb83bd0dR20776 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-6f239a14c0c4e792da78a0310d16d9a1R4652 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648ddbc62f0a74abf9e098d#diff-9dc22d2e9511b13cd64378f8671179edR3133 https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/2e109fb9e8c0dc273648dd... Looks like upstream Perl also uses drand48 from FreeBSD, with its own internal RNG. But I guess this can be overridden with build options. I'd imagine something like pwgen would be better, but I doubt it matters here.

merlincorey 8y ago

I have one of these instances (thanks Roman and team), and I have to say it's been a lot of fun re-acquainting myself with OpenBSD. That said, I would consider this mostly a place for experimentation and hobby work, as I routinely am unable to connect or find that my VM has been unexpectedly rebooted. Now THAT said, I think they are figuring things out, because the issues have been a lot less frequent since the big hard drive failure a month or so ago. Anyway, if you want to learn you some OpenBSD, I highly recommend it as a place to experiment, and you help the OpenBSD community as well through their donation.

smhenderson 8y ago
I found Absolute OpenBSD[1] to be both informative and entertaining to read. Really anything by Michael Lucas is a good read for me. [1] https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#ao2e https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#ao2e

znedw 8y ago

If you need more convincing to try OpenBSD, these interviews are nice https://www.bsdjobs.com/people https://www.bsdjobs.com/people and similar to usesthis.com.