6 ms·

OpenBSD Foundation Receives Silver Contribution from John Carmack

122 points by raimue 8y ago

grizzles 8y ago
Anyone know why OpenBSD VMs aren't provisionable by the big cloud companies like AWS or DigitalOcean? I've always found it to be a curious omission given OpenBSDs sterling reputation for security.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Probably just the amount of support tickets vs revenue. OpenBSD doesn't support Xen PV, for example. I thought there was an AWS AMI for OpenBSD though. Vultr does let you boot up and install any ISO, so that's an option. Not a big provider, but...
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
    In principle, if the provider does support full-virtualization and has a debug console, one could install any operating system of their choice, manually. It may be possible even without one, if you can somehow figure out how the boot process works. The most crazy successful attempt I made was performing deletion of the entire Linux root filesystem with a busybox shell running in RAM over SSH, and replacing it with to another unsupported distribution, then rewrite the grub.cfg, configure the network settings and trigger a clean filesystem sync and reboot via proc. Finally pray you'll see the server coming online again soon. It worked. But providing a template is all it needs for the provider to support OpenBSD, unfortunately it is still unavailable. Is it that hard to provide a template?
  - Mikealcl 8y ago
    Vultr has it listed now officially. Don’t think you even need to upload the iso anymore.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      Can confirm OpenBSD works fine on Vultr. No weird install problems.
- technofiend 8y ago
  Now that Digital Ocean has added custom image support, it's at least potentially possible. No idea if OpenBSD supports all the cloud components needed but it does at least support ext2 which may be close enough. https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/ https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/
- pyritschard 8y ago
  I expect the situation to change over time, OpenBSD has invested a lot in working well with KVM which most providers are relying on now anyway. OpenBSD also has cloud-init support now[1] which makes interaction with terraform and ansible much simpler. While the big three do not have officially supported templates, a few providers do, including Exoscale (disclaimer: CTO there). [1]: https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init
- sirmac1k 8y ago
  While there isn't many companies supporting obsd officially it took me a little over 5 minutes to spin it on my own VPS at OVH. So if your provider gives you the access to kvm console you just need to download bsd.rd, add GRUB entry and reboot. Do your install and you're a happy OpenBSD user in the cloud. In the next step I think I'll automate that process with bash/ansible and autoinstall file.
- h1d 8y ago
  Vultr has it but to be honest when I was considering to switch my personal server from Linux as it can be anything, I wanted to run OpenBSD for providing the leading tools like OpenSSH and I'm a fan of pf and to support them by running it but when I deployed, it just lacked packages which means you need to compile stuff from source but typically OpenBSD isn't in those deployment target and they just don't compile even though some support FreeBSD. In the end I just settled with FreeBSD when most stuff I used to use in Linux worked fine. I really wish I could stay with OpenBSD. I don't want to call it but it does feel like it's becoming more of a research OS.
aquabeagle 8y ago
A "silver-level" contribution, not literally a contribution of silver :)
- CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
  That would’ve been awesome, if he made the contribution in actual silver.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    It would be between 25kg (54 pounds) and 60kg (130 pounds), depending on the size of the donation. Just in case anybody else was wondering too.
curiousgal 8y ago
Tangent: I just love how it links to a diff with his name added. There's something about that.
- geoah 8y ago
  And why are they not closing the HTML tags? Why? Why would anyone do this? :P
  - dogecoinbase 8y ago
    Ahem ;) https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/syntax.html#optional-tags https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/syntax.html#op... "An li element's end tag may be omitted if the li element is immediately followed by another li element or if there is no more content in the parent element."
    - wongarsu 8y ago
      I know that makes sense, but it feels unsettling and wrong. Where are the good old times of proper XHTML.
      - tannhaeuser 8y ago
        They've been superseeded by the even older and better times of SGML ;)
      - dannypgh 8y ago
        HTML and XHTML are different things, and you can have proper documents in either. HTML is a subset of SGML. XML is designed for machines to read and write. SGML, humans. It's like the difference between JSON and Markdown. (Addendum: TIL HTML5 is not parseable as SGML. Because, reasons.)
        marktangotango 8y ago
        According to Firefox, chrome and amusingly not IEs xmlserializers, xhtml tags are case insensitive. The scars oh the scars..:
kasey_junk 8y ago
A silver contribution is 10k-25k.
BonesJustice 8y ago
Hey, you can now have your name immortalized next to the great John Carmack’s for just $10,000.
- Technoannoyed 8y ago
  Does replying to your comment also immortalise one's name to the great John Carmack's?
- carlmr 8y ago
  It's kind of unclear whether $10,000 is Bronze or Silver.
openloop 8y ago
Hero.
copperx 8y ago
I'm curious. What are people here using OpenBSD for? In which scenarios would you consider using OpenBSD over Linux?
- dman 8y ago
  WorkstationOS in my case.
- 51lver 8y ago
  It makes a damned good router or ssh gateway
  - chx 8y ago
    We used to call it bastion host but yes. Rent a few physical machines around the world, make production SSH firewalled off from everywhere except those ones. Now you only need to worry about all the security holes in your web app stack which are of course quite numerous... but at least you are not bothered by SSH bots.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Just put SSH access behind a decent VPN such as WireGuard.
- Philipp__ 8y ago
  It makes really nice workstation operating system, believe it or not.
  - copperx 8y ago
    The reason I don't believe it is because I doubt it has drivers for the latest graphics cards and modern desktop environments such as Gnome/KDE. Is Ryzen even supported? What about sleep/suspend and resume? What's the story on package management? Can you run VirtualBox / VMWare on it?
    - 8y ago

122 points by raimue 8y ago

Anyone know why OpenBSD VMs aren't provisionable by the big cloud companies like AWS or DigitalOcean? I've always found it to be a curious omission given OpenBSDs sterling reputation for security.

tyingq 8y ago
Probably just the amount of support tickets vs revenue. OpenBSD doesn't support Xen PV, for example. I thought there was an AWS AMI for OpenBSD though. Vultr does let you boot up and install any ISO, so that's an option. Not a big provider, but...
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y ago
  In principle, if the provider does support full-virtualization and has a debug console, one could install any operating system of their choice, manually. It may be possible even without one, if you can somehow figure out how the boot process works. The most crazy successful attempt I made was performing deletion of the entire Linux root filesystem with a busybox shell running in RAM over SSH, and replacing it with to another unsupported distribution, then rewrite the grub.cfg, configure the network settings and trigger a clean filesystem sync and reboot via proc. Finally pray you'll see the server coming online again soon. It worked. But providing a template is all it needs for the provider to support OpenBSD, unfortunately it is still unavailable. Is it that hard to provide a template?
- Mikealcl 8y ago
  Vultr has it listed now officially. Don’t think you even need to upload the iso anymore.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Can confirm OpenBSD works fine on Vultr. No weird install problems.
technofiend 8y ago
Now that Digital Ocean has added custom image support, it's at least potentially possible. No idea if OpenBSD supports all the cloud components needed but it does at least support ext2 which may be close enough. https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/ https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/
pyritschard 8y ago
I expect the situation to change over time, OpenBSD has invested a lot in working well with KVM which most providers are relying on now anyway. OpenBSD also has cloud-init support now[1] which makes interaction with terraform and ansible much simpler. While the big three do not have officially supported templates, a few providers do, including Exoscale (disclaimer: CTO there). [1]: https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init https://github.com/exoscale/openbsd-cloud-init
sirmac1k 8y ago
While there isn't many companies supporting obsd officially it took me a little over 5 minutes to spin it on my own VPS at OVH. So if your provider gives you the access to kvm console you just need to download bsd.rd, add GRUB entry and reboot. Do your install and you're a happy OpenBSD user in the cloud. In the next step I think I'll automate that process with bash/ansible and autoinstall file.
h1d 8y ago
Vultr has it but to be honest when I was considering to switch my personal server from Linux as it can be anything, I wanted to run OpenBSD for providing the leading tools like OpenSSH and I'm a fan of pf and to support them by running it but when I deployed, it just lacked packages which means you need to compile stuff from source but typically OpenBSD isn't in those deployment target and they just don't compile even though some support FreeBSD. In the end I just settled with FreeBSD when most stuff I used to use in Linux worked fine. I really wish I could stay with OpenBSD. I don't want to call it but it does feel like it's becoming more of a research OS.

aquabeagle 8y ago

A "silver-level" contribution, not literally a contribution of silver :)

CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
That would’ve been awesome, if he made the contribution in actual silver.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  It would be between 25kg (54 pounds) and 60kg (130 pounds), depending on the size of the donation. Just in case anybody else was wondering too.

curiousgal 8y ago

Tangent: I just love how it links to a diff with his name added. There's something about that.

geoah 8y ago
And why are they not closing the HTML tags? Why? Why would anyone do this? :P
- dogecoinbase 8y ago
  Ahem ;) https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/syntax.html#optional-tags https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/syntax.html#op... "An li element's end tag may be omitted if the li element is immediately followed by another li element or if there is no more content in the parent element."
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    I know that makes sense, but it feels unsettling and wrong. Where are the good old times of proper XHTML.
    - tannhaeuser 8y ago
      They've been superseeded by the even older and better times of SGML ;)
    - dannypgh 8y ago
      HTML and XHTML are different things, and you can have proper documents in either. HTML is a subset of SGML. XML is designed for machines to read and write. SGML, humans. It's like the difference between JSON and Markdown. (Addendum: TIL HTML5 is not parseable as SGML. Because, reasons.)
      - marktangotango 8y ago
        According to Firefox, chrome and amusingly not IEs xmlserializers, xhtml tags are case insensitive. The scars oh the scars..:

kasey_junk 8y ago

A silver contribution is 10k-25k.

BonesJustice 8y ago

Hey, you can now have your name immortalized next to the great John Carmack’s for just $10,000.

Technoannoyed 8y ago
Does replying to your comment also immortalise one's name to the great John Carmack's?
carlmr 8y ago
It's kind of unclear whether $10,000 is Bronze or Silver.

openloop 8y ago

Hero.

copperx 8y ago

I'm curious. What are people here using OpenBSD for? In which scenarios would you consider using OpenBSD over Linux?

dman 8y ago
WorkstationOS in my case.
51lver 8y ago
It makes a damned good router or ssh gateway
- chx 8y ago
  We used to call it bastion host but yes. Rent a few physical machines around the world, make production SSH firewalled off from everywhere except those ones. Now you only need to worry about all the security holes in your web app stack which are of course quite numerous... but at least you are not bothered by SSH bots.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Just put SSH access behind a decent VPN such as WireGuard.
Philipp__ 8y ago
It makes really nice workstation operating system, believe it or not.
- copperx 8y ago
  The reason I don't believe it is because I doubt it has drivers for the latest graphics cards and modern desktop environments such as Gnome/KDE. Is Ryzen even supported? What about sleep/suspend and resume? What's the story on package management? Can you run VirtualBox / VMWare on it?
  - 8y ago