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Falling in love with OpenBSD again
- fxfan 8y agoShould I run OpenBSD or Debian on my VPS, with arguments about security and (some) ease of usability?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoIs there a good option for VPS hosting with OpenBSD? It receives minimal support from major providers which I'm aware. Which is unfortunate, since I personally find it to be a much nicer system to work with than the more popular operating systems.
- ioddly 8y agoVultr will let you spin up an OpenBSD VPS easily, although as to how supported it is I'm not sure. I'm certainly happy with their Linux offerings.
- gorbypark 8y agoI actually have an OpenBSD instance with 512mb of ram that costs $2.50/mo on Vultr and their support has been amazing. A while after upgrading OpenBSD to a new version, I noticed IPV6 wasn't working anymore. I didn't initially think it was the upgrade that did it, because I rarely ever thing about IPV6, so I opened a support ticket. I got a response back by someone obviously very familiar with OpenBSD with step-by-step instructions on what I needed to do after the upgrade to get back IPV6. It was pretty amazing for $2.50/mo!
- snazz 8y agoI got $10 in free credit at sign up too. Very impressed with their service so far and OpenBSD is equally well supported as Linux. In case someone is looking for the very cheap plans, make sure to select Atlanta as the data center because some other locations in the US don’t have the cheapest plans.
- JdeBP 8y agoOut of curiosity: Was it the IPv6 regression in 5.9? * https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/299580/5132
- gorbypark 8y agoHmm, I can't remember exactly. It was either 5.9->6.0 or 6.0->6.1. I'm leaning towards the latter.
- protomyth 8y agoI use Vultr, and it works pretty well for a budget provider.
- lelf 8y agoKVM (not joking)
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoIf I had colo space, why not just run OpenBSD on bare metal and optionally use vmm? I want this precisely because I'm not in a position to host stuff physically myself.
- lelf 8y agoI mean (forgive my heresy) using kvm(-the-hypervisor) under GNU/Linux to run guest OpenBSD. That is at least a very fast way to get started, spin up €2 instance somewhere, qemu -cdrom openbsd.iso and that's it.
- gigatexal 8y agoYou can upload a custom image to your digital ocean droplet.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- meruru 8y agoPerhaps https://openbsd.amsterdam https://openbsd.amsterdam
- platform 8y agohttps://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html https://openbsd.amsterdam/setup.html this was posted here. I was intrigued but have not tried it (because my software relies on java 11, which is not on OpenBSD)
- pimeys 8y agohttps://console.hetzner.cloud/ https://console.hetzner.cloud/ has OpenBSD 6.4. You must purchase a server with one of the four official Linux images first, then go server settings and from the iso images you can mount the OpenBSD install ISO and reboot. Use the server console to continue the installation.
- cyberpunk 8y agoAs someone who was a heavy OVH user -- well, 100 or so dedicated servers -- and who just abandoned an attempt to migrate them to hetzner (who were slightly cheaper and offered NVME) -- let me suggest that you avoid Hetzner. They blocked several critial IPs of mine without any warning, their support had absolutely no idea what the problem was and refused to unblock my IPs until I could convince them I'd solved the "problem" (which was an extra mac address appearing on one of my router addresses -- not an actual problem) and cost my business about 10k in the process. The email chain was... painful. I've never had such a bad experience with a host before. YMMV of course, but I'm back on OVH and life is easy again...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- snvzz 8y agoAny of this should work. https://ramnode.com/vps.php https://ramnode.com/vps.php (kvm) https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.vultr.com/pricing/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://www.exoscale.com/compute/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://openbsd.amsterdam/ https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices
- vbezhenar 8y agoYou can install any Linux distro e.g. Centos with grub, copy OpenBSD install image to /boot and start it with grub. From now on you can just install it reformatting disk. You don’t need any particular support, standard KVM should be enough. Here’s guide I used recently and it worked just fine: https://archive.org/details/hpr2181 https://archive.org/details/hpr2181
- platform 8y agoDepends on the software requirements you have, and perhaps on the network throughput you need. For example java 11 is not, yet, a native option in any of the BSDs (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DF Bsd).
- jbverschoor 8y agoThis is the reason I switched from FreeBSD to Debian about 20 years ago. Sad that it's still not an option.
- platform 8y agojava is definetely an option on all of the BSDs I mentioned. It just they did not have Java 11 ported to them yet. But now since OpenJDK 11 is ported to FreeBSD, others, will follow. Sorry if my comment was not clear.
- wolrah 8y agoIMO not having Java should be considered a positive. Java is wonderful in theory, but in practice it's likely been one of the most common recurring headaches in my IT management career. For a platform where one of the key marketing points has always been "write once, run anywhere" it sure is apparently not only easy but seemingly encouraged to write software that only runs on a specific version of the JVM, often with key security features disabled. Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which. Obviously not all Java applications nor all Java developers suck, but there is a larger than normal amount of suckage in the Java universe.
- darkpuma 8y ago> "Either Java itself sucks or Java encourages its developers to suck. I'm not sure which." Neither. Java makes it easy for developers that suck to contribute. (The subtle difference here being that it won't make a good developer lose his competency.) Incidentally this is why companies love java so much. Hiring a java developer straight out of college is much easier than hiring a C++ developer straight out of college. Arguably in the last few years Java's niche has been encroached on by other accessible languages with mild learning curves (golang, javascript/node, etc) but for years Java was the obvious choice if you wanted to hire cheap developers that could at the bare minimum fullfil the design requirements.
- ekovarski 8y agoYou should run what you are familiar with as security is an ongoing process of updating, applying patches, so familiarity will make these chores easier.
- ip26 8y agoOpenBSD is great for a VPS, especially a small one. The minimal install has an incredibly short list of packages, which I like & feel helps keep everything working even over many years of following updates. It's just so much simpler than most Linux distros. But, familiarity or lack thereof can be very important- it's amazing how much is different about BSD, when we are used to thinking of it as a close cousin to Linux.
- eljimmy 8y agoNice read. It’s always enjoyable setting up a new machine, regardless of the OS or platform you’re using. I’ve never used BSD or any of its derivatives - is the main difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD just the focus on security?
- notaplumber 8y agoA lot more than just security-- albeit that is one of the primary focuses of OpenBSD, encompassing everything from researching new mitigations to secure coding practices. https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html https://www.openbsd.org/innovations.html If it helps to put things into perspective, NetBSD is closest relative to OpenBSD, the latter having forked over 23 years ago. The last time FreeBSD and OpenBSD shared the same tree was at Berkeley. In fact, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD independently merged the final release from Berkeley, 4.4BSD-Lite2 in 1995. Linux users generally don't understand what it means for each major BSD being fundamentally distinct operating systems, including separately developed kernels, drivers, userland utilities, with their own developer/user communities.
- asveikau 8y ago> fundamentally distinct operating systems, including separately developed kernels, drivers, userland utilities, with their own developer/user communities. A lot of stuff does get ported between them though, and many people use multiple of them.
- notaplumber 8y agoOf course there is some overlap.
- protomyth 8y agoFor me, OpenBSD is easier to deal with. I use FreeBSD for boxes where we need larger storage, and FreeBSD is just harder. I've had problems with upgrades and FreeBSD really doesn't document some stuff thoroughly (zfs upgrade for instance). OpenBSD does almost require you do the every 6 month upgrade, but it really isn't that much of a bother. The syspatch utility has made patches a lot easier. Packages are often delayed, but if it has what you need its pretty simple.
- meruru 8y agoSome genius HN person reading this please port ZFS!
- notaplumber 8y agoThat's not likely to happen for both licensing and technical reasons. CDDL is not an acceptable license. And OpenBSD also has no extant framework for loadable kernel modules, nor any desire to add one (increasing attack surface).
- ohithereyou 8y agoIn fact, they recently removed loadable kernel support. OpenBSD 5.6 is the last release to support this. Of course, you don't need loadable kernel module support to extend the OpenBSD kernel.
- meruru 8y agoI understand the CDDL is not GPL-compatible, but why is it not acceptable for OpenBSD?
- int_19h 8y agoIt's still copyleft, so including it into the base system would require licensing those parts as CDDL, so the system as a whole would no longer be BSD-licensed.
- AndrewDavis 8y agoOnly the files pulled in would fall under the cddl. The cddl is unlike the GPL in that it is file based copyleft. It doesn't force any other part it is combined with to be any license. Ie you could combine it with anything that is ISC or BSD licensed without issues.
- int_19h 8y agoWhat files wouldn't be pulled in in an implementation that doesn't support dynamically loaded kernel modules? But anyway, even one file is enough. The aggregate would no longer be clean BSDL.
- bummer904 8y agoThe main thing keeping me from using OpenBSD is that TCP transfers seem to take at least twice as long (testing both small and large files over plain HTTP) as Linux. Has anyone else seen this?
- switch007 8y agoTwice as long! Have you found an existing bug report? Did you remove every difference in your testing except for the OS?
- bummer904 8y agoYes. I'm just wondering if anyone has actually compared side by side and can either corroberate or contradict my findings.
- anyfoo 8y agoI'm not sure what you mean. Certainly many people would have noticed if OpenBSD's networking was generally half as fast as it's supposed to be. It must be something related to your specific configuration (not necessarily just software).
- ggm 8y agoActually I think very few OpenBSD people would notice if under load OpenBSD was significantly slower than Linux because very few OpenBSD people deploy in situation where they can do sustained parallel load tests. Linux has BBR. OpenBSD doesn't have BBR. The difference between BBR and Cubic or classic TCP is immense.
- anyfoo 8y agoThat's a good point. I read the comment such as that every transfer over TCP would be twice as slow, which would be pretty absurd, but the poster probably meant high load/bandwidth situations. It would not surprise me at all if OpenBSD fared way worse, there.
- anyfoo 8y agoI use OpenBSD on both my remote (VPS) and home (a tiny pcengine box with 3 NICs) servers. Naturally, they do some IPv6/IPsec/tunneling and other shenanigans with each other, and the home server is the router and firewall for probably overly complex home network. It is an absolute joy, and often I just mess around with the system for the fun of it. One of the compelling factors is that, unlike with a modern Linux distribution, I practically always have the impression of having full reach and understanding of the whole system, mainly because of OpenBSD's impressive consistency and documentation through man-pages.
- snazz 8y agoHave you tried it on a desktop yet? I’ve talked about my experiences a couple of times (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280736), and I like it so much that it’s now the only OS on my primary desktop and laptop.
- mruts 8y agoI love OpenBSD, I used to run it as my primary computer. The only problem is that the performance is pretty terrible, and they are only just now getting rid of the global spinlock that kills SMP performance for a lot of workloads.
- anyfoo 8y agoI did, in fact, but that was over 10 years ago, so I don't think my experience counts anymore!
- jplayer01 8y agoMan, I'd love to run a BSD, but I'm so spoiled by the convenience of the AUR and immediate access to the latest packages and any packages I could ever possibly want or need, that I don't think I'd last a week.
- c17r 8y agoI too have a 3-nic pcengine running OpenBSD. DHCP, DNS, routing, firewall, and VPN. It just does it’s thing, no fuss no muss that it’s quite boring (everything you want in your head end device). I’m very pleased.
- gcb0 8y agoit looks much easier to de-solder the BIOS than to use the Pamona Clip... unless you are doing a dozen of those.
- bmer 8y agoWhy must one do this step? I didn't quite understand it.
- JdeBP 8y agoFor the record: 16-bit OS/2 version 1.x never ran Windows programs. That only came about with 32-bit OS/2 version 2.x.
- whalesalad 8y agoTo think... all this could have been avoided by remapping capslock to escape =) I kid... but it’s definitely changed my life.
- bitminer 8y agoESC key? My fingers are trained to use ctrl-[ since it's quicker than moving a hand. Except some keyboards have different locations for ctrl-....
- sverige 8y agoThe most interesting paragraph was that the author is thinking about porting the Kali pentesting suite to OpenBSD. That would be awesome.
- pizzazzaro 8y agoThat's... Gonna take some kernel work - maybe just some wifi drivers, maybe more of the network stack. And if there is one thing that's less "open" than on Linux, its the OpenBSD kernel. Dont get me wrong, the source is out there. But you're not gonna find anyone forking it, running patchsets (like almost any linux main-distro does) or the like. Compiling your own kernel isnt even supported.