7 ms·

OpenBSD Innovations

163 points by vogon_laureate 3y ago

bjoli 3y ago
That random relinking at boot is such a simple and elegant way to make things harder for an attacker. I would like to think I could have come up with it myself.
ntfAX 3y ago
When memory safe programming language?
- accrual 3y ago
  On OpenBSD? I don't think it will happen any time soon. The developers seem pretty happy with C and instead enforce a strict code style, commit reviews, and auditing. There was a user on the lists a while back also running some static analysis and submitting bugs (moon-something, sorry, it was years ago).
- bandrami 3y ago
  Conceivably when the current team is retired and a different group of people with a different set of priorities takes over.
- mikem170 3y ago
  Here's Theo's response on integrating safe languages into openbsd, circa 2017: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 To summarize: He mentioned a lack base posix utilities in these languages (posix compliant utilities), and that changes like this take a long time (stack protector took 10 years to implement), and that these new toolchains would dramatically increase build times (like haskell cgrep vs openbsd grep), and that openbsd requires that base can build base on all platforms and some of these languages won't work on some supported platforms (there wasn't enough address space on i386 for rust to compile itself, for example). I realize some of this may be dated by now, but I assume the above are the types of concerns they would want to address.
vogon_laureate 3y ago
Even if you're not an OpenBSD user, it's always good to see just what sort of innovations they (and the other BSDs) are regularly coming up with to solve all sorts of operating system problems, audit code, and improve security and performance.
- nesarkvechnep 3y ago
  It was discouraging to realise that I don’t know anyone who at least has tried a BSD.
  - scrapheap 3y ago
    You can always give it a try yourself :)
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      They run great in VMs too if you don’t want to commit to running them on bare metal hardware just yet.
    - nesarkvechnep 3y ago
      Oh yeah, I used to run FreeBSD on desktop and now I play with servers. I have big gaps in networking and it’s a problem. I’m eager to learn though.
  - owenmarshall 3y ago
    One of my biggest knowledge gaps was networking, so many years ago I bought a little single board computer and committed to learn OpenBSD & roll my own router. I learned a ton, and definitely recommend this as the next step for someone who installed a BSD in a VM and is intrigued.
    - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
      This is on my list of projects I want to try. Can you recommend a hardware platform to start from? Edit: hardware for building a router that is.
teddyh 3y ago
> This is a list of software and ideas developed or maintained by the OpenBSD project (Emphasis mine.)
nullindividual 3y ago
CARP is probably my most favorite innovation from OpenBSD. It is a direct competitor to the closed Cisco VRRP and I find it to be easier to use than Linux' Keepalived (I'm assuming this came out post-VRRP licensing?).
- skullone 3y ago
  One funny thing, CARP on the same L2 segment can cause funny things to VRRP nodes - they're that similar :p
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    One protocol has the patent bit set to 1 while the other is set to 0.
  - throw7 3y ago
    Yep, they're the same protocol number 112, so they conflict. In things like wireshark, you'll want to change to the carp dissector.
    - somat 3y ago
      The openbsd project tried to get a protocol number for carp, IANA made it more difficult then the project was able to comply with. so they made an executive decision to use the vrrp protocol number as the least wrong option. Long story short pay extra close attention when when mixing vrrp and carp on the same network segment.
      - dc396 3y ago
        Um. No. You can't blame IANA for this. See: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2090149 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2090149 Key paragraph: "The OpenBSD team, led as always by their Glorious Leader (their words, not mine), decided that a RAND license just wasn't free enough for them. They wrote their own protocol, which was completely incompatible with VRRP. Well, you say, that's not so bad; that's competition, and we all know that competition is good and brings better products, and it's the glorious triumph of Capitalism. But there is one last little nit to this story. The new protocol dubbed CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol) uses the exact same IP number as VRRP (112). Most people, and KV includes himself in this group, think this was a jerk move. "Why would they do this?" I hear you cry. Well, it turns out that they believe themselves to be in a war with the enemies of open source, as well as with those opposed to motherhood and apple pie. Stomping on the same protocol number was, in their minds, a strike against their enemies and all for the good. Of course, it makes operating devices with both protocols in the same network difficult, and it makes debugging the software that implements the protocol nearly impossible."
rollcat 3y ago
The impact of AnonCVS is probably understated. Github was 2008. Remember SourceForge? It's easy to forget how casually browsing commit history was just not a thing.
- chungy 3y ago
  I likewise remember maintaining svnsync mirrors to have locally-browsable subversion history. Not only was it faster, but it also meant I could work offline. At least until I had to sync up my local commits to a remote server, oh boy that's a pain I had long forgotten. There's very good reasons Git won, this is among them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
patrec 3y ago
You say innovations, I say counterproductive bullshit. The idea to write a "secure" operating system on the basis of a) C, the single worst and most actively anti-secure language in the history of computing b) unix with its ambient authority/everything is global and myriad of other design flaws is just fucking crazy and about as helpful as efforts to "fix" cattle slavery by tinkering with the design of whips and chains to make them more humane. So which of these layers upon layers of crap actually really, fundamentally fixes any of the core underlying problems (like using, in 2023, a memory unsafe language full of UB footguns to implement network facing services and not having the semblance of a proper security model)? Rather than just making them incrementally harder to exploit at the cost of ever increasing complexity and overheads that also get imposed on saner technologies which do not suffer from these problems in the first place? How much faster (never mind secure, simple and robust) would our core computing infrastructure actually be if not everything was organized around a quixotic quest to partially mitigate some insane design decisions of C and the fact we're using a half-century outdated OS design?
- nazgulsenpai 3y ago
  I rather like OpenBSD. I find its simplicity and modularity to be a positive, and personally I find it much easier secure a system that I fully understand. Plus its liberal license and open source nature makes it easy for anyone to fully audit the entire system. And if you don't like OpenBSD, you can use something more secure, made with modern safe language or whatever it is you expect an OS to be.
- beachhead 3y ago
  what's cattle slavery? we talkin dairy cows or what?
gumballindie 3y ago
So many good open source operating systems out there yet nearly all suffer from lack of drivers. I think there should be legislation forcing hardware manufacturers to open source all of the code needed to run their products. Not doing so prevents users from using them as they see fit, and are instead limited to low quality products such as windows. Imagine if as a result all hardware would he compatible with all os’. Suddenly openbsd, freebsd and linux distros would be dominating the desktop.

That random relinking at boot is such a simple and elegant way to make things harder for an attacker. I would like to think I could have come up with it myself.

ntfAX 3y ago

When memory safe programming language?

accrual 3y ago
On OpenBSD? I don't think it will happen any time soon. The developers seem pretty happy with C and instead enforce a strict code style, commit reviews, and auditing. There was a user on the lists a while back also running some static analysis and submitting bugs (moon-something, sorry, it was years ago).
bandrami 3y ago
Conceivably when the current team is retired and a different group of people with a different set of priorities takes over.
mikem170 3y ago
Here's Theo's response on integrating safe languages into openbsd, circa 2017: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2 To summarize: He mentioned a lack base posix utilities in these languages (posix compliant utilities), and that changes like this take a long time (stack protector took 10 years to implement), and that these new toolchains would dramatically increase build times (like haskell cgrep vs openbsd grep), and that openbsd requires that base can build base on all platforms and some of these languages won't work on some supported platforms (there wasn't enough address space on i386 for rust to compile itself, for example). I realize some of this may be dated by now, but I assume the above are the types of concerns they would want to address.

vogon_laureate 3y ago

Even if you're not an OpenBSD user, it's always good to see just what sort of innovations they (and the other BSDs) are regularly coming up with to solve all sorts of operating system problems, audit code, and improve security and performance.

nesarkvechnep 3y ago
It was discouraging to realise that I don’t know anyone who at least has tried a BSD.
- scrapheap 3y ago
  You can always give it a try yourself :)
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    They run great in VMs too if you don’t want to commit to running them on bare metal hardware just yet.
  - nesarkvechnep 3y ago
    Oh yeah, I used to run FreeBSD on desktop and now I play with servers. I have big gaps in networking and it’s a problem. I’m eager to learn though.
- owenmarshall 3y ago
  One of my biggest knowledge gaps was networking, so many years ago I bought a little single board computer and committed to learn OpenBSD & roll my own router. I learned a ton, and definitely recommend this as the next step for someone who installed a BSD in a VM and is intrigued.
  - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
    This is on my list of projects I want to try. Can you recommend a hardware platform to start from? Edit: hardware for building a router that is.

teddyh 3y ago

> This is a list of software and ideas developed or maintained by the OpenBSD project (Emphasis mine.)

nullindividual 3y ago

CARP is probably my most favorite innovation from OpenBSD. It is a direct competitor to the closed Cisco VRRP and I find it to be easier to use than Linux' Keepalived (I'm assuming this came out post-VRRP licensing?).

skullone 3y ago
One funny thing, CARP on the same L2 segment can cause funny things to VRRP nodes - they're that similar :p
- nullindividual 3y ago
  One protocol has the patent bit set to 1 while the other is set to 0.
- throw7 3y ago
  Yep, they're the same protocol number 112, so they conflict. In things like wireshark, you'll want to change to the carp dissector.
  - somat 3y ago
    The openbsd project tried to get a protocol number for carp, IANA made it more difficult then the project was able to comply with. so they made an executive decision to use the vrrp protocol number as the least wrong option. Long story short pay extra close attention when when mixing vrrp and carp on the same network segment.
    - dc396 3y ago
      Um. No. You can't blame IANA for this. See: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2090149 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2090149 Key paragraph: "The OpenBSD team, led as always by their Glorious Leader (their words, not mine), decided that a RAND license just wasn't free enough for them. They wrote their own protocol, which was completely incompatible with VRRP. Well, you say, that's not so bad; that's competition, and we all know that competition is good and brings better products, and it's the glorious triumph of Capitalism. But there is one last little nit to this story. The new protocol dubbed CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol) uses the exact same IP number as VRRP (112). Most people, and KV includes himself in this group, think this was a jerk move. "Why would they do this?" I hear you cry. Well, it turns out that they believe themselves to be in a war with the enemies of open source, as well as with those opposed to motherhood and apple pie. Stomping on the same protocol number was, in their minds, a strike against their enemies and all for the good. Of course, it makes operating devices with both protocols in the same network difficult, and it makes debugging the software that implements the protocol nearly impossible."

rollcat 3y ago

The impact of AnonCVS is probably understated. Github was 2008. Remember SourceForge? It's easy to forget how casually browsing commit history was just not a thing.

chungy 3y ago
I likewise remember maintaining svnsync mirrors to have locally-browsable subversion history. Not only was it faster, but it also meant I could work offline. At least until I had to sync up my local commits to a remote server, oh boy that's a pain I had long forgotten. There's very good reasons Git won, this is among them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

patrec 3y ago

You say innovations, I say counterproductive bullshit. The idea to write a "secure" operating system on the basis of a) C, the single worst and most actively anti-secure language in the history of computing b) unix with its ambient authority/everything is global and myriad of other design flaws is just fucking crazy and about as helpful as efforts to "fix" cattle slavery by tinkering with the design of whips and chains to make them more humane. So which of these layers upon layers of crap actually really, fundamentally fixes any of the core underlying problems (like using, in 2023, a memory unsafe language full of UB footguns to implement network facing services and not having the semblance of a proper security model)? Rather than just making them incrementally harder to exploit at the cost of ever increasing complexity and overheads that also get imposed on saner technologies which do not suffer from these problems in the first place? How much faster (never mind secure, simple and robust) would our core computing infrastructure actually be if not everything was organized around a quixotic quest to partially mitigate some insane design decisions of C and the fact we're using a half-century outdated OS design?

nazgulsenpai 3y ago
I rather like OpenBSD. I find its simplicity and modularity to be a positive, and personally I find it much easier secure a system that I fully understand. Plus its liberal license and open source nature makes it easy for anyone to fully audit the entire system. And if you don't like OpenBSD, you can use something more secure, made with modern safe language or whatever it is you expect an OS to be.
beachhead 3y ago
what's cattle slavery? we talkin dairy cows or what?

gumballindie 3y ago

So many good open source operating systems out there yet nearly all suffer from lack of drivers. I think there should be legislation forcing hardware manufacturers to open source all of the code needed to run their products. Not doing so prevents users from using them as they see fit, and are instead limited to low quality products such as windows. Imagine if as a result all hardware would he compatible with all os’. Suddenly openbsd, freebsd and linux distros would be dominating the desktop.