9 ms·

OpenBSD 5.5 Released

106 points by throwaway2048 13y ago

ninjin 13y ago
Don't miss out on the release song and the accompanying brief write-up about the release. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#55 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#55
0x0 13y ago
time_t is now always 64bit! Good to see someone working proactively on the y2k38 problem.
- bananas 13y ago
  Indeed. I get worried when I see people deploying new embedded ARM systems these days to replace systems that are 30 years old when there is only 24 years to 2038...
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  the most headache inducing issues by far are going to be file formats and network protocols that integrate 32bit unix timestamps, which are numerous. NTP is one such example. This is a much worse and much more fundamental issue than the y2k bug was, I hope people aren't writing off the severity, the time to start dealing with it is now.
  - 0x0 13y ago
    Agreed, it's pretty scary. On the other hand, I'm sure similar problems were tackled for y2k with the 2-digit fields everywhere. If we built it, we can rebuild it. Although a lot of software and hardware will need replacing/upgrading/switching over to new protocols.
    - Sanddancer 13y ago
      They were, however, given that a lot of things have life in the field of several decades, now is the time to start fixing it so it doesn't become a mad rush. Yes, it means less money for devs 23 years from now as they madly rush to update software, but I'd rather that money be spent for devs to make future programs awesome than to worry about our ghosts.
  - legulere 13y ago
    NTP doesn't use unix timestamps but an other format. It will hit the bug 2 years earlier.
  - falconfunction 13y ago
    If I see the 2038 problem in a newspaper headline I think I'm going to take the closer fire exit.
- zokier 13y ago
  It seems bit odd that they are so proud of 64-bit time_t that they even made their release song about that, with this sentence in the description: > In the same way, the road is paved for the 64-bit time_t transition. Other operating systems can now make this jump Haven't Linux and FreeBSD been on 64bit time_t for like 10 years now?
  - edwintorok 13y ago
    If you install a 32-bit Linux, then time_t is still 32-bit, only on 64-bit Linux you get 64-bit time_t. Although by 2038 I hope we won't have many 32-bit systems around...
    - bananas 13y ago
      Embedded devices are likely to be 32-bit for a very long time yet. I'd consider 100+ years to be a reasonable number! 64-bit devices are much more complicated (bus size, peripherals, part count) and therefore more expensive. If your entire task fits in a 32-bit space there is little motivation to use a 64-bit core.
      - zokier 13y ago
        > 64-bit devices are much more complicated (bus size, peripherals, part count) and therefore more expensive I don't see why 64 bit core would imply any additional external complexity? Didn't 68k have 32bit core and work just fine down to 8bit external bus?
        bananas 13y ago
        It won't on full SoC devices but most ARM embedded devices of that sort have all sorts of peripherals which are bus connected so the bus will need to be external.
    - mrweasel 13y ago
      I think one of the points from OpenBSD is that 32 bit systems will be around. Legacy system are one thing, but how about embedded systems. Manufacturers will want to use 32bit processors in new system for a long long time, simply because they can save a few cents.
bananas 13y ago
I'm increasingly impressed with the progress that OpenBSD is making. They're hitting some real problems on the head and actually letting us know what the changes are in a concise form as they always have. Compare this to a Ubuntu LTS release which is virtually impossible to determine a detailed change list for past the marketing and UI changes.
- pyvpx 13y ago
  I'm not sure what constitutes progress, but in my experience OpenBSD has been doing this since 3.3 (when I started using it regularly)
  - bananas 13y ago
    I've been using it since 2.4 as well but the progress is remarkable considering the team size and funding. Progress for me is the replacement of non-BSD licensed parts and top notch re-engineering of the old rusty bits as well as hardware support which is pretty damn solid and reliable.
  - mrweasel 13y ago
    It may be completely unrelated, but it seems like development have increased in speed since they successfully collected the $150.000+ in donations.
- verytrivial 13y ago
  I found this ~14 minute interview with Theo de Raadt from ruBSD very interesting and apropos OpenBSD's approach to trail-blazing "painful" changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXS8ljif9b8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXS8ljif9b8 tl;dw: Changes that must be done, must be DONE. The only way to see the ACTUAL impact is to just do it already and get feedback from real users. When the dust has settled, less brave projects can follow suit. I'm donating.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    BSD Now did an interview with him that is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahBZ4lSZHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahBZ4lSZHQ or http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013_10_09-doing_it_de_raadt_way http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013_10_09-doing_it_de_raadt_w...
edwintorok 13y ago
The addition of signify is also interesting: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify
mykhal 13y ago
$title =~ s/Released/to be \l$& today/
- edwintorok 13y ago
  You can download it already, although it seems the packages are missing on some mirrors for 5.5 still.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Some of the mirrors take an extra day.
ja27 13y ago
I know Theo and others are opposed to it, but I still would like to see it on the Raspberry Pi. Kind of a missed opportunity to make it easy for lots of people to give OpenBSD a try. http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132788027403910&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132788027403910&w=2
- bananas 13y ago
  The following "Blob" song and notes explain why they don't do it: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 And I agree with it entirely :)
- edwintorok 13y ago
  That is from 2012: in 2012 Raspberry Pi was a closed platform, not at all recommended: https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-for-education/ http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... Things have only started to change recently when BroadCom released some documentation: https://libv.livejournal.com/26434.html https://libv.livejournal.com/26434.html There is some support for OpenBSD on ARM, for hardware that is more open than the Raspberry Pi: http://www.openbsd.org/armv7.html http://www.openbsd.org/armv7.html
- clarry 13y ago
  It's not that Theo & co oppose it per se. It's that they are not interested in working on it, for a number of good reasons. If you are interested and willing to do the work to get it running (with free software), I'm sure somebody will take a look at the diffs you send to tech@. Chances are you'll also have to maintain the work.
- jolan 13y ago
  Well the Beaglebone Black is supported which is pretty much a more powerful Raspberry Pi and only costs $10 more.
  - angersock 13y ago
    Anywhere you can actually buy one, though? They seem to be on backorder everywhere I've checked.
muyuu 13y ago
I preordered the CDs a few weeks ago. Looking forward to the stickers and maybe some surprise :-)
- muyuu 13y ago
  Woha and I received it in the mail today! Happy times.
jorgecastillo 13y ago
My favorite operating system, unfortunately I had to uninstall it since I intend to learn Android development. If you haven't tried it yet & it looks like it has the software you need I invite you to give it a try.
snake_plissken 13y ago
Regarding the 2k38 problem, 24 years from now will any 32-bit systems still be in production? Won't mean-time-to-failure handle this for us? Software wise, it might be a different story.
- protomyth 13y ago
  There will be 32-bit systems still running in embedded systems. It is amazing how long stuff runs when hidden in walls.
- mrweasel 13y ago
  Not only will they be in production, they will still be built and designed. Stuff like nuclear power-plants and bridges also have a slightly high mean-time-to-failure than my laptop. 24 years isn't that long for infrastructure.
clarry 13y ago
Actual release announcement: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139895775701963&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139895775701963&w=2
darklajid 13y ago
Pain points for me: The package management and upgrades. If I'm not mistaken (perfectly possible, I'm really no expert and only browsed OpenBSD documentation here and there) - you have no decent binary packages FreeBSD guys online complain a lot about the current pkgng changes, but the direction is great: Build from ports, install binaries elsewhere. This is something I really really like, since I tend to avoid building stuff on production machines and since I don't want to (even temporarily - and that means you have to clean up!) pull in pure build time dependencies. FreeBSD solved this for my use case with pkgng and the ability to easily host your own repository. I have a build machine and run portshaker/poudriere to create exactly the (binary) packages I need. Installation on the targets is a breeze. - consider the heartbleed issue As far as I understand the OpenBSD project issued a patch (as in text file) and told you to rebuild the related parts of your base system (or everything)? FreeBSD has binary updates for these kind of things. I'm not trying to bash OpenBSD or promote FreeBSD, I guess the general idea behind this post is that I'm interested in the project OpenBSD, but feel that running OpenBSD would probably too much tinkering than I'd like (cough I guess I'm saying that I'm lazy?). But maybe, maybe, I'm wrong about one or both of these "issues"? Maybe there are 3rd party helpers that make everything very, very easy (just like portshaker/poudriere on FreeBSD are tools I install from ports, i.e. not part of base)? I'd be happy to be enlightened.
- avsm 13y ago
  > you have no decent binary packages This is completely incorrect. OpenBSD has been all about building reproducible binary packages for quite a long time now, and the ports tree is regularly bulk-built and failing ports fixed or swept out of the way. The key difference from FreeBSD is that OpenBSD binary package sets are released every six months with the base system, and you are expected to upgrade them during a system upgrade. It's as simple as `pkg_add -ui` if you point the PKG_PATH to a remote OpenBSD distribution mirror. One advantage of upgrading ports with the base system is that caveats are all conveniently listed in the upgrade guide for that release. E.g. for 5.4->5.5: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade55.html#Pkgup http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade55.html#Pkgup
  - darklajid 13y ago
protomyth 13y ago
Do remember to apply the patches http://www.openbsd.org/errata55.html http://www.openbsd.org/errata55.html
- cauterize 13y ago
  This strategy really hit home for my dinkly little router. I don't have the disk or CPU resources to compile these patches. Is there no other way to get the updates other than wait for the next release?
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Get someone you trust to build it for you is my current solution[1]. I'm not really up on the plans for binary patches other than they are signing stuff now. Also, BinpatchNG was mentioned at one time. 1) http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Release http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Release
    - cauterize 13y ago
      Looks like a weekend project to setup a VM to build just got bumped to the top. Thanks for the inspiration!
  - clarry 13y ago
    You can run -current snapshots. Caveat: the system changes, packages change, things are not always in sync. You might have to upgrade to a newer snapshot if you want to add binary packages after a while. This doesn't affect you if you only use software from base, or only use packages that can be installed around the time you install the system. Alternatively, you can get binary patches from M:Tier: https://stable.mtier.org/ https://stable.mtier.org/
    - cauterize 13y ago
      Thanks for the link!
    - 13y ago

106 points by throwaway2048 13y ago

Don't miss out on the release song and the accompanying brief write-up about the release. http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#55 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#55

0x0 13y ago

time_t is now always 64bit! Good to see someone working proactively on the y2k38 problem.

bananas 13y ago
Indeed. I get worried when I see people deploying new embedded ARM systems these days to replace systems that are 30 years old when there is only 24 years to 2038...
throwaway2048 13y ago
the most headache inducing issues by far are going to be file formats and network protocols that integrate 32bit unix timestamps, which are numerous. NTP is one such example. This is a much worse and much more fundamental issue than the y2k bug was, I hope people aren't writing off the severity, the time to start dealing with it is now.
- 0x0 13y ago
  Agreed, it's pretty scary. On the other hand, I'm sure similar problems were tackled for y2k with the 2-digit fields everywhere. If we built it, we can rebuild it. Although a lot of software and hardware will need replacing/upgrading/switching over to new protocols.
  - Sanddancer 13y ago
    They were, however, given that a lot of things have life in the field of several decades, now is the time to start fixing it so it doesn't become a mad rush. Yes, it means less money for devs 23 years from now as they madly rush to update software, but I'd rather that money be spent for devs to make future programs awesome than to worry about our ghosts.
- legulere 13y ago
  NTP doesn't use unix timestamps but an other format. It will hit the bug 2 years earlier.
- falconfunction 13y ago
  If I see the 2038 problem in a newspaper headline I think I'm going to take the closer fire exit.
zokier 13y ago
It seems bit odd that they are so proud of 64-bit time_t that they even made their release song about that, with this sentence in the description: > In the same way, the road is paved for the 64-bit time_t transition. Other operating systems can now make this jump Haven't Linux and FreeBSD been on 64bit time_t for like 10 years now?
- edwintorok 13y ago
  If you install a 32-bit Linux, then time_t is still 32-bit, only on 64-bit Linux you get 64-bit time_t. Although by 2038 I hope we won't have many 32-bit systems around...
  - bananas 13y ago
    Embedded devices are likely to be 32-bit for a very long time yet. I'd consider 100+ years to be a reasonable number! 64-bit devices are much more complicated (bus size, peripherals, part count) and therefore more expensive. If your entire task fits in a 32-bit space there is little motivation to use a 64-bit core.
    - zokier 13y ago
      > 64-bit devices are much more complicated (bus size, peripherals, part count) and therefore more expensive I don't see why 64 bit core would imply any additional external complexity? Didn't 68k have 32bit core and work just fine down to 8bit external bus?
      - bananas 13y ago
        It won't on full SoC devices but most ARM embedded devices of that sort have all sorts of peripherals which are bus connected so the bus will need to be external.
  - mrweasel 13y ago
    I think one of the points from OpenBSD is that 32 bit systems will be around. Legacy system are one thing, but how about embedded systems. Manufacturers will want to use 32bit processors in new system for a long long time, simply because they can save a few cents.

bananas 13y ago

I'm increasingly impressed with the progress that OpenBSD is making. They're hitting some real problems on the head and actually letting us know what the changes are in a concise form as they always have. Compare this to a Ubuntu LTS release which is virtually impossible to determine a detailed change list for past the marketing and UI changes.

pyvpx 13y ago
I'm not sure what constitutes progress, but in my experience OpenBSD has been doing this since 3.3 (when I started using it regularly)
- bananas 13y ago
  I've been using it since 2.4 as well but the progress is remarkable considering the team size and funding. Progress for me is the replacement of non-BSD licensed parts and top notch re-engineering of the old rusty bits as well as hardware support which is pretty damn solid and reliable.
- mrweasel 13y ago
  It may be completely unrelated, but it seems like development have increased in speed since they successfully collected the $150.000+ in donations.
verytrivial 13y ago
I found this ~14 minute interview with Theo de Raadt from ruBSD very interesting and apropos OpenBSD's approach to trail-blazing "painful" changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXS8ljif9b8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXS8ljif9b8 tl;dw: Changes that must be done, must be DONE. The only way to see the ACTUAL impact is to just do it already and get feedback from real users. When the dust has settled, less brave projects can follow suit. I'm donating.
- protomyth 13y ago
  BSD Now did an interview with him that is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahBZ4lSZHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahBZ4lSZHQ or http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013_10_09-doing_it_de_raadt_way http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013_10_09-doing_it_de_raadt_w...

edwintorok 13y ago

The addition of signify is also interesting: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/signify

mykhal 13y ago

$title =~ s/Released/to be \l$& today/

edwintorok 13y ago
You can download it already, although it seems the packages are missing on some mirrors for 5.5 still.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Some of the mirrors take an extra day.

ja27 13y ago

I know Theo and others are opposed to it, but I still would like to see it on the Raspberry Pi. Kind of a missed opportunity to make it easy for lots of people to give OpenBSD a try. http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132788027403910&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=132788027403910&w=2

bananas 13y ago
The following "Blob" song and notes explain why they don't do it: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 And I agree with it entirely :)
edwintorok 13y ago
That is from 2012: in 2012 Raspberry Pi was a closed platform, not at all recommended: https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-unsuitable-for-education/ http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... Things have only started to change recently when BroadCom released some documentation: https://libv.livejournal.com/26434.html https://libv.livejournal.com/26434.html There is some support for OpenBSD on ARM, for hardware that is more open than the Raspberry Pi: http://www.openbsd.org/armv7.html http://www.openbsd.org/armv7.html
clarry 13y ago
It's not that Theo & co oppose it per se. It's that they are not interested in working on it, for a number of good reasons. If you are interested and willing to do the work to get it running (with free software), I'm sure somebody will take a look at the diffs you send to tech@. Chances are you'll also have to maintain the work.
jolan 13y ago
Well the Beaglebone Black is supported which is pretty much a more powerful Raspberry Pi and only costs $10 more.
- angersock 13y ago
  Anywhere you can actually buy one, though? They seem to be on backorder everywhere I've checked.

muyuu 13y ago

I preordered the CDs a few weeks ago. Looking forward to the stickers and maybe some surprise :-)

muyuu 13y ago
Woha and I received it in the mail today! Happy times.

jorgecastillo 13y ago

My favorite operating system, unfortunately I had to uninstall it since I intend to learn Android development. If you haven't tried it yet & it looks like it has the software you need I invite you to give it a try.

snake_plissken 13y ago

Regarding the 2k38 problem, 24 years from now will any 32-bit systems still be in production? Won't mean-time-to-failure handle this for us? Software wise, it might be a different story.

protomyth 13y ago
There will be 32-bit systems still running in embedded systems. It is amazing how long stuff runs when hidden in walls.
mrweasel 13y ago
Not only will they be in production, they will still be built and designed. Stuff like nuclear power-plants and bridges also have a slightly high mean-time-to-failure than my laptop. 24 years isn't that long for infrastructure.

clarry 13y ago

Actual release announcement: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139895775701963&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=139895775701963&w=2

darklajid 13y ago

Pain points for me: The package management and upgrades. If I'm not mistaken (perfectly possible, I'm really no expert and only browsed OpenBSD documentation here and there) - you have no decent binary packages FreeBSD guys online complain a lot about the current pkgng changes, but the direction is great: Build from ports, install binaries elsewhere. This is something I really really like, since I tend to avoid building stuff on production machines and since I don't want to (even temporarily - and that means you have to clean up!) pull in pure build time dependencies. FreeBSD solved this for my use case with pkgng and the ability to easily host your own repository. I have a build machine and run portshaker/poudriere to create exactly the (binary) packages I need. Installation on the targets is a breeze. - consider the heartbleed issue As far as I understand the OpenBSD project issued a patch (as in text file) and told you to rebuild the related parts of your base system (or everything)? FreeBSD has binary updates for these kind of things. I'm not trying to bash OpenBSD or promote FreeBSD, I guess the general idea behind this post is that I'm interested in the project OpenBSD, but feel that running OpenBSD would probably too much tinkering than I'd like (cough I guess I'm saying that I'm lazy?). But maybe, maybe, I'm wrong about one or both of these "issues"? Maybe there are 3rd party helpers that make everything very, very easy (just like portshaker/poudriere on FreeBSD are tools I install from ports, i.e. not part of base)? I'd be happy to be enlightened.

avsm 13y ago
> you have no decent binary packages This is completely incorrect. OpenBSD has been all about building reproducible binary packages for quite a long time now, and the ports tree is regularly bulk-built and failing ports fixed or swept out of the way. The key difference from FreeBSD is that OpenBSD binary package sets are released every six months with the base system, and you are expected to upgrade them during a system upgrade. It's as simple as `pkg_add -ui` if you point the PKG_PATH to a remote OpenBSD distribution mirror. One advantage of upgrading ports with the base system is that caveats are all conveniently listed in the upgrade guide for that release. E.g. for 5.4->5.5: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade55.html#Pkgup http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade55.html#Pkgup
- darklajid 13y ago

protomyth 13y ago

Do remember to apply the patches http://www.openbsd.org/errata55.html http://www.openbsd.org/errata55.html

cauterize 13y ago
This strategy really hit home for my dinkly little router. I don't have the disk or CPU resources to compile these patches. Is there no other way to get the updates other than wait for the next release?
- protomyth 13y ago
  Get someone you trust to build it for you is my current solution[1]. I'm not really up on the plans for binary patches other than they are signing stuff now. Also, BinpatchNG was mentioned at one time. 1) http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Release http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#Release
  - cauterize 13y ago
    Looks like a weekend project to setup a VM to build just got bumped to the top. Thanks for the inspiration!
- clarry 13y ago
  You can run -current snapshots. Caveat: the system changes, packages change, things are not always in sync. You might have to upgrade to a newer snapshot if you want to add binary packages after a while. This doesn't affect you if you only use software from base, or only use packages that can be installed around the time you install the system. Alternatively, you can get binary patches from M:Tier: https://stable.mtier.org/ https://stable.mtier.org/
  - cauterize 13y ago
    Thanks for the link!
  - 13y ago