OpenBSD 5.5 Released

http://www.openbsd.org/55.html?hn

by throwaway2048 • 12 years ago

106 62 12 years ago

0x02• 12 years ago

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

bananas6• 12 years 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...

throwaway20482• 12 years 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.

0x02• 12 years 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.

legulere2• 12 years ago

NTP doesn't use unix timestamps but an other format. It will hit the bug 2 years earlier.

falconfunction• 12 years ago

If I see the 2038 problem in a newspaper headline I think I'm going to take the closer fire exit.

zokier4• 12 years 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?

edwintorok5• 12 years 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...

throwaway20482• 12 years ago

not on 32 bit systems, which is what that part of the release announcement is about.

All unix 64bit systems have a 64bit time_t, only OpenBSD and NetBSD at this point have 64bit time_t on 32 bit systems.

This cannot be changed on Linux without breaking userland ABI/API compatibility, something which the maintainers refuse to do.

bch• 12 years ago

I can't speak for Linux/FreeBSD, but NetBSD has been 64-bit time_t (all ports)[0] since 6.0, which was Oct 2012[1].

[0] https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-6/NetBSD-6.0.html

[1] https://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html

bananas6• 12 years 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• 12 years 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)

bananas6• 12 years 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.

mrweasel3• 12 years 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• 12 years 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

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.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

BSD Now did an interview with him that is pretty good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahBZ4lSZHQ or http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013_10_09-doing_it_de_raadt_w...

edwintorok5• 12 years ago

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

ninjin• 12 years 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

mykhal• 12 years ago

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

edwintorok5• 12 years ago

You can download it already, although it seems the packages are missing on some mirrors for 5.5 still.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

Some of the mirrors take an extra day.

ja27• 12 years 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

bananas6• 12 years ago

The following "Blob" song and notes explain why they don't do it:

http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39

And I agree with it entirely :)

edwintorok5• 12 years ago

That is from 2012: in 2012 Raspberry Pi was a closed platform, not at all recommended: https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi 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

There is some support for OpenBSD on ARM, for hardware that is more open than the Raspberry Pi: http://www.openbsd.org/armv7.html

clarry5• 12 years 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• 12 years ago

Well the Beaglebone Black is supported which is pretty much a more powerful Raspberry Pi and only costs $10 more.

angersock• 12 years ago

Anywhere you can actually buy one, though? They seem to be on backorder everywhere I've checked.

muyuu2• 12 years ago

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

muyuu2• 12 years ago

Woha and I received it in the mail today! Happy times.

jorgecastillo• 12 years 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• 12 years 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.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

There will be 32-bit systems still running in embedded systems. It is amazing how long stuff runs when hidden in walls.

mrweasel3• 12 years 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.

clarry5• 12 years ago

Actual release announcement:

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

darklajid5• 12 years 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.

avsm2• 12 years 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

darklajid5• 12 years ago

Cool! Thanks for correcting me.

That said: I need more stuff than the ports tree contains (I .. checked NetBSD and FreeBSD, plus a couple of Linux distributions. I admit that I haven't checked all my packages against OpenBSD's ports tree, but I assume I'm correct). Plus, I do need the occasional update without waiting 6 month. How would I do that?

For comparison: On FreeBSD I use portshaker to create a ports tree that is a mixture of upstream (FreeBSD) and other sources (a git repository, in my case). If FreeBSD doesn't bump a package and PRs take a whiiiiile, I bump that thing in my overlay.

poudriere allows me to build (in bulk) all my relevant packages in jails, is clever enough to rebuild just the stuff that changed (or where I changed the config) and spits out a directory structure that represents a pkgng repository with (optional) signed binary packages.

pkgng is pointed to my repository (actually it supports multiple sources, apt like. Can PKG_PATH do that?), which contains now builds from upstream ports and my overlay.

How would I (hoping that you have a couple of minutes and can prove me wrong once more)

- build binary packages for ports that either don't exist upstream (stuff I ported) or are outdated upstream?

- distribute those in a decent way (PKG_PATH swapping..?)

I guess I'm left with the question whether we're talking about the same thing when we're saying 'decent binary packages'? I'm sure you can OpenBSD works well for the intended use - but 'decent' wasn't an objective attribute here, it was more a subjective 'decent for my needs' kind of thing. More details above.

In the end, pkg_* feel like ooold Solaris, or like using Slackware again. That's package management on a different level and feels like a step down from apt/yum/pacman/pkgng. Again: Probably it's just a matter of convenience and my laziness in the end, but so far I feel that's not for me.

adamrt• 12 years ago

You post is formatted awkwardly so I'm only guessing at your issues. Forgive me if I am misunderstanding.

"you have no decent binary packages" - OpenBSD encourages the use of binary packages. The OS is shipped with them. You can use ports (compile from source) if you like, but packages are preferred. [0]

There are no binary updates for the base system (maybe in 3rd party, but not from OpenBSD). You do have to compile but there are only a few per release and not mandatory if they don't affect you. Here is the heartbleed patch [1]. Very simple and contains the instructions in the patch.

[0] Ports and Package Docs - http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html [1] Heartbleed Patch - http://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/5.5/common/002_op...

borando• 12 years ago

the ability to easily host your own repository.

OpenBSD can do this by default. Just build your package how you like, and then on the target machines, set $PKG_PATH to your build/hosting server.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

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

cauterize3• 12 years 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?

protomyth5• 12 years 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

clarry5• 12 years 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/

OpenBSD 5.5 Released

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