Recently in OpenBSD Category

I've set up CUPS printing before in just about every Unix-ish operating system I've run for any length of time (Debian, Ubuntu, OpenBSD).

Maybe not so curiously, I've always found that dealing with CUPS directly through the Web browser at http://localhost:631 is easier than with any GUIs that ship with a given distro or project.

Not that FreeBSD or OpenBSD have such a thing. You have to do a lot yourself, and through that process you learn quite a bit about how CUPS and networked printers work.

OpenBSD provided excellent instructions, I recall, as does FreeBSD, where I was pleasantly surprised to find that my friend Chess Griffin is responsible for the documentation. Thanks go to him and the many others who make the FreeBSD Handbook, FAQ and the system's comprehensive man pages the great resources they continue to be.

Chess, whose now-ended Linux Reality podcast was a great inspiration to me, has been using both FreeBSD and OpenBSD extensively over the past long while, and his recent e-mails to me have encouraged me to continue running FreeBSD when I might have otherwise given up due to my constant impatience when things don't immediately work as I think they should.

Back to CUPS: It's always dicey. I used old notes I took the last time I set up CUPS (in Debian Lenny) to get the path to my network printer just right.

The BSDs don't tend to install a lot of drivers, which is a good thing because it's easy enough to go to the drivers area of CUPS.org and grab only what you need.

As in OpenBSD, there are maybe a half-dozen things that you need to do configuration-wise to get CUPS running in FreeBSD (and they're all in the Handbook).

Not only have I been able to crash FreeBSD 7.3-release with GNOME by trying to automount FAT partitions on USB-connected drives, but those crashes rendered both the FAT partitions and the ext3 partitions that otherwise could be mounted automatically on those drives, for lack of a better word, unmountable.

I was able to mount the ext3 partitions once again in FreeBSD after a lengthy fsck courtesy of gParted on the Parted Magic live CD.

Then I did it all over again. I'm running fsck on the drives now. They could always be mounted in Parted Magic 4.9, by the way, just not in FreeBSD.

Once the fsck finishes, I'll boot into FreeBSD, make sure the ext3 partitions are mountable, make a backup of my FreeBSD user and relevant configuration files, and then I'll be moving on.

If this was a true test machine, I'd be able to run FreeBSD longer and perhaps figure out some of these issues (many of which are HAL-related, and if not HAL-specific, at least GNOME-specific).

When I ran OpenBSD 4.4 as my desktop OS, I didn't run into these problems. But I also didn't run GNOME, so it's not apples-to-apples between these two BSDs. In OpenBSD, I began with the default Fvwm2 window manager and eventually added Xfce. And I didn't automount anything.

I imaging that getting FreeBSD to work like any Linux distribution that ships with GNOME is doable, but I just don't have the time and expertise to do it.

I got a lot further a lot faster in FreeBSD than I did with OpenBSD in terms of getting my system set up. But if attempting to mount FAT filesystems is enough to crash the system and lead to endless fsck operations, I really can't stay with FreeBSD for my personal production workflow.

I did manage to get Java installed. The binary package didn't work because the dependencies in FreeBSD 7.3-release are too new. For one reason or other, I was unable to get the diablo-jre port to build, but the diablo-jdk port did successfully install the Java development kit — including the runtime, which is all I really needed.

I even got Flash to work in both Firefox and GNOME's Epiphany browser. I followed the instructions in the FreeBSD Handbook, and when they didn't work in Firefox 3.6.1, I replaced that Firefox package with version 3.5.8 and soon had Flash working.

The problem is that the Flash processes — which run as npviewer.bin, I believe — hog up a whole lot of CPU and aren't terribly good about reducing that load when I leave a page that includes Flash.

I could do without Flash — or maybe install a Linux browser (an option that's certainly available) and just have Flash there, like I did with Opera in OpenBSD.

I was able to mount FAT drives with the -o large switch in mount_msdosfs, but I wasn't able to umount them. I suppose HAL could have played a role, and perhaps running GNOME without hald enabled is the way to go.

But as I said, I need to get this laptop back into a regular production role, and I'll probably return to Debian Lenny just to get things back to where they were. If you'll recall, my Lenny-to-Squeeze dist-upgrade debacle is what led me here in the first place.

One thing I will be doing in the very near future is figuring out how to image a hard drive with either Ghost 4 Linux in Parted Magic, or using the Clonezilla live CD. If I can image the entire drive and be assured that I could completely restore an installation after any upgrade, I'll feel a whole lot better about doing things like this.

What I really need are a couple/few more test machines on which to run things such as FreeBSD until I can figure out just how far my skill level can take me with them.

We could argue the whole Linux distro-vs.-BSD project thing all day, but I'll say two things:

• There's something to be said for a distribution (or project) that ships with a certain desktop environment as far as more things working than not out of the box.
• The PC-BSD project - a desktop-ready system built on FreeBSD - is the best way for anybody from the Linux world wishing to get the most out of FreeBSD. The importance of PC-BSD at this point cannot be overstated (it helps if you like KDE and PC-BSD's PBI packaging). I'd love to see a FreeBSD desktop project based on GNOME.

In conclusion: My skill level and the time I have available to mess around with stuff just isn't where it needs to be for me to run FreeBSD with GNOME. If I had a bigger hard drive, I'd dual-boot Linux and one or more BSDs (now I'm working with 20 GB, which isn't enough for a credible dual-boot). But for a single-boot system, I need to be back in an environment that is a bit more ready out of the box. And this week, that's Linux.

In addition to his first e-mail to me, David Gurvich adds more about his experiences with Intel i830m video in Linux and PC-BSD/FreeBSD:

I did think the problems with FreeBSD were due to using PC-BSD and installing a lightweight desktop on top. After testing with a bare install that turns out to not be the case and the issue is with FreeBSD and has nothing to do with the scripts that PC-BSD uses.

I have not tested OpenBSD but most of the wireless drivers on FreeBSD have been ported from there. I suspect there is a difference between the two that causes these drivers to crash the system on FreeBSD. The primary reason that I was interested in FreeBSD was ZFS support and wanted to setup a file server. The network issue stopped that in it's tracks.

There is a graphical network tool in the FreeBSD ports that seems to work ok but most of my settings were with wpa_supplicant and rc.conf. I believe that PC-BSD has it's own graphical network configuration tool but didn't use that.

Flash does have issues on FreeBSD and I don't recommend installing the linux compatibility to use flash. Instead, use wine with a windows browser. There is a memory leak in the linux flashplugin on FreeBSD that will eventually cause your system to freeze until you kill nspluginwrapper. The same technique may work on OpenBSD.

I have tried Fedora 12 on this laptop and that worked somewhat after tweaking a number of parameters. By somewhat I mean that I had random Xorg crashes and the tweaks simply mitigated the frequency. I gave F12 about 2 months but just could not take the crashes. Fedora 12 is working well on the other systems that I've installed it on but there was a problem with one that had ATI video which required building an xorg module from git.

I am currently using Arch linux on the X30 and, since configuring the boot parameters with 'nomodeset' and locking the xf86-video-intel driver to 2.9.1, have not had any issues with video. The main problem has been with the networking scripts and I am still not sure what the issue is there but installing wicd-1.7 seems to have worked around that. I am impressed with the speed vs Fedora 12. The reason I am impressed is that, prior to Arch, Fedora 12 had been among the fastest distributions on the X30 with a useable firefox in under 2 minutes. The X30 from startup to a working firefox connection takes 45 seconds in Arch.

The main issue I will have with Arch is likely the very reason Arch is so responsive. Rolling releases don't keep old packages around and new versions can cause random failures on working systems. That means that I will need to maintain a list of packages that should not be upraded and be careful on upgrades. Nothing new to anyone who has used Gentoo.

I've currently had Arch installed on the X30 for a month and have had no issues to deal with since the video and networking were fixed. The livecd boots to a text console and I recommend looking at the arch installation guide. Pretty much everything needs to be configured but the wiki makes that simple.

David Gurvich

David, you hit on a number of important points. I will definitely try Fedora 12 to see how it works with i830m, and I agree with you that Arch is an excellent choice. I've written many times about how the Arch community has been a great resource for me in solving my X issues with i830m all the way from Debian Lenny through now.

I neglected to mention ZFS in FreeBSD. That certainly is something to recommend in its favor. There's also a project bringing journaling to soft updates in FreeBSD's UFS filesystem that I heard about in this BSD Talk episode.

I'm not terribly happy about Flash being so problematic in FreeBSD. I forget all the trouble I had with the Opera browser in OpenBSD. That browser and its Flash plugin uses OpenBSD's Linux compatibility layer, and I was eventually able to stop most crashes by changing a parameter in Opera.

Here's what I'm hoping for:

• People smarter than me will figure this out and either make allowances in the kernel and xorg, or will create some other kind of mechanism that doesn't leave users of Intel 830m video chips out in the cold
• HTML 5 will sooner than later take hold with an open video codec and return Flash to what it's good at, which is little applications that I can safely ignore, and stop doing what it's bad at, which is delivering video that can better be handled by a plethora of other formats. The easiest way for this to happen would be for Google to open-source the on2 video codec it recently acquired. (Except that Google already converted the entire YouTube library to the loved-by-Apple patent-encumbered H.264.)

  I've run BSD before, and if Linux/Xorg throws Intel 830m under the bus, I'll be an enthusiastic user of any system that doesn't follow along.

I've been thinking about building my own very small machine around the dual-core Intel Atom processor with Nvidia graphics. Yes, I know that Nvidia is freedom-hating and all, but I think that for the small form factors such as Mini-ITX, Intel and Nvidia are heading in the right direction when it comes to compactness, power consumption and graphical sophistication.

I usually begin my search with my favorite Mini-ITX vendor, Logic Supply, but I have also begun looking at pre-assembled systems that ship with Linux. Both ZaReason and System 76 are building small boxes around the Intel Atom/Nvidia platform, some single core, others dual core — and I do recommend the latter.

The one stopping point for me, other than money, is that I'm not sure whether or not these pre-built boxes have CPU fans or use passive cooling from massive heatsinks. For years now I've been leaning toward machines with no spinning fans either in the box itself (on the CPU or elsewhere) or the power supply. With Logic Supply I can easily make this happen.

At ZaReason, the Ion Breeze 4220, starting at $399 for single-core, offers a variety of options, including the above-mentioned dual-core Ion CPU. I don't know if Earl, the ultra-accommodating chief technology officer at ZaReason, is offering the option of a fanless motherboard — I'll ask him.

System 76 offers its Meerkat Ion NetTop with dual-core Ion starting at $359.

One thing that ZaReason offers in the Ion Breeze that I like is an optional external fanless power supply.

I've been running my converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client as a standalone Linux/BSD box almost since the beginning of my foray into open-source operating systems, with only a single fan blowing across the Mini-ITX motherboard and its heat-pipe-cooled CPU. The fan doesn't work when the box is upright, so for all intents and purposes this is a fanless computer, and I've never had a problem with thermal issues — in fact, it runs quite cool, if not quickly with its VIA C3 Samuel processor (that's supposed to be a 1 GHz model but for some reason only runs at 500 MHz), maximum of 256 MB RAM and woeful sound and video chips.

Right now the Maxspeed is running Debian Lenny from an 8 GB CF card inserted in the thin client's built-in CF-to-IDE interface. Yep, no spinning hard drives either.

System 76 does offer solid-state drives on the Meerkat Ion, starting at $110 extra for a 40 GB Intel drive.

If the Intel Atom Ion processor isn't what you're looking for, both System 76 and ZaReason have plenty of other desktop, laptop and server machines to look at.

The best thing about buying a computer from a shop that ships with Linux (in the case of these two retailers, Ubuntu) is that your hardware is pretty much guaranteed to work. You'll have audio, video, suspend/resume, all that stuff that sometimes is hard to get straight on the box that shipped to you with Windows.

In the times I've spoken with ZaReason's Earl, and the company will build, test and ship pretty much anything you want. They specialize in Ubuntu, but you can ask for a box to be loaded with Debian or CentOS, and I believe they'll do it.

Do ZaReason and System 76 charge more than your standard computer seller? Probably. You can't get the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel deals that are offered on the cover of the Office Depot circular, but those machines often do have bits of hardware that you'll tear your virtual hair out to get working properly.

When you get a machine from a company that specializes in Linux, not only will everything work, but you'll get support that will help you clear up any issues.

And for many people — and I'm getting more like this myself with less time available for banging-my-head-against-the-wall tinkering — it's worth a little extra money for somebody else to have figured out all the issues, or in the case of these companies, to choose hardware components that work well with free, open-source operating systems from the start.

And even if you are a tinkerer, chances are it ZaReason or System 76 have built you a machine, it won't just work well in Ubuntu but will be a great platform for other Linux distros you might want to run.

Not wanting to leave out BSD, you can get a pre-built and -loaded PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD) laptop as well as two workstations (prices unknown) from IXsystems, the company behind PC-BSD. They seem to specialize in selling servers running FreeBSD and ask that interested buyers request a quote to receive pricing info. They're also offering CD and DVD sets of FreeBSD 8.0 if you don't want to bother downloading the ISOs and burning your own discs.

Not to go off on a tangent or anything, I've been giving FreeBSD a lot more thought lately. I've run OpenBSD on the desktop as my primary system for about six months, and I'm considering FreeBSD instead for a future test for the following reasons:

• Easier upgrades and much longer cycle
• More focus on desktop users with hopefully better (and more meta-style) packages for things like GNOME
• Flash 9 and possibly Flash 10 support through the Linux compatibility layer
• Better performance
• I really don't need it for architectures other than Intel/AMD (although PowerPC and SPARC 64 are available; side note — on the various pages emanating from its platforms page, FreeBSD offers not only official manuals from the makers of the hardware in question but also links to other BSDs that run on the architecture. A very nice touch, I think)
• Community that actually cares about end users who aren't developers

I need to try some live images of recent FreeBSD/PC-BSD releases. (Is PC-BSD a live CD yet? I haven't kept up, but I did utilize the live environment of DesktopBSD back when I was testing it).

I never did the full review I promised of Dru Lavigne's excellent "The Best of FreeBSD Basics" book, but I find it to be an excellent reference for the FreeBSD and PC-BSD user. Dru is one of the best writers around in the Unix community, and even if you don't run BSD you can learn a lot about using Unix/Linux from this book. I got a whole lot about the shell, file permissions and other Unix sys-admin tasks, from "Basics," just as Michael Lucas' discussion of sudo in "Absolute OpenBSD" makes that now-way-out-of-date book extremely relevant and useful for anybody running any kind of Unix/Linux today who wants to make the most of sudo in their own environment (and especially on the server).

On the same tangentially arrived-at topic, Dru Lavigne's latest book, "Beginning PC-BSD: Frugal Unix for Power Users," is slated to be released three days from now. If past work is any indication, this will be an excellent book for anybody contemplating the use of PC-BSD.

I'd rather Dru write a book on using FreeBSD on the desktop — not necessarily PC-BSD but building out a FreeBSD-based desktop through ports or packages — but I can understand her focusing on PC-BSD given that the iXSystems-led project is a lot closer to what Linux users are used to.

Michael Larabel of Phoronix told me awhile ago that he was working on adding OpenBSD to his popular benchmarking application Phoronix Test Suite, and now he has an article benchmarking Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD snapshots of 6.0 Squeeze, Fedora 12, FreeBSD 7.2, FreeBSD 8.0, OpenBSD 4.6, and OpenSolaris 2009.06.

I don't think anybody expects OpenBSD to blow any doors off in terms of the usual Phoronix benchmarks. The whole mantra of the OpenBSD project is that it's not about raw speed, benchmarks, etc. Instead the focus is on correctness of code, security, cryptography and interoperability across platforms.

Here's what Larabel says in terms of his conclusion (emphasis mine):

There is a lot to gather from these benchmark results that directly compare the "out of the box" performance on Fedora, Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris. If looking solely at the number of first place wins for each operating system, Fedora 12 and Debian GNU/Linux (2010-01-14) were tied with each having seven wins. Behind the Linux distributions, OpenSolaris 2009.06 and FreeBSD 8.0 were tied with each having two wins. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and FreeBSD 7.2 each had one win. OpenBSD 4.6 had not won in any of our 20 operating system benchmarks. However, in this article we are just looking at some areas of the 64-bit OS performance and depending upon the system's configuration, tweaking, compiler changes, and other optimizations these results could certainly shake out quite differently. There are also features in some operating systems that make them more favorable than others depending upon your individual needs.

So in case you were wondering about performance across OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, Linux (Fedora and Debian) and even the FreeBSD/Debian mashup, here are some answers.

All said, I remain interested in using FreeBSD and OpenBSD on the desktop as well as the server. I'm looking more closely at FreeBSD than I have in the past because of the project's willingness to support releases for what appears to be quite a few years. There's still a FreeBSD 6.x branch receiving updates, and that means that FreeBSD 8 has quite a life ahead of it.

The biggest stoppers for me with OpenBSD were the lack of binary updates to both base and packages during the life of a release (six months) and my general lack of ability to upgrade from one version of OpenBSD to another, either via an in-place upgrade or reinstall, without killing the whole installation in the process.

For those keeping score, I'm mostly running Debian Lenny right now, but I'm looking at the upcoming Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 as something I might want to move to later this year.

Take a look. Undeadly.org, which used to have lots of comments on every post now seems to draw none. What's going on? Have users lost interest in OpenBSD? Or is something else afoot at Undeadly.org?

I'm not saying I won't go back to using OpenBSD (or even try FreeBSD on the desktop), but I'm sufficiently busy enough and have had a sufficient number of configuration and upgrade instances either take lots of time or go horribly wrong in OpenBSD that I'm continuing to use Linux (these days Ubuntu) on the desktop if, for no other reason, than that upgrading, configuration and adding the software I need is a whole lot easier.

As I've written recently (OK, I probably "tweeted" it), a true BSD distribution, i.e. one that provided a reasonable installer, timely binary updates and a wide choice of desktop environments easily installed is what I think is needed to take BSD (either Open- Free- or Net- ... or DragonFly ...) to the proverbial "next level," meaning use on the desktop by less-than-qualified geeky types (and maybe even "civilians") like myself.

Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular is just so good at taking care of the less technically minded while still providing a powerful, extendable operating system that can be used at just about every level and for every purpose. That's why I'm using it today.

I plucked this from the noise on Twitter:

A new project dubbed AerieBSD is starting, some say as a fork of OpenBSD (and from the looks of the planned architectures, I'd say they're right).

I'm not as enmeshed in the politics of the various BSD projects and their licenses as you might think, and the site isn't giving all that many clues as to WHY it's forking. Look at this (misspellings as they appear on the project Web site):

The ÆrieBSD project strives to produce a free, multi-platform UNIX-like operating system including the best possible free development environment. This includes (in adition to traditional BSD environment) free compilers, assemblers, linkers and other tools for various architectures as well cross-building capabilities.

The only name I can find on the site is that of a German guy named Michael Shalayeff, who's not hiding the fact that there's nothing to see yet ("we're working on our first release"). He is a (former?) developer of OpenBSD. I saw this reference to his work on the hppa port of OpenBSD and CARP.

I guess what Shalayeff is trying to say is that he doesn't want to use tools such as the GCC compiler or the GNU utilities that are not totally free in a BSD-licensing sense ... but I could be wrong. (And OpenBSD has this same goal, I believe.) So it's aiming to be BSD without the GNU (or the GPL).

To get somewhat of a picture of Shalayeff's involvement with OpenBSD and PCC, look at the mailing lists. (To be honest, I'm getting no clues there ...)

Look at the "about" page (emphasis mine, with my comments in footnotes, spelling theirs):

We are a group of individuals who like to hack operating systems. We are not driven by any kind of corporate agenda or market sales and thus can produce the best software ever, properly written. There is not any business or corporate backing (or even sponsourship) for the project. We even pay for it with our ice cream change! Since our time and resources are limited we use lots of software developed by other peoples and projects. Here is what our goals are (not necessarily in the order of priority):

* First of all hacking shall be fun and thus we resent any sort of political gaming and ego worshipping inside the project¹. If you want to be famous and naked -- here be a wrong place for you.

* Henceforth developers are the only real value that we have and this is who the project is for².

* Be open to the community and provide transparency of how the project works³.

* Provide free and functional best possible development environment. This includes free access to all source code, free development tools (compilers, assemblers, linkers, debuggers, text formatting tools, etc), various libraries and documentation.

* Support various hardware platforms (see Hardware page).

* Implement common standards.

* Pay attention to security and correctness⁴.

* Provide a stable release cycle⁵, although right now we are working on our first release (;

To keep the code free we prefer code licensed with ISC or 2- or 3-clause Berkeley style licenses. GPL is not really acceptable in the tree as through the years it has proven to be alot of trouble and counter-progressive.

OK, here are the footnotes (this is turning out to be easier to explain than I thought):

¹ I assume they're referring to what I call the "benevolent dictatorship" of OpenBSD, which was founded and now run by Theo de Raadt. The wording suggests "Theo doesn't like me/hates me/hates my code," or "my asbestos undies are wearing out."

² The "developers, developers, developers" mantra isn't just a Steve Ballmer thing. Everyone in the OpenBSD project is very open about that fact that the OS is coded by the developers, for the developers, and anybody else is free to use it as they wish, but if they want a certain feature or other, they best get to coding it themselves. And while everybody involved in OpenBSD thinks (and rightly so) that the OS is important to vast numbers of people, they as developers are pretty much scratching their own itch when it comes to their work. So ... I take this to mean, "We're just like OpenBSD, except we're in charge, and not Theo."

³ The whole thing about openness and transparency ... OpenBSD seems as open as they come. The whole tree can be seen by anybody at any time, everything is battled over in the mailing lists ... so it's more "we're just like OpenBSD minus Theo."

⁴ "Security and correctness (of code)" — again, right out of the OpenBSD playbook.

⁵ "Stable Release Cycle" means that, just like OpenBSD, we want it to be released like clockwork, every time ... so again, "just like OpenBSD minus Theo."

So what is AerieBSD and what will it become? I have no idea. If anybody out there knows anything, please post a comment on this entry.

Historical perspective: OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD. Matthew Dillon's DragonFlyBSD is a fork of FreeBSD. I guess you could say that all the current BSDs are forks of the earlier BSD projects, principally 4.4BSD-Lite and 386BSD.

And you might not say that Linux is forked from Minix, it was certainly inspired by it.

Related:

• AerieBSD mentioned in the DragonFlyBSD blog
  
• AerieBSD mentioned in the Trivium blog

As an experiment, I decided to bring my Evolutionary Computing presentation on making the journey into free, open-source software — a slide show originally created in OpenOffice Impress 2.4 — into Google Docs, which happens to have a presentation app in addition to the better-known Docs and Spreadsheets components.

I revised the presentation — taking some things out, adding others and providing some updates on what I'm doing — and output it as a PDF.

Download that PDF for your reading pleasure by clicking on the image above or the link below:

Evolutionary Computing (revised July 2009)

Interesting note: I believe that no previous entry on this blog has been filed under so many categories. (And I've been considering dumping Categories entirely and just using tags ...)

This entry from the OpenBSD-bugs mailing list looks surprisingly like my own problem with X in 4.5 (even though this person is using a VIA video chip and I have an Intel chip).

Morale of this story: I should've checked this out before I gave up on getting 4.5 working on my Toshiba laptop.

Other morale of this story: I should be running -current.

There's been plenty of hue, cry and worse about problems with Intel graphics chips and Ubuntu 9.04.

But the trouble with X and Intel has been getting some attention, too:

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/openbsd-tech/2009/1/27/4828624

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=124022497415733&w=2

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=124159792429777&w=2

honing in:

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=124161045215563&w=2

easier answer:

xorg.conf DEVICE section

Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Option "DDC2" "false"