Showing posts with label DiscoverBSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DiscoverBSD. Show all posts

DiscoverBSD update

Maybe you have noticed, that there has not been any DiscoverBSD News for some time now. Reason is very simple:  I'm getting more and more busy.

Bot no worries, BSDSec.net is still up, and I am trying to keep posting on social media. Other stuff is on as well.



Thanks,
Jan


BSD News 15/02/2016

BSD News 15/02/2016

Last week in BSD

Releases:HardenedBSD
Other news: CheriBSD, DiscoverBSD, DragonFly BSD, HardenedBSD, Lumina Desktop, NetBSD, Talks,


BSDSec.net

no warnings

Releases

New stable versions: HardenedBSD-stable 10-STABLE v40.3 and v40.4 and 11-CURRENT v40.2

HardenedBSD-10-STABLE-v40.4 - https://github.com/HardenedBSD/hardenedBSD-stable/releases/tag/HardenedB...
---------------------------------------
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: fix MAP32_BIT mode mmap when allowed
HardenedBSD-10-STABLE-v40.3 - https://github.com/HardenedBSD/hardenedBSD-stable/releases/tag/HardenedB...
---------------------------------------
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: add WITHOUT_HBSD_UPDATE src.conf knob to disable hbsd-build's installation
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: fix build on i386
[hardenedbsd] Revert "HBSD: Default jemalloc's lg_chunk to 16 from 21."
[freebsd] FreeBSD 10.3-BETA2
[freebsd] EFI fixes
[freebsd] Adjust initialization of random(9) so it is usable earlier.
[hardenedbsd] lot of new hardenedbsd related man page
[freebsd] OpenSSH 7.1p2
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: Update updater root certificate
HardenedBSD-11-CURRENT-v40.2 - https://github.com/HardenedBSD/hardenedBSD-stable/releases/tag/HardenedB...
------------------------------------------
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: add WITHOUT_HBSD_UPDATE src.conf knob to disable hbsd-build's installation
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: fix build on i386
[hardenedbsd] Revert "HBSD: Default jemalloc's lg_chunk to 16 from 21."
[freebsd] EFI fixes
[freebsd] Adjust initialization of random(9) so it is usable earlier.
[hardenedbsd] lot of new hardenedbsd related man page
[freebsd] OpenSSH 7.1p2
[hardenedbsd] HBSD: Update updater root certificate
[freebsd] Update em(4) to 7.6.1; update igb(4) to 2.5.3. (skylake support)
[freebsd] hyperv support cleanup / rewrite
[freebsd] ZFS + UEFI support

News

CheriBSD - A research fork of FreeBSD

CheriBSD is a fork of FreeBSD to support the CHERI research CPU. We have extended the kernel to provide support for CHERI memory capabilities as well as modifying applications and libraries including tcpdump, libmagic, and libz to take advantage of these capabilities for improved memory safety and compartmentalization. We have also developed custom demo applications and deployment infrastructure for our table demo platform. In this talk I will discuss the challenges facing a long running, public fork of FreeBSD.

The State of BSD | BSD Now 128

This week on BSDNow, we interview Nick Wolff about how FreeBSD is used across the State of Ohio & some of the specific technology used. That, plus the latest news is coming your way right now on BSDNow, the place to B...SD.

Code stuff


Interesting articles

One Week with NetBSD 7.0: LibreOffice! Working audio! OpenBSD?

Wallpaper of the week 

 from http://hdwallpapersfit.com/freebsd-wallpapers.html

BSD News 18/01/2016

BSD News 18/01/2016

Last week in BSD

Releases:OPNsense, MidnightBSD
Other news: OPNsense, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, DiscoverBSD, Talks, BSDSec, BSDNow, Wallpaper

BSDSec

 

Releases 


OPNsense 15.7.24 Released

Most notably, the firewall pages received a lot of subtle tweaks to improve user experience. Secondly, the firmware pages gained the plugins management feature. And last but not least, the kernel and base upgrade gained better signature support[1] that ties right into FreeBSD’s pkg verification mechanism, how cool is that!


News 


[OS X] Unleash your inner console cowboy

2 weeks has passed since the first video on DiscoverBSD talks, so it's about time for the new one.

Last time we were watching Early days of Unix and design of sh presented by Stephen R. Bourne at BSDCan 2015 so when I found presentation called Unleash your inner console cowboy, I was quite happy that we can continue in similar topic.

So second video of 2016 is:
Unleash your inner console cowboy presented by Kenneth Geisshirt at Øredev 2015
This talk will go through how to use the command-line/terminal/shell efficiently (key bindings, pipes, redirection, etc.), and general patterns and pitfall in shell scripting will be discussed (checking if a file exists, looping, etc.). To feel the real power of OS X, knowing how to write shell scripts is essential.
I hope that you will join me in discussion.


Get your engine(x) started! | BSD Now 124

This week on the show, we have a very full news roster to rundown, plus an oldie, but goodie with Igor of the nginx project. That plus all your questions and feedback, keep it tuned to BSDNow, the place to B...SD.
 

OpenSSH: client bugs CVE-2016-0777 and CVE-2016-0778

This is the most serious bug you'll hear about this week: the issues identified and fixed in OpenSSH are dubbed CVE-2016-0777 and CVE-2016-0778. An early heads up came from Theo de Raadt in this mailing list posting.
Until you are able to patch affected systems, the recommended workaround is to use
# echo -e 'Host *\nUseRoaming no' >> /etc/ssh/ssh_config
That is, add the option UseRoaming no to your /etc/ssh/ssh_config (or your user's ~/.ssh/config) file, or start your ssh client with -oUseRoaming=no included on the commandline.
We will be updating this article with more information as it becomes available. Read more...


Code stuff 


Xen Support Enabled in OpenBSD -current

Interesting articles


Wallpaper of the week 

 
from http://technology.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/8275/

[OS X] Unleash your inner console cowboy

[OS X] Unleash your inner console cowboy
2 weeks has passed since the first video on DiscoverBSD talks, so it's about time for the new one.

Last time we were watching Early days of Unix and design of sh presented by Stephen R. Bourne at BSDCan 2015 so when I found presentation called Unleash your inner console cowboy, I was quite happy that we can continue in similar topic.

So second video of 2016 is:

Unleash your inner console cowboy presented by Kenneth Geisshirt at Øredev 2015

This talk will go through how to use the command-line/terminal/shell efficiently (key bindings, pipes, redirection, etc.), and general patterns and pitfall in shell scripting will be discussed (checking if a file exists, looping, etc.). To feel the real power of OS X, knowing how to write shell scripts is essential.
I hope that you will join me in discussion

BSD News 05/01/2016


Last week in BSD

Releases: none
Other news:FreshPorts, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, BSDnow, NetBSD, POSIX, MirOS, Wallpaper, DiscoverBSD


News 

 

Not all ports have packages

Sir l33tname asked: @DLangille is it possible to show on freshports when there is no package for a port? — Sir l33tname (@l33tname) December 29, 2015 That’s a good question. It took some more questions on IRC for me to figure it out. Here is what I know. The port in question is net-p2p/btsync and [...]
 

The BSD Black Box | BSD Now 122

This week on the show, we will be interviewing Alex Rosenberg to discuss his work on LLVM/Clang & his work with BSD at a large console gaming company. (Hint, it wasn’t Microsoft). All this, and the latest BSD news coming your way right now!
 

Introducing HardenedBSD's New Binary Updater

One feature our users have been asking us ever since we officially launched over a year ago was to provide binary updates for base and kernel. We are excited to announce that we are launching the framework for binary updates today! We still need to tie in the update build script to our continuous integration infrastructure. For now, updates for the hardened/current/master branch of the HardenedBSD repo will be done manually. When we create the next installers/distsets for the HardenedBSD-stable repo, we'll also support updates there. You will notice two new programs, /usr/sbin/hbsd-update and /usr/sbin/hbsd-update-build, which apply and build update packages, respectively. This work was sponsored by G2, Inc, who has an immediate need for binary updates.
Please note that this feature is still experimental.
Here's the design of the update mechanisms:
Goals
  1. Provide binary updates for base and kernel
  2. Cryptographically sign binary updates
  3. Support mirrors and a massively scalable design
  4. Easy maintenance
  5. Supports jails
  6. Support ZFS BEs
 
  

Stable pkgsrc-2015Q4 branch released

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the pkgsrc-2015Q3 branch. There are 16846 possible packages in pkgsrc-2015Q4, up from 16764 last quarter. Notable new packages this quarter include kodi (home media center software previously known as xbmc), php-baikal (a CardDAV/CalDAV server), freecol (a Colonization clone), unicorn (a CPU emulator framework), and clang-static-analyzer.
See the release announcement for more information.

NetBSD New Developers

The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developers:

  • Ritesh Agrawal (login: ragrawal), who will be working on networking.
  • Guilherme Salazar (login: salazar), who will be working on kernel.
 

POSIX locales; POSIX shell and `…` command substitutions

izabera did make a good point in IRC the other day for why we will need to have two locales at the very least in MirBSD – C and C.UTF-8 (the latter being widespread enough by now, thanks to me, interestingly enough. He uses code which leads to unexpected results…
 $ generate() { tr -dc "[:alnum:]" < /dev/urandom | dd bs="$len" count=1; }
 $ len=10; echo $(generate 2>/dev/null)
 Ut流54Ȫf
… because tr(1) was the first utility I converted to Unicode, to explore possibilities and craft the OPTU encoding and, thus, “ï§Š” is, indeed, an alphanumeric character.
This implies two things: we need to change MirBSD libc locale functions back to support two charsets (and make setlocale(3) match), and mksh(1) should implement locale tracking (to change set ±U whenever one of the relevant parameters (${LC_ALL:-${LC_CTYPE:-${LANG:-C}}}) changes in the session; users could still set utf8-mode manually though). For this to not break anything, we’ll have to audit scripts in MirBSD though (usually adding export LC_ALL=C at their begin is enough, and we need this for portable scripts anyway) and remove all occurrences of #ifndef __MirBSD__ before setlocale(3) calls in applications. This will take a while.

Secondly, I opened an issue with POSIX about handling of the (deprecated, and for good reason) `-style command substitutions. The GNU autoconf texinfo manual gives good advice for portable shell scripts, and we all knew that foo="bar `echo \"baz\"`" wasn’t portable due to use of more than one set of double quotes, but my (and the yash authors’) reading of the standard (and mksh R52’s POSIX mode) make it set $foo to bar "baz" instead of the historic bar baz now, and I wish to get this clarified (and, possibly, the standard changed to match historic practice, as this breaks at least the Acrobat Reader 5 start script). Nothing has been decided yet (due to the holidays, I’m sure), but we got input from some other people involved in shell.
So, if any #!/bin/sh scripts break or behave weirdly with R52, you now know why. I’m waiting for an official statement.
 
 

Early days of Unix and design of sh

Abstract for talk:
  • my history and background
  • how and why we had to re write the shell
  • why I wrote my own memory management
  • key language design decisions
  • where those ideas came from
  • what was hard to get right
  • system changes we made to accommodate sh
  • what the rules were in UNIX group
  • what would I do differently today

 

Code stuff 


Interesting articles

The Most Popular BSD Stories Of 2015

Wallpaper of the week 

 
 from http://hdw.eweb4.com/out/318823.html

Introducing BSDHistory

Hi folks,

I am very happy to introduce #BSDHistory

 

What is it?

#BSDHistory is  kind of "a fact a day", "random fact" website, showing random facts from BSD History.
I guess the best thing you can do is to visit it and see for yourself:
  • minimal design
  • link to the source of the information
  • link to another random fact
  • link to add new fact
  • share to twitter funcionality
  • footer with some more info

 

You can add your own facts. 

Right now, there are 4 facts only, but no worries. Project is open-source and anyone can contribute.
I would be very happy to see people contributing facts, or making the page better. Obviously, the code can always be made better. I will be adding more stuff to the page.

So go ahead and share something by clicking on twitter icon... :)

If you're looking for more details how #BSDHistory was done, please visit my blog post here.

Small BSDSec and DiscoverBSD changes

Small BSDSec and DiscoverBSD changes
As I mentioned a bit earlier, there is a need to change hosting for BSDSec.net.

I am migrating app to heroku and as of now, everything seems to works just fine. You can see it live here: https://warm-falls-4657.herokuapp.com/.

I am now using bsdsec.net domain for email (took some time, right?) and there was no data loss so after everything is finished we will have old SA as well. Not sure when I will finish the migration (I only need to change where BSDSec.net domain is), but if you have some troubles with accessing it, that's probably me doing stuff. 

DiscoverBSD

Lately, I have noticed that discoverbsd.com (without www and so) was redirecting to my domain registrar. You might have noticed as well.

So current status is that all forms of address will now redirect to https://www.discoverbsd.com.

Please let me know if there is some problem with it.

Ads

I added Google ads. Well, I do not expect to make a lot of money, but when one day I run of free hosts for BSDSec, I plan to use that money.

Two days of adds and someone from France clicked on it and I make €0.04. Not bad ;] 

Feel free to run AdBlock of any kind. I am doing it as well. 


DiscoverBSD, BSDSec and what's going on...

DiscoverBSD, BSDSec and what's going on...
Hey,

You might have noticed that I've been playing with style of DiscoverBSD. The reason is that I wanna make a new theme. Was almost there but need some time fix this and that, so... Going to old one for some time.

About BSDSec
- there will be some changes, well, changes.

I was hosting app on Ninefold but they are sunsetting theirs Rails hosting so I am moving it to Heroku.

Why Heroku?
It's free.  I don't have money for paid services. So let's see how it will work. Might get a bit more slowly. 100% sure.

 


DiscoverBSD update

DiscoverBSD update
Hi guys,

you might have noticed a bit less of activity. It's because last few weeks I've been busy with searching for job. Seems like my search is over, so, everything should get back to normal ;]

Thanks!



BSD News 06/10/2014

Last week in BSD
Releases: FreeNAS, GhostBSD, FreeBSD
Other news: bsd, freeNAS, OpenBSD, HardenedBSD, EuroBSDCon, FreeBSD, SSL, FreeBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD Foundation, DiscoverBSD

Releases

FreeNAS 9.2.1.8-RELEASE 


The list of bugs fixed in 9.2.1.8-RELEASE can be found here. The release notes for 9.2.1.8:
  • Fix bug where use of NONE cipher in replication erroneously reported an error on a successful replication.
  • Don’t enable lz4 compression on replication by default if upgrading from a pre-9.2.1.7 release.
  • Multiple kernel iSCSI / CTL improvements. This includes VMWare VAAI and Microsoft ODX acceleration support, improved performance and fixes for number of bugs. Kernel iSCSI can be activated by checking the experimental target checkbox under services -> iSCSI.
  • Improve performance of viewing snapshots when replication tasks are set up.
  • Allow binding CIFS to specific IPs.
  • Fix LDAP bind URL when using TLS.
  • Validate AD advanced settings. If the GC or DC are manually specified make sure they are reachable.
  • Set UNIX permissions when the Mac permissions radio button is selected. Netatalk does not play nicely with ACLs.
  • Fix a bug in the mail sending routines used by FreeNAS. With some mailserver configurations the To: address could’ve been set to root instead of the address specified in the root user.
  • Fix a bug that prevented the system from showing the replicated status of a snapshot if the remote path differed from the local path.
  • “Shellshock” security vulnerability in bash (which is not the system shell FreeNAS or FreeBSD) proactively closed.
GhostBSD 4.0-RELEASE
  • GCC is no longer installed by default, clang is the default compiler.
  • make(1) has been replaced with bmake(1), obtained from the NetBSD Project.
  • pkg(7) is now the default package management utility.
  • pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1), bxpkg and related tools have been removed.
  • Networkmgr is the default network manager.
  • Mate is the default Desktop.
  • 3 workstation to chose

FreeBSD 10.1-RC1 Now Available   

Changes between 10.1-BETA3 and 10.1-RC1 include:
  • A bug that would cause all processes to appear to have the parent PID of '1' has been fixed.
  • Various updates to bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8).
  • The Hyper-V KVP (key-value pair) driver has been added, and enabled by default on amd64 and i386 architectures.



BSDSec
BSDSec September 2014 Security Advisories and Announcements 

[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD CVSup network shutting down.
fix for nginx SSL session reuse 
Announcing the pkgsrc-2014Q3 Release 

DiscoverBSD
BSD Releases September 2014 

Other news

OpenBSDs EuroBSDCon 2014 Papers Online

 OpenBSD 5.6 Pre-Orders Available

OpenBSD 5.6 CD sets are available for pre-order
Be the first kid on your block to serve up man pages in a brand-spanking-new httpd(8)!

The Daemon's Apprentice | BSD Now 57 

We're back from EuroBSDCon! This week we'll be talking with Steve Wills about mentoring new BSD developers. If you've ever considered becoming a developer or helping out, it's actually really easy to get involved. We've also got all the BSD news for the week and answers to your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

FreeBSD Foundation and Cavium Inc. Collaborate on FreeBSD ARMv8 Based Implementation 

The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce a collaboration with Cavium Inc. to  develop and deliver the first ARMv8 reference design and implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System based on the ThunderX™ workload optimized processor family.  Find out more at here

Code stuff
EuroBSDCon and ARM
UDP improvements
DragonFlyBSD Powersaving tips 
mksh R50c released, security fix 
In Other BSDs for 2014/10/04


Interesting Articles
bsdtalk245 - Looking for a new /home 

Introducing ASLR In FreeBSD 
Installing MySQL on FreeBSD 
Installing tomcat7 on FreeBSD 
A Sneak Peek at the Upcoming OpenBSD 5.6 Release
NetBSD developer summit at EuroBSDCon 2014 in Sofia 
Package building without sudo (part 2) 
Unix: The aftershock of shellshock

Experiment with ads

Experiment with ads
On G+, someone asked me whether I have any income from DiscoverBSD and/or related projects (BSDSec.net). Answer is no, but it got me thinking: would be nice to cover domain expenses and hosting expenses somehow.

I don't think that sites are so popular that I can get interest of sponsors (eg. companies doing VPS with BSD or so), so I decided to try ads. I will run it for some time and I will see. Ads will be only here, not on BSDSec. So far ads are only on Desktop, not Mobile. Maybe later I will try mobile, but I guess better save your traffic.

If I decide to keep it, I will publish monthly reports of earnings. 

Not very optimistic about it, but let's see.

Small update

Small update
So small update about why I was not writing BSD News for 2 weeks.

As you might know, I am intern in India, one small start-up. And as it goes in India, sometimes you can get chance to do extra in some Bollywood movie. So that's what I did last week Monday and so. Then I was ill so I was without net to write.

This week I am too busy at my work, as I need to finish something by tomorrow. So...

Let's hope next week all will go as usual and I will be able to write again. 

BSD News 21/04/14

BSD News 21/04/14
Last week in BSD
Releases: FreeNAS, NetBSD
Other News: DiscoverBSD, FreeNas, iXsystems, FreeBSD Foundation, DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSL, FreeBSD


Releases

FreeNAS 9.2.1.4-RELEASE is now available

Please come and get it from the usual location. Also as usual, the issues we fixed in this release are best described by looking at the list of fixed tickets in the 9.2.1.4 milestone.  We improved replication speed, we fixed more issues with CIFS, we brought in some ZFS fixes (addressing the zpool history 100% CPU spin, among other things), and just basically did our best to keep whittling away at the issues that made 9.2.1.3 less than complaint-free.

NetBSD 6.1.4 and 6.0.5 released!

For more details, please see the NetBSD 6.1.4 release notes or NetBSD 6.0.5 release notes.
Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 6.1.4 and NetBSD 6.0.5 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.
Other news

No BSD news last week

I've been travelling so I didn't have chance to write. As you might know, I am now on Internship in India (Mumbai), so I travelled South India. Very nice, indeed.


FreeNAS Professional Training Courses Announced by iXsystems

The first available professional training, "Intro to FreeNAS and ZFS", introduces students to the FreeNAS Web User Interface. They will learn how to setup volumes and share data using AFP, NFS and CIFS. The ZFS portion of the training will cover enterprise features including caching, snapshots, and replication. New users and experienced system administrators will learn everything needed to get started with FreeNAS and set up ZFS for maximum performance and uptime.

Signups and schedules are available at www.freenas.org/freenas-zfs-training/.

FreeBSD Foundation: Spring Fundraising Campaign

The FreeBSD Foundation has just released news regarding their Spring Fundraising Campaign: We’re kicking off our Spring Fundraising Campaign! Our goal this year is to raise $1,000,000 with a spending budget of $900,000. As we embark on our 15th year of serving the FreeBSD Project and community, we are proud of how we’ve helped FreeBSD


DragonFlyBSD: Dynamic binaries arrive

Here’s the announcement from Francois Tigeot: DragonFly now uses dynamic binaries in the root filesystem.  You will need to do a full buildworld/buildkernel if on 3.7 and upgrading.

OpenBSD has started a massive strip-down and cleanup of OpenSSL 

The denizens of lobste.rs (and no doubt you, eagle-eyed reader!) have made note of the ongoing rototilling of the OpenSSL code in OpenBSD, and Joshua Stein (jcs@) has chimed in with a quick breakdown of the action thus far:
Changes so far to OpenSSL 1.0.1g since the 11th include:
  • Splitting up libcrypto and libssl build directories
  • Fixing a use-after-free bug
  • Removal of ancient MacOS, Netware, OS/2, VMS and Windows build junk
  • Removal of “bugs” directory, benchmarks, INSTALL files, and shared library goo for lame platforms
  • Removal of most (all?) backend engines, some of which didn’t even have appropriate licensing
  • Ripping out some windows-specific cruft
  • Removal of various wrappers for things like sockets, snprintf, opendir, etc. to actually expose real return values
  • KNF of most C files
  • Removal of weak entropy additions
  • Removal of all heartbeat functionality which resulted in Heartbleed
To clarify, not all of the cryptographic engines were removed; the padlock and aesni engines are still in place.
As always, it's heartening to see a concentrated effort on such a critical software component.

FreeBSD: January-March, 2014 Status Report

The January-March, 2014 Status Report is now available with 41 entries.

Certified Package Delivery | BSD Now 33

We sit down with Jim Brown from the BSD Certification group to talk about the BSD exams. Following that, we’ll be showing you how to build OpenBSD binary packages in bulk, a la poudriere. There’s a boatload of news and we’ve got answers to your questions, coming up on BSD Now – the place to B.. SD. 
 
Code stuff
 
Weekly Feature Digest 26 — The Lumina Project and preload   
ALTQ removed from -current
In Other BSDs for 2014/04/19 



DiscoverBSD 2014 - interview with new writer Nur Agus

DiscoverBSD 2014 - interview with new writer Nur Agus
2014 is here, so kinda time to make something new. Well, not only because there is a change in year, but ...

But straight to the point.

I am really happy to announce that +DiscoverBSD has a new writer!

His name is Nur Agus and I made an interview with him, so you can find out more about him.

Q: Could you please introduce yourself?

A man, currently employed as a technical consultant and pre-sales. Meaning I develop (or honestly sell) solutions to our customers regarding with their IT requirements, both in development or infrastructure. Mostly involved enterprise products. Beside that I also 'manage' plus-minus 20 virtual-systems in my company. I got some friends who help me with it. Most systems are using Linux operating systems, and few systems are on Windows.

I was introduced to computer when my father bought an XT clones when I was 6 years old. We were managed to upgrade our family computer, until I got my personal computer when I was 12. I wish I learned UNIX-clone or C instead of Windows and BASIC, but that was already in the past. My first experience with Linux was on 2002 with SUSE-8. It was 8 or more installation CDs that I bought in nearby computer market. I managed to install it on my Athlon XP. I still remember my friends came and tried mahjong game. That was fun.

Due to my jobs, I am accustomed to branded UNIX operating systems, namely AIX, UX, and SOLARIS. The majority of my customers still using those UNIXes although some already migrated to Linux. Although BSDs are not as popular as those 3-UNIXes and Linux in enterprise environment, but it is a promising operating system for open-source built deployments due to its long-standing credibility as stable and robust server operating system. For example, FreeBSD community has been ported ZFS and it is very active in development.

Also OpenBSD is probably the best OS for routers. Though our experience with Linux as router is rather smooth, but replacing it with OpenBSD could give us many advantages, such as smaller footprints, more readable PF rules, and so on. And I have started this project to replace our Linux router with OpenBSD. My admin friends are excited with this plan, and they are preparing the new infrastructures.

Q: How did you came to idea to use OpenBSD instead? Did you have any problems with Linux?

Linux is performing quite well as a router. Our rulesets are mostly simple: NAT, port-forwarding, port open and block, burst, and logging. This router has been served us for more than 3 years and we faced only one problem, that was when the disk failed. We were forced to restore the OS and iptables ruleset.

I am considering openBSD after I learn its pf.conf file and smaller footprint.  These time we were wondering why iptables doesn't give a configuration file. We save our iptables ruleset to a restorable file, but it is different way of thinking. We are not supposed to edit iptables saved-file and restore it. And we think we are more accustomed to config files.  Currently, our router has 2GB RAM. We put also saprouter in the same OS. This is not a best practice. We are planning to have smaller RAM for router, and putting the saprouter in a DMZ. With openBSD we can have less RAM for router so we can build separate OS for saprouter.

Q: Do you use BSDs somewhere out of work?

Well, this is a rather difficult question. Yes, my job is sysadmin related with UNIXes, but it is also my hobby. If you asked whether I use BSDs for leaisure such as watching movies, playing musics, and so on, I haven't use BSDs for those activities. I still rely on my macbook and ipad. 

I have one thinkcentre machine with openBSD and mainly it is for browsing, sometimes I do some works, and as a backup storage. 

Only, if you consider MacOS is a BSD, then yes. I do almost everything (computer related) with BSDs.

:)
Q: Do you work on some side projects? 

Currently I work on one side project with some friends, related with mathematics. But it is still on the idea brainstorming pace so I haven't really involved, yet. I hope DiscoverBSD can be my second and last side project. My normal job and 2 side projects is I think my max.
I think it will be easier for both of us if I can commit some schedule within a week, how many hours I will spend for DiscoverBSD.
Q: Fair enough. Let's talk about DiscoverBSD. What do you want to bring to readers?   

I've always been inspired by LWN on their technical writings and content. They are really good. But I know that my technical writing capability will not be able to produce articles with those quality. So I am thinking of something in-between OMGubuntu and LWN.

Q: Do you have some specific area in mind that you would like to cover?

I want to cover little bit deeper. That said, I will skip some tips on GUI (e.g how to achieve this on XFCE openbsd) but I will be happy to cover networking and interfaces, filesystems, services (sshd, nginx, apache), and of course, PF.

 Q: Where can people contact you if they want you to write about some specific question?

I think people coould reach me at my google+ page. My e-mail traffic is so busy so messages get buried so fast.
Thanks for interview! 
Another thing is that DiscoverBSD is now at twitter: follow us at @janhovancik
Wanna join our team and publish here? Contact us on facebook, twitter or google+ page!  


Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: First login, Networking, Crash

Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: First login, Networking, Crash
First part: Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: Intro 

So I logged, looking for way how to make a screenshot. People wanna see stuff. But first about boot: feels swift, not much longer than my Debian. Login took a bit longer, it took about 2 minutes to finish, but I am running from live USB so no problem. Can't really compare. 

Screenshot. Can't find any screenshot utility in menu, so I google. I shall do it later, they all recommend to install some software to do it.

First login. Live USB has LXDE. You can see "Welcome to PC-BSD" window, telling you some basics of PC-BSD. For example it says that if "computer is connected via network cable it will be auto-configured via DHCP". In my case, that is not true. I am on cable, but there is no icon in tray and no Internet connection. Then it explains icon on Desktop: AppCafe to install software, Control Panel to config, some more stuff from Icon tray and How to get involved. I guess for some newbie that's enough to see. Can't really say about newbie coming from Windows, but for someone coming from Linux, that's enough.

As I mentioned, there are AppCafe and Control panel icons on Desktop. Plus Handbook. In my case, it's unfortunately not working. It says that the file is damaged. I have to admit that I never checked downloaded img so it might be my mistake. If you tried live USB please share your experience. 

Hardware. Not sure what PC-BSD support? Try Hardware compatibility from Control Panel. (I wanted to put screenshot here, but as you will see later, I was not successful. Anyway, PC-BSD says it supports all my hardware.)

As I mentioned Network was not working correctly. I mean not working. I head to Control Panel - Networking. System finds wireless ath0 and asks me whether I wanna enable device now. Sure I do. 

I can't see it in devices thought. I only see my bge0 ethernet. It's disabled, so I enable it. The same I set to Display icon in tray. After clicking save, networking restarts itself. Restarting network does one funny thing: bge0 is disabled again. So I close it and try to find another way how to enable the device. I managed to do it by left clicking on tray icon and unchecking "Disable this networking device". It again restarts networking, but pinging google works now. (I use ping, as there is no browser installed (i consider this minus))

Great, I managed to get internet working. By the time I do this all (~10 minutes, I'm also writing) systems recognizes my wireless card. So I am trying to configure it. I only set password and systems says that I didn't set what IP to use. Bad thing is that it does not let me do it, but I have to go to config again and set everything once again.

Can't figure out how to connect to internet thought (via wifi). Everything is set up, but in tray there doesn't seems to be any way to configure wireless like I am used from any other OS (pick network). Network manager shows that wifi card had the IP from my network, status associated, but ping is not working. 

I go back to cable and try to install scrot from AppCafe so I can make screenshots. Works well, made a screenshot. So I want to copy picture to my another USB, so I can add it here. That seems to crash a system a lot. File manager crashes, desktop icons disappears. Running pcmanfm from console gives: 

/: create /symlink failed, no inodes free
So I am trying to install firefox from AppCafe and add screen from there.  That is not successful, as it says there is no space left on device. df is actually saying something different:

filesystem                      1k-blocks   Used         Avail         Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ufs/PCBSDUSB    5980094     4787071  714616     87%         /
devvfs                            1                 1              0              100%       /dev
/dev/ada0s1                   83886044   66822800  17063244   80%    /media/ada0s1

But this is something I am pretty much lost in. Don't know what my USB did to PC-BSD, but it creshed it pretty nice. I know it because when I tried to install some other software on the same live USB image and same pendrive, I was able to install more that firefox. Restart will probably fix this, but knowing that inserting USB drive breaks the system is bad enough itself. 

Result? So far it seems a bit unstable (or how to put it?), a bit unpolished (stuff with networking), and confusing in some parts (again networking).

I shall see after reboot. 

//small edit: my usb probably crashed lxde - can't logout from menu, need to hard-reset. 

Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: Intro

Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: Intro
You might read about how I tried to get some BSD running on my kinda spare Samsung Series 5 laptop. And how I was not successful. I pretty much gave up. 

Here you might read that I am thinking about getting rid of Windows on my another laptop, that I use everyday (gateway nv5214u, specs here). And I really do. In fact, I decided to use PC-BSD as testing subject

Why? 

New version was announced few days ago. 







Fresh blood, I mean. And the fact they they always serve live USB image. Makes things much more easier as I have pendrive to spare, but no spare partition to install and test. 

PCBSD9.2-RELEASE-x64-USB-live-latest

Getting it on pendrive was pretty much straight forward. I used following dd on my Debian machine. 

dd if=PCBSD9.2-RELEASE-x64-USB-live-latest.img of=/dev/sdb bs=64k conv=sync
(Just in case someone is wondering why, head to google ;] there's a bunch of stuff out there explaining how this works.)

And success!
93752+1 records in
93753+0 records out
6144196608 bytes (6.1 GB) copied, 1945.92 s, 3.2 MB/s
At least it seems as I booted just fine.

And when booting, I mean Multi User - the first and default selection.
During first boot, I got following:

Do you want to expand the file system for this LIVE media?
The process may take up to 15 minutes. 
 I answer yes, as I would like to use some extra space on pendrive for some installs and tests. Process takes about few seconds, as my drive is 8GB only. System reboots.

 First graphical screen I see is asking me whether I wanna keep settings for desktop it uses right now.

1366x768
driver:radeon
 Looks good, I shall keep it. Then I see animation, kinda like when you first run Windows (No sound so I guess it is now yet configured, or not working). Personally, I would rather not see it.

After that comes Setup. Every step let you choose keyboard layout, you can even use on-screen keyboard or check help page for current step. What I miss is possibility to make screenshot, in case of some problems.

First, you need to set language. I keep English, easier to get help with troubles.
Next is Time Zone and Hostname, followed by root password and user config. You have to create user password. You can also choose to encrypt $HOME directory. I go on without encryption.

Setup is now completed. I have login screen (no reboot).

I log in, wondering: How will I make the screenshot of default desktop?  

History of BSD: 1BSD

In last part I wrote what let to creation of BSD operating system.

And I finished with talking a bit about 1BSD, the very first BSD. I mentioned, that it was not operating system, it didn't provide a kernel nor operating system. It provided a variety of useful programs and utilities for UNIX. [1]

When looking for software included, I found out that on various ftps you can still download it. So I downloaded one. Size of 1bsd.tar.gz is around 1.2MB, unpacked around 3.4MB.

Update file informs that This tape reflects updates to Thu Jan 19 10:34:29 PST 1978.

1BSD was released as Berkeley UNIX Software Tape (according to read me file). 30 free copies of 1BSD have been sent out and 35 tapes sold for 50 USD, all during late 1977 and 1978. [2]

The tape came with 2 labels.

First label on the tape:

    Berkeley UNIX Software Tape
    Jan 16, 1978    TP 800BPI

    To extract contents do:
      tp xm ./setup; sh setup; tp xm

    See accompanying document
Second label on the tape:

    The contents of this tape are
    distributed to UNIX licensees
    only, subject to the software
    agreement you have with Western
    Electric and an agreement with
    the University of California.


Most of the data on this tape has been archived, so that they could write it on tape. This tape included sources and binaries for a quantity of UC Berkeley software. The major items on this tape were the instructional Pascal system and the text editor "ex". Other software includes a modified shell, a new shell, new commands, and a "star trek" game. Machine readable documentation was also included for all programs.  The "Pascal User's Manual" and the "Ex reference manual" needed a phototypesetter
if readable copies wanted to be produced. [3]

Reading Read Me file, you can find out that compiled  binaries  have  been  included  for  most  of  the software  there.   (A few of the routines in the directory s6 include system dependent headers and so binaries would be of no use and are not included.) The major programs "pi", "pxp", "px", and "ex-1.1" have  the binaries  in  the  directories  with  the same names.


Each major directory includes a  file  "READ_ME"  describing the  software  in  the  directory.   There  is often a shell script "setup" in the directory to  perform  one  time  only operations.   The script "install" in these directories placed the software in its standard home. [3]


ashell directory



ashell read me file

For recompilation of these programs users could use the  scripts "make*",  and  "comp"  and  "load" in the directories.  Most directories also had "print" scripts,  i.e.  "printpi",  to make  a program listing with utility files and programs in a reasonable order.[3]

The suggested way to bring up the software on this  tape  was to  run the install scripts in "pi", "pxp", and "px", and to then install (some or all) of the software from "bin". [3]

As read me file says, the directory structure goes like this:

        pi           Pascal translator source
        px           Pascal interpreter
        pxp          Pascal execution profiler
        eyacc        Modified yacc for Pascal
        assubs       Assembly stuff for Pascal
        tests        Test programs for Pascal
        pcs          Wirth's Pascal-S
        pxref        Pascal cross-refence program
        opcodes      Definition files for Pascal
        fpterp       Sep ID floating point interpreter using FETCHI sys call
        s?           Command software source
        man?         Documents for s? stuff
        ashell       A new shell with some nice features
        ex-1.1       Ex source
        exrecover    Ex recovery routines (after system crashes)
        trek         Source for a "star trek" game
        portlib      Portable library used by trek
        exrefm       Troff source for "Ex 1.1 Reference Manual"
        puman        Troff source for "UNIX Pascal User's Manual"
        help         Sections from our help command

        lib          Routines for /lib and /usr/lib
        bin          Routines for /usr/bin
        etc          Stuff for /etc
More about history of BSD in next parts.

[1] http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/2012/05/Features181.html
[2] http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree
[3] READ_ME file from downloaded 1BSD

Transparency: ads, tracking, etc...

I believe in transparency.

So there some some things I wanna talk about. Mainly because things like blogs don't have TOS and User agreements or other noone-ever-read-that stuff.If you don't wanna be tracked by +DiscoverBSD , read on and I will tell you how to do it.

I. Tracking


This blog tracks it's readers. Well, as any other website does. Usually because it's useful one way or another.

 screenshot made by ghostery, I will talk about it later
1. AddThis - this is for adding sharing features to the blog. (If you like my posts, you can easy share them with this feature. That would be nice, actually ;] ) You can find it at bottom of every post.
More Info

2. Google +1 - this is for Google + features that are at right side of blog -button and followers.



More Info


3. Google AdSense - some time ago I added ads to blog. I would like to buy .info or .net domain, but I ain't got money so ads sounded like idea to get some funds.

There are maximum 3 ads at page. One at right side, other at bottom of blogposts.

If you wanna support this blog, please unblock it in AdBlock software.

AdSense pays for clicks, but anyway, I am not sure if I can share how many clicks I have and the earnings. So I will just say that I earned about one dollar. It's about month or so. Not much, but soon I will have 70 dollars and payout.  (Just kidding)

Anyway! (Please do not consider this that I am telling you to click on ads! That would be against the rules, and Google would kill me ;] That's not what I wanna.  )

I am telling this just to be transparent.  If you wanna support me financially, consider using flattr.

More info

4. Google Analytics

I guess the most of people know about this one. With Analytics I can see where people come from to my blog, how long they spend on blog and so. I find this information very useful, I can see what people like etc.

More info

II. How not to be tracked (disable trackers and ads)? 

Even most of people do not think about it, websites are full of trackers that watch your behaviour so they can deliver you personalized ads, recommend likes on facebook, personalize context on website or whatever. Some people don't mind (or actually like it) and some don't.

As this blog also has trackers, I wanna show my readers how to disable them in case they do not wanna be tracked.

There are many anti trackers, you can google them, so I will show example of one that I use. Ghostery. It's browser extension, you can read more in their About page.But in general, with Ghostery you can block trackers so they do not watch your behaviour. Or unblock some that you don't mind (maybe you don't mind Google or Facebook). But be careful what you block, sometimes it block useful stuff like some embedded SoundCloud or other social features. You can choose what to block, so one needs to find out what works and what does not. 

This will also block Ads.

In case you don't mind trackers but don't like ads, you can still use AdBlock. And then you can also choose at what pages to block ads. I find it very easy, and at any rate there's a lot of web tutorials and how-tos.  


That might be it, so happy reading ;]

Time for feedback?

Time for feedback?
3/6/13 or 6th March 2013 - that's the day when I started to write this blog. It's been some months ago.

So what I wanna do some stats, and ask for feedback. I would definitely love it. Any feedback or random words. And no problem to be all negative ;]

http://www.northside.asn.au/Feedback/feedback.jpg

Some stats:



Pageviews all time history 4,389

Pageviews by Browsers

EntryPageviews
Firefox
2432 (55%)
Chrome
915 (20%)
Internet Explorer
465 (10%)
Opera
282 (6%)
Safari
115 (2%)
Mobile Safari
79 (1%)
Instapaper
22 (<1%)
Mobile
22 (<1%)
UniversalFeedParser
19 (<1%)
CriOS
8 (<1%)

Pageviews by Operating Systems

EntryPageviews
Windows
2598 (59%)
Linux
635 (14%)
Other Unix
408 (9%)
Macintosh
333 (7%)
Android
238 (5%)
Unix
40 (<1%)
iPad
37 (<1%)
iPhone
29 (<1%)
Ultimate Edition
9 (<1%)
Windows NT 6.1
8 (<1%)

Pageviews by Countries

Graph of most popular countries among blog viewers
EntryPageviews
United States
1775
South Korea
368
Germany
323
Russia
239
United Kingdom
173
Poland
160
France
113
Italy
108
Canada
60
Netherlands
56


Some stuff I realized

I created +DiscoverBSD  page to share articles. If I share as this page to my followers, I will get about 10-20 views of blog. If I share in communities, I can get up to 100, or more views.  But  usually about 30-40-50.

Btw, page has 44 followers and 143 +1.

Thanks a lot!