[HN Gopher] OpenBSD 7.5
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       OpenBSD 7.5
        
       Author : SoftTalker
       Score  : 292 points
       Date   : 2024-04-05 02:19 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openbsd.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openbsd.org)
        
       | brynet wrote:
       | Announcement mail: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-
       | announce&m=171228270018970&w=2
        
       | Panino wrote:
       | I'm currently switching my Go code to Rust in part because of the
       | syscall related Go trouble:
       | 
       | > Users of syscall(2), such as Perl and the Go programming
       | language were converted to use the libc functions.
       | 
       | I think the following may still need to be converted:
       | * unix.Pledge from golang.org/x/sys/unix       * unix.Unveil from
       | golang.org/x/sys/unix       * terminal.ReadPassword from
       | golang.org/x/crypto/ssh/terminal
        
         | qweqwe14 wrote:
         | Didn't Go already realize that it can't use direct syscalls on
         | anything other than Linux? They made some mistakes in the past
         | but by this point I think they learned their lesson.
         | 
         | On Linux, using direct syscalls is a good idea, since it's
         | _the_ stable userspace-kernel interface. There 's really no
         | need for libc on Linux, each language should just implement
         | it's standard library on top of syscalls.
        
           | int_19h wrote:
           | They knew it all along, since it's well-documented. But they
           | don't seem to care about it until they get burned. Which
           | first happened on macOS, so that was switched; then OpenBSD.
           | 
           | This was previously discussed at length here:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25999623
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Like many other decisions, and as it happens with other
             | technologies, reaching for it is a decision that outweights
             | my preferences, given how it has managed to become
             | unavoidable in many CNCF and DevOps products.
        
             | akira2501 wrote:
             | Ironically the libc itself fails to document how large of a
             | stack you should have before you call into it. Which is why
             | go, having goroutines, tried to avoid it in the first
             | place.
             | 
             | They didn't "get burned" they were "trying to provide a
             | nice feature that wasn't as broadly compatible as they had
             | hoped."
        
           | LAC-Tech wrote:
           | _There 's really no need for libc on Linux, each language
           | should just implement it's standard library on top of
           | syscalls._
           | 
           | Rustix is a great implementation of that idea
           | https://docs.rs/rustix/latest/rustix/
           | 
           | Any similar projects in other langs?
        
             | Cloudef wrote:
             | Zig's standard library does not use libc
        
             | qweqwe14 wrote:
             | It would be great for Rust to have a Linux target that
             | doesn't use libc, but from what I've read, not many people
             | are interested in this.
             | 
             | Found this as well: https://github.com/sunfishcode/mustang
             | 
             | Some discussion here:
             | https://github.com/bytecodealliance/rustix/issues/76
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | > There's really no need for libc on Linux, each language
           | should just implement it's standard library on top of
           | syscalls.
           | 
           | Its not always not so clearcut. For example using pthreads
           | instead of just calling clone can be useful for interop etc.
           | Similarly, anything involving NSS is probably best done
           | through libc. Having libc malloc integrated makes interacting
           | with other C libs easier. And so on.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | They were converted months ago.
        
         | citizenpaul wrote:
         | Forgive my ignorance but is this something limited to go on
         | openbsd? Or is it a general isssue with go?
        
         | ikmckenz wrote:
         | Have you updated your packages with 'pkg_add -u'?
        
           | Panino wrote:
           | Yes, I run -current so I update packages frequently.
           | 
           | After tedu's comment here I installed 7.5 in a VM and could
           | build and run my Go software in it successfully, so I figured
           | there were some Go build or config files or something
           | somewhere getting in the way. I pkg_delete'd go, removed
           | every Go build/config file I could find, and re-added Go with
           | pkg_add. Now I can build apps with the previously mentioned
           | modules; everything works fine now.
           | 
           | Thank you for the responses. :-)
        
       | a-french-anon wrote:
       | Does anyone know if there's any plan to reintroduce xattrs in
       | FFS2? Probably the only modern UNIX without it in its main FS(s).
       | 
       | Or for a more standard/modern FS like XFS (I don't expect OpenBSD
       | to go for ZFS bloat).
        
         | ByQuyzzy wrote:
         | They made their FFS 64-bit. That's what you get. And FFS is
         | _THE_ standard.
         | 
         | In short no. Also they removed softupdates, code was old and
         | slow and was holding back the quest to unlock.
        
           | znpy wrote:
           | > And FFS is THE standard
           | 
           | What's that supposed to mean? ed is the standard text editor,
           | yet we don't actually expect anyone to use it (let alone know
           | it...)
        
             | ByQuyzzy wrote:
             | It means no meme filesystems will be tolerated. There are
             | tons of operating systems out there if you don't like ffs.
        
           | jabl wrote:
           | > They made their FFS 64-bit.
           | 
           | What does this mean? 64-bit inode numbers? 64-bit timestamps?
           | Something else?
           | 
           | > Also they removed softupdates,
           | 
           | Shame in a way, I remember reading McKusick's paper and being
           | impressed. But I guess it's the antithesis of batching, which
           | turned out to be more important for performance than avoiding
           | the extra I/O due to journalling. Also the implementation was
           | AFAIU fearsomely subtle and tricky.
        
             | ByQuyzzy wrote:
             | Read the manual page, I'm not going to type it all in here.
        
             | volkadav wrote:
             | https://unixgeeks.net/posts/2022/10/check-for-openbsd-ffs-
             | fi... may be helpful. tl;dr - timestamps and blocknumbers
             | are 64b in FFS2, intro'd in 4.2 and made the default (more
             | or less) in 6.7
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > Or for a more standard/modern FS like XFS (I don't expect
         | OpenBSD to go for ZFS bloat).
         | 
         | At some point, I think I heard that they might use HAMMER2,
         | which would be nice.
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2
           | 
           | A developer was making active progress, but hasn't made any
           | commits since Dec
        
         | jmclnx wrote:
         | >plan to reintroduce xattrs in FFS2?
         | 
         | With unveil(2) and maybe pledge(2), I do not think there is a
         | need for Extended Attributes. To me, all it does is add
         | complexities not really needed in OpenBSD.
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | I don't see how unveil/pledge is in any way related to xattrs
        
           | patrakov wrote:
           | You confuse ACLs and xattrs. SAMBA uses Extended Attributes
           | to store thinks like Hidden and System flags on files, so
           | that Windows clients can manipulate them. NT ACLs, too.
        
       | omnibrain wrote:
       | No song this time.
        
         | dbolgheroni wrote:
         | Sometimes the song release comes after the software release.
        
       | bheadmaster wrote:
       | The removal of generic syscall(), and introduction of
       | pinsyscalls() which registers the precise entry location of every
       | system call used by a program, makes me think of some kernel-
       | level ABI issues that Linux has.
       | 
       | In particular, kernel ABI is the main stable interface that Linux
       | exposes - and all applications can just use syscalls directly
       | without having to interface with the libc at all. However, that
       | means that kernel must not change its ABI lest it risks breaking
       | compatibility, and each functionality that isn't implemented
       | inside of the kernel (e.g. GUI stuff) cannot be implemented
       | completely portably.
       | 
       | However, using pinsyscalls(), a kernel can make sure that
       | syscalls can only be called from the libc - therefore, making the
       | libc de-facto ABI! Which allows for much more freedom in changing
       | kernel ABI, as long as the libc follows through. Perhaps this way
       | the system can go away from the syscall-level ABI and move over
       | to the libc ABI / shared library ABI?
        
         | newpavlov wrote:
         | Honestly, I think that making libc THE system interface is a
         | mistake. Ok, I understand issues with the Linux approach of
         | exposing raw syscalls (though it works well enough in practice
         | and ossification could be amended by some kind of syscall
         | versioning scheme), but why in the world can't you introduce
         | libsystem/libsyscall/libopenbsd which would contain only
         | "syscall" functions? Why do you need all the C junk in a
         | library for talking with OS?
        
           | tedunangst wrote:
           | Nothing stops you from making your own libsystem. Or still
           | just making syscalls.
           | 
           | Nobody seems to understand how this feature works, even
           | though it's quite simple. The process asks the kernel to only
           | allow system calls from one segment. If you don't like that,
           | don't ask for it.
        
             | newpavlov wrote:
             | Lack of stable syscall ABI is what stops me. It can be only
             | done by OS developers.
        
               | nanolith wrote:
               | A "stable" syscall ABI means that the interface between
               | kernel and userland is ossified, potentially forever. If
               | OpenBSD did this, then many of the security improvements
               | it has made over the years, which has required the
               | deletion of old (bad) system calls and the modification
               | of other system calls to make them safer, never could
               | happen without fundamentally breaking userland.
               | 
               | Calling into system calls in libc is not a hindrance at
               | all for the use of other languages, any more than calling
               | directly into a syscall would be. Cross-language function
               | calls have been a time honored tradition since the first
               | compilers were developed.
               | 
               | Linux's ossified syscall ABI is a quirk of Linux, and not
               | a feature found in most, let alone many, operating
               | systems.
        
               | aforwardslash wrote:
               | Bullshit. A stable syscall api reflects a well designed
               | kernel interface. You can obviously extend on it and
               | deprecate at your will. Thing is, call gates are quite
               | more common now (they even have shortcut instructions in
               | modern cpus) vs software interrupts (int80h), and there
               | is quite some effort into of runtime linking vs static
               | linking - yes, static linking can be used in libc-based
               | ABIs but just defeats the purpose. In my opinion, libc
               | should not be a broker for privileged operations. There
               | are a plethora of reasons for this, but the most obvious
               | is that languages may not use libc in their linkage.
               | 
               | And FFS, Ive been using OpenBSD for well over 2 decades
               | now. I'd say any syscall changes done in the OS are
               | minimal compared to eg. linux.
        
               | nanolith wrote:
               | > Bullshit. A stable syscall api reflects a well designed
               | kernel interface.
               | 
               | Says who? I certainly wouldn't consider Linux's syscall
               | ABI to be well designed. You know what is well designed?
               | A stable facade that provides minimal overhead between
               | two components, which prevents tight coupling. Like libc.
               | 
               | > You can obviously extend on it and deprecate at your
               | will.
               | 
               | Only by breaking userland, which grinds this process to a
               | crawl, even when it can happen at all. libc provides a
               | better interface here.
               | 
               | > Thing is, call gates are quite more common now
               | 
               | I fail to see the relevance here. The mechanism by which
               | syscalls are made doesn't make it cheaper to ossify your
               | syscall ABI, nor does it improve security. It can
               | certainly reduce the performance hit of a context switch.
               | But, even with call gates, the overhead of a context
               | switch is so high that adding the overhead of calling a
               | wrapped function in libc is hardly going to matter.
               | 
               | > and there is quite some effort into of runtime linking
               | vs static linking
               | 
               | What effort? Yeah, you have ld.so doing the relocation
               | for you at runtime, but this happens once at program load
               | time. Compared to everything else that must occur to load
               | a program, dynamic linking adds minimal overhead.
               | 
               | > In my opinion, libc should not be a broker for
               | privileged operations.
               | 
               | That's an interesting opinion, but beyond an unlisted
               | "plethora of reasons", I don't see any relevant reason
               | for this blanket ban. Having a single path into and out
               | of the system call interface provides a way in which
               | userland protections -- such as syscall pinning,
               | immutable pages, etc., can be added. For defense in
               | depth, this is useful.
               | 
               | > but the most obvious is that languages may not use libc
               | in their linkage.
               | 
               | How does language runtime library linkage matter? What is
               | the real difference to a language whether it calls read()
               | or the read syscall? Either way, it has to marshal
               | arguments through a FFI. Either way, it has to do the
               | same amount of work. Languages must be ported to each
               | operating system they run on. On OpenBSD and MacOS in
               | particular, this porting means calling libc. On most
               | OSes, libc is considered the preferred interface. On
               | Linux, it's not, and because of that, folks assume that
               | Linux's relative uniqueness here is somehow the default.
               | 
               | There is really no point to directly using syscalls. In
               | nearly every case for unistd, socket, and fcntl, the libc
               | wrapper is negligible. You can do all of the same things.
               | There are few, if any, enforced C-isms. Even where they
               | exist, they can be abstracted with a middling to average
               | FFI library. Performance-wise, the significant overhead
               | is making the syscall. Calling a library to do this has
               | little measurable effect.
               | 
               | This is much ado about nothing.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | UNIX is the C language runtime, so to speak, so naturally
           | libc is THE system interface.
           | 
           | It only became something else, when C got standardised, a
           | tiny subset of it landed into ISO C, grew beyond UNIX, and
           | the rest of the UNIX API surface landed at Open Group's
           | POSIX.
           | 
           | Obviously on the UNIX world nothing changed, until GNU/Linux
           | came into scene and decided to act in another way, due to
           | being GNU ecosystem + Linux kernel combo.
        
             | newpavlov wrote:
             | I do not dispute that it made sense during early days of
             | UNIX. But today we write system software for these
             | operating systems in many languages other than C. Maybe
             | it's time to reconsider the dominant libc position instead
             | of reinforcing it further?
             | 
             | Linux has successfully paved the way and demonstrated its
             | practicality. Yes, it made certain unfortunate mistakes
             | along the way, but OpenBSD (or any other OS) can learn from
             | those and provide a better solution.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Every other operating system does exactly the same in
               | regardless to abstracting syscalls, regardless of being
               | UNIX clone or not, GNU/Linux is the exception, not the
               | rule.
               | 
               | If you mean a C based OS ABI, there are many other
               | alternatives, like on managed OSes, IBM and Unisys
               | surviving mainframe and micro computers, OS IPC like
               | COM/XPC/AIDL/FIDL/D-BUS.
        
           | ByQuyzzy wrote:
           | Do you know what Unix is or the C programming language? Your
           | bafflement is entirely baffling. OpenBSD is never switching
           | to Rust or Go or any of the new fad languages, so why not use
           | libc? It's the Unix way after all.
        
         | int_19h wrote:
         | libc is already de jure ABI on the BDSs though, no? Since the
         | OS doesn't really guarantee their stability or portability.
        
       | dfc wrote:
       | Does anyone know the story behind the artwork? Puffy does not
       | look so good.
        
         | gattilorenz wrote:
         | Vaguely reminiscent of
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_from_the_Black_Lagoon...
        
           | riffraff wrote:
           | I thought it was a nod to the statue of liberty at the end of
           | Planet of the Apes (1968). I miss the days all OpenBSD
           | releases came with a song!
        
         | greyface- wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias
        
           | NortySpock wrote:
           | If you prefer to hear it from a excellent narrator:
           | https://youtu.be/xbLdz1kcQNw
        
             | nullindividual wrote:
             | Tex is an awesome narrator. Thanks for linking!
             | 
             | "Comrade Stalin says there's bread on the Finnish line"
        
           | dfc wrote:
           | Do you know this to be the inspiration for the artwork or
           | best guess?
        
             | greyface- wrote:
             | I inferred it based on the image's filename, alt text, and
             | visual correspondence to the scene described in the poem.
        
           | krylon wrote:
           | Look upon my source tree, ye mighty, and despair!
        
             | perihelions wrote:
             | Nothing therein compiles.
        
           | lenerdenator wrote:
           | feels relevant looking over their list of discontinued
           | architectures.
           | 
           | each was made by teams sure they were going to be the next
           | big thing in some market space...
        
         | jaypatelani wrote:
         | https://merveilles.town/@prahou/112217694585794119
        
       | ch0ic3 wrote:
       | For anybody wondering about the new pinsyscalls(2) suggest having
       | a look at https://isopenbsdsecu.re/mitigations/pinsyscall/ . To
       | be clear: I use OpenBSD on all my external-facing systems. I
       | trust it infinitely more than any GNU/Linux distribution (esp
       | with the recent xz.. "issue"), but I think it's important to do
       | your own research and see what the contrarians say from time to
       | time.
        
         | calvinmorrison wrote:
         | Do you think there's more value in combining 2 heterogenous
         | systems (like openbsd up front, linux behind) than using one
         | 'more secure' system throughout? I feel like the number of
         | critical issues that have faced two systems at once is far
         | fewer than a single system.
         | 
         | Also I think it shows value in having independent
         | implementations of standards. If you have 5x different xz tools
         | or C compilers or Javascript engines, the threat is chopped in
         | half, plus you can easily compare reference outputs between
         | them (RE: on trusting trust)
        
           | wannacboatmovie wrote:
           | It's common practice for the ultra paranoid to use two
           | firewalls, from different vendors, back to back, for this
           | reason.
        
           | terlisimo wrote:
           | There is a name for this
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
        
           | ch0ic3 wrote:
           | For sure! An argument in OpenBSD circles is that contrary to
           | popular belief one can have security through depth. This
           | means that even though you'll never be 100% secure you can
           | definitely make an attacker's job harder and their life more
           | miserable. Of course, if the NSA wants to attack you then
           | they'll probably succeed, but for your average script kiddy /
           | botnet scanner / worm exploiting some vulnerability having
           | multiple layers might be enough of a deterrent.
           | 
           | I'm not a security person but I also think a lot of malware
           | damage comes from companies / users using misconfigured or
           | outdated software. As such, if you were a sysadmin, knew what
           | you were doing and had the time, then running GNU/Linux is
           | probably fine, but I'm not super knowledgeable. I just want
           | to host a website or run a tor-relay on a VPS and not have to
           | worry about updating my system as soon as some 0-day is
           | announced in glibc or systemd; even if it's in the service
           | itself, my hope is that by using a non-mainstream OS the
           | exploit might not initially target it, hence giving
           | sufficient time to see the news somewhere and patch / update.
        
         | nanolith wrote:
         | This site is often fairly balanced, but I think the author
         | often jumps to conclusions. The pinsyscall feature is one place
         | where many security researchers have jumped to conclusions,
         | because they only see it from their narrow x86 oriented view.
         | 
         | Yeah, on x86, I can craft a ROP attack that allows me to
         | discover relocations for functions fairly trivially, especially
         | for coarse ASLR, because I can read the text segment. But,
         | ARM64 has execute-only support so that it's possible for code
         | to execute, but not read, a text segment. In this situation,
         | pinsyscall does add a valid defense in depth layer. It's still
         | imperfect, but this does in fact raise the bar necessary to
         | carry out a ROP attack when combined with randomized re-linking
         | on boot ASLR. Further, once dynamic linking has occurred, the
         | text segment for a binary is made immutable so that no mapping
         | changes can occur, including mmap.
         | 
         | I think that OpenBSD still has a long way to go before all of
         | these defenses align, but they are far less trivial than the
         | author makes them out to be, because none of them are meant to
         | be used alone. OpenBSD developer decisions like these can
         | sometimes appear to be casting about randomly, because they are
         | making small improvements instead of building toward a
         | particular goal. Sometimes, they hit gold as with W^X, which
         | was widely adopted. Sometimes, their ideas stink, like
         | systrace. But, I don't think it's wise to just dismiss these
         | ideas out of hand.
         | 
         | Instead, I recommend that people look to the history of
         | OpenBSD, which has been more of an evolutionary approach to
         | security instead of a revolutionary approach (i.e. Fuchsia).
         | From an evolutionary perspective, pinsyscall makes sense as it
         | is low-hanging fruit that can buy some security and can force
         | applications to use a standard interface (libc) instead of
         | making raw system calls. From a revolutionary perspective,
         | pinsyscall just seems like a dead end. Revolutionary design has
         | convergent effects -- all of the pieces come together in a
         | perfectly engineered defensive shell. Evolutionary design has
         | emergent effects -- fixes and features build on each other
         | until they co-evolve into strong defenses.
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | Since you're clearly knowledgable ...
           | 
           | What's your take on http://cheribsd.org (and CHERI as a
           | concept overall)?
        
             | nanolith wrote:
             | I've been following CHERI for years. I'm a fan of runtime
             | mitigations in hardware, better process isolation, and
             | capability models. This couples nicely with an obsession of
             | mine, which is the integration of formal methods into
             | system and firmware development.
             | 
             | That being said, CHERI has a long way to go before it makes
             | it to any production system. ARM Morello has certainly
             | breathed new life into it, as has its current push toward a
             | RISC-V ISA. Going from R&D to synthesis on production
             | hardware is a significant leap.
             | 
             | It has inspired innovation in hardware much as seL4 and
             | similar projects have inspired innovation in the formal
             | methods field. For that, I'm grateful.
        
           | pstuart wrote:
           | Would the evolutionary approach be an advantage in allowing
           | existing code bases to run with minimal modifications? So not
           | perfect but safer than linux with minimal effort?
        
             | nanolith wrote:
             | I think that it's difficult to quantify whether X is safer
             | than Y. Instead, we should look at what safety measures X
             | or Y have in place, and whether these can be reasonably
             | improved. Certainly, a single comment on a forum would do
             | this topic a disservice.
             | 
             | OpenBSD has clearly been in the business of making small
             | improvements with each release. This model has worked for
             | them, but it has also been part of what makes them
             | controversial. I trust OpenBSD for my personal servers and
             | my travel laptop. I use it as a build target for my
             | projects.
             | 
             | That being said, do I think that people should switch from
             | Linux to OpenBSD? I wouldn't do this purely for security,
             | because Linux has not been sitting still either. But, I
             | think it's definitely a good idea to take lessons that
             | OpenBSD has taught when configuring a Linux server: disable
             | things you don't need, use the most aggressively secure
             | options for services you provide, and add as much isolation
             | between pieces that you can. Regardless of which OS you
             | choose, you should spend time familiarizing yourself with
             | what is required to harden the security for servers you
             | make available with a public IP address.
             | 
             | OpenBSD's "secure by default" idea is great until you need
             | to enable a service, which widens its attack surface. Doing
             | this safely requires research and knowledge. In this way, I
             | don't think that OpenBSD is much different than the average
             | Linux distribution. I openly admit that I like OpenBSD, but
             | I don't want to steer people the wrong way by claiming that
             | they would be safer using it. In fact, blindly switching
             | operating systems could make folks less safe, because they
             | will probably use the new operating system incorrectly.
             | Instead, study and experiment.
        
           | brynet wrote:
           | > ARM64 has execute-only support so that it's possible for
           | code to execute, but not read, a text segment.
           | 
           | OpenBSD does xonly by default on multiple architectures
           | (arm64, risc-v, ... g5 powerpc), including even amd64 on
           | recent Intel/AMD CPUs supporting MPK/PKU:
           | 
           | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=167423045918820&w=2
           | 
           | On machines that lack hardware-enforcement, at least on CPUs
           | that can differentiate between traps for instruction-fetch
           | and data-fetch, there is still benefit:
           | 
           | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=167517831914525&w=2
           | (msyscall(2) part is now handled by pinsyscalls in -current)
        
         | lenerdenator wrote:
         | Would it be correct to say that OpenBSD is far more of a
         | unified approach to kernel and userland development than
         | GNU/Linux? As in, both ship as one unit, end-to-end, instead of
         | interchangeable modules that make up GNU's ecosystem?
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | That's correct for all BSD's, not just OpenBSD.
           | 
           | BSD = kernel + userland
        
             | lenerdenator wrote:
             | I might throw it on a VM soon.
             | 
             | Maybe it'll finally scratch the ultimate nerdy OS itch.
             | 
             | Probably not though.
        
         | alberth wrote:
         | Does pinsyscall mean Cosmo will no longer work on OpenBSD?
         | 
         | https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan
        
       | The_Colonel wrote:
       | > Copyright 1997-2024, Theo de Raadt.
       | 
       | Caught my eye. I'm vaguely aware that Theo de Raadt is not the
       | paragon of modesty, but would still expect a more "communal"
       | copyright. Or is OpenBSD largely a one-man show?
        
         | ninjin wrote:
         | One would probably have to define "one-man show". But, no, Theo
         | does not write most of OpenBSD's code. Although he certainly is
         | the leader of the project. If the copyright statement bothers
         | you, I can recommend the announcement e-mail (see "THANKS" in
         | particular):
         | 
         | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-announce&m=171228270018970&w=2
         | 
         | You will also find separate copyright statements in a lot of
         | the source files and many carry the name of their authors.
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | Uh? Of course it's not a one-man show.
         | 
         | https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aopenbsd%2Fsrc%20copyright...
        
         | jmclnx wrote:
         | Are you referring to the text in the WEB Page ?
         | 
         | https://www.openbsd.org/75.html
         | 
         | I think that is because Theo de Raadt maintains the Site. As
         | someone said the source files have their own copyright
         | comments.
        
         | phone8675309 wrote:
         | I believe that copyright notice is for organizing the layout of
         | the actual distribution images (ISO, etc) and for the music and
         | artwork (though work-for-hire), not that Theo de Raadt is
         | claiming copyright over all of the code in the distribution.
        
         | ByQuyzzy wrote:
         | The advantage of Theo being dictator is that big companies
         | can't take over like they did with Linux.
        
           | flykespice wrote:
           | Linus is still dictator in the Linux kernel...
        
             | infamouscow wrote:
             | In what sense?
             | 
             | The Linux kernel development model is one that embraces
             | forking and submitting patching in a way that totally
             | horrifies webdevs paid to mush together data transformation
             | pipelines.
             | 
             | Linus and Greg KH are both very clear that you don't have
             | to use their "blessed" source trees. You're encouraged to
             | fork.
             | 
             | All of the genuinely moronic rhetorical arguments about
             | "maintainer responsibility" are downstream from the GPLv2,
             | which very clearly states in all capital letters there's no
             | warranty implied or otherwise. The amount of time wasted on
             | moot debates over that is mind boggling.
        
             | ByQuyzzy wrote:
             | Not since his vacation-style treatment.
        
               | nequo wrote:
               | I haven't heard about this. Can I read more about this
               | somewhere?
        
           | clort wrote:
           | The problem with having a benvolent dictator is that the
           | system is set up for a dictator to control things, and the
           | chances of the next dictator being quite as benevolent are
           | low.
           | 
           | perhaps Theo has a plan for an eventual succession, perhaps
           | not. Sometimes dictators can't really conceive of somebody
           | else running the show so they don't plan for it.
        
       | shrubble wrote:
       | Is the artwork a reference to the poem, Ozymandias?
        
         | rydgel wrote:
         | it is
        
       | another2another wrote:
       | Always interesting to see the amount of work going into LibreSSL,
       | but I'm not sure how much use it gets outside of OpenBSD which
       | seems a bit of a shame.
        
         | anonymous_union wrote:
         | apple ships it
        
       | lemper wrote:
       | what i enjoy the most when openbsd has a new release is their new
       | song. my favourite is the legend of puffy hood.
       | 
       | https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | "Pond-erosa Puff" lives in my head.
         | 
         | I think we've been using this a while, huh?
        
       | dyingkneepad wrote:
       | Does anybody know what are the major companies employing OpenBSD
       | developers these days? To what level are they invested?
        
         | alberth wrote:
         | I think this will be difficult to know, because IIRC, to commit
         | to OpenBSD you must use an @openbsd.org account.
         | 
         | So it's not like you can just look at the commit log and search
         | for private company @names
         | 
         | http://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/Changelogs/
        
       | whitepoplar wrote:
       | Can anyone comment on the OpenBSD security model in 2024? Is it
       | more secure than a minimal linux distro (or one configured to be
       | so) such as Ubuntu Minimal or Debian Stable?
       | 
       | I'm finding it quite difficult to compare OS "security" these
       | days, whatever that means. Everyone seems to have their own
       | crackpot opinions. If anyone with a security background could
       | chime in, I'd be forever grateful.
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
         | As far as I know, all of these statements are still true:
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20220227172102/https://madaidans...
         | 
         | https://isopenbsdsecu.re/
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > OpenBSD has no Mandatory Access Control (MAC) system like
           | AppArmor or SELinux which prevents you from fully locking
           | down user space.
           | 
           | Isn't that pledge?
           | 
           | And in general, I observe that lots of people are happy to
           | say that OpenBSD's protections are no good, but somehow they
           | can't be bothered to actually show a working exploit.
        
             | MuffinFlavored wrote:
             | > > OpenBSD has no Mandatory Access Control (MAC) system
             | like AppArmor or SELinux which prevents you from fully
             | locking down user space.
             | 
             | Would this have mattered/stopped/mitigated the `xz` problem
             | if systemd spawns opensshd and transiently loads infected
             | .so shared objects?
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | I'm not really super confident, but I think the problem
               | is that sshd has to be able to spawn user sessions and
               | those users are generally not supposed to be
               | (meaningfully) confined by selinux or whatever. So I
               | _suspect_ that it wouldn 't have helped, because a
               | compromised sshd is necessarily in the prefect place to
               | MitM or forge a session regardless of extra constraints.
               | But take with a grain of salt.
        
             | sillywalk wrote:
             | AppArmor/SELinux require separate policy files to be
             | written, to describe what an app can/can't do.
             | 
             | Pledge/unveil are APIs that developers use to directly
             | restrict what an app can do/can't do.
        
       | zvmaz wrote:
       | Is OpenBSD used in industry, in critical systems, etc.? If so,
       | what are some examples of its use? Truly interested to know.
        
         | mrweasel wrote:
         | m:tier (https://www.mtier.org/refs/) claims to have customers
         | in the oil and gas industry.
        
         | tranxen wrote:
         | There was this interesting talk [1] about how this ISP uses
         | OpenBSD as BGP control plane.
         | 
         | I used to heard that OpenBSD was often used as Internet facing
         | middlebox (like firewalls/proxy/network load balancer) because
         | of how good pf and relayd are.
         | 
         | But it would surprise me if it would still be the case
         | nowadays, OpenBSD seems to perform poorly [2] in terms of
         | network throughput compared to the competition (VyOS/VPP). And
         | I don't think this 7.5 upgrade helped a lot regarding this
         | topic.
         | 
         | [1]: https://gregsowell.com/?p=7069 [2]:
         | https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2021/07/19/pcengines-apu6.html
        
       | sjaak wrote:
       | Just upgraded my small homeserver                  sysupgrade;
       | sysmerge; pkg_add -u;
       | 
       | Done! What a delight!
        
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