
OpenBSD: arm64 platform now officially supported, and has syspatch(8) - ezequiel-garzon
https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20171208082238
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st3fan
Honest question: what is the big deal about syspatch? I see OpenBSD folks talk
about it as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How is this
different from what many distributions have had for more than a decade in the
form of apt or yum?

~~~
loeg
Can't use Linux distribution tools like apt/yum unless you package the update
contents as rpm/dpkg files and distribute apt/yum with the base system.
Neither of those is happening in OpenBSD, or likely any BSD. (I can go into
more detail on why if you're curious.)

In some ways, the BSDs are just catching up to Linux in terms of update
distribution mechanism. They all have a history of being self-hosting compile-
from-source systems, and some greybeards are still pretty attached to that
idea.

As someone who discovered Linux first and happily used it for many years
before discovering the BSDs, I think there's a lot Linux gets right that BSDs
will or should adopt to be relevant. (There are also many things the BSDs get
right, of course.) This is a good example of that.

~~~
floatboth
Packaged base is a beta feature in FreeBSD
[https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase](https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase)

But IMO there's nothing wrong with freebsd-update.

~~~
rleigh
Using pkg to update both base and ports with a single tool will be nice. As
will updating jails robustly; freebsd-update is not so great in jails in my
experience.

~~~
cperciva
freebsd-update works fine in jails, as long as you use it correctly.
Unfortunately there are a few landmines due to versioning issues.

~~~
sydney6
".. use it correctly": As in excluding the kernel component in freebsd-
update.conf or how do you mean?

~~~
cperciva
The place people usually trip up is with freebsd-update getting confused about
what version it's trying to update. The '\--currently-running <release>'
option is your friend here.

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pingiun
Isn't the official term aarch64?

~~~
Conan_Kudo
Yes, but like Debian, OpenBSD is ignoring that.

Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, etc. use the official term. Debian and the BSDs use
the informal "arm64" term.

~~~
lerax
The informal makes more sense, BTW.

~~~
lloeki
Well I misread it as amd64, thought it "can't be possible" and had to come
down to this thread to realise the nature of my mistake.

aarch32 and aarch64 are strictly ARMv8, while arm32, being informal, could
really be a catch-all term for all the previous ones. I don't know of any
aarch32 distro though, they all seem to limit to ARMv7hf, which is sad because
on a Raspberry Pi 3 you can't get the VideoCore binaries and v8 instruction
set: going 64bit means most hardware does not work (at least: no X/wayland, no
3D, no sound), and some benchmarks have shown that they bring up 15-20%
performance improvements.

Anyway, this is basically the same debate as x64 vs x86-64 vs amd64 and mostly
bike shedding at the end of the day.

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sverige
I saw this last night, plan to order a Pinebook today.

Edit: _Registered_ for a Pinebook today, will have look for a board to play
with. Any suggestions?

~~~
cat199
Don't have 1st hand OpenBSD/arm64 experience but I'd definitely expect the
page [https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html](https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html)
to be accurate as concerns device support, although I'd expect more drivers to
be written. Not a committer but I think supported in this case is talking
about system featureset on working hardware & project support (e.g. solid
committers, build machines, etc), not meaning all hardware being supported.

I'd probably read the last year-or-so of openbsd-arm list and check the recent
commit messges for that part of the tree if that page isn't clear..

------
asgs
so does this mean smart phones and IOTs can run on BSD?

~~~
watersb
OpenBSD support list [0] at the moment:

> The current target platforms are Rockchip RK3399, Allwinner A64/H5,
> Raspberry Pi 3 and Opteron A1100.

That's a good list, it may cover a number of "Maker"-oriented single-board
computers that are fun to play with.

Note that most of the Raspberry Pi chip is its Broadcom Videocore IV graphics
processor, which is not supported by the OpenBSD OS. You would have to hook up
a screen to the GPIO pins, I think, rather than getting display out of the
HDMI port. There are lots of LCD display "hats" on the market.

(I am typing this on my iPad, which is an iOS device, which is a descendent of
BSD.)

[0]: [https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html](https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html)

~~~
qubex
You can use an RS232/USB connector to hook it up to a VT100-compatible
terminal or emulator. That’s what I plan to do this afternoon.

Alternatively you can just SSH 59 it. It depends on what your objectives are.

