When the raspberry pi first launched I managed to get Gentoo on it with a USB hard disk, and I decided that was the last time I was going to go that crazy ever again.
I also had some spare servers set up as distcc-pump servers, so very little got compiled on the pi.
If this sort of thing pleases you, more power to you. We need those people and these write-ups to keep everything moving forward, or it's apple all the way down...
I'm amazed at how the openbsd community seems to like calling people idiots.
I've been using various unices for about 20 years now, ranging from Slackware Linux to OpenSolaris to FreeBSD to Kubuntu. I gave openbsd a try a few years back, and found it utterly complicated to setup and use.
And when you ask for help, you're treated like an idiot and the only reply you get is basically "rtfm". No joke, one of the guys said "Grey Unix beards are formed in suffering".
Granted, a lot of stuff is in the documentation. But also a lot of stuff isn't. Your edge case from laptop X isn't documented, and you're still considered an idiot if you can't solve it.
Even the title of this article reflects that mindset.
I think you're overreacting and exaggerating, both regarding OpenBSD being complicated to set up and about the community being toxic.
Yes, a certain few people on the official mailing lists can be a bit vocal and stingy, and that also goes for one or two asocial a**holes on the inofficial IRC channel (#openbsd/libera), but these people are few and by no means representative of the community. For the absolute majority of occasions, people seeking help on these two venues are met with generous and thorough reciprocation.
If you've used unices for 20 years, and in particular if you've installed the Slackware of old, I cannot imagine why you would feel OpenBSD is complicated to set up. It's technically the neatest, tidiest and least convoluted of the UNIX-likes out there, coupled with the best documentation available. Could it be that you approached it as if it were a "Linux-like"? I see this regularly with new users asking for help in #openbsd/libera, trying OpenBSD out with a bit of Linux in their backpack resulting in some common and entirely logical misconceptions.
I don't think so. I had similar experiences to what GP is reporting.
Edit: I must add, this was many years ago (at least ten)... I then let them on their own playing their games, kept studying gnu/linux and I regret nothing, frankly.
> I cannot imagine why you would feel OpenBSD is complicated to set up.
Maybe the fact that there are so many manual steps to have a usable, "production grade", setup? Sure, you just have to follow documentation, but you're in for hours of work and learning tons of concepts before having anything secure if it's the first time. Also, if you make a single mistake along the way, all the help you'll get is a "Yeah, you did something wrong. RTFM".
That certainly isn't the definition of simple to me.
Even if you're just going through the manual install, there a no more steps than during something like a normal installation of Ubuntu. The disklabel tool isn't that user-friendly, but it's workable and help is available.
I think many believe the installation is complicated, simply because it's not graphical. Overall though, the installation process, the flexibility and tooling available for larger installation is impressive, and much better documented than anything I've seen on Linux.
Yeah, OpenBSD's autoinstall is absolutely best in class (2nd place, IMO, goes to Red Hat's kickstart), and is the kind of thing where once you've used it you wonder why everybody didn't do it this way. Just... Have the installer take input in text prompts, and then let people record the question and the answer in a text file.
if you want a full system format and are happy with the defaults, you can just keep pressing enter, and besides entering a username and 2 passwords, that is it as far as interacting with the installer goes.
You say your background includes Slackware Linux but you find OpenBSD to be difficult, nigh impossible, to install correctly? I think you're being disingenuous. I too have a long history with Slackware, going back to the late 90s, and I first tried OpenBSD back in 2008. Back then, it didn't do nearly as much "out of the box" to help a new user along as it does today in 7.0. Back then the user was expected to know the proper installer URL to set up for pkg_add to work, was expected to know how to manually install closed source firmware if needed, was expected to know how to partition their drive beforehand, was expected to know how to set up and turn on WiFi, and so on. All of that information was of course in the man pages, but the user was expected to carry a lot of the responsibility of bringing up the system for the first time.
Today, the OpenBSD installer literally does all of that for you. It sets the /etc/installurl to a sane default (the OpenBSD CDN URL), it does WiFi autoconfig even if your firmware is not available yet, it has an automatic partitioning feature, and it attempts a firmware update, all before you reboot the first time. Sure, there are a few after-boot setup steps left to do, but no more so than in Slackware 15.0. Both OSes give you a command line after install, both expect you to tweak the OS to your own needs from its base configuration, and OpenBSD even helps you set up your regular user account in the installer rather than leaving you to do it afterwards as Slackware does.
Hmm, no, I really have to disagree here. And you need to proceed with the same configuring of for example an httpd on the Linuxes as well after installing the software. These simply are not graphical "click'n'play" environments like IIS on Windows.
> Granted, a lot of stuff is in the documentation. But also a lot of stuff isn't. Your edge case from laptop X isn't documented, and you're still considered an idiot if you can't solve it.
In my experience that's not what the OpenBSD mailing lists are like. Most people will go out of their way to help, but it's also expected that you do your own due diligence first. It's not a commercial project, and not every combination of hardware is going to work perfectly, or is going to be documented.
> Even the title of this article reflects that mindset.
I think you're reading too much into it, and really stretching it for that interpretation. You've gone in with a negative opinion of the OpenBSD community, which I think is an undeserved one, and are viewing it through that lens.
> I'm amazed at how the openbsd community seems to like calling people idiots.
"The complete idiot's guide" is a well-known series of books that cover a variety of topics for beginners; the title is a play on that. It's not an insult.
I would imagine that the author had the same feeling as a lot of us who have written and researched complex documentation that you feel like an idiot for all the missteps and detours taken to find the correct path. There is always a joy in the completion but damn you wish you had been smarter and more knowledgeable in the middle.
I've used OpenBSD since 2000. I own a PinebookPro. The tired and lame title makes me think the author is a joke (right or wrong) and I end up not wanting to bother giving this a try.
When I write documentation, I usually target it at an idiot. The idiot in question is me in six months when I've forgotten all this stuff. It's not an insult.
the openbsd community seems to like calling people idiots
Even the title of this article reflects that mindset
There's cultural history about that very phrase. There was a series of books written with that exact title. They were intended to "provide a basic understanding of a complex and popular topics. The term 'idiot' is used as hyperbole".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_Idiot%27s_Guides
Edit: I want to add that apparently the author put a lot of effort into writing a fairly comprehensive document. It will probably be quite helpful for someone attempting that install.
The document shouldn't be dismissed just because of the title.
So when you were told to RTFM, did you find the answer in the manual? If you didn't, did you tell them, and how did they respond?
I don't have any experience with OpenBSD or its community, but I'm in several (Linux-related) communities that would also tell you to RTFM if you were to ask a question that we expect is answered in the FM. And we would be happy to be corrected if you came back and told us it wasn't there, or even better if you told us when you initially asked your question that you did read such-and-such parts of the FM and did not find the answer. You could even become the one to update the manual to add the missing info for the next soul who has the same problem.
Basically what I'm getting at is that lots of small communities don't have the resources or inclination to answer the same questions over and over again. Yes the response may not be polite, and if that puts you off of using the software then so be it, but some level of self-help and doing-your-homework is expected before asking questions.
Do you have examples of what in OpenBSD you found "utterly complicated to setup and use"? I've been using for several years now because of how devoid of complexity it is and because of how comprehensive the documentation is. Trying to even install other Unices nowadays frustrates me to no end because they're more complicated than "just keep pressing enter".
I think it's the difference between being simple, and hiding complexity behind towers of abstraction. In my experience OpenBSD goes to great lengths to rethink systems and purge intrinsic complexity. By contrast, Linux tends to merge complexity behind meta interfaces.
OpenBSD's approach appeals to me aesthetically, and I like the feeling that I could easily dive in and get to the bottom of the stack. There is no magic.
By contrast, I look at Ubuntu as a hot mess of code that I'll never understand, while simultaneously appreciating that I can click through the installer after a cocktail or two and be playing games on Steam in short order.
the openBSD community is also very pragmatic in terms of backwards compatibility.
spending time make systems backwards compatible should be better spend making the path to using <newthing> as easy as possible, and a big help in that is keeping complexity down and not building towers of abstraction.
Arguably it's a little weird that it's under "softraid", when you don't know that it's a feature provided by the softraid layer. It's easy enough to figure out after a bit of searching, but it's not the first place I'd look either.
That doesn't really match my experience. When I read the docs and don't find what I want, I've gotten useful help from the community. Either they help me or they point me to the piece of documentation that I somehow missed.
Granted I didn't actually ever need to ask for much help because OpenBSD was so utterly simple to set up.
From the POV of most of the folks working on OpenBSD most people are idiots. It's sounds like snark, but I'm trying to make a point here. There are umpteen OS for beginners (Ubuntu, TinyCore) or power users (Arch, most of the others) but OpenBSD is mostly for OpenBSD developers. They have been dealing with "idiots" who don't get that for years and years now, and part of their attitude is (IMO) just a heuristic for keeping out the riffraff.
I like OpenBSD because it doesn't treat the user like an idiot, and the documentation is excellent.
Also, the developers assume that they, themselves are idiots that can't maintain complex software, so they rip out as much unnecessary complexity as possible.
>I'm amazed at how the openbsd community seems to like calling people idiots.
Nobody called anyone an idiot. You just missed the direct and obvious reference to the "Complete idiot guides to" series of books which are themselves a reference of the "for dummies" books.
My biggest problem with OpenBSD is the partitioning, do i want security? Then i need partitions with w^x but how big should they be without wasting to much space. I think OpenBSD would greatly benefit from stuff like zfs-filesystems or btrfs sub-partitions...and NO i don't say OpenBSD needs ZFS, just a more flexible partition mechanism, maybe overlay with quota or something?
Having used OpenBSD and seeing how partitions and mount options are used to increase security, it’s really weird going back to a Linux system where everything is just one big partition.
You’re right though, it’s really tricky getting the partition sizes right. The auto layout is sensible, I just feel that it set aside to much space for home and to little for var.
Linux has all the tools to make use of partitions, but many distros still just go for one big partition. It seems counter intuitive.
It's a relatively recent thing. Before that, all major Linux distributions gave you a bunch of different filesystems by default. Which is how all UNIX-like systems worked, for a number of historical reasons.
This wasn't great in practice. One partition layout certainly doesn't fit everbody, and there is a world of difference between the use case of a laptop, a database server, and a small web server. Most people outgrew the default setup rather quickly.
Over time installers tended to get the simplest use case as default, while allowing users with knowledge to choose their desired file system setup.
Since more than a decade ago it's not necessary to choose since all major file systems have online resizing capabilities and you can change the setup without downtime. There's also no need to be limited by the age old partitioning format. That made the simple default even more appropriate.
The disklabel utility can be used to install, examine, or modify the
label on a disk drive or pack. The disk label contains information about
disk characteristics (size, type, etc.) and the partition layout, stored
on the disk itself.
disklabel supports 15 configurable partitions, `a' through `p', excluding
`c'. The `c' partition describes the entire physical disk, is
automatically created by the kernel, and cannot be modified or deleted by
disklabel. By convention, the `a' partition of the boot disk is the root
partition, and the `b' partition of the boot disk is the swap partition,
but all other letters can be used in any order for any other partitions
as desired.
The word "slice" does not come up in disklabel's man page at all.
Your openbsd sd0e partition wont show up under fdisk.
sd0c will as it can be maped to either the openbsd A6 partition under MBR/GPT or a disklabel using the whole disk.
As far as I know the c partition is always the whole disk, regardless of what you have (or don't have) in MBR or GPT. If you want to image the whole disk with dd, you'll reach for rsd0c, always.
But I still don't understand what distinction you're trying to make. Yes, disklabel partitions don't show up in MRB, just as GPT partitions won't. No surprise that the three different partitioning methods aren't exactly aware of each other.
For all practical intents and purposes, BSD's use partitions. They just call them differently because they use a different technical implementation. But they're still just as static and just as limiting as regular partitions.
The important distinction for me is that the tools for working with partitions exist on openBSD (eg fdisk) but those deal with mbr/ gpt partitions, and won’t tell you about slices. So practically it’s a distinction you need to understand if you intend on working with them.
It's the same...GPT is the partition-table, you even write it yourself:
>into several parts
parts are partitions and not subvolumes, a subvolume is a filesystem or volume-manager on top of a partition and it's size/quota etc is defined BY the filesystem or the volume-manager (look up btrfs subvolumes, zfs-filesystems or lvm).
This is one of OpenBSD's shortcomings. While I like the fundamental design of all the file systems living contained within a "normal" MBR/GPT partition, the lack of advanced tools (no logical volume management, can only grow file systems but not shrink them etc.) has vexed me a couple of times during my 22 years of using OpenBSD. Thankfully it doesn't take long to get a good view of the storage requirements. I recommend playing around with OpenBSD in a virtual machine, e.g. VirtualBox or so.
I'm an OpenBSD user, and while that's a solution, it's not a good one. The poster is right, lack of a modern filesystem is a major shortcoming of OpenBSD; but sadly nobody with the right skill set has decided to work on that.
If I remember rightly there was some interest in porting HAMMER2 (DragonflyBSD's filesystem) to OpenBSD, but it's a lot of work with very few people both interested and experienced enough to put in the work.
Seems like an attempt to make it should Apple-like in naming. Why the need to try and piggyback off Apple? I take it less seriously because of the obvious attempt at invoking Apple. A gimmick name.
I also had some spare servers set up as distcc-pump servers, so very little got compiled on the pi.
If this sort of thing pleases you, more power to you. We need those people and these write-ups to keep everything moving forward, or it's apple all the way down...