Mastodawn

Tried installing my first non-linux unix the other day. Here are some impressive things about #openbsd :

- Partitions. ~By default, files aren't allowed to be both writable and executable. So `chmod 777` only works in /usr/local~ EDIT: apparently I misunderstood this one.

- The man pages are way more complete than many linux distros. `man afterboot` and `man 8 intro` are great.

- Nice unified service management without the complexity of systemd

- There's a CLI that'll just make RAID volumes for you.

- Nothing more complex than it needs to be. No openssl, only libressl. No sudo, only doas.

- The kernel drivers for recording audio and video by default only record silence and blackness. You need to make a sysctl.conf change if you want to un-blind your laptop. This is both privacy-conscious and hella goth.

@totherme Very nice, especially the absence of systemd. What was the hardware platform?

@underlap I'm experimenting with a hobby server on @beasts

Miod Vallat Nov 13

@totherme I'm afraid you have slightly misunderstood the writable/executable restrictions.

You can chmod 777 a file anywhere (if you own it).

But unless your partition is mounted with the wxallowed option, binaries are not allowed to have areas with both write and execute permission in memory while running.

@miodvallat thanks!

Is there a good place I can read more about this?

Miod Vallat Nov 13

@totherme The behaviour of the wxallowed mount option is described in the mount(8) manual page.

@miodvallat Thanks!

I'm still getting used to navigating the manpages to find what I want, but that makes sense.

gunstick Nov 13

@totherme can you do easily "add a second disk and mirror your boot disk to that and it just works" in one command?
Linux needs about a dozen commands. I am surprised nobody has ever written a script to do that.

@gunstick I have definitely already misunderstood one thing here, and haven't tried any RAID stuff yet, so take with big pinch of salt. But I was encouraged by these docs:

https://www.openbsdhandbook.com/storage/#software-raid-with-softraid

"""
To create a mirrored RAID 1 volume from two partitions (sd1a and sd2a):

# bioctl -c 1 -l sd1a,sd2a softraid0
softraid0: RAID 1 volume attached as sd3
# newfs /dev/rsd3c
# mount /dev/sd3c /mnt/raid

The new device sd3 acts like any other disk. It can be mounted, checked, and used normally.
"""

For my imagined use-case (keeping user data like email and media safe, not the root fs) that looks at first glance like it might be very straightforward.

Of course, now I've said that, I'm probably cursed forever, but 🤷‍♀️

Storage and File Systems

Managing disks, filesystems, encryption, and backup strategies on OpenBSD.

OpenBSD Handbook

Tim Chase Nov 13

Might depend on a couple things:

• if you boot to a ramdisk image (`boot> bsd.rd`) so that the actual source-disk has no write-activity (and thus won't get a sheared copy), you can dd(1) that source-/boot-disk's image to a second disk in Linux, OpenBSD, or pretty much any RAM-only Unixlike

• do you want a *RAID* mirror or just a copy? It's a bit (cough*a*lot*cough) more complex if you didn't set up your source-/boot-disk as a RAID to begin with. Setting up a RAID-mirror is pretty straight-forward, but incorporating an existing disk and its data into that mirror is really best done by creating a mirror on two *more* disks, making that mirror bootable, and then copying a quiesced system to that disk.

gunstick Nov 13

@gumnos @totherme yeah, raid1, sonthat both copies stay current. Including when updatimg the kernel.

Tim Chase Nov 13

@gunstick
Yeah, you're safer creating a fresh RAID mirror, installing to that, then copying your data over.. 😞

@totherme My story starts with trying to load FreeBSD on a Thinkpad. (Take a moment. Thinkpads are by far the most used laptops by BSD devs.) The OS loaded fine, but could not manage the video. After trying a few things, I decided I should "just give OpenBSD a try", and see if it's a hardware thing or a config thing. OpenBSD came right up, X and all. I've really never gone back.

I used to carry a travel router to protect my laptop at hotels. With OpenBSD and PF, there's no need.

sebsauvage Nov 13

@totherme
This is pretty impressive.

I genuinely do find the BSD documention to be better most of the time.

@publius I'm liking it. I miss the index searching features I've gotten used to in gnu info, but I really like the thought that's gone into the manpage organisation here.