[can09]

Does it seem a little embarrassing to anyone else that this is necessary? OpenBSD is supposedly the most secure nix platform available, and yet users have to resort to third-parties to get functionality that is available on nearly every other nix system by default.

[OrpheanBeholder]

The OpenBSD project doesn't have the resources to provide this so m:tier employs a couple of OpenBSD developers to provide this option for people who want it. Not sure what is embarrassing about this.

[can09]

The fact that virtually every other nix system, large and small, can provide this standard functionality, and the OpenBSD project cannot. Having to rely on third parties for convenient updates is an obvious potential security issue. Firstly because it discourages updates in the first place, but secondly because I now have to trust m:tier as well as the OpenBSD devs.

That is why I say embarrassing - they are one of very few projects to lack this feature, and this feature is an important part of a secure system. OpenBSD is all about being "hands off" and "sane by default" and yet paradoxically their update process is much more involved and hands-on!

[saean]

If openbsd developers do it, why don't they make it official and provide it from openbsd.org? They could still plaster "this is thanks to funding from mtier" on the site prominently.

[sdkmvx]

The OpenBSD developers are unwilling to do anything that makes some architectures better than others, and M:Tier is unwilling to build stable updates for everything. Perhaps this will change one day as hardware continues to consolidate, but that's the way it is for now.

http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

[the_trapper]

As far as I know, the patches are submitted to the -stable ports tree. mtier just provides a very convenient way to perform binary updates.

I fail to see any downsides to this arrangement.

[technofiend]

Why would anyone find it embarrassing that OpenBSD is not RedHat? They don't have the staff or the funding to curate an operating system and all the ports. Rather than do a poor job maintaining a large code base they prefer to do the best job they can on the core OS. What's embarrassing about that?

[montyedwards]

Nobody is suggesting OpenBSD not being RedHat should be embarrassing.

However, it is not ideal to have a security-focused OS not directly provide binpatches for the base system and core libraries like libressl. Trusting OpenBSD.org is one thing, but trusting additional entities like mtier, etc. just to get security updates without having to compile is another.

FWIW, I think we should feel embarrassed about not giving more funding & time to OpenBSD given everything they already do for us.

http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/campaign2016.html

Maybe someone at OpenBSD Foundation should get itself listed at smile.amazon.com and make it even easier for people to contribute.

[the_trapper]

The traditional means of patching is recompiling from source. That is the ONLY officially supported method.

This is just another convenient option. I fail to see the problem here.

If you want supported first-party binary security patches you should be using a project that provides that, such as FreeBSD, or just about any Linux distro that is not Gentoo.

[toyg]

I think there would be no problem with OpenBSD supporting an automated build-and-recompile tool, that would be perfectly fine and would stop people like me bitching about updates. Yeah yeah "it's trivial for you to write etc etc" but that's not the point: it's like saying that developing a text editor is simple so we shouldn't provide vi. This sort of thing is better designed and implemented by people who know the OS inside out, not by users.

[Mordak]

For what it is worth the project does provide regular binary updates for both the base system and ports for -current (snapshots). If I were to guess, I would guess that one of the reasons that the project does not provide binary updates for -stable is because they are busy providing binary builds for -current. Since all the devs run -current, you can see which one they choose to invest their limited resources in.

Following current is pretty simple if you're happy to track snapshots, which are updated regularly (usually every week). If you're worried about stability, remember that -current turns into -stable twice a year, so current is pretty stable, and any issues that do crop up get fixed very quickly, because they impact the developers.

[the_trapper]

The problem is that the OpenBSD team doesn't want to write and maintain a tool like that, and they also don't want to utilize their sparse resources hosting the necessary package build infrastructure for all of the architectures they support. They are volunteers, so it really is up to them to work on whatever they want to work on.

Additionally, the amount of security patches we're talking about here is so small that just updating from source code really isn't that big of a deal for most people.

[toyg]

> it really is up to them to work on whatever they want to work on.

Sure, and it really is up to me to keep bitching :)

Besides, the contradiction here is that they are not all volunteers: M:Tier employs some of them exactly to do that job. So, they don't want to do it, but they'll do it if the price is right? Why can't this pricing be done transparently through OpenBSD, rather than some obscure third-party company?

If the problem is funding, why can't they do like RedHat or Oracle, who ask for money to provide automated updates? Oh yeah they do, but through m:tier for some sort of reason (tax? street rep? We can but speculate).

> just updating from source code really isn't that big of a deal for most people.

It's enough to keep the m:tier service running and people like me bitching, so clearly for a lot of people it is. It's enough that every other linux distro out there does it. Denying it over and over won't change that.

[can09]

We are not talking about the same thing. I am not arguing they should be more responsible for third-party codebases, this is not an issue of ports vs base. This is far more an issue of infrastructure, of source vs binary. Simply offering binpatches for their core OS would still be a huge step forward.

[notaplumber]

You can always stick with the release binaries, which are unchanged.. or follow -current development by periodically upgrading to snapshots, where you can find more up-to-date binary packages. This is what developers run on their laptops, and often in production. It's sort of a "rolling release".

There aren't enough resources or interested developers willing to handle -stable package builds, but the ports tree is tagged each release and receives select backported security updates, which you can build yourself.

[RaleyField]

It's what's blocking me from trying it. I don't want to spend time to micro manage my desktop system and applying security patches involves lots of time. They should bless certain architectures (amd64) and certain packages (chrome, firefox, one DE) and keep binary patches available for those, everything else can stay the same (i.e. binaries on release). I also don't want to try third party services for updates because I'm not sure if I can trust them. I know core OpenBSD team can run a tight ship but other OS teams have shown that's not always the case. Irc the excuse is that openbsd is now a research operating system, but lack of funding probably plays into this as well. So everything is broken as per usual. </rant>

[jlgaddis]

> ... I'm not sure if I can trust them.

Might I suggest looking into who it is at M-Tier that's producing these packages? It's not just some random third-party.

FWIW, the openup tool makes things extremely easy and it certainly doesn't "involves lots of time". Run "openup -c" from a cronjob and, when you get an e-mail saying there are updates available, log in and run "openup". Kick off a reboot if the kernel/base was updated and you're good.

I run several OpenBSD boxes in production. Don't let this be what stops you.

[saean]

The idea that we outsiders have to research mtier to decide that it's not very much of a third party after all is just odd.

I don't want to seem adversarial, and I want to like openbsd, but it's hard.

[toyg]

I said it before: if the people running mtier and openbsd are basically the same, the fact that they are different organizations invites speculation as to why that might be the case. In the spirit of trust and full-disclosure, it would be good if this situation were made transparent. At the moment there's a lot of "these packages are not blessed but they're from the same people wink-wink-nudge-nudge".

Nobody else does this, not even small distributions, and tbh the excuses are really thin - especially for a project so committed to security and transparency.

[Gracana]

With the amount of software you likely run on a desktop machine, your implicit web of trust is already pretty huge. Does trusting mtier really make that big a difference? How does it compare to the maintainers-and-build-bots infrastructure of other open source operating systems? I think this sort of hang-up is an example of letting perfect become the enemy of good, and it's something I have to push myself through from time to time.

[RaleyField]

> How does it compare to the maintainers-and-build-bots infrastructure of other open source operating systems?

Most other operating systems are badly run as well. Doesn't mean that adding another layer of potential insecurity is justified.

> Does trusting mtier really make that big a difference?

Yes. Is mtier running similar ship to mint? Do you have convincing argument that they don't?

[Gracana]

> Most other operating systems are badly run as well. Doesn't mean that adding another layer of potential insecurity is justified.

But if you go with another OS, that's the system you get and you miss out on the nice vulnerability mitigation technologies that are built into OpenBSD. Besides, which harmful thing is more likely to happen, your package repository gets owned, or someone sends a maliciously crafted request to your server?

> Is mtier running similar ship to mint? Do you have convincing argument that they don't?

I have no idea what "running similar ship to mint" means or implies.

[RaleyField]

> Besides, which harmful thing is more likely to happen, your package repository gets owned, or someone sends a maliciously crafted request to your server?

If you have ports closed because you run desktop then the former? It's fine do a little admin work (or it be a job of itself) on (production) servers, it's not if you just want to have secure desktop, which was my original complaint. Besides, there are plenty of examples in various projects where downstream got compromised, so why introduce another link that can potentially break.

> I have no idea what "running similar ship to mint" means or implies.

That they shipped infected isos. There are other examples where you'll see brilliant engineers give little to no thought to security, the fact that m:tier guys might contribute great work for openbsd doesn't mean that they can also keep artifacts secure and I as the end users shouldn't have to play sherlock to figure out if I can trust them.

[ams6110]

> users shouldn't have to play sherlock to figure out if I can trust them.

If you don't trust them, then apply the errata yourself and compile from source. It's not that difficult. If you have many machines you can do it on one, build a release and roll that out on the others.