[tiffanyh]

While I agree, OpenBSD also doesn't fully implement features/functionality.

If your operating system only does 20% of what another operating system can do, it's easier for you to have 80% less bugs.

That's not a knock, it's a design philosophy of OpenBSD (which is to do the minimal needed, and no more, in the most simplistic way).

[somat]

That does not match my experience with obsd. It is not so much minimalism as they are not afraid to reinvent the wheel. A obsd install is full of services, more than most linux installs I have seen.

For example you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered what a pain in the ass it is to get a pflow producer working on linux after doing the first one on openbsd.

[knorker]

I'd say it's true. They chose to not implement SMP until consumer CPUs surprised them by going multi thread.

And obsd has no Bluetooth, right? A pretty big subsystem to drop because security.

[somat]

And as a counter example here you have openbsd "we are going to install a bgp daemon on every single device, because you never know when you may need one"

I am not complaining, I like the feeling that I could single handedly rebuild the internet using only what is found in an openbsd base install. But wow, considering the size there is a lot in there. They definitely punch above their weight.

[knorker]

It's not a counter example to give examples of what does exist.

And it's not like the BGP daemon is on by default. That'd be dumb. You could equally say that any Ubuntu system has equally many steps to turn on a BGP daemon, starting with `apt install frr`.

I sure hope openbsd's BGPd doesn't have any suid binaries. And if it doesn't, well that might just as well be a vacation photo instead of a binary for all the "code" it is.

I agree that they're punching above their weight, but I would also say that they are falling more and more behind. 25 years ago they were more at par in what use cases they can address, and its performance. But now it's almost retro computing.

And it's fine! If you really only need a bog standard webserver, or router/firewall, then that's the use case and it solves your problem. And solves the problem without baggage.

I wouldn't use it for storage, though, since running a non-checksumming filesystem nowadays is a bit of a joke. (let's not get into btrfs. I acknowledge its history, but checksumming is not backups, and backups address the historical btrfs problems while not addressing at all the checksumming)

[gunapologist99]

But Bluetooth is basically a giant blast of security vulnerabilities. On the consumer side, yes, it's a big subsystem to drop, but on the server side, it's a little bit different!

I'm not an OpenBSD expert, but seems like you should be able to pass BT through USB and then do that in a subsystem or an isolated environment like a VM.

[mikem170]

> you should be able to pass BT through USB

I use a Creative BT-W2 bluetooth usb dongle. Small and has a button on it for pairing. OpenBSD sees it as a normal audio device.

[knorker]

> But Bluetooth is basically a giant blast of security vulnerabilities

Yes, but this is exactly the point. And running OpenBSD is not a problem, until you run into a brick wall like this.

If you don't need it (and things like it), then that's all fine. As with everything, the last 10% takes 99% of the work, and code, and therefore contains about 99% of the security problems.

IIRC they were also very late to being able to run virtual machines, and even USB.

If you simply don't implement the things you don't need for a use case (e.g. a webserver) then that scales down to the fact that the compressor controller chip in your (dumb) fridge is not remotely exploitable too.

[skydhash]

The Bluetooth spec is horrendous, and from what I read, the hardware is equally horrifying. Bluettoth is a wireless bus, not one class a device and an implementation would need to provide hooks to the other subsystems like wscons (keyboard and mouse), audio and network. OpenBSD does not have kernel modules, so it’s either in or not.

[gucci-on-fleek]

> The Bluetooth spec is horrendous

The Bluetooth Classic spec is indeed fairly awful, but the Bluetooth LE spec is not too bad. Plus, the entire specification is available free-of-charge, without even needing to register an account.

Bluetooth LE used to be limited to tiny accessories, but these days it supports nearly everything—I've completely disabled Bluetooth Classic on my (Linux) laptop because of how much of a disaster it is, but I'm still able to use my mouse and headphones over LE only.

> OpenBSD does not have kernel modules, so it’s either in or not.

But I'm assuming that not all kernel code is active at all times? Because it would seem odd to me if the amdgpu code was always active on something like a Raspberry Pi.

[skydhash]

There’s a config[0] mechanism, both static and runtime that tells what gets enabled. In static mode, it tells what’s get compiled in the kernel, while you can disable any drivers (and save your config as a modified kernel) in a compiled one.

It mostly a drivers tree that describe how to probe for hadrware. Like mainbus -> pci -> xhci -> usb -> uaudio -> audio.

[0] https://man.openbsd.org/config.8

[0x0203]

Depends on what you mean by active. The kernel has the code in the binary, but on boot it goes through device discovery and initialization, so it doesn't initialize or run drivers for things that aren't present.

There are also architecture specific builds, so the aarch64 build won't include driver code at all for devices that are specific to x86.

[rootnod3]

They mostly dropped it because nobody was around who could maintain it. Wasn't just about security.

[thesuitonym]

You're right, but of course OpenBSD does far more than 20%.

One thing I actually really like about OpenBSD is that things either work or they don't. There's no "Well it kind of works if you have this specific hardware set up and these programs running..." It just works 100% of the time, in 100% of the ways you expect, or it doesn't.

[ploxiln]

If they can provide only 20% of the functionality and only 1% of the bugs, that's a compelling trade-off for many use-cases! (and a bit closer to the reality IMHO)

[doublepg23]

My hobby horse is the lack of a “modern” filesystem on obsd.

Without journaling I really don’t agree with the oft repeated claims it makes a good “router”.

Any networking gear I’ve used is treated as an appliance and I don’t want an unfortunate power outage causing data loss.

[spauldo]

I ran it diskless for years with read-only NFS mounts. Set up syslog and a pflog daemon to send logs elsewhere, and you don't need write access most of the time.

[pianopatrick]

I believe that while the file system does not have journaling, that can be offset by applications. I.e. I think the SQLite Write Ahead Log would still protect you against data loss even if there's no journal in the file system, assuming you set various settings correctly. So I think it kinda depends on how the applications store data.

[1over137]

Yeah, if OpenBSD had ZFS it’d be perfect.

[nomel]

What's the use for a writable filesystem in network gear, that is detrimental if lost at power outage? Some sort of very important logging?

[daneel_w]

He does not know.

[tiltowait]

Out of curiosity, why put "router" in quotes?

[daneel_w]

OpenBSD's FFS can be told to be fully synchronous, making it about as robust as can be for not being journaled. If you lose power it will lose the specific data currently being written to disk. It won't lose other data, because it doesn't keep a bunch of it sitting around in a RAM cache while lying to the writing process about the I/O op already being completed. A journaled file system, too, will lose in-flight data that has yet to land on disk if the power is cut.

I've had my share of sudden power cuts hit OpenBSD during the 20+ years I've been using it, and I have yet to ever see its file system actually go corrupt.

A sincere question: what important data does your router frequently and busily need to persist? If you don't have a UPS for it, perhaps it isn't too important after all. Maybe we have different perspectives of what a router is and should be. I manage a router (with OpenBSD) and it can drop off the power grid at any moment without losing anything of importance. If your router is in fact a multi-functional server I can understand the notion. Consider making all of the file systems fully synchronous. It has worked great for me for two decades.

[sunshine-o]

> OpenBSD's FFS can be told to be fully synchronous, making it about as robust as can be for not being journaled.

I am very interested, is there anything we can read to achieve that?

[pianopatrick]

You can look at the mount command and the "sync" option: https://man.openbsd.org/mount

If you're really curious about it, Michael Lucas wrote a full book about the OpenBSD file system.

[ptidhomme]

Man, thanks for this precious tip

[fsckboy]

>That's not a knock, it's a design philosophy of OpenBSD (which is to do the minimal needed, and no more, in the most simplistic way)

you mean the most simple way. "simplistic" would mean they went too far.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simplistic

simplistic

1. Overly simple.

2. In a manner that simplifies a concept or issue so that its nuances and complexities are lost or important details are overlooked.

[fsckboy]

>That's not a knock, it's a design philosophy of OpenBSD (which is to do the minimal needed, and no more, in the most simplistic way)

you mean the most simple way. "simplistic" would mean they went too far.