OpenBSD Journal

Daemon News

Contributed by dhartmei on from the november-has-just-passed dept.

The latest issue of the Daemon News ezine contains among others two articles related to OpenBSD:

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Simon (130.225.194.124) on

    I get the OpenSSH article, but isn't patching of OpenBSD documented already?

    I find it a bit silly to write a guide to patch OpenBSD, when each patch comes with its own documentation and the FAQ already covers kernel rebuilds.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (69.143.29.120) on

      Agreed, it is silly to write an article that's covered already.. it almost seems as if the article is a summary that paraphrases the existing documentation. I think DaemonNews may be on their last legs, what with the obvious backup of their magazine and e-zine publishing.. wasn't this the November issue? That's really bad. I hope they can recover, but if not I'm sure someone else more capable will take the reigns.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (24.127.0.74) on

        It's not about being capable, it's about the damn BSD community not helping. Articles come from people writing and submitting them. If no one writes anything, then there's nothing to post.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (69.143.29.120) on

          So stop whining and start writing articles. I'm sure it's not that hard to motivate people to write articles.

    2. By jose nazario (204.181.64.2) --@--.-- on http://monkey.org/~jose/

      i can think of a valuable reason for this article being written.

      daemon news is read by the wider BSD community and many non-BSD people, as well. many of these people aren't OpenBSD users, or people who have looked at the OpenBSD docs. this gives them some exposure to the (relatively) straight forward process of patching and updating an OpenBSD system, and may entice them to look more closely at the project for their needs.

      if you're goal is wider exposure of the project and education of the potential userbase, this is a good thing.

      i concur with another reply in this thread and encourage the BSD community to write more docs, submit them to places like Daemon News, and help fix any weaknesses you think you've spotted. you'll learn a lot, you'll contribute to the community effort, and you'll make the resource better for it. i got my start in contributing to open source projects by writing documentation, and i'm proud of that. it's a great way to add real value to the wider open source community and improve your position in it, as well.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (65.198.20.164) on

    The article on patching OpenBSD is kinda redundant because those instructions are included in the patchfiles so even an OpenBSD neophyte like me can do it. Although, I figure any good press is better than no press.

    I typically don't patch my system that way though. Coming from FreeBSD I was quite used to using cvsup to update my source, so I dug through the OpenBSD documentation and figured out how to a) install cvsup and b) get it configured to update my source tree and ports tree. The documentation wasn't as clear and organized as I hoped, but I figured it out (I kinda cheated and used a FreeBSD cvsup file as an example). I look at the errata page from time to time for my version of OpenBSD and see what's vulnerable then I recompile and install whatever needs to be fixed. It's pretty simple.

    I have tried using other methods to update my source and ports tree, such as SUP and other methods, but I quite used to using cvsup and it works well for me. I hope I'm doing things right though. Like I said, I'm an OpenBSD neophyte so I'm still learning my way around OpenBSD.

    My next job for OpenBSD is to utilize it as a transparent filter here at work. Mostly, I want to filter out layer 2 junk on my network. I have some RF scanners on the network that work at the layer 2 network level and they seem to be flooding the network with junk. I thought the use of switches would have prevented that, but apparently they're (the RF scanners) broadcasting thier junk.

    Comments

    1. By SH (82.182.103.172) on

      The article on patching OpenBSD is kinda redundant because those instructions are included in the patchfiles so even an OpenBSD neophyte like me can do it. Although, I figure any good press is better than no press.

      Jose Nazario explained this quite nicely.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (65.198.20.164) on

        And that's why I said this: Although, I figure any good press is better than no press.

        I agree, visibility is good in the BSD even if it is redundant. BSD can use all the visibility it can get.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (213.118.35.44) on

      Rudancy must be free.

  3. By mirabile (213.196.227.95) on http://mirbsd.org/

    About The Author

    Saad Kadhi is a computer security consultant. In addition to computer security, his main areas of
    interest are Open Source and Unix Operating Systems. He is a member of the OpenBSD project. He can be
    reached at saad (at) docisland dot org.

    This document is Copyright (C) 2004 Saad Kadhi. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify
    this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), Version 1.2 or any later
    version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the invariant sections being ``About the
    Author''.



    Please read the following:
    http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html

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Copyright © - Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]