# OpenBSD / GhostBSD / FreeBSD



## knightjp (Apr 1, 2019)

I do have a few questions about the difference in between OpenBSD, FreeBSD and GhostBSD. 
From what I know ( I do welcome any correction), GhostBSD is a distro based on FreeBSD. 
OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD that concentrates on the purity of the code base and security. I guess if you're looking for the most secure system, OpenBSD is the one to install. 

However my questions are: 
1. If GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD, does it use the FreeBSD repos for the "pkg install" or its own?
2. What are the pros and cons of each?


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## Cthulhux (Apr 1, 2019)

knightjp said:


> OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD that concentrates on the purity of the code base and security.



Security is a side effect that happens automatically if you care about code correctness.



knightjp said:


> I guess if you're looking for the most secure system, OpenBSD is the one to install.



I would guess that Plan 9 wins this race, but Plan 9 is (arguably) a worse desktop OS.



knightjp said:


> If GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD, does it use the FreeBSD repos for the "pkg install" or its own?



Both, actually.


			New GhostBSD 10.3 pkgs repositories - GhostBSD
		




knightjp said:


> 2. What are the pros and cons of each?



Pro GhostBSD: A preconfigured desktop.
Pro FreeBSD: No surprises re: the package configuration.


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## knightjp (Apr 1, 2019)

Cthulhux said:


> Pro GhostBSD: A preconfigured desktop.
> Pro FreeBSD: No surprises re: the package configuration.


What about OpenBSD? What are its pros and cons?


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## Cthulhux (Apr 1, 2019)

Pro OpenBSD: A relatively minimalistic system which still includes (most of) the kitchen sink, made by talented developers who fully embrace meritocracy.

Contra OpenBSD: The performance could be better. That _might_ be relevant on lower-specs desktops.


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## blackhaz (Apr 1, 2019)

You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?

OpenBSD is such a clean and pure system - a delightful sight to behold, especially in our age of "modern" operating systems where `ps ax` takes multiple terminal screens after clean install. Most of things you would expect are working out of the box. Configuration is simple, and documentation is great, albeit concise. My experience with it, however, is that it was very slow for desktop use - performance takes a hit for all this security stuff, so much that I couldn't play a video in the browser on the same hardware that worked fine on FreeBSD. Also, OpenBSD has no wine.

Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you. I guess with modern CPUs performance isn't a big deal these days, and many people don't need Windows emulation, and for them, I guess, OpenBSD can be a wonderful home.

So, I went with FreeBSD as my main desktop/laptop. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is fast, has Linux and Windows emulation, ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe), even better documentation - the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. There are more people maintaining ports and packages, so you don't feel on a desert island when it comes to a wide range of user applications. Updating is easy. I'm running a business and doing all sorts of work from my FreeBSD workstation - from research to web design and desktop publishing, and it works very well. It replaced my Macbook at some point in life and I'm not looking back (when things are working!) I am running web and file servers on FreeBSD, and a few hundred of small firewalls at remote locations. It's just a great all-around operating system you can throw at virtually anything.


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## Cthulhux (Apr 1, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you.



No, this is not true (anymore). You can run the "bleeding edge" (-CURRENT) or you can have support for one year with upgrades twice a year. In either case, security updates are officially available through _syspatch_, software updates are in -CURRENT or, well, twice a year.


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## twllnbrck (Apr 1, 2019)

knightjp said:


> 1. If GhostBSD is based on FreeBSD, does it use the FreeBSD repos for the "pkg install" or its own?





Cthulhux said:


> Both, actually.
> New GhostBSD 10.3 pkgs repositories - GhostBSD Forums



GhostBSD is now based on TrueOS (or Project Trident or whatever name they choose today) - paraphrased a fork of a fork.
https://ghostbsd.org/18.10_release_announcement


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## knightjp (Apr 2, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?


Yeah.. I just realised. I was actually talking more for the desktop side.



blackhaz said:


> Also, OpenBSD has no wine.


Yeah... that doesn't bother me. But to be fair, the only things I would need from Windows side is to be able to run a couple of old games. AOE2 / RA2.



blackhaz said:


> So, I went with FreeBSD as my main desktop/laptop. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is fast, has Linux and Windows emulation, ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe), even better documentation - the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages. There are more people maintaining ports and packages, so you don't feel on a desert island when it comes to a wide range of user applications. Updating is easy. I'm running a business and doing all sorts of work from my FreeBSD workstation - from research to web design and desktop publishing, and it works very well. It replaced my Macbook at some point in life and I'm not looking back (when things are working!) I am running web and file servers on FreeBSD, and a few hundred of small firewalls at remote locations. It's just a great all-around operating system you can throw at virtually anything.


I'm still getting to grips with FreeBSD. I wonder why there is no xenodm for it.. I like it on OpenBSD.


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## shepper (Apr 2, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you.


The two third party package updates I'm aware of are both run by OpenBSD developers.
OpenBSD Mozilla Builds
M:tier updates
The base system now uses binary updates via syspatch
OpenBSD syspatch



knightjp said:


> I'm still getting to grips with FreeBSD. I wonder why there is no xenodm for it.. I like it on OpenBSD.


Xenodm was forked from xdm and cleaned of useless code in the process.  You would use Xorg's xdm in FreeBSD.
This brings up another distinguishing feature of OpenBSD is the development of userland utilities.
xdm => xenodm
openssl => libressl
sudo => doas
sendmail => opensmtpd
ntp => openntp
openssh => openbsd owns this - everyone else, including Microsoft, uses it.

Each of the above apps had its genesis in concerns with bloat/code quality in the original application.  I think all, except xenodm, are available in FreeBSD.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 2, 2019)

Just to throw this out there, I did a bare-metal install of OpenBSD a couple of months ago just to see what all the fuss was about. First observation was that the FreeBSD installer is tremendously easier than the OpenBSD installer, in my opinion. Also, could not install using more than one block device with OpenBSD. To clarify: I run 2 SSDs: one for the OS and one for my user's /home. OpenBSD didn't allow me, or I couldn't figure out how to, use my second SSD as my user's /home. Lastly, performance was terrible. I run a homebuilt PC with a 4 core i7 7700, 32GB ram, 2 SSDs and onboard Intel 6300HD video. Display is a 34 inch 4k @ 3440x1440, which I suspect was the issue. Screen redraws were so slow it looked like I was viewing web pages over a 1990 dial up connection.

I am staying with FreeBSD simply because it gives me a great base to customize, I am used to it and performance is fantastic.


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## mod3777 (Apr 2, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> You didn't put us into context. Are you building a file server, a laptop, a research workstation, something else?
> 
> OpenBSD is such a clean and pure system - a delightful sight to behold, especially in our age of "modern" operating systems where `ps ax` takes multiple terminal screens after clean install. Most of things you would expect are working out of the box. Configuration is simple, and documentation is great, albeit concise. My experience with it, however, is that it was very slow for desktop use - performance takes a hit for all this security stuff, so much that I couldn't play a video in the browser on the same hardware that worked fine on FreeBSD. Also, OpenBSD has no wine.
> 
> ...



The documentation project needs more manpower. Much of the information is getting outdated. Also, OpenBSD update process is very decent, i.e loading the initial ramdisk, and booting it will pull rest of the upgrade. OpenBSD is not a bad option. The developers communicate with users (patch submitter) so quick that even a paid project can't beat that. However, FreeBSD is way ahead in terms of features and performances.


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## Joe (Apr 4, 2019)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> Just to throw this out there, I did a bare-metal install of OpenBSD a couple of months ago just to see what all the fuss was about. First observation was that the FreeBSD installer is tremendously easier than the OpenBSD installer, in my opinion. Also, could not install using more than one block device with OpenBSD. To clarify: I run 2 SSDs: one for the OS and one for my user's /home. OpenBSD didn't allow me, or I couldn't figure out how to, use my second SSD as my user's /home. Lastly, performance was terrible. I run a homebuilt PC with a 4 core i7 7700, 32GB ram, 2 SSDs and onboard Intel 6300HD video. Display is a 34 inch 4k @ 3440x1440, which I suspect was the issue. Screen redraws were so slow it looked like I was viewing web pages over a 1990 dial up connection.
> 
> I am staying with FreeBSD simply because it gives me a great base to customize, I am used to it and performance is fantastic.



The installer prompts you to choose a disk and partition it and then choose another or done. No problem using multiple disks...in the last six months or so I brought up a new box with 4 drives and did everything through the installer. Filesystems on all drives...

OpenBSD does not have good/any hardware acceleration for a lot of graphics. So yeah, don't expect a video editing setup on OpenBSD. I have used OpenBSD for around 15 years and while you can make a desktop out of it, I think FreeBSD is a better desktop. I like OpenBSD in that it's very simple and clean as was already said upthread. The upgrade and patching process have improved a lot over the years and they have a lot of good innovations.


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## badbrain (Apr 5, 2019)

Just my opinion.

Openbsd is overhyped by the net. It's a clean system where many great homegrown softwares like OpenSSH was ported to use everywhere. The project is very good at cryptography. Suitable for resources constrained environments like mail server, router, firewall or old laptop but for high performance pc/server it's just doesn't scale. About security it's not the most secure like it pr. Security like Openbsd like yourself to cut your legs because you mostly sit on your chair but rarely move, so just "remove it to reduce the attack surface". It's nonsense. They remove loadable kernel module support. Disabled SMT by default. And many mores. Secure but useless. The idea Openbsd code base is smaller than Linux and FreeBSD and has less features means lesser bugs is just plain wrong. The low numbers of exploited bugs only means there're many more not exposed so not discovered, not mean it's any more secure than the other OSes. Being a smaller and very selective community also means fewer eyes looking on the code. Read the twitter of Maxime Villard and you will see the latest exploit using vmm/vmd's bug.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1109208948429725697
I hear something named HardenedBSD which has the largest number of "security features" they list on their page. Secure but still has FreeBSD performance. I see pretty much just pr. Doing security stuff you need a team of professionals to implement to audit and many tests tests tests but it's just a play of two men. After read this I'm very sure I'm right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17382388

The master of hyping. Made himself a victim and FreeBSD as a evil and bureaucracy project. But many clueless and hater just go with him.

Edit: I'm noway hate the two nor personally attack them. But I believe in facts and common sense. Hope their business will be good but for now we should just avoid the hype and sticking with FreeBSD. If their patches someday be good enough sooner or later we will have it. Quality is preferred over quantity (and hype).

Don't ride the trends. Don't take the hype. You will be safe. My brain will shutdown right now too tired of editing a very long post god bless everyone.


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## badbrain (Apr 6, 2019)

The last FreeBSD based GhostBSD edition I tried is fine. It worked out of the box like any other Linux based live system. Nothing special. I hate the default fonts installed. Too ugly compared to a standard Linux live system like Manjaro. I'm not talked about screen font but fonts available by default on LibreOffice. Is it has anything related to licensing issue so Linux could ship a better one but we can't?

Recent version switched to TrueOS base. As the author of it now works for iXsystem. Incompatibility happens. We can no longer use FreeBSD ports and packages but TrueOS ports and packages, freebsd-update now trueos-updates... I found it's very adventurous to run a system based on current so I don't use it.

If NomadBSD supports installing to hard drive just like GhostBSD it's so great.


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## ralphbsz (Apr 6, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Just my opinion.
> 
> Openbsd is overhyped by the net. ... About security it's not the most secure like it pr.



You are free to have your opinion.  I think your opinion is completely wrong.  OpenBSD is good at what they strive to do: Being minimal while usable for small servers, being relatively secure, and being above all clean and well designed.  If you try to use OpenBSD for large servers, or as general-purpose machines, the results will be predictably bad.  I like the fact that the OpenBSD community gives us an alternative OS, which allows trying different things, and using them where appropriate.    Personally, I haven't used it in several years, but I enjoyed it for the 6 or 8 years that it was my main home server OS.


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## rigoletto@ (Apr 6, 2019)

badbrain said:


> I found it's very adventurous to run a system based on current so I don't use it.



It is not so bad as in Linux. FreeBSD has a culture of keeping -CURRENT as stable as *possible*. Also, ixSystems is not innovating doing that with TrueOS, Netflix does the same in their production servers, and some others commercial entities.


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## badbrain (Apr 6, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> You are free to have your opinion.  I think your opinion is completely wrong.  OpenBSD is good at what they strive to do: Being minimal while usable for small servers, being relatively secure, and being above all clean and well designed.  If you try to use OpenBSD for large servers, or as general-purpose machines, the results will be predictably bad.  I like the fact that the OpenBSD community gives us an alternative OS, which allows trying different things, and using them where appropriate.    Personally, *I haven't used it in several years, *but I enjoyed it for the 6 or 8 years that it was my main home server OS.


Not need to argue with you anymore. Live with the doctrine people fed into your head.


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## Cthulhux (Apr 6, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Secure but useless.



I find a good number of uses in it.


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## badbrain (Apr 7, 2019)

Cthulhux said:


> I find a good number of uses in it.


I wrote too short. Useless for high performance pc/server. As I wrote before, used for resources constrained environments like mail box, router, firewall or old laptop.


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## rigoletto@ (Apr 7, 2019)

badbrain said:


> Not need to argue with you anymore. Live with the doctrine people fed into your head.



This is funny, and you don't do that, but Ralph is more like someone more than qualified to create not just technically correct doctrines but actual theories.


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## badbrain (Apr 7, 2019)

rigoletto@ said:


> This is funny, and you don't do that, but Ralph is more like someone more than qualified to create not just technically correct doctrines but actual theories.


I don't care who he is. If you fed a student with a doctrine again and again he will remember it instinctively just like how you teach a carrot talking. That student then become a professor or famous researcher but he still spread the false doctrine despite the facts. One of such doctrine is C is the best, cli is the best which many here still advocate zealously. Everyone is equal in this regards.

Edit: no insult. No personal attack. Sorry about my bad English and if you can't understand it. Sorry.


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## gni75 (Apr 17, 2022)

blackhaz said:


> ZFS (a big deal if you want to keep your data safe),



I registered to ask you to elaborate on that, as I care about my data.

And what do you think of BTRFS?


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## Crivens (Apr 17, 2022)

Btrfs is not available on FreeBSD, ZFS is. Also reading the comments on that video mirrors what I see from power users here. They use ZFS with no issues. Attempts to run big stuff on btrfs easily gives you migranes 32/7. Also, btrfs was the result of a NIH spell over ZFS. They are playing catch up.

All the talk about memory requirements and speed is mood. You need to factor in the time for restore/downtime/customer relations.

As an example, your car will go some percent faster and consume less fuel if you make it lighter. So why not take out all these air bags, seat belts, climate comtrol, wipers,... ? Oh, they are safety devices? But they eat fuel and make the car go slower. I happily spare a gig of memory for my data being safe.


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## ralphbsz (Apr 17, 2022)

I keep saying the same thing over and over.

ZFS is a very very good file system. To begin with, it is written by real professionals, large teams (so people can check each other's work). It started out life in a company that was trying to write a highly reliable and good performance file system for serious servers; it has since been maintained by respectable people. In has (most importantly) several features: Checksums for everything (which make it much more reliable), scrubbing, and a built-in RAID system (which makes it both more reliable, and easier to use, the argument for why "more reliable" is interesting and complex).

There are other very good file systems. For example, a lot of my data is stored on ext4. No, it doesn't have those safety features, and you need to use external RAID, but it is also very well built, exceedingly well tested, and it tends to have superb performance for most workloads (ZFS is good for many workloads, but there are use cases where it is slow).

BtrFS is an interesting case. It started out with a genius idea by one very smart person; I think I heard the idea at lunch about a week or so after it happened, long before implementation. But the original inventor was not involved in the implementation, which is mostly done by a very small team (at times de-facto one person). It has checksums, but no RAID. And it has lots and lots of bugs. About 5 years ago I was chatting with a few friends (including some of the original ZFS people, and the father of ext2/3/4), and we decided to call BtrFS "a machine for destroying data". It was super unreliable, and pretty much guaranteed data loss. The design of BtrFS contains one very good idea, then it copies many of the implementation techniques from other good file systems ... but you also need top-notch quality control, lots of bodies, and extreme thoroughness to implement a really reliable file system.

There are other good file systems. XFS (from Silicon Graphics) was very good (no checksums, no RAID, but well implemented), alas it is being forgotten these days. Similarly, the original Berkeley file system (called variously FFS and UFS) is so well designed and so well tested, it just works: not fancy, no modern features, but reliable. IBM's JFS is all but forgotten today, but it was pretty reliable too (and it had transactional correctness when used with a database); similar with VxFS. NTFS and APFS are also very fine systems, but they are not freely available (they come with commercial OSes, and are tuned to them). In contrast, ReiserFS and HammerFS are egomaniacs writing their own file system; in the former case, it got some commercial traction. In research, you can find zillions of other interesting but not practically usable file systems.

I store all my important personal stuff on ZFS. It is the file system I trust most for amateur use. I don't trust it enough to give up on backups ... those are stored on both ext4 and on Apple's file system. Several machines I use at home run ext4, and I have not had any trouble with them either. I would never ever use BtrFS or ReiserFS for my own data, nor would I recommend it to customers at work. At work, I use and develop custom storage systems, which tend to be a lot better than any of the free solutions (but they are not available to the public, at least not for free).


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## hardworkingnewbie (Apr 17, 2022)

gni75 said:


> I registered to ask you to elaborate on that, as I care about my data.
> 
> And what do you think of BTRFS?


Let's ask the user base from now extinct CoreOS, shall we? They made Btrfs their default file system back then in 2014. They were so unhappy that they moved away from it in 2015 to ext4.

In short: Btrfs is a bad ZFS copy cat that will eat your data. Don't use it!






						CoreOS looks to move from Btrfs to overlayfs [LWN.net]
					






					lwn.net


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## Crivens (Apr 17, 2022)

Hi ralphbsz, I knew this would summon you. 
I used XFS before switching to FreeBSD. It is sad that it got dropped from kernel, but cost/benefit was too high. Before, I have nothing but praise for it. A lot more solid than extX in that time I would say. UFS2 the same. Extremely fast and robust.


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## ralphbsz (Apr 17, 2022)

Indeed, XFS was very good in its time, as were its competitors. To understand why, we need to go a little bit back in history. In the 90s, there were lots of commercial Unix variants, each major computer manufacturer had one: AIX, Irix, Tru64 (changed names a few times, I knew it as Ultrix), Solaris = SunOS, HP-UX. The vendors competed on the quality and features of their OS. That means that each of those vendors also had engineering groups building file systems. IBM's version was called JFS, for journaling file system, and came out of Austin (Texas). In those days, using journals or log structures was the hot idea (after Margo Seltzer's PhD thesis out of Berkeley), so everyone wanted one. As I worked at IBM, I used JFS heavily, and it has fine performance for reasonable workloads (in particular databases and integration of blobs with databases), and it was awesomely reliable (that shows the IBM heritage). I don't know very much about Digital's file system AdvFS, other than that it contained lots of ideas from the VAX ODS-2 file system (duh, it used the same people), and it had clustering built in (again inherited from the VAX), and was developed in Massachusetts. HP outsourced the file system to Veritas, and I used VxFS for a while when I worked there; also quite pleasant to use. In those days, there was a lot of development going on in file systems, each of the large Unix vendors competed on the strength of their offering, and the use of journaling (for crash resilience) and logging (for performance) was something the companies talked about in their advertising. Yes, in those days the industry newspaper had ads for file systems!

Because I work in storage systems and in Silicon Valley, I ended up knowing lots of the people in this business. But my personal connection with XFS is a complete coincidence and has nothing to do with work. We live in a small neighborhood in the hills about 45 minutes from the core of Silicon Valley, and one of our neighbors is an older gentleman (I think he's in his mid-80s now). About 20 years ago, we had dinner at his house on the occasion of the birthday of his twin kids (they're about the same age as our son), and one of the guests was his older brother. Turns out the brother worked at Silicon Graphics, where he was ... wait for it ... one of the architects of XFS!


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## Crivens (Apr 18, 2022)

Was that the spritefs paper? I think I still have that around _somewhere_.
Also as always a pleasure to get some historical context. Sometimes I wonder how I would have fared there. Well, mayhaps I'd be living under a bridge now...


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## grahamperrin@ (Apr 18, 2022)

To the original topic: 

GhostBSD now is closer to FreeBSD than it was three years ago. TrueOS (and so, OpenRC) no longer in use, and so on. 

FreeBSD will become more like GhostBSD, with PkgBase on the roadmap for this year. 









						Technology Roadmap
					

https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/technology-roadmap/  Enjoy.




					forums.freebsd.org
				







rigoletto@ said:


> FreeBSD has a culture of keeping -CURRENT as stable as *possible*.



I am ever impressed by this.


Tangential, a couple of XFS-related topics (one not yet resolved): 









						Solved - Where can I find the status of XFS for FreeBSD
					

Hello everyone. I'm a new home user of FreeBSD (via GhostBSD). I use FreeBSD at work but never at home. I also use Slackware linux at home and would like to share some XFS partitions between the two. From the XFS manpage I understand that write-access has not been implemented yet. Is this still...




					forums.freebsd.org
				












						Other - XFS + LKLFUSE - is this broken?
					

I need XFS filesystem under FreeBSD.   So I have created a partition or two: root@fb13:/home/willy # gpart show /dev/ada2 =>         40  35156656048  ada2  GPT  (16T)            40  17179869184     1  linux-data  (8.0T)   17179869224  17976786864     2  linux-data  (8.4T)  Created Filesystem...




					forums.freebsd.org


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## ralphbsz (Apr 18, 2022)

Crivens said:


> Was that the spritefs paper? I think I still have that around _somewhere_.


Exactly, I actually had a slightly hard time finding it online a moment ago, because it doesn't contain "Sprite" in the title. It is Margo Seltzer / Keith Bostic (wife and husband), Kirk McKusick and Carl Staelin: "An Implementation of a Log-structured File Systetm for UNIX", in the Usenix ATC 93. 



> Well, mayhaps I'd be living under a bridge now...


Given the insanity that the Silicon Valley real estate market has become, half of senior engineers are living under bridges. Actually, that's a joke, but not too far away from the truth. At the height of various booms (99, 2007, before Covid) some well-paid engineers were living in their cars, or buying small camper vans (RVs), because they couldn't afford apartments. It's sad (not funny) to see someone with a good degree who works for a fine employer and drives a nice BMW, but then has to sleep in that BMW.


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## astyle (Apr 18, 2022)

Cthulhux said:


> Security is a side effect that happens automatically if you care about code correctness.


I'd quibble with that.  I'd say that code correctness makes it a bit easier to tighten up security holes, but *security is not an accident or a side effect*.

I'd also like to make an claim (based on an educated guess) that just about everything that OpenBSD's packages have, FreeBSD's ports tree has it, as well. And yes, that covers security-related apps like OpenSSH / LibreSSH, and encryption libs. It's still up to OP to configure the stuff properly on both, but OpenBSD will probably offer something that's pre-configured.

OpenBSD won't offer a pre-configured KDE, but they will offer a pre-configured LibreSSH server. On OpenBSD, KDE will be a few versions behind what's offered on FreeBSD. But on OpenBSD, you're gonna have bleeding-edge LibreSSH that has been patched against CVE's released just yesterday. No, I won't provide links, the point of my claim is to give OP an idea of the kind of priority that OpenBSD gives to security.


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## cracauer@ (Apr 24, 2022)

FreeBSD can be substantially faster, and not even in abstract many-cores examples. A basic read(2) system call is twice as fast than OpenBSD. OpenBSD never got an optimized gettimeofday(2) like FreeBSD and Linux have, resulting in 10x the time. pthread_mutex_trylock is 70% slower on OpenBSD. Many system calls are about the same time, but some very frequently used ones are much more optimized on FreeBSD.

I do not know what the situation with networking system calls is.


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## hitest (May 1, 2022)

> Updating OpenBSD was also a hassle - I am not sure if this is still true, but there was no binary option, so you've had to re-compile everything or rely on a third party to compile the updates for you. I guess with modern CPUs performance isn't a big deal these days, and many people don't need Windows emulation, and for them, I guess, OpenBSD can be a wonderful home.


Regarding your quote blackhaz.  OpenBSD can now be updated with binary security patches using the command # syspatch.  Compiling security updates is thankfully a thing of the past.  You can compile applications using ports in OpenBSD.  I prefer using packages.


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## a6h (May 3, 2022)

hitest said:


> Regarding your quote blackhaz.  OpenBSD can now be updated with binary security patches using the command # syspatch.  Compiling security updates is thankfully a thing of the past.  You can compile applications using ports in OpenBSD.  I prefer using packages.



+1
... and also, there are some differences between OpenBSD and FreeBSD, from a typical end-user point of view, and how he's using the system. For example:


* Using packages instead of building from ports:


> The OpenBSD ports team considers packages to be the goal of their porting work, not the ports themselves. In general, you are advised to use packages over building an application from ports.


_— __OpenBSD.org | FAQ15_


* Using GENERIC kernel instead of a CUSTOM kernel:


> Some other operating systems encourage you to customize your kernel for your machine. OpenBSD users are encouraged to simply use the standard GENERIC kernel provided and tested by the developers.


_— __OpenBSD.org | FAQ1_


* To change the kernel configuration via boot_config(8) and config(8) instead of compiling a CUSTOM kernel:


> There are three ways to customize a kernel:
> * temporary boot-time configuration using boot_config(8)
> * permanent modification of a compiled kernel using config(8)
> * compilation of a custom kernel


_— __OpenBSD.org | FAQ5_


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## ralphbsz (May 3, 2022)

Does FreeBSD encourage building ports, or using custom kernels? It allows it, but is there a documented push towards it?


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## Alain De Vos (May 3, 2022)

I have the impression it is neutral, i.e. do as your likings.
But it is asked to not complain if you do things you don't understand.


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## astyle (May 3, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> Does FreeBSD encourage building ports, or using custom kernels? It allows it, but is there a documented push towards it?


The handbook tries to give a basic explanation of options you have. The explanations are meant to give enough information to decide if, for example, you want ports or packages.  You can get as deep in as you want, but you gotta know what you're doing.


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## Deleted member 67862 (May 4, 2022)

There are not really pros and cons other than what you can/can't manage to run and what you become used to. This notion that some BSD operating systems "focus more on x than x" has little merit other than what Youtubers like to say.

Why do I say this? Because every *BSD wants to be an operating system with plenty of use cases. They just have their own standards, implementations, and methods but they all ultimately try to achieve the same goal of security, usability, and (for the most part) compatibility. For me, FreeBSDs way flows best, and since I'm used to the FreeBSD way of doing things I'd rather stick to it than use OpenBSD, NetBSD etc. and have to re-learn everything.


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## astyle (May 4, 2022)

hunter0one said:


> This notion that some BSD operating systems "focus more on x than x" has little merit other than what Youtubers like to say.


I'd quibble with that... OpenBSD is actually pretty loud about their own focus on security, and it is the project's official priority. NetBSD tries to run on everything under the sun - that project makes portability their official priority. Yeah, focus on those official priorities do come at the expense of other OS components.

The merits of those claims are backed by benchmarks run not just by Youtubers, but also by educational institutions and think tanks like Forrester Research, a favorite on ZDNet.


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## a6h (May 4, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> Does FreeBSD encourage building ports, or using custom kernels? It allows it, but is there a documented push towards it?


I think there's a tendency toward building a CUSTOM kernel, and also compiling the packages from the ports. At least, that's how I approach a FreeBSD machine in the past. However, I won't suggest that's a de facto, or even every FreeBSD normal user (like me) feels that way. It's just an anecdotal.


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## scottro (May 4, 2022)

I feel that with modern hardware, there's little need for a custom kernel. In the days of FreeBSD-4.x and 5.x, I used to go through my kernel, removing unneeded drivers.  These days, with say, a moderately modern laptop or desktop, I doubt you'd gain anything. Of course witha pi or ancient hardware, you might.

Greh Lehey, who wrote The Complete FreeBSD once wrote that you could tell each BSD's focus by their slogan. Back then, (before DragonFly), OpenBSD's motto was something like One security hole in 10 years, NetBSD's was Of course it runs NetBSD, and FreeBSD's was (and still is) The power to serve.  Free emphasized running well on server hardware, Net on portable code, and Open, of course on security.


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## mer (May 4, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> Does FreeBSD encourage building ports, or using custom kernels? It allows it, but is there a documented push towards it?


Encourage?  My opinion would be no FreeBSD does not.  But the flip side, FreeBSD does not discourage it either.  I believe OpenBSD strongly discourages it, as in "if you report a bug on a kernel that is not GENERIC retry on GENERIC, and report if it still exists".

A documented push towards it?  Again my opinion is FreeBSD does not have a documented push.

But the process to rebuild from source: make world && make kernel && make installkernel && make installworld && portmaster rebuild everything has been well documented and the standard method of doing upgrades for many people.  Sometimes custom kernel, most times just GENERIC.

My opinion is people that need to have a custom kernel know what they need to do, people that have specific requirements for port configurations know what they need to do.  Everyone else should be fine running GENERIC and prebuilt packages.

I think everyone should run through the "upgrade from source and rebuild all your ports" at least once in their life, even if it's just to gain appreciation for the ease of doing binary upgrades.


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## astyle (May 4, 2022)

mer said:


> Encourage?  My opinion would be no FreeBSD does not.  But the flip side, FreeBSD does not discourage it either.  I believe OpenBSD strongly discourages it, as in "if you report a bug on a kernel that is not GENERIC retry on GENERIC, and report if it still exists".
> 
> A documented push towards it?  Again my opinion is FreeBSD does not have a documented push.
> 
> ...


When I started with Linux back in 2002, I was reading stories of heroic efforts to recompile the kernel to squeeze more performance out of it. Back then, however, my priorities were simply on installing and running the programs, and experiencing powerful functionality for free. I was not that interested in putting in the effort to learn to recompile the kernel. But over time, as I got more experience in just using Linux (and later, FreeBSD), I learned quite a bit about how compiling even works. But even then, re-compiling the kernel and getting a handle on the steps involved - that was a time-consuming adventure that I was not ready for.

FreeBSD does have very nicely organized documentation. If you're not too lazy to study it, you can recompile the kernel just following that. BTW, I recently tried to take another look at Linux kernel re-compilation - and even the official documentation of the Linux kernel project doesn't have the same instructions as what a distro would provide. When you add in variations between distros - I got lost so completely, I gave up on Linux kernel recompilation. But with FreeBSD - if you follow the manual, you can do it.


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## cracauer@ (May 4, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> Does FreeBSD encourage building ports, or using custom kernels? It allows it, but is there a documented push towards it?



No, kernel rebuilding for performance is only a thing on -current where the default kernel has debug and internal checks activated.


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## cracauer@ (May 4, 2022)

astyle said:


> When I started with Linux back in 2002, I was reading stories of heroic efforts to recompile the kernel to squeeze more performance out of it. Back then, however, my priorities were simply on installing and running the programs, and experiencing powerful functionality for free. I was not that interested in putting in the effort to learn to recompile the kernel. But over time, as I got more experience in just using Linux (and later, FreeBSD), I learned quite a bit about how compiling even works. But even then, re-compiling the kernel and getting a handle on the steps involved - that was a time-consuming adventure that I was not ready for.



There is a potential win here, as demonstrated by Intel's own Clear Linux distribution. For some workloads it is indeed faster.

I haven't seen a bisection to narrow down which factors are the most relevant for that. Could be anything from compiler use to narrowing down on Intel's own CPUs or kernel options or...


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## bsduck (May 4, 2022)

scottro said:


> FreeBSD's was (and still is) The power to serve. Free emphasized running well on server hardware


I don't think that _serve_ was ever meant in the particular meaning of a _computer server_. I understand it in the generic meaning of a servant serving someone or a soldier serving in the army. Computers of all kinds are there to serve us humans 

One of FreeBSD's original goals (as opposed to NetBSD) was to focus on x86 hardware, which at the time was mostly a desktop PC architecture and not mainstream for servers.
Therefore an earlier FreeBSD slogan: _Turning PCs into workstations.




_

Quoting the FreeBSD Foundation:


> in all cases the Foundation acts to expand freedom and choice so that FreeBSD users have *the power to serve their varied compute needs*.


Those varied compute needs of course include running servers, but also much more.

I'd say in this slogan the world _power_ is more important, because FreeBSD focusses on performance, more so than NetBSD or OpenBSD (if you ever used them, you know what I mean!).


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