I tinkered with OpenBSD a long time ago and found installing was more of a headache than I cared for - specifically disk partitioning was a chore. I wonder if that’s gotten much better?
Can’t see myself switching to OpenBSD at this point, but I’d try it just for fun if the installation has improved enough.
In contrast, I find the installer refreshing. Yes, it's text-based, but it's streamlined and for most use cases all you have to do is hit Enter at the prompts. As for the partitioning, I don't know when you last installed OpenBSD, but, with the auto partitioning, you just hit Enter as well. If you wanted to customize the partitioning, it is a bit daunting for the uninitiated, but after you do it a few times it really is just as streamlined as the rest of the installer.
Nope, I am firmly with Joe here on this one. The installer is the first major pain point new OpenBSD users are likely to encounter, and especially partitioning is weird, cryptic, and downright unhelpful.
In real life OS testing and evaluation, I don't get to dedicate whole machines to any OS. No OS is that special, that important, or that versatile.
I always dual-boot because that often uncovers weaknesses and assumptions in installers... just as the OpenBSD devels encourage people to fail hard, the OpenBSD installer itself fails hard in a multi-boot scenario.
Example, to recreate if you are curious enough:
0. Set up a new PC (or VM, it doesn't matter.)
1. Install Windows (say, v10 as it's easy.)
2. Add a random Linux distro. For best results, have separate /, /home and swap partitions.
3. Now, try to add OpenBSD to that.
For best results, do this by directing a friend who has never used Unix through the process, over the phone so you can't see the screen. ;-)
If that's too easy, partition the disk with MBR so you have to deal with logical partitions too.
Text based is fine. I started with Slackware in 96, and I’m totally comfy with that - but when I installed OpenBSD I recall needing to supply some pretty detailed stuff about starting cylinders? It was lower level than I remember having to get even with Linux in very early days.
For me it was the other way around. In 2000/2001 I had zero experience with anything *nix apart from a couple of failures to get anything Linux to run, but on the first try with OpenBSD I managed to get it up and running in no time. I've always considered their installer to be simple, explaining, understandable and straightforward.
That's right around the same time I first started tinkering with Linux, and I had a similar experience. I didn't know about BSD at the time, but it took me weeks to get my first Gentoo install up and running. That being said, the amount I learned throughout the process made the experience absolutely worth the hassle. Then it was just a matter of getting the conexant chipped dial-up modem to work...
It's like an filter to determine whether the user is worthy enough to use OpenBSD. Last time I used OpenBSD must have been back in 2000, 2001. Extremely well built system and the impact it has had on the world is mind blowing. I later changed to FreeBSD which had a bigger community and better support for graphics drivers, etc.
I think you might be right. The partitioning is very old school but if you need old school partition it's right there.
If you don't need old school partition learn what you do need and move on.
The documentation has always matched the experience with OpenBSD. I enjoy OpenBSD simply becuase I know where to find the documentation. Some OS's have so many variations that I'm overwhelmed.
Considering the goals of OpenBSD the partitioning is a feature and structural.
If you decide to put everything in one large partition (not really recommended), always make sure /usr/local is on its own partition. If you do not do that, some ports will core dump. If you use one big partition, you will need to disable an important security feature to allow the ports to run.
And yet the last time I accepted OpenBSD's partitioning defaults I ended up with "/usr: no space left on device" the first time I tried building something from ports.
The defaults probably are probably close to the minimums required. Remember this is a conservative operating system. They will not look at your system and guess how you want to use it and make more guesses at your partition size should be.
They assume since it's your disk you best know how to partition it. One is free to edit the default save them to file for next time.
If one wants to manage the details of a computer system with documentation describing the implications of each decision OpenBSD is perfect.
There are plenty of other operating systems that will most do the right thing. How many operating systems do exactly what you tell it to?
> They will not look at your system and guess how you want to use it and make more guesses at your partition size should be.
Then it shall have some documentation on system requirements.
I tried to install Freebsd on a VM with UFS as a filesystem and the show ended with out of inodes when installing the ports system. This in 2020 is a bit sad.
Oh right. I've just never encountered such issues in the years I've been using FreeBSD, with /usr/local being one big partition.
I'm aware of that if no partitions are filled it causes an domino effect if not on its own partition. I have ZFS quotas configured so surely that mitigates the issue?
Each of the BSD's have their own personality and group of adherents. There is a secondary circle that may love all BSDs. Long ago there was east coast unix and west coast unix. The BSDs represent the West Coast thread.
I just like the BSDs because they all maintain a single document that can get you from a single system host install to a supporting network installs DHCP->TFTP install.
I always go for either NetBSD "We install on anything" or OpenBSD "We are still just trying to get secure implementation of the 4.4 spec"
Unlike some other operating systems, OpenBSD encourages users to split their disk into a number of partitions, rather than just one or two large ones. Some of the reasons for doing so are:
• *Security: Some of OpenBSD's default security features rely on filesystem mount options such as nosuid, nodev, noexec or wxallowed.*
• *Stability: A user or a misbehaved program can fill a filesystem with garbage if they have write permissions for it. Your critical programs, which hopefully run on a different filesystem, do not get interrupted.*
• *fsck(8): You can mount partitions that you never or rarely need to write to as readonly most of the time, which will eliminate the need for a filesystem check after a crash or power interruption.*
[1]: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Partitioning
the bit that resulted in me removing it from all my routers/firewalls was having to run "make world" and rebuild the entire OS to install security fixes
not at all practical on a router with a underpowered cpu and little disk
apparently the developers have had a change of heart here (previously they didn't believe in providing binaries for security fixes)
That particular problem has been addressed in the more common architectures - syspatch was introduced in OpenBSD 6.1 (April 2017) https://man.openbsd.org/syspatch
I think the expectation is that you would cross-compile for your router on a faster machine. I have no idea whether you need to be running OpenBSD on the build machine.
This is indeed how I did it before syspatch was available. I ran a more powerful Dell Optiplex tower as my "build box" and built the -stable branch on it, then installed those sets on my low power router boxes.
Can’t see myself switching to OpenBSD at this point, but I’d try it just for fun if the installation has improved enough.