Tag: NetBSD

Why FreeBSD is (and isn’t) My Favorite Operating System

Over at Webmasters by Design there was a very interesting article by Scott Spear about Why FreeBSD is My Favorite *nix OS. Like him, I find FreeBSD to be wonderful and like it a lot. However, I find that I don’t want to use it for everything.

Why I Like BSD: Small Footprint

FreeBSD works in many, many, many more places than Linux – and even more places than Solaris. There just isn’t a lot of overloaded kernel involved. As kernels grow faster and faster, it is refreshing to be able to use something not so bloated.

Why I Like BSD: History

Unlike Linux, BSD goes back a very long ways (longer than Solaris even) and is UNIX. It is possible that with the exception of Unixware and NetBSD, no other UNIX system has as much of a history. Some of the original developers are still involved in FreeBSD (Marshall McKusick comes to mind).

Why I Like BSD: Cohesiveness

No matter how hard they try, a Linux distribution can’t match the overall cohesiveness of one of the BSD systems (such as FreeBSD). Some Linux distributions are very well done, but they still have “missing parts” – usually documentation.

Why I Like BSD: Documentation

There is nothing that matches FreeBSD documentation in the Linux world. Once, I ran a test: I wrote a script to test for the existance of man pages for every binary in the usual locations on the system (/bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin). Red Hat Linux come up with a number of programs that were undocumented; FreeBSD did not have a single missing man page.

All of the kernel tunables can also be found in man pages, and more.

The FreeBSD Handbook is phenomenal, and a valuable resource. Linux environments don’t have anything like it.

Why I Don’t Like BSD: Linux (In)Compatibility

Linux compatibility fails as often as it succeeds, and it is more of a simulated environment than it is just a compatibility layer. It doesn’t work, it’s bloated and it’s wrong to rely on it in any case.

Why I Don’t Like BSD: Flash et al

Getting to use Flash in FreeBSD is a nightmare. Even following the directions is no guarantee that it will work. Distributions such as OpenSUSE and Ubuntu come ready to plug in Flash support, and Adobe has specified that they will support Linux. That leaves out FreeBSD.

This may be better in PCBSD; I aim to try it soon.

Why I Don’t Like BSD: Installation

Sysinstall is not the easy install process that installation of distributions like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE is. There are way too many technical details to comprehend.

This probably has improved with FreeBSD 7; I’ve not yet tried FreeBSD 7.

New operating system releases!

This is just amazing: did everybody coordinate this? Within the last three weeks or so, we’ve seen these releases come out:

Several of these were released on the same day, November 1.

What next? Am I really supposed to choose just one? Sigh. And I just installed OpenBSD 4.1 and Fedora 7, too – not to mention installing FreeBSD 6.2 not too long ago.

From all the talk, I’ll have to try Kubuntu again. So many systems, so little time.

I have been using OpenSUSE 10.3 (with KDE). I just love it – and I love the new menu format, too.

Update: Sigh. I should have known. Microsoft Windows Vista celebrated its 1st Anniversary on Nov. 8.

Locking out root!

This is not as far fetched as it sounds; every Macintosh OS X system comes configured in this way: it is impossible to log in as root.

How does one do things as root then? I shall reveal the secret…

First of all, one needs to make sure that the program sudo is available and correctly configured. It must be configured to allow you (or the system owner) to switch to root. Best to test this directly before doing anything to the root account.

Once you have verified that you can switch to root using sudo, then it is time to actually lock the root account. Before doing so, open a root shell using sudo or a direct log in as root. Then execute:

# passwd -l root

There! Now no one can log in as root – don’t you feel much better? Well…. you can become root (by using sudo) but logging in directly as root is impossible.

If passwd does not recognize the -l option, then just put an asterisk (*) into the password field, wherever it is. HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris all recognize the -l option; FreeBSD uses the -l option for a different purpose.

For FreeBSD (and quite probably, OpenBSD and NetBSD as well), use the vipw command to lock out not only the root account, but the toor account as well. The toor account is identical to the root account (including userid) but allows user customization.

When combined with the wheel group, this will lock down your root account quite effectively. Just don’t stop there: remember to use multiple defenses. However, that’s a topic for another day.

Update: This is most useful in situations where a normal user will always have access (workstations come to mind).  If your normal users are authenticated via NIS, or Active Directory, or LDAP, don’t do this! If root logins are locked out, and none of the users can log in…….. then what?  Uh oh….

The decTop $100 Computer!

Lifehacker has an article on a product called the decTop. It is billed as a Internet-browsing appliance, but is apparently a complete (and upgradable) computer as well. Sounds like the perfect hacker computer.

It does seem to be slowish by modern standards, and if my experience with 128M is any indication, it won’t run the most current distributions. There are some excellent discussions on how to install Ubuntu 6.06 onto it: one from Jonathon Scott and one from Ray over at Librenix. Juan Romero Pardines from the NetBSD Project has put NetBSD onto the decTop. Someone else put AstLinux onto a decTop – and added great pictures of the internals as well.

Over at Docunext there is a great series on the decTop, including pictures of the guts and of the locked drive (apparently no longer locked in current versions). There is also a set of tips on getting Debian to work on the decTop, as well as the author’s experiences in running the decTop on solar power.

The system advertises an ethernet connection, but it is, in fact, an USB-ethernet dongle. This fact combined with the USB-1.1 means that the ethernet connection is very, very slow. Everything hooks into the USB ports, including keyboard and mouse as well as the Ethernet connection. These two facts appear to be some of the worst drawbacks of the device.

There also appears to be no wireless support at all – the Internet browsing devices I’ve seen all use wireless connectivity as their main connection method – so this appears to be more of a desktop device, rather than a portable device. It is fanless, which means near absolute quiet. Who knows, maybe they’d make a good cluster (heh).

I must admit, when I first heard the name, I thought it might be a minature of one of these instead. Silly me.