Theo de Raadt wrote:
I see 4.0 is coming out, and yet, no hardware raid support, no fixes for
raidframe,
and still no SMP support, for sparc64 on Ultrasparc II machines.
I'm using only 1 processor out of 4, and 4 hard drives out of 30 because I
can't hardware raid
my enterprise fiberchannel array, I can't hardware raid the majority of the
drives in my
E450, and because raidframe is so old and buggy, I can't raid5 any of it,
and am left
mirroring my 2 boot drives together, and 2 data drives together.
This is a $125,000 machine 5 years ago, and I treat it no better than some
crappy i686 box
because security is my primary issue. If I went with another OS, I could
get a lot of the
functionality I want, but what good is it, if some 12 y/o kid in pakistan
can hack my box.
I just can't see why SMP and hardware raid aren't supported on sparc64/II.
Thanks at least for a very secure OS. I've been online now for 6 months on
this E450 with
no hacks.
We welcome code submissions. I think you have no idea at all how much
effort it takes to support all the things we do, and you are just
being rude.
Actually I agree with David B. here. I know developing an OS is a huge
task and with nothing but security on your mind, building bridges seems
a trivial task compared to it. However having more than one processor is
rapidly becoming a commodity and not supporting enough hardware is a
death stab. If a 5 year old RAID controller is not supported, what can
be expected in the future? Yes I'm sure there isn't enough documentation
available, license disagreements, etc... but come on, it's 5 years old!
You would think _somebody_ would at least make an attempt at it. I can
imagine OpenBSD being reduced to something that is used on embedded
devices. It's not really much for desktop (compared with other operating
systems) and without decent SMP support and a huge list of RAID
controllers, active use of OpenBSD in server environments could drop
rapidly. Even the most basic servers nowadays are equipped with a dual
core processor. If OpenBSD's performance/scalability doesn't improve
this is the most likely scenario.
Yes I'm pretty sure that OpenBSD features a lot of proper, decent and
intuitive code, but performance in some areas lacks tremendously.
I'm not saying OpenBSD is a bad operating system. Far from it. However I
would only use it for routers, firewalls, bridges, etc... Anything that
has to do with networking because after all, OpenBSD's networking is
great. Outside these areas OpenBSD is just too slow and doesn't support
enough hardware.
Asking for code submission if you want feature x or y doesn't really
float my boat. I only do some high level programming and I know nothing
about kernel internals. I use it where it fits me and equals customer
benefit. If it doesn't I need to search for something else. We are all
specialized in our field, you can't ask a butcher to do a heart
operation even if they both handle meat all the time.
Please note that this is all IMHO.
Glenn
