FreeBSD Multimedia
FreeBSD Multimedia Resources List
Links on this page refer to multimedia resources (podcast, vodcast, audio recordings, video recordings, photos) related to FreeBSD or of interest for FreeBSD users.
This list is available as chronological overview, as a tag cloud and via the sources.
This list is also available as RSS feed 
If you know any resources not listed here, or notice any dead links, please send details to Edwin Groothuis so that it can be included or updated.
Tag: openbsd
Asterisk Open Source Community Director John Todd
An interview with Asterisk Open Source Community Director John Todd, who also happens to be a user of BSD. We talk about Asterisk on BSD, and his choice of OpenBSD for his systems.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, john todd, asterisk, openbsd
Ogg version (23 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 23 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Pierre-Yves Ritschard
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Pierre-Yves Ritschard. We talk about hoststated.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 02 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, hoststated, pierre-yves ritschard
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
Artist and Musician Ty Semaka
Interview with Artist and Musician Ty Semaka. You can find his work at http://www.tysemaka.com/, and also on the OpenBSD CDs, posters, and shirts.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 29 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, artwork, ty semaka
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Claudio Jeker
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Claudio Jeker.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 24 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, claudio jeker
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Jason Wright
Interview with OpenBSD developer Jason Wright. We talk about his work on sparc and also amateur radio.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 10 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, sparc, radio, jason wright
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer David Gwynne
Interview with OpenBSD developer David Gwynne. We talk about the upcoming 4.0 release of OpenBSD and current projects that he is working on.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, david gwynne
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer. We talk about www.opencon.org and his work with OpenBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencon, openbsd, marc balmer
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Interview with Christoph Egger about Xen on OpenBSD
Interview with Christoph Egger about Xen on OpenBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, xen, christoph egger
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Bob Beck
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Bob Beck.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, bob beck
Ogg version (26 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 26 minutes)
OpenBSD Network Stack Internals
P8A: OpenBSD Network Stack Internals AsiaBSDCon 2008, Claudio Jeker clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V85It0dGUF4
Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
Added: 24 May 2009
Tags: youtube, presentation, asiabsdcon2008, asiabsdcon, openbsd, claudio jeker
Flash (53:41)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Constantine Murenin - OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework
In this talk, we will discuss the past and present history and the design principles of the OpenBSD hardware sensors framework. Sensors framework provides a unified interface for storing, registering and accessing information about hardware monitoring sensors. Sensor types include, but are not limited to, temperature, voltage, fan RPM, time offset and logical drive status. The framework spans sensor_attach(9), sysctl(3), sysctl(8), sensorsd(8), ntpd(8), snmpd(8) and more than 67 drivers, ranging from I2C temperature sensors and Super I/O hardware monitors to IPMI, RAID and SCSI enclosures. Several third-party tools are also available, for example, a plug-in for Nagios and ports/sysutils/symon. Originally based on some ideas from NetBSD, the framework has sustained many improvements in OpenBSD, and was ported and committed to FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD. Constantine A. Murenin is an MMath graduate student at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (CA). Prior to his graduate appointment, Constantine attended and subsequently graduated from East Carolina University (US) and De Montfort University (UK), receiving two bachelor degrees in computer science, with honors and honours respectively. A FreeBSD Google Summer of Code 2007 Student, OpenBSD Committer and Mozilla Contributor, Constantine's interests range from standards compliance and usability at all levels, to quiet computing and hardware monitoring. http://Constantine.SU/
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, presentation, openbsd, hardware sensors, constantine murenin
PDF (539395 bytes, 38 pages)
EuroBSDCon 2007 Videos
EuroBSDCon 2007 Papers
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 10 October 2007
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, videos
Sam Smith - Fighting "Technical fires" (147 Mb), Pierre Yves Ritschard - Load Balancing (219 Mb), Claudio Jeker - Routing on OpenBSD (394 Mb), Brooks Davis - Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods (92 Mb), Antti Kantee - ReFUSE: Userspace FUSE Reimplementation Using puffs (197 Mb), Gregers Petersen - Open Source - is it something new? (285 Mb), Stephen Borrill - Building products with NetBSD - thin-clients (364 Mb), Pawel Jakub - FreeBSD/ZFS - last word in operating/file systems (203 Mb), George Neville-Neil - Network Protocol Testing in FreeBSD and in General (271 Kb), Soren Straarup - An ARM from shoulder to hand (141 Mb), Simon L Nielsen - The FreeBSD Security Officer function (195 Kb), Steven Murdoch - Hot or Not: Fingerprinting hosts through clock skew (235 Mb), Yvan VanHullebus - NETASQ and BSD: a success story (382 Mb), Ryan Bickhart - Transparent TCP-to-SCTP Translation Shim Layer (376 Mb), John P Hartmann - Real Men's Pipes - When UNIX meets the mainframe mindset (315 Mb), Sam Leffler - Long Distance Wireless (for Emerging Regions) (248 Mb), Kirk Mckusick - A Brief History of the BSD Fast Filesystem (251 Mb)
EuroBSDCon 2007 Papers
EuroBSDCon 2007 Papers
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 05 October 2007
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, papers
Pawel Jakub - FreeBSD/ZFS - last word in operating/file systems (337 Kb), Stephen Borrill - Building products with NetBSD - thin-clients (407 Kb), John P Hartmann - CMS Pipelines Explained (118 Kb), Soren Straarup - An ARM from shoulder to hand (307 Kb), Brooks Davis - Building clusters with FreeBSD (2.2 Mb), Steven Murdoch - Hot or Not: Fingerprinting hosts through clock skew (6.1 Mb), Brooks Davis - Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods (989 Kb), Sam Leffler - Long Distance Wireless (for Emerging Regions) (19 Mb), Antti Kantee - ReFUSE: Userspace FUSE Reimplementation Using puffs (102 Kb), Yvan VanHullebus - NETASQ and BSD: a success story (2.4 Mb), Ryan Bickhart - Transparent TCP-to-SCTP Translation Shim Layer (692 Kb), Pierre Yves Ritschard - Load Balancing (23 Kb), John P Hartmann - Real Men's Pipes - When UNIX meets the mainframe mindset (382 Kb), Claudio Jeker - Routing on OpenBSD (1.3 Mb), Marc Balmer - Supporting Radio Clocks in OpenBSD (304 Kb), Peter Hansteen - Firewalling with OpenBSD's PF packet filter (531 Kb), Simon L Nielsen - The FreeBSD Security Officer function (251 Kb), Robert Watson - FreeBSD Advanced Security Features (152 Kb), Ryan Bickhart - Transparent TCP-to-SCTP Translation Shim Layer (491 Kb), Kirk Mckusick - A Brief History of the BSD Fast Filesystem (145 Kb), George Neville-Neil - Network Protocol Testing in FreeBSD and in General (251 Kb), Sam Smith - Fighting "Technical fires" (1.4 Mb), Marko Zec - Network stack virtualization for FreeBSD 7.0 (401 Kb), Isaac Levy - FreeBSD jail(8) Overview, the Secure Virtual Server (120 Mb)
AsiaBSDCon 2009 Paper List
Papers of the AsiaBSDCon 2009
Source: AsiaBSDCon
Added: 24 May 2009
Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2009
FreeBSD and SOI-Asia Project Mohamad by Dikshie Fauzie (753 Kb, 4 pages), Deprecating groff for BSD manual display by Kristaps Dzonsons (114 Kb, 8 pages), FreeBSD on high performance multi-core embedded PowerPC systems - Rafal Jaworowski (359 Kb, 12 pages), An Overview of FreeBSD/mips by M. Warner Losh (67 Kb, 8 pages), Active-Active Firewall Cluster Support in OpenBSD by David Gwynne (154 Kb, 20 pages), Mail system for distributed network by Andrey Zakharchenko (150 Kb, 3 pages), OpenBGPD - Bringing full views to OpenBSD since 2004 by Claudio Jeker (401 Kb, 6 pages), Environmental Independence: BSD Kernel TCP/IP in Userspace by Antti Kantee (213 Kb, 10 pages), Crypto Acceleration on FreeBSD by Philip Paeps (58 Kb, 3 pages), Isolating Cluster Users (and Their Jobs) for Performance and Predictability by Brooks Davis (662 Kb, 7 pages), PC-BSD - Making FreeBSD on the Desktop a reality by Kris Moore (351 Kb, 9 pages), The Locking Infrastructure in the FreeBSD kernel by Attilio Rao (55 Kb, 7 pages), OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework by Constantine A. Murenin (245 Kb, 14 pages)
AsiaBSDCon 2008 Paper List
Papers of the AsiaBSDCon 2007
Source: AsiaBSDCon
Added: 08 April 2008
Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2008
Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods, Brooks Davis, Michael AuYeung, Mark Thomas (The Aerospace Corporation) (483 Kb), OpenBSD Network Stack Internals, Claudio Jeker (The OpenBSD Project) (410 Kb), Tracking FreeBSD in a Commercial Setting, M. Warner Losh (Cisco Systems, Inc.) (94 Kb), Send and Receive of File System Protocols: Userspace Approach With puffs, Antti Kantee (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) (126 Kb), GEOM --- in Infrastructure We Trust, Pawel Jakub Dawidek (The FreeBSD Project) (91 Kb), Reducing Lock Contention in a Multi-Core System, Randall Stewart (Cisco Systems, Inc.) (72 Kb), PC-BSD: FreeBSD on the Desktop, Matt Olander (iXsystems) (6.4 Mb), Logical Resource Isolation in the NetBSD Kernel, Kristaps Dzonsons (Centre for Parallel Computing, Swedish Royal Institute of Technology) (97 Kb), Whole of the proceedings (9.3 Mb), Gaols: Implementing Jails Under the kauth Framework, Christoph Badura (The NetBSD Foundation) (92 Kb), Cover page (467 Kb), Sleeping Beauty --- NetBSD on Modern Laptops, Jorg Sonnenberger, Jared D. McNeill (The NetBSD Foundation) (87 Kb), A Portable iSCSI Initiator, Alistair Crooks (The NetBSD Foundation) (341 Kb), BSD implementations of XCAST6, Yuji IMAI, Takahiro KUROSAWA, Koichi SUZUKI, Eiichi MURAMOTO, Katsuomi HAMAJIMA, Hajimu UMEMOTO, and Nobuo KAWAGUTI (XCAST fan club, Japan) (526 Kb)
AsiaBSDCon 2007 Paper/Slides List
Slides and papers of the AsiaBSDCon 2007
Source: AsiaBSDCon
Added: 17 March 2007
Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2007
SHISA: The Mobile IPv6/NEMO BS Stack Implementation Current Status, Keiichi Shima (Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Japan), Koshiro Mitsuya, Ryuji Wakikawa (Keio University, Japan), Tsuyoshi Momose (NEC Corporation, Japan), Keisuke Uehara (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (311 Kb), An ISP Perspective, jail(8) Virtual Private Servers, Isaac Levy (NYC*BUG/LESMUUG, USA) [paper] (140 Kb), A NetBSD-based IPv6 NEMO Mobile Router, Jean Lorchat, Koshiro Mitsuya, Romain Kuntz (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (412 Kb), Whole of the Proceedings (6.5 Mb), Cover page (588 Kb), Porting the ZFS File System to the FreeBSD Operating System, Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd at FreeBSD.org, Poland) [slides] (278 Kb), Implementation and Evaluation of the Dual Stack Mobile IPv6, Koshiro Mitsuya, Ryuji Wakikawa, Jun Murai (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (1071 Kb), puffs - Pass to Userspace Framework File System, Antti Kantee (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) [slides] (116 Kb), Reflections on Building a High Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD, Brooks Davis (The Aerospace Corporation/brooks at FreeBSD.org, USA) [paper] (1371 Kb), Nsswitch Development: Nss-modules and libc Separation and Caching, Michael A Bushkov (Southern Federal University/bushman at FreeBSD.org, Russia) [paper] (32 Kb), Bluffs: BSD Logging Updated Fast File System, Stephan Uphoff (Yahoo!, Inc./ups at FreeBSD.org, USA) [slides] (601 Kb), Security Measures in OpenSSH, Damien Miller (djm at openbsd.org, Australia) [paper] (97 Kb), Porting the ZFS File System to the FreeBSD Operating System, Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd at FreeBSD.org, Poland) [paper] (96 Kb), An ISP Perspective, jail(8) Virtual Private Servers, Isaac Levy (NYC*BUG/LESMUUG, USA) [slides] (20 Mb), Support for Radio Clocks in OpenBSD, Marc Balmer (mbalmer at openbsd.org, Switzerland) [paper] (86 Kb), How the FreeBSD Project Works, Robert N M Watson (University of Cambridge/rwatson at FreeBSD.org, United Kingdom) [paper] (328 Kb), puffs - Pass to Userspace Framework File System, Antti Kantee (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) [paper] (68 Kb)
New York City BSD Con 2008
Slides of presentations given at New York City BSD Conference 2008.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 24 November 2008
Tags: nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, presentation
Julio M. Merino Vidal: An introduction to the Automated Testing Framework (ATF) for NetBSD. (570 Kb, 18 pages), Mike Silbersack: Detecting TCP regressions with tcpdiff. (88 Kb, 28 pages), Metthew Dillon: The HAMMER File System. (820 Kb, 16 pages), Kurt Miller: OpenBSD's Position Independent Executables (PIE) Implementation. (21 pages), Adrian Chadd: High-throughput concurrent disk IO in FreeBSD. (197 Kb, 92 pages), Anders Magnusson: Design and Implementation of the Portable C Compiler. (123 Kb, 29 pages), Jason L Wright: When Hardware Is Wrong, or "They can Fix It In Software". (1.7 Mb, 22 pages)
New York City BSD Con 2008
Audio recordings of presentations given at New York City BSD Conference 2008. Courtesy of nikolai at fetissov.org. The main page also has links to the slides.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 13 October 2008
Tags: nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, presentation
Jeremy C. Reed: Introduction to DNSSEC. (15 Mb), Michael Lucas: Network Refactoring, or doing an oil change at 80 MPH. (10 Mb), Anders Magnusson: Design and Implementation of the Portable C Compiler. (15 Mb), Jason Dixon: BSD versus GPL. (4 Mb), Kurt Miller: OpenBSD's Position Independent Executables (PIE) Implementation. (10 Mb), Metthew Dillon: The HAMMER File System. (14 Mb), Pawel Jakub Dawidek: A closer look at the ZFS file system. (16 Mb), Jason L Wright: When Hardware Is Wrong, or "They can Fix It In Software". (9 Mb), Michael Shalayeff: Porting PCC. (11 Mb), Adrian Chadd: High-throughput concurrent disk IO in FreeBSD. (14 Mb), Mike Silbersack: Detecting TCP regressions with tcpdiff. (11 Mb), Julio M. Merino Vidal: An introduction to the Automated Testing Framework (ATF) for NetBSD. (10 Mb)
Managing OpenBSD Environments
This talk is the result of an after-meeting discussion with a few folks, when it became apparent that there is some confusion as to how to deal with OpenBSD in small and large environments. The topic of installation and upgrading came up again. This talk is aimed to hopefully dispel many of the rumors, provide a thorough description and walk through of the various stages of running OpenBSD in any size environment, and some of the features and tools at the administrator's disposal. Okan Demirmen has been working with UNIX-like systems for as long as he can remember and has found OpenBSD to match some of the same philosophies in which he believes, namely simplicity and correctness, and reap the benefits of such.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 12 May 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, system management
MP3 version (11 Mb, 103 minutes)
Ray Lai: on OpenCVS
This presentation was inspired by the recent Subversion presentation. It will talk about the origins of OpenRCS and OpenCVS, its real-world usage in the OpenBSD project, and why OpenBSD will continue to use CVS. Ray is an OpenBSD developer who uses Subversion by day, CVS by night. Taking the phrase "complexity is the enemy of security" to heart, he believes that the beauty of UNIX's security is in its simplicity.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 06 April 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, cvs, openbsd, ray lai
MP3 version
Okan Demirmen on PF
We have had lots of meetings that have peripherally discussed OpenBSD's wildly popular PF firewall... but finally we will have a meeting focused on it.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 07 January 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, pf, okan demirmen
MP3 version
New York City BSD Con 2006
Audio recordings of presentations given at New York City BSD Conference 2006. Courtesy of nikolai at fetissov.org. The main page also has links to the slides.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 01 November 2006
Tags: nycbug, nycbsdcon, nycbsdcon2006, presentation
Russell Sutherland: BSD on the Edge of the Enterprise. (12 Mb), Bob Beck: spamd - spam deferral daemon. (16 Mb), Bjorn Nelson: A Build System for FreeBSD (9 Mb), Jason Dixon: BSD Is Dying. (5 Mb), Kristaps Johnson: BSD Virtualisation with sysjail. (15 Mb), Bob Beck: PF, it is not just for firewalls anymore. (15 Mb), Jason Wright: OpenBSD on sparc64. (9 Mb), Brian A. Seklecki: A Framework for NetBSD Network Appliances. (10 Mb), Johnny C. Lam: The "hidden dependency" problem. (13 Mb), Corey Benninger: Security with Ruby on Rails in BSD (14 Mb), Wietse Venema: Postfix as a Secure Programming Example. (16 Mb), Marco Peereboom: Bio & Sensors in OpenBSD. (11 Mb)
OpenBSD 4.5 Release Songs - Games
[Commentary still being written] For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 25 May 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (4.5 Mb, 3:29 minutes), MP3 version (6.4 Mb, 3:29 minutes)
OpenBSD 4.0 Release Songs - OpenVOX
This is an extra track by the artist Ty Semaka (who really has "had Puffy on his mind") which we included on the audio CD. This song details the process that Ty has to go through to make the art and music for each OpenBSD release. Ty and Theo really do go to a (very specific) bar and discuss what is going on in the project, and then try to find a theme that will work... For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 10 October 2006
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.0 Mb, 4 minutes), MP3 version (3.9 Mb, 4 minutes)
OpenBSD 4.4 Release Song - "Source Wars - Episode IV - Trial of the BSD Knights"
Nearly 10 years ago Kirk McKusick wrote a history of the Berkeley Unix distributions for the O'Reilly book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". We recommend you read his story, entitled "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable" first, to see how Kirk remembers how we got here. Sadly, since it showed up in book form originally, this text has probably not been read by enough people. The USL(AT&T) vs BSDI/UCB court case settlement documents were not public until recently; their disclosure has made the facts more clear. But the story of how three people decided to free the BSD codebase of corporate pollution -- and release it freely -- is more interesting than the lawsuit which followed. Sure, a stupid lawsuit happened which hindered the acceptance of the BSD code during a critical period. But how did a bunch of guys go through the effort of replacing so much AT&T code in the first place? After all, companies had lots of really evil lawyers back then too -- were they not afraid? After a decade of development, most of the AT&T code had already been replaced by university researchers and their associates. So Keith Bostic, Mike Karels and Kirk McKusick (the main UCB CSRG group) started going through the 4.3BSD codebase to cleanse the rest. Keith, in particular, built a ragtag team (in those days, USENIX conferences were a gold mine for such team building) and led these rebels to rewrite and replace all the Imperial AT&T code, piece by piece, starting with the libraries and userland programs. Anyone who helped only got credit as a Contributor -- people like Chris Torek and a cast of .. hundreds more. Then Mike and Kirk purified the kernel. After a bit more careful checking, this led to the release of a clean tree called Net/2 which was given to the world in June 1991 -- the largest dump of free source code the world had ever received (for those days -- not modern monsters like OpenOffice). Some of these ragtags formed a company (BSDi) to sell a production system based on this free code base, and a year later Unix System Laboratories (basically AT&T) sued BSDi and UCB. Eventually AT&T lost and after a few trifling fixes (described in the lawsuit documents) the codebase was free. A few newer developments (and more free code) were added, and released in June 1994 as 4.4BSD-Lite. Just over 14 years later OpenBSD is releasing its own 4.4 release (and for a lot less than $1000 per copy). The OpenBSD 4.4 release is dedicated to Keith Bostic, Mike Karels, Kirk McKusick, and all of those who contributed to making Net/2 and 4.4BSD-Lite free.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 18 November 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (4.4 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds), MP3 version (5.6 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.3 Release Song - "Home to Hypocrisy"
We are just plain tired of being lectured to by a man who is a lot like Naomi Campbell. In 1998 when a United Airlines plane was waiting in the queue at Washington Dulles International Airport for take-off to New Orleans (where a Usenix conference was taking place), one man stood up from his seat, demanded that they stop waiting in the queue and be permitted to deplane. Even after orders from the crew and a pilot from the cockpit he refused to sit down. The plane exited the queue and returned to the airport gangway. Security personnel ran onto the plane and removed this man, Richard Stallman, from the plane. After Richard was removed from the plane, everyone else stayed onboard and continued their journey to New Orleans. A few OpenBSD developers were on that same plane, seated very closeby, so we have an accurate story of the events. This is the man who presumes that he should preach to us about morality, freedom, and what is best for us. He believes it is his God-given role to tell us what is best for us, when he has shown that he takes actions which are not best for everyone. He prefers actions which he thinks are best for him -- and him alone -- and then lies to the public. Richard Stallman is no Spock. We release our software in ways that are maximally free. We remove all restrictions on use and distribution, but leave a requirement to be known as the authors. We follow a pattern of free source code distribution that started in the mid-1980's in Berkeley, from before Richard Stallman had any powerful influence which he could use so falsely. We have a development sub-tree called "ports". Our "ports" tree builds software that is 'found on the net' into packages that OpenBSD users can use more easily. A scaffold of Makefiles and scripts automatically fetch these pieces of software, apply patches as required by OpenBSD, and then build them into nice neat little tarballs. This is provided as a convenience for users. The ports tree is maintained by OpenBSD entirely separately from our main source tree. Some of the software which is fetched and compiled is not as free as we would like, but what can we do. All the other operating system projects make exactly the same decision, and provide these same conveniences to their users. Richard felt that this "ports tree" of ours made OpenBSD non-free. He came to our mailing lists and lectured to us specifically, yet he said nothing to the many other vendors who do the same; many of them donate to the FSF and perhaps that has something to do with it. Meanwhile, Richard has personally made sure that all the official GNU software -- including Emacs -- compiles and runs on Windows. That man is a false leader. He is a hypocrite. There may be some people who listen to him. But we don't listen to people who do not follow their own stupid rules.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 03 May 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.5 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds), MP3 version (8.2 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.2 Release Song - "100001 1010101"
Those of us who work on OpenBSD are often asked why we do what we do. This song's lyrics express the core motivations and goals which have remained unchanged over the years - secure, free, reliable software, that can be shared with anyone. Many other projects purport to share these same goals, and love to wrap themselves in a banner of "Open Source" and "Free Software". Given how many projects there are one would think it might be easy to stick to those goals, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. A variety of desires drag many projects away from the ideals very quickly. Much of any operating system's usability depends on device support, and there are some very tempting alternative ways to support devices available to those who will surrender their moral code. A project could compromise by entering into NDA agreements with vendors, or including binary objects in the operating system for which no source code exists, or tying their users down with contract terms hidden inside copyright notices. All of these choices surrender some subset of the ideals, and we simply will not do this. Sure, we care about getting devices working, but not at the expense of our original goals. Of course since "free to share with anyone" is part of our goals, we've been at the forefront of many licensing and NDA issues, resulting in a good number of successes. This success had led to much recognition for the advancement of Free Software causes, but has also led to other issues. We fully admit that some BSD licensed software has been taken and used by many commercial entities, but contributions come back more often than people seem to know, and when they do, they're always still properly attributed to the original authors, and given back in the same spirit that they were given in the first place. That's the best we can expect from companies. After all, we make our stuff so free so that everyone can benefit -- it remains a core goal; we really have not strayed at all in 10 years. But we can expect more from projects who talk about sharing -- such as the various Linux projects. Now rather than seeing us as friends who can cooperatively improve all codebases, we are seen as foes who oppose the GPL. The participants of "the race" are being manipulated by the FSF and their legal arm, the SFLC, for the FSF's aims, rather than the goal of getting good source into Linux (and all other code bases). We don't want this to come off as some conspiracy theory, but we simply urge those developers caution -- they should ensure that the path they are being shown by those who have positioned themselves as leaders is still true. Run for yourself, not for their agenda. The Race is there to be run, for ourselves, not for others. We do what we do to run our own race, and finish it the best we can. We don't rush off at every distraction, or worry how this will affect our image. We are here to have fun doing right.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 November 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.4 Mb, 4 minutes 4- seconds), MP3 version (4.0 Mb, 4 minutes 40 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.1 Release Song - Puffy Baba and the 40 Vendors
As developers of a free operating system, one of our prime responsibilities is device support. No matter how nice an operating system is, it remains useless and unusable without solid support for a wide percentage of the hardware that is available on the market. It is therefore rather unsurprising that more than half of our efforts focus on various aspects relating to device support. Most parts of the operating system (from low kernel, through to libraries, all the way up to X, and then even to applications) use fairly obvious interface layers, where the "communication protocols" or "argument passing" mechanisms (ie. APIs) can be understood by any developer who takes the time to read the free code. Device drivers pose an additional and significant challenge though: because many vendors refuse to document the exact behavior of their devices. The devices are black boxes. And often they are surprisingly weird, or even buggy. When vendor documentation does not exist, the development process can become extremely hairy. Groups of developers have found themselves focused for months at a time, figuring out the most simple steps, simply because the hardware is a complete mystery. Access to documentation can ease these difficulties rapidly. However, getting access to the chip documentation from vendors is ... almost always a negotiation. If we had open access to documentation, anyone would be able to see how simple all these devices actually are, and device driver development would flourish (and not just in OpenBSD, either). When we proceed into negotiations with vendors, asking for documentation, our position is often weak. One would assume that the modern market is fair, and that selling chips would be the primary focus of these vendors. But unfortunately a number of behemoth software vendors have spent the last 10 or 20 years building political hurdles against the smaller players. A particularly nasty player in this regard has been the Linux vendors and some Linux developers, who have played along with an American corporate model of requiring NDAs for chip documentation. This has effectively put Linux into the club with Microsoft, but has left all the other operating system communities -- and their developers -- with much less available clout for requesting documentation. In a more fair world, the Linux vendors would work with us, and the device driver support in all free operating systems would be fantastic by now. We only ask that users help us in changing the political landscape.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 May 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (8.3 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds), MP3 version (4.1 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.0 Release Song - Humppa negala
The last 10 years, every 6 month period has (without fail) resulted in an official OpenBSD release making it to the FTP servers. But CDs are also manufactured, which the project sells to continue our development goals. While tests of the release binaries are done by developers around the world, Theo and some developers from Calgary or Edmonton (such as Peter Valchev or Bob Beck) test that the discs are full of (only) correct code. Ty Semaka works for approximately two months to design and draw artwork that will fit the designated theme, and coordinates with his music buddies to write and record a song that also matches the theme. Then the discs and all the artwork gets delivered to the plant, so that they can be pressed in time for an official release date. This release, instead of bemoaning vendors or organizations that try to make our task of writing free software more difficult, we instead celebrate the 10 years that we have been given (so far) to write free software, express our themes in art, and the 5 years that we have made music with a group of talented musicians. OpenBSD developers have been torturing each other for years now with Humppa-style music, so this release our users get a taste of this too. Sometimes at hackathons you will hear the same songs being played on multiple laptops, out of sync. It is under such duress that much of our code gets written. We feel like Pufferix and Bobilix delivering The Three Discs of Freedom to those who want them whenever the need arises, then returning to celebrate the (unlocked) source tree with all the other developers. For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 10 October 2006
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (3.6 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds), MP3 version (2.3 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds)
Installing OpenBSD in 5 minutes
Installing OpenBSD. In real time :)
Source: Linux and FreeBSD video tutorials. For everyone.
Added: 03 May 2007
Tags: unix-tutorial, flash, openbsd
Constantine A. Murenin - Quiet Computing with BSD
Quiet Computing with BSD Programming system hardware monitors for quiet computing In this talk, we will present a detailed overview of the features and common problems of microprocessor system hardware monitors as they relate to the topic of silent computing. In a nutshell, the topic of programmable fan control will be explored. Silent computing is an important subject as its practice reduces the amount of unnecessary stress and improves the motivation of the workforce, at home and in the office. Attendees will gain knowledge on how to effectively programme the chips to minimise fan noise and avoid system failure or shutdown during temperature fluctuations, as well as some basic principles regarding quiet computing. Shortly before the talk, a patch for programming the most popular chips (like those from Winbond) will be released for the OpenBSD operating system, although the talk itself will be more specific to the microprocessor system hardware monitors themselves, as opposed to the interfacing with thereof in modern operating systems like OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD and FreeBSD.
Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
Added: 25 May 2009
Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, openbsd, hardware sensors, constantine murenin
Slides (264 Kb, 16 pages)
Peter Hansteen - Building the Network You Need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter
Building the Network You Need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter. Building the network you need is the central theme for any network admin. This tutorial is for aspiring or seasoned network professionals with at least a basic knowledge of networking in general and TCP/IP particular. The session aims at teaching tools and techniques to make sure you build your network to work the way it's supposed to, keeping you in charge. Central to the toolbox is the OpenBSD PF packet filter, supplemented with tools that interact with it. Whether you are a greybeard looking for ways to optimize your setups or a greenhorn just starting out, this session will give you valuable insight into the inner life of your network and provide pointers to how to use that knowledge to build the network you need. The session will also offer some fresh information on changes introduced in OpenBSD 4.5, the most recent version of PF and OpenBSD. The tutorial is loosely based on Hansteen's recent book, /The Book of PF/ (No Starch Press), with updates and adaptations based on developments since the book's publication date.
Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
Added: 25 May 2009
Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, tutorial, pf, openbsd, peter hansteen
Slides (2.5 Mb, 68 pages)
John Pertalion - An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD
An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD Solving the problem At Appalachian State University, we utilize an open source VPN to allow faculty, staff and vendors secure access to Appalachian State University's internal network from any location that has an Internet connection. To implement our virtual private network project, we needed a secure VPN that is flexible enough to work with our existing network registration and LDAP authentication systems, has simple client installation, is redundant, allows multiple VPN server instances for special site-to-site tunnels and unique configurations, and can run on multiple platforms. Using OpenVPN running on OpenBSD, we met those requirements and added a distributed administration system that allows select users to allow VPN access to specific computers for external users and vendors without requiring intervention from our network or security personnel. Our presentation will start with a quick overview of OpenVPN and OpenBSD and then detail the specifics of our VPN implementation. Dissatisfied with IPSec for road warrior VPN usage we went looking for a better solution. We had hopped that we could find a solution that would run on multiple platforms, was flexible and worked well. We found OpenVPN and have been pleased. Initially we ran it on RHEL. We migrated to OpenBSD for pf functionality and general security concerns. ...and because we like OpenBSD. Our presentation will focus on the specifics of our VPN implementation. We will quickly cover the basics of OpenVPN and the most used features of OpenBSD. Moving along we will cover multiple authentication methods, redundancy, running multiple instances, integration with our netreg system, how pf has extended functionality, embedding in appliances, and client configuration. The system has proven helpful with providing vendor access where needed and we'll cover this aspect as well. Time permitting we will cover current enhancement efforts and future plans. OpenVPN has been called the "Swiss army knife" of VPN solutions. We hope our presentation leaves participants with that feeling.
Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
Added: 26 May 2008
Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, openbsd, openvpn, john pertalion
PDF file (127 Kb, 26 pages)