alt Hacker NewsSomewhat related OpenBSD is the fundament of my self-hosted homelab since it runs DNS, DHCP, a firewall router and a small local web server. Configuration is a dream compared to Linux and probably even compared to FreeBSD. You just need to go through the FAQ and copy&paste the relevant examples and modify them as needed. I don't know why it's so complicated on Linux where you need to appease a handful of daemons and find your way through a labyrinth of config files. I run a separate Linux based KVM host though.
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My impression is that the BSD's are laser-focused on providing efficient environments for networking backbone software to exist in, so special attention is paid to making it easy to orchestrate everything with rc.conf and keeping anything not required for these goals out of the default installation; while Linux (and its distributions) being far more general-purpose naturally will take more configuration.
OpenBSD used to run my network but Plan 9, specifically 9front is even easier. Everything is configured using NDB which is a flat text file containing entries for each system on the network. On my CPU server I run DHCP, DNS and TFTPd, which are three lines in /cfg/$sysname/cpurc. That's it. No init system and no /etc. Just start the programs which all look at the same central database for config info. When I setup PXE booting it took literally 5 minutes of adding the tftpd line, adding an extra bootf= tuple in the machines ndb entry, a plan9.ini in /cfg/pxe and I had a machine pxe booting 9front over the network when turned on.
> I don't know why it's so complicated on Linux where you need to appease a handful of daemons and find your way through a labyrinth of config files.
Not too mention that some newer servers you might want to run are containerised and have few, if any, instructions for how to set them up without containers.
Speaking of Linux, OpenBSD’s hypervisor (vmm) supports it so I managed to get docker and containers running on my server via Alpine Linux. Opens the door on all the latest ‘modern server stuff’ running happily on an OBSD box.
Have you dealt with hardware failure or instability yet? It can be pretty annoying to pin down and isolate, unless you keep an order of magnitude of hoarded hardware around.
Time and attention are always in short supply.
OpenBSD is a very well kept secret that very few people are aware of. As close to nirvana as I can manage.
The fact I miss pretty much all the drama around the latest corporate take over attempts on Linux is just icing on the cake. The toxic slug strategy is an amazing one that more open source projects should use.