Steve Furlong wrote:
Sunder wrote:
Why Plan-9? I'd say go with OpenBSD. :) Built in crypto, built in firewall, secure on installation without you needing to tweak stuff. Hell you can even tell it to encrypt swap pages.
I'd really like to use OBSD for my always-on server, but there are a few shortcomings.
Does OBSD have a kernel optimized for use as a router like linux does? That's really important if you want a full-time router. http://master-www.linuxrouter.org:8080/ Likewise, the linux bios would be very useful here -- does obsd have a bios port? www.linuxbios.org (snip)
- Encrypted file systems: I want my main server to have TCFS or equivalent, so if the machine is seized the feebs would see a tiny boot partition and a large, strongly-encrypted main partition. I tried a few encrypted file systems a while back, and the couple I found for OBSD weren't there yet, either; they typically dumped core when I tried to use them. (I see that Dr Evil posted a message on this subject last May on a list archived at Geocrawler, so I guess the shortcoming hasn't been fixed since I last looked at it in depth.)
You need to look at the linux cryptoapi, which is fully functional at this point http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hvr/ and which can also be used to encrypt both swap *and* boot partition if you want (using initrd). I agree, Plan 9 looks very interesting, but then, so does MOSIX http://www.mosix.org/ which is also a distributed (kernel implemented) OS based on linux. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS CyberShamanix Work 920-203-9633 Home 920-233-5820 hseaver@cybershamanix.com http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html