Blog of Echothrust Solutions

Here we go with another "episode" of Running on OpenBSD which will focus on hardware related questions that you made. Although there is not much to say about the hardware used I will try to outline as much details possible without making the post utterly boring.

As always if I missed anything that you would like to know, make sure you post a comment and I'll include it in future updates.

Are you running any multi-core boxes, especially those with, say, four cores? If so, how has the performance been compared to, say, a GNU/Linux or Windows Server box? (We’ve got a lot of multi-core boxes at work, and the Powers That Be loooove Microsoft, so I need to make sure the MCSE’s can’t find something (that matters) to try to beat me up on.) (Sum Yung Gai)

Unfortunately we do not currently own any multi-core boxes but you can take a look at the "OpenBSD server hardware compatibility list" kindly hosted by the good folks over at Armlogic. Although, the list is not by any means complete, there are pleanty of systems with multi-core CPU's to give you an idea.

We do have a multi-processor AMD system, however, that seemed to run smoothly under OpenBSD. However, overall performance is not easy to compare. The very same system running with mp had worse performance than with the single-processor kernel. Unfortunately, the very same system always seemed to freeze under Linux and Windows in the past, so it was of a great surprise to me that OpenBSD actually made the system usable again.

However, considering that the development of MP support under OpenBSD is relatively new, I wouldn't suggest a large scale implementation into production systems before you perform thorough testing.

The truth is I am still a bit of a sceptic on how well OpenBSD runs on this dual system but I have to accept the fact that so far performs its duties without a problem. Unfortunately since the system was unstable with other OS's it was not possible to perform thorough testing and present you some comparisons. Last time anything other than OpenBSD run on this system was something like 5 years ago.

As far as your attempt to convince your MCSE’s to change into OpenBSD I have to say good luck. The migration from one platform to another has to be considered very carefully. Although, OpenBSD can certainly replace certain servers and services, you need to asses your needs, your current costs (including time spend on updates, troubleshooting etc). If you heavily rely on MS SQL servers for example, then you will have a bit of a problem there. In order to have a successful and wide adoption you need to make sure that what you suggest meets the actual needs of your organisation and make sure you have at least the support of a couple more techies. However, we wish you the best of luck and remember to post your adventure once successful.

What are the specs for the workstations and servers? The reason I ask is because of issues with drivers that sometimes crop up. (Amit)
The servers we used were quite diverse, they included x86 systems, Sun sparc systems, SGI systems. Each system hardware was configured specifically for the purposes it served. Some really old systems with remarkably low memory performed very simple tasks such as ntpd (SparcStation 5 with 32MB ram) and our ircd+ssl (a really old Sparc Clasic with 48MB of ram). All servers and workstations were able to boot through the network. The database, ldap server had 2GB of memory and enough storage, the NFS had a SCSI array box, the web server had 768 memory and 256MB of those were mfs for the web pages to increase performance. As I mentioned earlier our hardware was always based on choice of simply be supported by OpenBSD so we did not have any hardware problems there.

On the workstations we had 512MB of ram, standard 40GB hard drives, 3com network and nvidia graphics, Creative sound cards and AMD/Intel CPU’s from 800Mhz to 3000Mhz. For the record I am on a AMD Athlon XP 1700+.

What about network cards? Did you have to select a specific one that matched drivers included with OpenBSD? (Amit)
We usually select network cards that we know before hand will work with OpenBSD. But this can be a bit of a pain, because it is hard to know what kind of cards each driver supports. We had to look on the web for details on how other operating systems reporting the cards or if anyone have tried it on OpenBSD already in order to be sure. As a side note the most commonly used drivers, in our network, are fxp, xl, rl and sis.

Can you describe your printer setup? Is it networked PostScript printer(s) over IPP or some thing more complicated? (ct & Anonymous)
The printer, a HP PSC 2175 All-in-One USB printer, was connected to a server configured through lpd and apsfilter. There was no matching driver for the printer and for that we had to try different types of drivers for any that would output the best results. Although printing was good enough from time to time we had an extra page printed out (without an apparent reason and not requested by us). This page seemed like non printable characters oversized (about 1 inch each letter), which we simply overlooked as a side effect of the driver we used. For our windows clients the printing was done through samba (I don't currently recall the driver used by windows but I think was something to do with "Raw"). It is also worth mentioning that the printing quality was not as good compared with the one from a Windows workstation directly connected to the printer, but for invoices and text is good enough so that it doesn’t cause your eyes to bleed.

Final Note
Before we close our post we would like to say about the difficulty with drivers in general under Open Source operating systems. It is extremely hard to find compatible hardware without risk. Only recently some companies start to pop out with drivers available for Linux, which gives it a good shot that soon or already a driver exists for the BSD's as well.

However, focusing on our operating system at hand (OpenBSD), it would be really good if there was a website that could link the drivers to actual products on the market. We did have occasional changes on orders that we made simply because although the card was a 3com it simply wasn't detected. Maybe I will start this as a project once I found some spare time what do you think ?

I hope you enjoyed the reading and was not too boring or difficult to understand.

So see you again in the next "episode".

PS: I noticed that some people got encouraged by this series and gave a run at OpenBSD, kudos to you guys, I'm waiting for your impressions.