Re: 2.9 as a firewall

[Nick Holland <nick@holland-consulting.net>]

James Mclean wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> I am building a firewall box at the moment, and I have noticed a lot of
> teething problems with the 3.0 distro which has caused me to stand back
> from it a bit, I want some mega uptime!

oh, come on...

I've seen people post this question for every version of OpenBSD since
I joined the misc@ list durring 2.6...

Keep in mind, the ONLY things you see on the mailing lists are people
with problems.  The vast majority of people follow instructions,
install and use without posting to misc@, and judging from the number
of people I have talked to who are familiar with OpenBSD and not the
mail lists, I suspect the majority don't even join misc@.  All
evidence is that the OpenBSD user base is growing, and if the number
of people asking about problems is your guide, things are going to be
getting "worse" for a long time to come.

The relatively few people who post "Hey, I installed and everything
worked great!" messages rarely generate any discussion.  This results
in what I call "Technician's perspective":  ask any tech about the
product they work on, they will usually laugh and say "What junk!" 
However, a tech only sees the products that are broke, not the vast
majority that never go under their screwdriver.

OpenBSD is a great product.  3.0 is very definitely worthy of the
name.   

I've been putting OpenBSD systems at clients for two years now.  I
have NEVER had a box crash in the field, I had _one_ box that required
a manual fsck after a power outage.  I'm impressed.  I was also a
little scared, when I realized that last several times a client called
me to tell me they had lost internet connectivity, I didn't even
bother to have them check the box...just said "call your DSL
provider"...and I was right...but I gotta quit doing that.  SOMEDAY it
will probably be the OpenBSD box.

Nick.
-- 
http://www.holland-consulting.net