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Date:      Mon, 20 Sep 1999 15:26:17 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Bosko Milekic <bmilekic@dsuper.net>
To:        Kip Macy <kip@lyris.com>
Cc:        Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Joao Carlos <jcarlos@bahianet.com.br>, security@FreeBSD.ORG, hitech@bahianet.com.br
Subject:   Re: Out of mbuf clusters
Message-ID:  <Pine.OSF.4.05.9909201505560.14980-100000@oracle.dsuper.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.05.9909201137450.25063-100000@luna>

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On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Kip Macy wrote:
!>Here is where your philosophy diverges from many others -- I and I believe
!>many others think that a server operating system should at least be robust
!>out of the box. Neither Linux nor Solaris is vulnerable to running out of
!>mbufs as a result of malicious code. I don't think FreeBSD should be
!>either. 
!>
!>This is in no way a rant against FreeBSD, but rather a rant against the
!>attitude that one needs to know about OS internals to run a lightweight
!>server. If all of core insisted that Joe User had to know about internals
!>to use FreeBSD as a server, FreeBSD would be little more than a hobbyist
!>OS, rather than what it is -- the best OS currently available.
!>
!>					-Kip
!>

	First of all, you can't compare 'mbufs' with Linux.

	Second of all, there are advantages and disadvantages to every
implementation. There are people presently working on changing the
bahavior of certain shortage situations (like mbufs, for instance) but
this work is dedicated to making the present implemention _better_, and
not changing it entirely.

	Finally, although I don't officially represent the project, I
seriously doubt that core (or anybody else that posted in response to the
initial "problem") implied that "one needs to know about OS internals to
run a lightweight server." The suggestion here seems to simply be that if
you want to do _more_ than run a light-weight server and be able to
protect yourself from _every_ type of idiotic DoS (or whatever),
especially when being exposed to a multitude of possible DoS attacks (e.g.
when running an IRC server), you have to know something more than just how
to whine and complain about 'security.' I have a feeling that many people
who want security-related issues fixed complain because they don't know
what it involves -- and to know what it involves you have to know at least
*something* about the way things work. Thus, my suggestion is to either
help some of us better certain areas or take Dag-Erling's advice on
running an IRC server whilst remaining protected (see previous posts) and 
save yourself the work.

	Also, I don't think that cross-posting to questions, stable, and
security was necessary.


--Bosko Milekic





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