5 ms·

Anyone relying on a 30+ year old monolith kernel written in C to not have some exploitable LPEs lurking should stay in basket weaving and out of sysadmin.

• itsthefrank 4mo ago
  Not sure why the snark but if people are running FreeBSD then they should be...basket weaving instead of using it? Yes, the correct solution is to patch and reboot but not everyone is in a place to jump and do that which is why a temp workaround, if possible, would be welcome
  • wswin 4mo ago
    I think good system should be prepared to do a reboot in a short notice. Even some long running jobs can have a pause mechanism.
  • epcoa 4mo ago
    There was no snark. If you have something of importance running and the inevitable discovery of an LPE is something you don’t have defense for or can quickly mitigate you’re doing a bad job as a sysadmin. For all general purpose OS in common use today that usually means patch and reboot should be an NBD workaround.
• cyberpunk 4mo ago
  Yep. You should treat any system where non-admins regularly login as basically insecure/owned and rig your architecture appropriately. TBH -- I don't have any of these kinds of boxes anymore. Who is really running anything like this in 2026 and for what purpose?
  • jmspring 4mo ago
    Stability of ecosystem. No systemd. Native ZFS. Jails over Docker. Been using it for 20+ years and it’s my preferred server OS.
    • cyberpunk 4mo ago
      No, I mean do you run FreeBSD boxes where users who should not ever assume root access actually login to do tasks? My point is that if you do, you probably shouldn't run, for e.g applications which need production db credential, or hold sensitive data on these boxes, or .. whatever. Edit: I use FreeBSD extensively, for various things -- but shell access to them is restricted to the sysadmins..
      • CoolCold 4mo ago
        Hard to tell about FreeBSD, it's basically extincted, but think of webhosting servers, wordpress, cPanel/Plesk and alike. often it's ssh'able with things like rbash and other restrictions and almost always you, well, can run something there (as you can edit php/other files right from web management ui). Hordes of this (in Linux world).
        • jmspring 4mo ago
          Extinct? Far from, just doesn’t draw the crowd/press Linux does. An OS used as a stable server OS workhorse with exceptional ZFS support and doesn’t have to push for the desktop market doesn’t mean it’s extinct. I’ve run FreeBSD on stinkpads back in the early 2000s fine. I prefer MacOS these days as a daily driver - hardware quality. But server OS is FreeBSD. Void when I need Cuda/docker/etc. (Yes, FreeBSD has docker support, but just use Linux if needing that.
          • CoolCold 4mo ago
            Yep Try to search vacancies for FreeBSD or candidates with FreeBSD knowledge/background, you will be surprised, its desert. Even TrueNAS realized it's a dead end for reaching wide audience needs and migrated to Linux (as you mentioned zfs, your probably heard a thing or two on TrueNAS). I have not tried in the last 10 years, so don't have numbers, my ballpark figure about having small infra team say of 5 persons and try to hire for FreeBSD would be longer and more expensive. I see somewhat tolerable Linux Corp fleet of laptops (still meh, but somewhat works), what you will reply to your users when they complain on WiFi or Zoom not working and how will procurement work for you interesting questions for me. Red Book for FreeBSD animal, can meet somewhere deep in tundra, but not a widespread species- extinction form my POV.
  • bch 4mo ago
    >> monolith kernel written in C > Who is really running anything like this in 2026 and for what purpose? Am I parsing your question correctly?
    • cyberpunk 4mo ago
      No, I worded it badly. See below.
  • mrln 4mo ago
    Not necessarily FreeBSD, but for Linux this applies to most universities with a CS program, I think. The systems should be cut off from sensitive administrative data, but a malicious student would at the very least have access to the other students' data with an LPE.
• yjftsjthsd-h 4mo ago
  ...as opposed to what, exactly? Linux is a 34 y.o. monolithic kernel in C, the BSDs are all forked from the same base (386BSD) of around the same age, XNU is 29 years old (and also heavily based on BSD code while also throwing in mach code) in C and other languages,...
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • raddan 4mo ago
    The 33 year old Windows NT kernel, duh.