The discussion centers on a visualization tool for systemd boot jobs, which serves as a catalyst for a broader debate regarding systemd's monolithic architecture versus simpler alternatives like OpenRC or Runit. Participants strongly disagree on whether systemd's complexity and aggressive integration are necessary modernizations or detrimental violations of the Unix philosophy that hinder debugging and flexibility.
145 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4openbsd
src
C2016–2026
openbsd / src
src
Read-only git conversion of OpenBSD's CVS src repository. This only includes the main branch; use CVS for -stable or release branches. Send any diffs to the tech@ mailing list.
108Distinct people
146Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Read-only git conversion of OpenBSD's CVS src repository. This only includes the main branch; use CVS for -stable or release branches. Send any diffs to the tech@ mailing list.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- coreutils/coreutils · linked in 11 of the same discussions
- freebsd/freebsd-src · linked in 7 of the same discussions
- illumos/illumos-gate · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:23:53 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year146 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-10-17 20:24:05 UTC to 2026-10-20 07:38:05 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 0 | 11 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 1 | 12 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 32 | 1 | 31 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 16 | 1 | 15 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 0 | 14 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 1 | 11 |
What Hacker News says
12 sourcesROrootnod3·Oct 20, 2026
Specifically in this script https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/distrib/miniroot/...
Just look for `fw_update`
In OpenBSD 8.0 release will have inteldrm/radeondrm/amdgpu drivers from Linux 6.18Most of the common drm code and kernel gpu drivers are already MIT/X licensed for historical reasons, same goes for the Mesa GL and Xorg components.
https://github.com/openbsd/src/tree/master/sys/dev/pci/drm
In OpenBSD 8.0 release will have inteldrm/radeondrm/amdgpu drivers from Linux 6.18Although Theo seems to imply AI code is not welcome, this commit says Claude was used: https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/9c2b8e445a0bdfafdd6148...
In Wine ported to OpenBSDSee also BSD queue.h: https://man.openbsd.org/queue.3
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/sys/queue.h
In Type Safe Generic Data Structures in C (2025)OpenBSD's hypervisor now supports guest SMP
4 points · Open discussion> Just like cheap plastics and improved processes has enabled us to rapidly manufacture anything we want for a very low price
Have they? Most of the world production is tied down to expensive factories and machines. Yes, we have more products, but that the result of the global trade, which is a very complex system.
> Produce it cheaply and if it breaks throws it away and reproduce it.
I don't know why everyone would ever wants this. It's been parroted since forever, but the true usefulness of software is to be able to build it once and runs it indefinitely. If some edge case occurs, I fix it. Which is way cheaper than rebuilding the whole thing. The goal is to have something like OpenBSD's ed[0] or dmesg[1], which you only touch every few years or so
[0] https://github.com/openbsd/src/commits/master/bin/ed
[1] https://github.com/openbsd/s
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And some code is absolutely unnecessary. Look at the yes command. GNU version is optimized to death for no reason at all[1].
OpenBSD's version is as simple as it gets[2].
[1]: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c
[2]: https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.c
In OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to rootNo.
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/d5b0ed23b6fe61f0278c37a4...
Perhaps relevant, Students from the University of Southern Denmark released a paper earlier this month, which once again noted the fact that over ~90% of the OpenBSD base system uses pledge(2). Almost certainly all of the network speaking daemons in base do.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03056
In OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to rootBest guess, from the commit message alone[0]: It was fixed as a bug, at the time they didn't have evidence it could lead to LPE
The AI security tool then, retroactively discovered that it could have been used for LPE.
Again, just my guess I could be wrong.
[0] https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/1957873d2063db11dab780...
In OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to rootAs I mentioned in the post, I only did a brief exploration of OpenBSD in order to cheer myself up. I took some findings, confirmed them being true bugs, and ended there.
As I said in the out of bounds null termination write patch, I don't believe it's exploitable. I would have gotten a CVE, website, and logo then (kidding!). But it was UB. And one-byte overflows have in the past been exploitable by better sploit authors than me.
In any case, I reported that since I felt it was clear that OpenBSD folks would obviously care about it, exploitable or not.
Confirming these findings take time, even though I found GPT to almost always be correct. I will NOT report upstream until I understand the bug. I ain't no slop reporter. As I said in the post OpenBSD (and all other code bases) need a larger effort. The Mythos/Glasswing effort focusing on ac
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tually exploitable ones may be a good method for getting them fixed, without overwhelming projects with patches, even when the patches are correct.
I did confirm at least one more UB, and did consider whether to report that OpenBSD `find` reads `status` via `WIFEXITED(status)` without checking `waitpid()` for errors. This is UB since `status` is uninitialized.
(https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/ae684bfaed6cae797cd90e27...)
The reason is my previous experience with OpenBSD where the reply may be "<some standard> is wrong in this regard", and because they control their whole system, they don't care. E.g. in this case they may go "we build with GCC x.y.z exactly, and we know what actually happens in this controlled domain". This may be a bit unfair to them, but not by much.
GPT also flagged the extremely surprising behavior of running `cat -n file1 file2` if file1 doesn't end with a newline. And that `find /etc/passwd -execdir[…]` doesn't run the command. But maybe that's how they want it? I don't want to go through the whole thing for them to go "yeah we won't do that" again. So I think this project is for them. GPT is as available to them as it is to me.
Tangent: in running GPT against `cat` I learned that not only is `cat -n` not standardized, but it also behaves COMPLETELY differently than on Linux, if you provide more than one file.
In OpenBSD, with the fcntl system call
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/lib/libc/gen/isat...
https://man.openbsd.org/fcntl
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/sys/fcntl.h
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/ba496e5267528b649ec87212...
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/ba496e5267528b649ec87212...
In LLM=TrueIs this really that hard to type?
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/etc/rc.d/watchdog...
In Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support