DHCP server in base

Darren Pilgrim freebsd at bitfreak.org
Sat Sep 25 20:35:23 UTC 2010


M. Warner Losh wrote:
> It would be very convenient to have this particular thing in the 
> base, and we shouldn't be too dogmatic about never having any new 3rd
>  party things in the base.

Please no, don't add optional servers to the base.  I already don't like
sendmail, bind, ntpd and inetd in the base.  These are *optional*
software--not required for the normal operation of the OS.  They aren't
even enabled by default except sendmail.  Adding sendmail_enable="NONE"
to /etc/rc.conf is one of the first things I do on all new systems.  I
only barely tolerate openssl in the base because it's needed for
openssh; however, I'd rather both of those be in ports as well.

There's also the issue of updating:

It's very annoying to have to update the OS just to fix a BIND or
OpenSSL vulnerability and, let's be honest, we'll likely never see the
last of those.  Rebooting a production server is non-trivial.  By-hand
partial installworlds on live systems are a disturbing prospect.  If it
was a port, just update the port.  Its far easier justifying updating a
port than modifying the OS on a production server.  The Ports System
makes updating a port so fast and painless I can do many of the
non-user-facing ones without an announced downtime.

It's trivial installing ports and utterly so installing packages.  I'd
love to see us use the awesomeness that is the Ports System to manage
these things.



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