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Hank Gay
Asked: 2010-07-16 08:19:52 +0800 CST

Is there a good guide to using "The DJB Way" with FreeBSD?

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I'm rapidly becoming a FreeBSD convert (from Linux). I'm also intrigued by djb's software. Is there a good guide to replacing the standard set of FreeBSD utilities with their djb equivalent? It would be swell if that also happened to leverage ports, but I'm willing to do it manually if that's the way to do it.

Thanks.

freebsd

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    djb as in Daniel J. Bernstein? He has a limited set of software that he has written, you are not going to replace many FreeBSD "utilities" with his software. I am not confident that you understand what you're asking.

    I use his software regularly and greatly appreciate his approach to secure software development. However, his lack of consideration of standard UNIX conventions such as the Filesystem Hierarchy can be frustrating. Last I heard, Theo removed djb's software from OpenBSD ports due to his licensing and conflict over the filesystem hierarchy.

    You could replace your MTA with QMAIL.

    You could replace your DNS with djbdns.

    You could run a static content Web server with Publicfile.

    You could run a combination of tcpserver and daemontools instead of a more common superserver like *inetd. daemontools is very useful to keep software running in case of crashing, but you have to run in the foreground.

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  2. In addition to Warner's Answer, there are ports for:

    QMail: /usr/ports/mail/qmail
DJBdns: /usr/ports/dns/djbdns
Publicfile: /usr/ports/www/publicfile

    As a side note I'm not a fan of these software packages. I am a fan of the more popular packages:

    Sendmail - Built in
Postfix: /usr/ports/mail/postfix
Courier: /usr/ports/mail/courier (less popular, but my preferred)
BIND - Built in
Apache: /usr/ports/www/apache22

    In any case, there's several FreeBSD users around this site, so feel free to ask if you have any questions!

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