Is BIRD on BSD a second class citizen?

[Ondrej Zajicek]

On Thu, Oct 03, 2019 at 09:07:00PM +0000, Christoph wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> (reminder: please keep me in CC, the mailing list issue is still unsolved)
> 
> so far we get the impression that BIRD on BSD appears to
> be somewhat less supported when compared to Linux based systems.

Hello

That is true. While we test basic OS-dependent functionality (socket
abstraction, iface and kernel sync) and routing protocols also on
Free/Net/Open BSDs, and all OS-independent features are available
there, advanced OS-dependent features we actively develop for Linux
(but we would accept patches for BSD).

> The two main points being so far:
> - security: no privilege dropping on BSD
> - performance issue when syncing with kernel routing table?
> 
> Are there more limitations of BIRD on BSD?

No ECMP, no VRFs, no MPLS (although that is still not much usable
with BIRD on Linux). No advanced kernel route attributes. Less safe
kernel table sync.

Generally worse socket API (No SO_BINDTOIFACE, no IP_PKTINFO /
IP_SENDIF, missing SO_DONTROUTE on OpenBSD, no IPv6 TTL security).
It is possible that some of these API issues are already fixed on
some on some newer BSD versions in some flavors and we just did
noticed that.

Performance issue when syncing kernel table is also on Linux, although
it is AFAIK worse on BSD and simpler to fix on Linux (where we receive
routing table dump as data on a socket, while on BSD it is one big
slow syscall).

> Do you actively recommend running BIRD on Linux (and against BSD)?

If you have no other reason to run BSD or you need some advanced
features, then i would recommend Linux. If you want some OS diversity
and have some basic setup, then running it on BSD is OK.

-- 
Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo

Ondrej 'Santiago' Zajicek (email: santiago at crfreenet.org)
OpenPGP encrypted e-mails preferred (KeyID 0x11DEADC3, wwwkeys.pgp.net)
"To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so."