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Old 22nd October 2009
lionsong lionsong is offline
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Default Useful docs

BSD manpages are in my opinion without peer - they are the (almost) primary reason i prefer bsd's over linux (standardisation and code clarity being the other).
The BSD faq is an amazing piece of documentation, second only to the freebsd handbook (again in my opinion).

However the overwhelming number of linux users over bsd desktop users precipitates an abundance of documentation. Not that openbsd is lacking, just that you can trip over linux docs in any given google search, while iv found myself having to look a little closer to get usable supplementary information that is openbsd specific, although i understand the rationale that everything you really need is in the man pages and faq.

Still i thought it would be fun excerise to try and collate useful sources of documentation, so newb's like myself can find things a little easier. Id like to hear of any documentation that has proved useful to the more experienced users out there.

In a way this is more of a way for to keep track of useful links i come across, but in the spirit of freedom i thought why not put it into the public domain.

As way of a start, here's somethings that iv found invaluable -

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks...l?OpenDocument BIG but worthwhile, still not even into the core of it myself, but as a support to the "understanding ip addressing" document mentioned in the faq its incredibly extensive.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/design-44bsd/ just one of the many docs you can pick up on the freebsd website so probably well known by everyone on this forum, but i singled it out as its a great way of abstracting every bsd variants inner workings.

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/cou...douts/cvs.html nothing useful to the more experienced openbsd admin but for a lone desktop user like myself is a great way to (gently) begin understanding the potential of the CMS model used in openbsd developement.

http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1122109.htm a very simple abstraction on firewall rule methodolgy, there is probably more throurough/correct docs out there, anyone know of any?

Also the pf links carpetsmoker lists here are well worth a look
http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=51

Edited 13:22 OCT 2009 to include already listed resources availbe in the forum

Last edited by lionsong; 22nd October 2009 at 12:23 PM.
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Old 22nd October 2009
lionsong lionsong is offline
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some fruits of my recent googling -

http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ - a free handbook on cryptography, seems to be very thorough and working from the ground up

http://www.ciphersbyritter.com/LEARNING.HTM - a nice overview of general cryptographic concepts

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/...%2B_Essentials - another generalised account of IT security concepts

a whole slew of cryptography notes, very interesting!
http://machacking.net/kb/files/Algor...Complexity.pdf
http://machacking.net/kb/files/dimacs.pdf
http://mathforum.org/library/topics/cryptography/ - DEEP

some nice bits on socket and pcap programming
http://www.tcpdump.org/pcap.htm
http://yuba.stanford.edu/~casado/pcap/section1.html
http://machacking.net/kb/files/sockinc.txt

http://machacking.net/kb/files/wp-over-pentest.pdf - a nice laymens treatment of pen-testing methods

this guy is such a G, check everything he writes but in the spirit of this post these two are gold
http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/
http://beej.us/guide/bgipc/

everyone loves cheatsheets, and gdb is a profoundly powerful tool
http://www.givemefish.com/ArticlesAn...tSheet_gdb.php
http://www.digilife.be/quickreferenc...0Reference.pdf

some great code auditing guides
http://www.metasploit.com/users/puss...pers/Audit.pdf
http://mixter.void.ru/vulns.html

and lastly this list seems mostly linux based but there are some promising looking links none the less
http://www.vanheusden.com/Linux/audit.html
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Old 22nd October 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
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With due respect to the Linux community, they do not promote good hygiene by publishing less than comprehensible manpages (possibly an unintended consequence of Linux itself being a kernel only...). This is why the culture lives & breathes on third-party howto documents. This is further complicated by the fact there is no community body which oversees the completeness nor quality of such documents, nor can there be. So buyer, beware. Maybe the documentation which is dredged up is correct; maybe it isn't.

The BSD community (ie. project developers...) puts great effort into ensuring that the manpages are up-to-date, correct, &readable. They should be the first place users search, & users unfamiliar with the subjectt matter should still compare any outside documentation to this gold standard.

The second source of truth users should consider is the FAQ's published by each of the projects.

Unfortunately, those of us who answer questions here regularly deal with issues where the research done is either non-existent, incomplete, or based on how-to documents found in the wild which have not been vetted by anyone other than the original author. We end up mopping up the mess afterwards for those who stopped at these documents thinking they found a shortcut. They didn't.

Unix is a powerful & flexible environment which in its transparency provides lots of knobs for tuning, but knowing how to tune takes knowledge, experience, tenacity, & the willingness to research. Howto documents can be used as preliminary information, but manpages speak the truth. Become a responsible administrator to your own systems by integrating their use throughout the research process & daily usage.
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Old 22nd October 2009
lionsong lionsong is offline
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i think you misinterpret the intention of my OP.

To clarify

Quote:
i understand the rationale that everything you really need is in the man pages and faq
Im not trying to suggest a docmentation arms race, the cause for the volume and quality of docs for bsd as opposed to linux is quite explicit. Sorry i didnt make that clear enough.

In fact my original aim was for documents supportive to unix in general, that also ran parallel to openbsd-centric subjects such as networking and cryptography.

Quote:
iv found myself having to look a little closer to get usable supplementary information that is openbsd specific
I realise i should have expanded on this statement further to avoid confusion, however the keyword here is 'supplementary'.

In fact, my steadfast opinion is that
Quote:
Howto documents can be used as preliminary information, but manpages speak the truth
to that end
Quote:
i thought it would be fun excerise to try and collate useful sources of documentation
and as you very correctly put
Quote:
Maybe the documentation which is dredged up is correct; maybe it isn't.
so i began this thread to ask the more experienced members on some proven recommendations
Quote:
Id like to hear of any documentation that has proved useful to the more experienced users out there.

Again im sorry i didnt take the time to make my OP more clear, ill bear this in mind when posting in future.
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