Rubenerd

John-Mark Gurney shared this worrying mailing list find:

So, just learned that the OpenSSL devs decided to break /dev/crypto on FreeBSD.

Benjamin Kaduk posted this output:

$ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -engine devcrypto    
    
82677: openat(AT_FDCWD,"/dev/crypto",O_RDWR,00)  = 3 (0x3)
82677: ioctl(3,CIOCGSESSION,0x7fffffffde70)      ERR#22 'Invalid argument'
82677: ioctl(3,CIOCGSESSION,0x7fffffffde70)      ERR#22 'Invalid argument'
82677: ioctl(3,CIOCGSESSION,0x7fffffffde70)      ERR#22 'Invalid argument'
82677: ioctl(3,CIOCGSESSION,0x7fffffffde70)      ERR#22 'Invalid argument'
82677: ioctl(3,CIOCGSESSION,0x7fffffffde70)      ERR#22 'Invalid argument'

John raised using LibreSSL in FreeBSD if non-Linux compatibility isn’t a priority anymore. Michael Warren Lucas responded in the Twitter thread with something I wasn’t aware of:

The support cycle on LibreSSL is shorter than a FreeBSD release’s lifetime, which means they won’t switch.

This is the manifestation of what I just talked about. I didn’t think I’d get a specific example again so quickly.

As a FreeBSD guy as well as a Mac user, I agree that among the biggest challenges today are Linux-first/only development, as opposed to thinking about the underlying architecture.

We all realised how perilously under-resourced and staffed the OpenSSL project was during the Heartbleed days. Is this another manifestation of that, or are we just witnessing yet another project that preferences Linux above *nix?