Matthew Dillon has turned net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive on by default, due in part to problems seen during the most recent pkgsrc bulk build I’ve been doing on pkgbox.dragonflybsd.org.

Student proposals for the Google Summer of Code are now due on April 7th, instead of today. This means more time to refine proposals, or create a new one. Get to it! We have 28 applications at this point.

And look: Google’s newest product to launch on April 1st: Google Gulp.

Abstracts for paper presentations at EuroBSDCon 2008 are due June 1st. The EuroBSDCon site doesn’t have the Call For Papers on it, so I’ll link to the mail.

I like this note from the family page: “Derivative work such as Gentoo are considered welcome though their creativity is restrictively licensed.”  (Emphasis added)

Matthew Dillon reports that HAMMER is running well enough to have survived a week holding backups on his local LAN; he asks for more testers.

The March issue of the Open Source Business Resource is out.  There’s a timely article in there where Murraay Stokely describes the benefits for FreeBSD that came from Summer of Code participation.  (via Dru Lavigne)

(remember, student apps are due by Monday!) 

Matthew Dillon posted another HAMMER filesystem update. In this one, he goes into the current state and talks about a bit of what’s planned for this filesystem (boot support – yay!). He later went into details of historical filesystem access and snapshot usage.
An interesting point from a recent commit: a HAMMER filesystem is stable enough to use as /usr/obj during a buildworld.

We are in the student signup period for Google Summer of Code projects on DragonFly.  I have a link roundup for both students and mentors – check it if you have not yet signed up or want to propose a project.

Microsoft has been making some “We support open source” noise lately, but I wonder how far it will go.  It’s neat to see open source tools acknowledged, but this other OnLAMP post about how open source removes vendor dependence seems to conflict with Mcrosoft’s usual business model.  I would be surprised if Microsoft went so far as to have open source products supplant (instead of complement) their products, like other vendors have done.

Dru Lavigne wrote a blog entry on some of the dangers of using a GPL license vs. BSD, and links to this interesting story of how the University of Toronto found sticking to BSD licensing made software management easier.  That article is from the October 2007 issue (“Licensing”) of the Open Source Business Resource; I’ve linked to the OSBR before, but not that issue.

Even more conferences: Free and Open Source Conference 3 is happening August 23-24, in Germany.   The call for papers is already out.  (via Undeadly)  Also, there will be a BSD booth at IT360, April 8-9 in Toronto.  (via Dru Lavigne)  Check Dru’s post for details on free admission.  There will be a BSDA exam there, too.

The latest BSDTalk has an interview with Dan Langille, a driving force behind BSDCan and also the creator of the FreeBSD Diary, which is one of the things that inspired me to create this digest.

There’s a BSD convention in Barcelona, April 19th and 20th. If you want more information, it will help if you can read Spanish.  As I’ve said before, the number of BSD conventions is growing.  (via Planet FreeBSD)

Matthew Dillon recommended a specific way to Merge From Current.

You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM.  However, this ‘Ramback‘ is an interesting idea for Linux I’d like to see more of.  (Via the howling void)  I’m a sucker for the idea of battery-backed RAM for storage.

Christopher Rawnsley pointed at eINIT, a potential init replacement.

Microsoft is running a program called “DreamSpark”, where students get Microsoft tools free to use in creating software for particular academic activities, as long as it’s non-commercial and student status can be verified.

That’s great – I’m not knocking the provision of software that’s normally too expensive to buy so that people can learn.  However, I do want to contrast it against BSD (and Linux, too) – where all the development tools come with your free system, and have been doing so with BSD for 3 decades.

For additional snarkiness, compare the Microsoft terms of use and the BSD license.

Registration for BSDCan, happening in mid-May, is open, with prices in U.S. and Canadian dollars equal.  Also, PGCon (for PostgreSQL) is happening in the same place, the next week.  (Thanks, Undeadly)

I’ve placed a page on the wiki with some guidelines for students who want to work with DragonFly for Google’s SoC 2008.  It’s on the wiki, so if you want to add something, please do.

Kris Kennaway did some benchmarks of FreeBSD 4 and 7 along with DragonFly 1.12.  DragonFly is still mostly under the Giant Lock, so there’s unfortunately little scaling from multiple CPUs, as his benchmarks show.   (Thanks, Richard Toohey)

USENIX has made the records of all its proceedings public, meaning that a simple search can pick out details from the conferences since … 1975?  Search for DragonFly, and you’ll see references popping up in the last few years.  (Via Hubert Feyrer)

Dru Lavigne has completed the Spring08 BSDA DVD, which includes Free/Net/Open/DragonFly BSD and a pile of documents related to certification.  It’s $40 – check her post for details.

zsh is one of those shells I hear people talk about but have never tried; if you’re in the same boat, I came across this “Get the most out of zsh” article at IBM’s developerWorks.  (Via rootprompt.org)

Sascha Wildner has created the framework for something I’ve wanted for a long time: the DragonFly Live CD able to support X and various programs. His post mentions various uses for it; his diff has since been committed.

The latest @Play column on GameSetWatch describes Slash’EM, which is apparently a roguelike for people who find NetHack too simple. Nethack’s in pkgsrc, and I think Slashem should compile on DragonFly…

BSDTalk 143 is an interview with Deborah Norling, focusing on computer accessibility for the blind on BSD, and old computer equipment. It’s a very different interview from the normal technical overview. A choice quote: “We don’t have a [PDP] 11/70 cause they’re just too darn big”.

wiki.dragonflybsd.org has been updated by yours truly to 1.6.1 of MoinMoin; this should fix some reported errors with 1.6.0.

Peter Avalos has been working on CAM locking using lockmgr; he has a patch set available for anyone who wants in on the action.

Welcome our newest committer: Dave Hayes.   His first project will apparently be importing the BSD Installer.

If you’re willing to mentor a DragonFly project for Google Summer of Code, please speak up now, as the application is going in soon.

Because my name is attached to a variety of DragonFly ‘things’, including this digest, sometimes I get bizarre email.

Francis Gudin is working on IKE/IPSEC support for DragonFly; he has patches for racoon in pkgsrc, plus there’s other patches available out there.

If you need an XSLT2 processor, or like programs written in Eiffel, Colin Adams has a program for you.

If your configure is out of date, Sascha Wildner pointed out the right place to get the most recent config.sub and config.guess.

This is one of those perennial article types: “Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits” on IBM’s developerWorks site. It’s not shell-specific, and actually quite useful, though dry. (via rootprompt)

OnLAMP has a article talking about setting up Apache with SSL; it’s been covered elsewhere, but this article manages to not assume you’re using one platform or another, thankfully.

DragonFly user ‘why the lucky stiff’ has put together a book called ‘Nobody Knows Shoes‘.  Shoes is a library for creating graphical interfaces on Ruby applications.  The book is a lesson on how to use Shoes, mixed in with hand-drawn and collaged art, and available as a free download or a physical, purchasable object.

I am all for more interesting computer books.  This one reads as a mix between an O’Reilly Nutshell guide and The Book of the Subgenius, or perhaps a Max Ernst novel.

Alert readers may remember why’s previous book, “Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby“.

The NYCBSDCon site now has a call for presentations, plus details for sponsorship.   (via Undeadly)

Hubert Feyrer’s latest post detailing recent changes in NetBSD mentions strcspn(3), strpbrk(3) and strpspn(3) improvements coming from DragonFly.  It’s gratifying to see good ideas spread.

It’s finally happened: an amateur entomologist interested in dragonflies (the bugs) is using DragonFly (the operating system).  This entertains me in a geeky way.

Dmitri Nikulin wrote a long post on users@ about how he was worried that DragonFly would lose importance given that FreeBSD 7 has improved performance relative to FreeBSD 5/6.  Responses include a number of anecdotes on how agreeable the DragonFly community can be, plus my note that DragonFly validation does not require FreeBSD to suck.  Matthew Dillon noted his concerns as project leader, and the difficulty of explaining how significant the changes from FreeBSD-4 are in DragonFly.