Thanks to Xin Li, gzip now supports pack and can unpack archives in that format.
Month: July 2009
Always make an effort to report bugs
Not directly DragonFly-related, but good to think about: the amount of effort you put into reporting bugs often pays off proportionally.
07/30/2009
DevFS this weekend
The DevFS Summer of Code project is going into DragonFly this weekend; be ready for surprises if you update. It’s not complete yet; there’s a few more weeks for Summer of Code, but there’s other work that this code will enable.
ACPI update to test
Sepherosa Ziehau working on merging some of Alexander Polakov’s ACPI work; testers needed. If you have a system that pitches a fit with ACPI enabled, you would make a perfect subject.
A smattering of C to get started
For those people who use a variety of dynamic languages, but haven’t yet hit C: Just Enough C For Open Source Projects has a brief but comprehensive run through the basic parts. The page linked is about the presentation, but the slides are available on there as a tarball. (Via) I could have used this a few days ago.
07/29/2009
@Play: programming the dungeon
The latest @Play column talks not about specific roguelikes, but rather programming them, delving into python programming. It’s a new level of nerdy.
Summer of Code stats
Google has published some inital statistics from the 2009 midterms. This covers all Summer of Code projects, not just DragonFly.
Remember, projects are due August 17th at the very latest.
07/28/2009
pkgsrc 2009Q2 announced
The latest quarterly release of pkgsrc, 2009Q2, is out. The release announcement has details on what’s new.
07/27/2009
Autosizing available
Peter Avalos has made it possible for TCP buffers to be automatically sized according to need, which improves performance when latency goes up. It’s already in.
Development machine upgrade
The system leaf.dragonflybsd.org, where developer accounts are located, has had a significant bump in CPU and RAM, and has the newest scripts for automated vkernel setup.
As always, leaf accounts are available for anyone who wants to develop something on DragonFly, independent of commit access.
07/26/2009
2.3.2 released
Release 2.3.2 has been tagged, for anyone who wants to stick with DragonFly past the current release but before the recent radical changes to NFS. Check the commit message for a summary of what’s changed since 2.3.1, taken from the commit messages.
NFS over TCP now default
Well, default as of the next release. With the recent changes to NFS, TCP will be needed in most circumstances. It’s still possible to force UDP if desired with the ‘mntudp’ option, or ‘udp’ if you’re using a 2.3.x system.
PFS and NFS now play nicely together
It is now possible to mount a Hammer PFS via NFS, though you’ll want to use NFSv3.
Weekend reading, again
Entertaining weekend reading: Practical Reusable Unix Software in PDF form, from AT&T. (Via)
07/25/2009
New gzip
Peter Avalos has updated gzip, with a far longer list of updates than I would have thought possible with a utility that’s been around for a while.
NFS changes
Matthew Dillon made some major changes to NFS, which have greatly improved speed. He’s also made the clients able to write asychronously, which can overwhelm a server because of this increased throughput. Be careful.
07/24/2009
Hammer gets bigger
Hey, look at what Michael Neumann’s doing: making Hammer expandable! It will be possible to expand your Hammer volumes while online, even.
(note: it’s experimental; don’t be surprised if it destroys data.)
Support for mxge(4) and 10G
DragonFly has its first 10G network driver, mxge(4), for the Myricom Myri10GE. Aggelos Economopoulos ported it from FreeBSD. Check his post for notes and credits for the people who helped out.
07/23/2009
PRISON_ROOT set free
Michael Neumann has removed the PRISON_ROOT flag, and has changed jail(8) code to use only prison_priv_check() to check for allowed operations. This won’t mean anything from a user standpoint, but it does make programming easier.
Multiprocessing pipe
pipe(2) is now MPSAFE, meaning it can take advantage of multiple processors without the Giant Lock. Matthew Dillon published some before-and-after stats in his commit.
07/21/2009
Old games to spare?
(This is off-topic) The National Center for the History of Electronic Games has opened at a museum in my town. They are looking for donations, so if you have old game equipment around that you want to see get a second life, contact them.
The collection there is already huge (15K games), and visitors get to play whatever games they have on display. In my last visit, I played the arcade versions of Gauntlet, the standing and sitting versions of Star Wars, and Battlezone. It was awesome in a way that may only be apparent to people born before 1985 or so.
07/20/2009
More on Open Source contributions
Matt Trout noticed I had linked to one of his articles, and kindly sent along two more good ones on open source topics: Respect is Per Community and You Aren’t Good Enough (video). The video is something I can certainly get behind: it’s easier to contribute to open source than you think.
07/19/2009
ae(4) support added
Alexander Polakov has ported the ae(4) network driver from FreeBSD to DragonFly; it’s committed now. This device is common in some (many?) Asus Eee devices.
PCI_MAP_FIXUP removed
The kernel option PCI_MAP_FIXUP has been removed as of July 11th; if you’re upgrading past that point, make sure to remove that option.
07/17/2009
New pkgsrc-current build for DragonFly 2.2.
avalon.dragonflybsd.org has a fresh set of pkgsrc-current binary packages for 2.2.1 located at http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/packages/DragonFly-2.2/pkgsrc-current/. I’ll start a pkgsrc-2009Q2 build momentarily – the pkgsrc-2009Q2 build will become ‘stable’.
Schwag is where it’s at
Colin Perceval has a good idea: if your employer uses open source code, show your appreciation to the developer(s) with some sort of freebie. (Via.) It’s much easier to prise a mug or t-shirt from a marketing department than to get money from a finance department.
07/15/2009
AMD64 progress update
The in-progress code for the Summer of Code project ‘DragonFly on AMD64′ has been imported; you can now build for SMP on AMD64, and complete a installworld/buildworld, natively. Modules don’t (yet) compile…
vkernel go SMP
Virtual kernels are now SMP by default on DragonFly, even if you don’t have multiple processors/cores.
tcpdump, libpcap updated
Peter Avalos has updated libpcap to version 1.0.0 and tcpdump to 4.0.0. (tcpdump site) I’d guarantee that having at least a passing familiarity with tcpdump will eventually, someday, solve an otherwise intractable problem for you.
07/14/2009
Libpthread changes
Threading libraries libc_r and libthread_xu have been synchronized by Hasso Tepper; this shouldn’t cause noticeable issues. The potential issues he mentions for pkgsrc appear fixed, as I haven’t had any significant trouble (from that, at least) during bulk builds.
Suggestions for devfs
Alex Hornung is looking for suggestions on the userland tool(s) for his devfs project. This is a Google Summer of Code project, and I’m a bit late posting this, so hurry if you want to get your two cents in.
07/13/2009
pkgsrc 2009Q2 soon, 2.3.1 packages removed
The binary pkgsrc packages I had on avalon.dragonflybsd.org for 2.3.1 are removed; I had mixed an old and new libc on the build system. (Sorry!) I’ll have new ones based on pkgsrc’s 2009Q2 release very soon.
MPSAFE work requires rebuilds
There’s going to be a lot of kernel structure changes this week, as Matthew Dillon works on making more system parts multiprocessor-safe. Rebuild everything including your kernel, if you’re running bleeding edge DragonFly.
EuroBSDCon 2009
EuroBSDCon 2009 is happening the 18th through 20th of September, in Cambridge, UK. There’s usually at least 2-3 DragonFly folks showing up at these – anyone planning to go?
07/12/2009
More compiler options
Sascha Wildner has made it possible to include “other” compilers (meaning not GCC) in DragonFly’s build system. His post has additional details.
GSoC: surveys due
If you’re a student or mentor for Google Summer of Code, all midterm surveys have to be done by tomorrow, the 13th, at 12:00 PDT. Please do it if you haven’t – payment depends on participation.
07/11/2009
New Hammer option
The hammer command now has an ‘info’ option, which gives a great deal of information on your Hammer drives, thanks to Antonio Huete Jimenez. (Committed)
Wishlist for the next release
Hasso Tepper has some things he’d like to see for the next release, and he put them together in a wish list. His hands are full with pkgsrc, but if any of these projects look interesting to you, now is a good time to take advantage of the delay before the next release. (there’s already some work done.)
07/10/2009
Goals for DragonFly
This blog post talks about the identified reasons Ubuntu has been so successful in growth over the past few years. The post uses it as a comparison to Perl, but it holds some lessons for DragonFly. Some items we have now – a Live CD, simple install, regular release schedule – and they’ve been very useful.
On the other hand, the available applications is something that can improve – as nice as it it to build from source, immediate installation of binaries is best. Heck, some companies base their business around it. Pkgsrc is getting closer to creating an “app store” for DragonFly. We’ve got a civil community, but I’d like to figure out ways to make it even more accessible.
(Nobody mentions this when talking about Ubuntu’s success, but having a large, privately-funded company backing your open source project also helps.)
While on the subject, I would love to have a job like Jono Bacon’s. He works with all the issues that I think about.
07/09/2009
AHCI disk renaming reminder
Dennis Melentyev was trying out AHCI support, and as part of that process, Matthew Dillon described the steps needed to deal with disk renaming issues that can come from a NATA -> AHCI switch. This isn’t needed for most people right now, but I wanted to link to it just in case someone hits that moment of panic.
AHCI update, testing
Matthew Dillon fixed a problem with AHCI on July 2nd. If you are running AHCI from before that date with a port multiplier, you may want to update. Further tests have completed without issues.
07/08/2009
PCI, ACPI code updated
Alexander Polakov has put together an update of PCI bus and ACPI interrupt handling code taken mostly from FreeBSD, and ported it to DragonFly. Please try it out – if you previously had booting issues with DragonFly, this may have cured them.
Firefox 3.5 work
Firefox 3.5, which is in pkgsrc-wip, is working on DragonFly. There’s some HTML% audio/video problems that can be attributed to the somewhat stale OSS code in Firefox; if you can contribute a fix, please do.
07/07/2009
Catchup linkdump
I’ve been traveling the past few days, so there’s a huge backlog of things to post. I’ll revert to bullets. Some of this stuff merits individual posts, but I need to clear out too much. I haven’t even reached my email yet.
- The July version of the Open Source Business Resource is available.
- Sometimes I take my roguelike interests too far. (needs Flash. Via.)
- Still roguelike: New Nethack variants: Sporkhack and UnNethack, at @Play.
- Open source only comes in one edition: awesome.
- X text copying made less likely to fall down: autocutsel. (via)
- BSDTalk 176: 13 minutes on the Unbound DNS resolver, with Wouter Wijngaards.
- OpenBSD imported tmux. That seems like a good idea.
- Microsoft really is getting better at open source. This is something that probably requires more arguing than I have the desire to do. (via)
07/02/2009
Release schedule shifts
Matthew Dillon is shifting the semiannual release schedule over by two months; new releases of DragonFly will happen in March and September. The current July-December releases hit right on major (U.S.) holidays and too close to quarterly pkgsrc releases.
The message linked above also contains a list of the surprisingly large quantity of work that will go into the next release, plus some details on booting strategies going forward.
2.3.1 packages on the way
I’m copying pkgsrc packages to avalon.dragonflybsd.org that were built on a 2.3.1 DragonFly system; if you’re running a 2.3.1 or more recent DragonFly setup, pkg_radd should pull right from this, once the 8G of files finish copying over.
07/01/2009
GSoC: Midterms!
The Google Summer of Code midterms are almost upon us. Starting July 6th (that’s next Monday), students and mentors will need to fill out a survey detailing how the project is going. There’s a preliminary version at Google Docs, so you know what to expect when they go up on the GSoC site. They will have to be completed by the 13th.
If you’re a student: make sure you have code that shows progress. If you’re behind schedule, cram.
If you’re a mentor: make sure you are aware of your student’s progress. If the student’s behind schedule, help them cram.
