BSDTalk 178 is all about Evil! Well, Internet evil. It’s an hour-plus-long conversation wtih Richard Clayton at EuroBSDCon about phishing, spamming, and other things that didn’t have a name a few decades ago.
Month: October 2009
10/30/2009
OSBR: Co-creation for the rest of the year
The next theme for the Open Source Business Resource was to be “co-creation”, focusing on commercial companies and relationships with open source development. There were so many articles that it’s now covering 2 months.
Software updates
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has updated gcc 4.4 to version 4.4.2 (not used by default), and binutils to version 2.2.0.
10/28/2009
shiningsilence.com issues
I’m suddenly having trouble with the machine that hosts this site (random crashes, hardware disappearing), so there may be some surprise downtime over the next few days until a replacement motherboard arrives…
dragonflybsd.org downtime
dragonflybsd.org will be going down for work somewhere in the next two weeks. The package archive at avalon.dragonflybsd.org is located elsewhere, so pkg_radd and similar programs will still work.
mandoc(1) added
Sascha Wildner has added mandoc(1), an OpenBSD product. I like the HTML output. (I’ve said it before, come to think of it.)
10/26/2009
ACPI update, with questions
Alexander Polakov is putting together an update for the complex beast that is ACPI, but he has two questions that need an answer, about locking and APICs. Please help if you know something about it, as an up-to-date ACPI helps everyone.
10/25/2009
More @Play: items in roguelikes
I’ll indulge myself in a bit of roguelike enjoyment: the @Play column is targeting roguelike equipment types, starting with Potions and Scrolls. Loot!
Fun with time zones
Hubert Feyrer posted a note about time zones, describing how to find what’s defined on a system (all his steps work on DragonFly) and tricks to set it locally. Along the same lines is this “A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database” that talks about all the historical details. (via) Of course, I have to mention Sascha Wildner, who has been carefully keeping DragonFly’s time zone data up to date for quite a while.
Update: and again!
Summer of Code conference
Matthew Dillon went to the Google Summer of Code Mentor’s Conference at Google’s offices in California, and took some pictures. It’s all available on Flickr. He was the only DragonFly attendee, but check to see what developers on other open-source projects look like in person. There’s even the not-related-to-me Joel Sherrill (on the left).
10/24/2009
DragonFly meetup at CCC
If you’re going to the CCC, there’s several DragonFly people going, and they are working to rent an apartment for the several days of the event. Follow up with Matthias if you’re going too.
Eating fresher dogfood
Sorry for the downtime today – shiningsilence.com is now running DragonFly 2.4 and Hammer, so I’ll be able to complain testify first-hand.
If you aren’t familiar with the phrase “eating your own dogfood”, here’s what it is.
10/23/2009
Teeny notebooks
With some recent reports of people running DragonFly on Eee 900 and Acer Aspire netbook models, here’s a link to a recent O’Reilly column that links to a whole bunch of different netbook vendors. If you have some spare cash and an urge for a netbook, try DragonFly on one and report back…
Easier Hammer manipulation
‘mike’ made this interesting csh script that allows autocompletion of Hammer sub-commands. e.g. type ‘hammer’ and then cycle through the available hammer commands as you would through file names.
More Postgres benchmarking
Jan Lentfer repeated his Postgres tests on DragonFly with some system changes suggested by Matthew Dillon, and noticed a speed increase. (See previous report.)
10/22/2009
Pkgsrc binaries for 2.5/amd64/2009Q3
If you’re running an AMD64 DragonFly system, there’s new pkgsrc binaries for you on avalon.dragonflybsd.org. (See report) The pkg_radd utility will pick them up automatically, or you can use pkgin.
Update: Well, be patient if what you need isn’t there yet. The packages are still uploading to avalon…
10/21/2009
A good answer on make -j
It’s possible to speed up a ‘make buildworld’ by increasing the number of parallel make processes, with the -j option. However, the optimal number of make processes depends on your system setup. Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert did some testing, and it looks like the number of CPUs +1 is the best option – as long as you have more than 1 CPU. His writeup even includes a nice graph.
estd update, new hardware support
Johannes Hofmann has taken over estd, a “frequency scaling daemon for NetBSD and DragonFly”. The newest release brings multicore support on DragonFly.
10/20/2009
Bug report reading
This description of a Hammer bug makes for interesting reading, since it delves into the sequence of events where data is actually laid down on disk. Interesting reading for a geek, admittedly…
Acer Aspire One hints
Do you have an Acer Aspire One D150 and you want DragonFly to work on it? Alexander Polakov has one something similar, and he got it to boot. Sound and wireless networking works too.
10/19/2009
Finishing netgraph 7 port
Nuno Antunes has a compact writeup of what it would take to finish porting netgraph7 to DragonFly, if you’re interested…
Binary packages for 2.5/i386/pkgsrc-2009Q3 available
The build for pkgsrc-2009Q3 packages performed on i386 DragonFly 2.5 is complete. There’s a build log. These packages are immediately available if you are on a 2.5/i386 system and use pkg_radd. If you want to upgrade, try pkgin or pkg_rolling-replace.
10/18/2009
Downtime for the Digest
I’m upgrading hardware, so this site will be down for a bit today. This is separate from anything happening with dragonflybsd.org systems.
10/17/2009
Hammer version 3 in testing
Version 3 of Hammer is now available in bleeding-edge DragonFly, though it’s still experimental. The biggest reason for this version bump is to move the /snapshots folder to /var for all Hammer filesystems. This means an accidental <tt>rm -rf</tt> won’t destroy snapshots, as I’ve done. The saved data is still on the original partition, as just the metadata is saved to /var. More explication is available.
Postgres benchmarks
Jan Lentfer performed some Postgres benchmarks on DragonFly. It’s elaborate enough that it’s in the form of a PDF attached to the message I’ve linked. There’s some additional variations that haven’t been tried yet.
Vigorous file system activity seemed to lower performance in the long term on Hammer, which is certainly something to investigate. More testing please!
10/16/2009
Messylaneous again
A bunch of small things to catch up on:
- vim-fugitive: a vim addon that seems to allow git manipulation from within Vim. (via)
- xkcd book 0 is out, for those who like math cartoons. (history cartoons is what gets me.)
- Webfwlog is a firewall log analyzer for various firewall products. It ought to work on DragonFly, too. (via)
10/15/2009
Test framework details
Stathis Kamperis has written up a description of the test framework he designed during the Summer of Code. It may end up in DragonFly, which seems like a good idea to me. It’s designed to be generally operating-system independent. He includes a link to the git repo where he’s keeping it now.
10/14/2009
Thesis topic ideas
Can you think of something that:
- Takes about 4-6 months to do?
- Can be used in DragonFly?
- Is usable as a Computer Science thesis?
vkernels in production
Francois Tigeot reports having used vkernels in production quite successfully to isolate some legacy software, even though vkernels were only planned as a development tool. Nice to hear of something being more useful than intended.
10/13/2009
More pkgsrc by git
There are now official but experimental git repositories of pkgsrc available. One’s already available for DragonFly, but either should work.
pkgsrc 2009Q3 officially announced
Details of the new release are found in the announcement, including some biggies like KDE4. I’m building binaries for this release, for DragonFly i386/2.4, i386/2.5, and amd64/2.5. (Though the 2.5 binaries for amd64 should work on the amd64 2.4 release, too.)
10/12/2009
Installation screencast
Luiz Gustavo made a screencast for the DragonFly installation process. It’s 15 minutes long, requires Flash, and it would probably help if you speak Portuguese. I like seeing videos like these; multiple media always make for more fun.
Stathis keeps going
Stathis Kamperis has ported POSIX message queues to DragonFly (from NetBSD) and has his eyes set on veriexec next.
10/11/2009
pkgsrc-2009Q3 branched
The release announcement isn’t out, but the branch is there. I’m building it for DragonFly 2.4 and DragonFly 2.5 on i386 now, so we should have binary packages in about a week. I should have reports to go with it.
10/10/2009
NFS fixes for vkernels
If you use NFS, especially with vkernels, you may be interested in the latest round of NFS changes recently committed.
10/08/2009
pkgsrc-2009Q3 soon
The next quarterly release of pkgsrc should be released by next week. Normally it is released 2 weeks after starting a freeze period, but this release was slightly delayed for some structural changes and for KDE4.
VM improvements
Matthew Dillon solved a performance problem that was most noticeable when doing intensive I/O while performing other tasks; downloading a large collection of files while opening another application that read a lot of initial data, for example, would have a noticeable startup delay. His recent VM change seems to have solved it, and the commit message has an in-depth explanation of how.
10/07/2009
Another laptop
Sdävtaker has reported success booting DragonFly on a Clevo TN120R, which is almost more of a tablet/nettop than a laptop.
10/06/2009
BSD influences
Two items, picked from RSS feeds:
- People get really excited when software on Windows or a Mac manages to automatically install software. BSD systems have been doing this for years.
- What’s the first license mentioned when Palm opens up free access to open source software? BSD.
More pkgsrc maintenance material
Greg Troxel, on the pkgsrc-users@netbsd.org mailing list, shared a script he wrote for automatic maintenance/update/cleanup of his installed pkgsrc packages, via pkg_rolling-replace.
10/05/2009
Surprise! Soekris 5501
Alex Hornung has added support for a bunch of hardware to enable a Soekris 5501 to run DragonFly. We now have a watchdog and gpio framework as a side effect.
10/04/2009
October OSBR: Arts and Media
The October issue of the Open Source Business Resource is out, with Arts and Media as the theme. The article about film production using open-source tools is especially good, as articles like that tend to be a list of application names only, while this article goes into the whys and wherefores.
10/03/2009
New blog site
Sdävtaker has created a new blog, similar in design to this one, at http://dfbsd.trackbsd.org.ar/. It’s in Spanish!
10/02/2009
NVIDIA on DragonFly
It’s been mentioned before, but it’s moved: Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has a version of the FreeBSD NVIDIA graphics driver that works on DragonFly.
Recent updates: tcsh, opencrypto, libarchive
Mentioned here for completeness: tcsh has been updated, along with libarchive and opencrypto.
10/01/2009
DragonFly 2.4.1 released
DragonFly 2.4.1 has been released; this is recommended for any users of 2.4.0, as there’s a lot of little bugfixes. (Check the tag list to see all the fixes.) Next time, we may make a release candidate first.
New binary pkgsrc packages
A build of pkgsrc packages for DragonFly 2.4 and DragonFly 2.5 has been completed. The 2.5 packages are on avalon.dragonflybsd.org, and the 2.4 packages are about halfway there.
