Matthias Schmidt found a discussion about DragonFly’s password encryption. The result, if I am reading it correctly, is that brute-forcing the password from available hashes is quicker than it should be. Matthias also found a contributed fix. Samuel Greear updated to match the reference SHA implementation also in Linux, with this very pertinent warning.
The answer is “not very”. As I wrote in a post to kernel@, DragonFly 3.0 will be tagged soon, and released when there’s pkgsrc-2011Q4 packages to go with it. Probably a week if everything goes to plan.
The presence of /usr/include/crypt.h in DragonFly (starting in December 2010) meant that some programs compiled during that time will expect that file to always be there. It was recently removed, so any programs compiled in that timeframe will also need to be recompiled. Right now, this affects you only if you are running DragonFly 2.13 , since that’s the only place crypt.h was removed. This may be an issue for the release, but we’ll worry about that when we get there… I’m kicking off new 2.13 bulk builds now.
There’s a rare crash in DragonFly 2.10, where applications would segfault. The system would run find. This is apparently more likely to happen in 2.12, though reports on this vary. It’s real, though.
Matthew Dillon went looking for this bug, and happened to roll back vm_token, the last lock in DragonFly that presented a serious impediment to multiprocessing. It’s a big patch. It fixes the problem, which is great! It also happens to make DragonFly buildworlds almost twice as fast depending on the number of cores in the system.
Holy crap we want to get that out… but it makes some significant changes to the system and needs to be tested. So, the next release probably won’t be for a few weeks.
If you want to help, build master and do something with it – move data, run server programs, whatever. Report crashes. This performance improvement is worth working for.
Some ISA devices have been removed from DragonFly. That probably affects approximately 0% of everyone, cause they’re old devices, but a few of them are were in the GENERIC kernel configs, so you’ll get an error for an unrecognized option when you next rebuild your kernel using a GENERIC-based config, based on an older version of GENERIC. The description of which drivers went is quite sensibly placed in UPDATING.
If you’re running 64-bit DragonFly, and you’re on version 2.11, you will want to rebuild with the latest sources. Peter Avalos found a bug with file descriptor passing, and Venkatesh Srinivas fixed it. It will require a quickworld/kernel build – maybe a full buildworld and kernel? I’m not sure. Some pkgsrc packages might need recompilation, too if they also passed file descriptors around.
17 different ISA device drivers have been removed by Sascha Wildner. The commit message has device descriptions. This may mean you need to change your kernel configuration file on the next buildkernel, since some of them were in the GENERIC kernel. If you need any of them, speak up. (I don’t think I’ve ever used any of them. Oh darn.)
If you are a Summer of Code student or mentor, make sure you’ve filled out your midterm survey. Without it, your project fails – and they are due for everyone in roughly the next 24 hours!
Venkatesh Srinivas is making vmobj_token and vm_token much more fine-grained. That’s great, but watch out over the next few weeks as this work goes into 2.11. (i.e. don’t upgrade your DragonFly 2.11 unless you are ready for surprises.) Venkatesh has already found some.
The SMP option is now in the GENERIC kernel config. This means you’ll have a SMP-capable kernel even on an uniprocessor machine, unless you configure a special kernel.
It’s out! See the 2.10 release page for the startlingly extensive list of updates in this version. Download images from the mirrors, or follow these steps (using a 2.10 version number) to build from source.
Sascha Wildner has updated the default version of binutils in DragonFly from 2.17 to 2.21. You’ll want to do a full buildworld on your next upgrade, if you’re running DragonFly 2.9.
Also, Matthew Dillon has made version 6 the default version of Hammer in DragonFly 2.9. Version 6 has improved handling of directory names in some circumstances. Just don’t ask me which, cause I lost track. It’s been a hard day!
The mentor signup page for Google Summer of Code 2011 is available again, launched using a new interface. If you want to be a mentor, please sign up now. The student application period opens tomorrow!
The mentor signup page for Google Summer of Code 2011 as of this writing still says “We have temporarily disabled the creation of new requests and invites in preparation of the launch of the new UI for Melange later this week.”, as it has said since the 20th.
So, if you’re wanting to mentor, keep an eye on it. I’ll send mentor requests to any of the names on my list of people that have already expressed interest, if I get to a working version of the page before you do…
This shouldn’t be a surprise considering recent events: AsiaBSDCon 2011 has had some event cancellations; specifically the tutorials and meetings. The paper presentations starting on the 19th, and the banquet, are still on, however. (via)
Sascha Wildner has changed the default compiler to gcc 4.4. See his commit notes for some details. To my knowledge, we’re the only BSD using this recent a version.
A full buildworld/buildkernel is probably the best strategy. I’ll be rebuilding all the pkgsrc packages for 2.9 using gcc 4.4… This will take at least a week.
avalon.dragonflybsd.org, also known as mirror-master.dragonflybsd.org, is back up at a new location, with new disks and new connectivity. pkg_radd should work by default again, as should git.dragonflybsd.org.
Avalon, the machine that works as the master mirror site for DragonFly, and also as git.dragonflybsd.org, is being moved. Binary package downloads and source updates won’t work in the meantime. If you can’t wait for the system to come back, change the settings for pkg_radd or in /usr/Makefile to point at a different host.
Sepherosa Ziehau recently made a change in TCP handling that could cause a panic. If you get it to happen, he wants to know about it. This only applies to people running bleeding edge DragonFly as of a few days ago.
Bleeding-edge DragonFly may suffer some instability issues; Matthew Dillon is making scheduler changes to accomodate larger numbers of CPUs. On the other hand: yay, better performance!
If you have net/proftpd installed, and you installed it in the last week or so, you may want to upgrade. There’s been a security problem with the source files.
The index page of the DragonFly site has been updated by Matt Dillon with some notes regarding the status of the 2.8 release. Among these, it is mentioned that the GUI image will be making a return for 2.8! There will be no DVD image this time, only an image suitable for writing to a disk, such as a usb stick.
DragonFly 2.8 (technically 2.8.1; see here for the .1 changes) is due to be released tomorrow. There should be at almost the same time pkgsrc 2010Q3 packages available. There will also be a LiveDVD for this release, too, though the window manager has changed.
Matt Dillon and Venkatesh Srinivas conspired to fix another nmalloc issue, which should resolve any remaining problems people were having with Firefox, and possibly other applications as well. Due to an oversight of sorts, all locking operations on nmalloc’s depot were ineffective, as if there were no locking at all. Curiously, it worked remarkably well considering such a large race condition was present.
If you run any flavor of BSD, you should make sure your ftpd is off, as Mathias Schmidt points out based on this recent security advisory.
Our mirror of the never-quite-official git repository for pkgsrc is being rebuilt, so it will be temporarily inaccessible. Matthew Dillon is working on building a new one directly from pkgsrc CVS, which will have a different link.
Update: It’s finished. Matthew Dillon’s posted a summary of the changes and what you need to update in order to use it.
A little work has snowballed into even more of the network systems in DragonFly being pulled apart in order to get rid of the Giant Lock. It may delay the 2.8 release by a week or two, but it’s already paying dividends, such as NFSv3 now performing at maximum physically possible speeds on gigabit Ethernet.
Well, technically not ripped out, just serialized roughly. This means if you update your DragonFly 2.7 machine in the next few days, the wireless drivers may not work, except for (I think) ath(4). They should return, better, by next week.
Full buildworlds again, as there’s more commits that make it necessary. If you’re running 2.7, you should probably just plan on using buildworld, and not quickworld for rebuilding.
System data structures have changed again, so make sure your next rebuild is a full buildworld/buildkernel if you’re running 2.7. There’s been a lot of changes to pull more and more out from under the Giant Lock.
happened to notice that recent libkinfo changes broke sysutils/estd. It’s fixed by rebuilding the program, though this may affect a few other packages. This only affects people running bleeding-edge DragonFly 2.7.
Two things:
I recently sent out a description of what built for pkgsrc-2010Q2 , though the section on not changing the stable link is no longer true.
Matthew Dillon posted a warning about both Samuel Greear’s kqueue work and Alex Hornung’s LVM2 work. Both are now committed to DragonFly 2.7. These are dramatic (and useful!) changes, so some instability may happen for bleeding-edge users. His post does include some minor detail on what was touched.
Alex Hornung has imported LVM2 from NetBSD, along with cryptsetup and dm. (Not dm(8), but devicemapper) LVM(8) stands for Logical Volume Management, and it makes storage management much easier; you may have encountered it on NetBSD or Linux. Those additional tools make it possible to encrypt volumes. Alex has published details on how to use it.
Also: Alex’s not-really-related-but-I -mistakenly-linked-to-it udev/libdevattr work.
EHCI support is now always on, for 2.7 users, and will be for 2.8 when released. It’s possible to turn it off if it causes a problem, but it should generally just mean better USB performance.
Matthew Dillon set up a git copy of the pkgsrc repository some time ago. However, it’s had syncing problems, and there’s an ‘official’ pkgsrc git repository now which does not have the problems. You can still pull from the same place, but it’s the ‘master’ branch now. His heads-up message describes how to switch.
Matthew Dillon’s made changes again that require a full world and kernel rebuild, if you’re following the bleeding edge. There’s also discussion of the underlying principles of the token-based multiprocessor work he’s planning.
If you’re running DragonFly 2.7, you will need to do a full rebuild on your next update. Matthew Dillon has made some changes because of his lwkt_token work. Making parts of DragonFly subsystems multi-processor safe should be much easier now.
I’m removing the links for the old (DragonFly 2.3 and older) pkg_radd paths on avalon.dragonflybsd.org. If you have one of those older systems, you can update one line in pkg_radd if it’s useful to you.
As previously foreshadowed, BIND has been removed from the DragonFly base system. Instead, it’s installed from pkgsrc. Note that this includes tools like nslookup or host. Instructions after the jump.
From my email to users@:
If you use Apache, as many people do, some of the default building choices have changed in pkgsrc. Read Matthias Scheler’s post for details.
Matthew Dillon identified a possible data corruption bug in Hammer with a nearly-full filesystem. It’s dramatic enough he’s tagged 2.6.2 and 2.7.2 so that people can update; his message about it describes how to check for corruption.
The naming convention for the daily snapshots of DragonFly has changed, to make the file names more readable. This may lead to some confusion as the mirrors settle, but it’ll pan out. If you run a mirror, double-check your downloads.
We’ve got a third year in Summer of Code!
The timeline shows about a week and a half for planning, and then student applications begin on the 29th of March, and run to April 9th.
If you want to participate as a student, start planning now by talking with people on IRC (#dragonflybsd on EFNet) or on the mailing lists. You cannot be over-prepared.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert’s host for DragonFly, chlamydia.fs.ei.tum.de, is down for good. Since it had excellent bandwidth, it was frequently used as the source for a lot of the DragonFly mirror sites out there.
If you were using it for your own mirror, switch to mirror-master.dragonflybsd.org, and tell Matthew Dillon at @dragonflybsd.org your contact info so you can be notified of changes. (If you’re not mirroring, please download from the nearest site that is.)
The next release, 2.6, is scheduled for mid-March. Please make sure things are running well, as there’s a lot of new features already ready for this release.
Most of the dragonflybsd.org machines will be down for a short period Wednesday; this is for an upgrade that includes an SSD for the recent swapcache work. Everyone should notice a speedup, since while crater.dragonflybsd.org is getting the SSD/swapcache, a lot of crater’s directories are mounted on other machines via NFS.
Matthew Dillon is setting up DragonFly to be able to use a fast disk (like a SSD) for disk cache, reducing the effect swap has on speed. This means very large amounts of data could be read into memory – greater than the available RAM in the system – without having the normal paging out problems that happen when memory is exhausted. It’ll work for any filesystem on the machine – HAMMER, UFS, or NFS. His inital notes have more. Other notes include details on the NFS benefits, and possibilities with SSDs. Wear-leveling may make SSDs last much longer.
Work has started, and there’s an update (with examples) that people can try, though it may destroy all your data at this point. Test results in that update show, if I’m reading it right, a better than doubling of speed on a repeated md5 test on a large file when using the new caching system. This should be a huge benefit.
If you’re running DragonFly 2.5 and updated in the past week or so, and have UFS disks, there’s some instability introduced by Matthew Dillon’s recent work. It ought to be better by next week.
Users of Hammer, or of UFS only as /boot, don’t have anything to worry about.
Thomas Nikolajsen experienced firsthand a bug where downgrading a Hammer PFS master to a slave and then later making it a master again lost all data. Lucky him… The problem’s now fixed.
This has been bouncing around other news outlets, but I’ll mention it here: There’s an out of data SpamAssassin rule that can potentially mark mail as spam because of the 2010 date. A mail to tech-pkg@netbsd.org describes the various fixes.
The step of ‘sa-update && /etc/rc.d/spamd restart’ seems to have fixed it for me. Incidentally, if you are using SpamAssassin, sa-update is a good tool to run on a regular basis.
Matthew Dillon is working on moving more of DragonFly out from under the Giant Lock. This may mean some instability this week if you’re following the bleeding-edge. He’s already posted a warning and an explanation (with numbers!) of work already completed.
If you’re running DragonFly 2.5, Matthew Dillon has changed thread and process structures, meaning that a full rebuild of kernel and modules is necessary on the next system update.
SSH, on DragonFly, now defaults to allowing root logins, but does not allow plaintext password logins. This is on new installs only, so any existing installations won’t be affected, even after upgrades. Plaintext passwords are under constant brute-force attack for some years now, so this is probably safer.
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.
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.
DragonFly 2.4.1 is slated for release this Wednesday, 2009-09-30. This will have fixes for the installer and 64-bit DragonFly, among other things.
The 2.4 release of DragonFly is out. This is a major release, with a lot of new features packed in, so read the release notes carefully. There’s a 64-bit experimental version, too
By the way, please use a mirror. Avalon is a good one, as is chlamydia.
Updating steps I used after the cut.
The 2.4 release has been branched, and the release ISO should be available Wednesday.
The 2.4 release looks to be about a week and a half away; if you’re a committer, please plan to make drastic changes after the release, if possible,
The libtiff package has been found to write out incorrect TIFF files in version 3.9.0. If that’s what is installed on your system, please update now.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has removed GCC 3.4 and Kerberos 5/Heimdal from the base system. Kerberos hasn’t been building as part of base for a while, and is available in pkgsrc. It was also the last item that requires GCC 3.4, so buildworlds are little quicker now. (Cross your fingers that GCC 4.2 the current version doesn’t break somehow.)
As Hasso Tepper pointed out, having GCC 4.4 in DragonFly is unique to DragonFly. Systems like pkgsrc don’t work due to the changes in headers and etc. between gcc 4.2 and 4.4, and since no other BSD uses gcc 4.4, the fixes would all have to come from DragonFly (and be backward compatible). This is unlikely to change in the near term, since this newer version of gcc is being refused due to the V3 GNU Public License, not a technical issue. It’ll stay in DragonFly for now.
However, you can specifically exclude it and speed up buildworlds with the new NO_GCC44 option. It’s also possible to use NO_GCC34 in make.conf to keep the old version of gcc from building, for those who don’t like to wait.
DevFS breaks vinum. Will it be fixed? Yes, hopefully very soon.
DevFS has been added. There’s some issues, each with a workaround. Please test, as it’s certain that a major change like this will cause new problems around video and sound. Once those are fixed, however, device management will be a lot easier.
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.
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.
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.
Subversion isn’t being used for DragonFly, but it is available via pkgsrc. If you’re one of the people using it, the pkgsrc version has been updated to 1.6.2 which may have some upgrading issues.
Hasso Tepper has a “BIG FAT WARNING” about two new issues: threaded programs are broken on bleeding-edge DragonFly because of a possible GCC bug that was only recently exposed, and Xorg in pkgsrc has issues with the Intel driver.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert already has one change in that may fix the issue with threaded programs, and is working on the Intel driver issue.
Update: more threading changes.
If you’re running bleeding-edge DragonFly, you’ll need to rebuild world and kernel after this recent change to interrupt counting from Sepherosa Ziehau.
Yonetani Tomokazu discovered a permissions problem under Hammer, so Matthew Dillon made a number of commits to fix this and other issues. An update for 2.2 will get them for you, and DragonFly 2.2.2 will be put together very soon so that there’s a release image with these fixed.
Peter Avalos has made major changes to DragonFly’s libc; you can look at the commits page or check out his git repo for details. If you are running 2.3, you will need to do a full buildworld on your next update.
You may also need to rebuild pkgsrc packages; I’m build a new binary set for 2.3 now.
If you’re a student with a Summer of Code application, make sure to subscribe to it. Doing this will ensure you are automatically notified of any mentor requests for more information.
There’s also some recent stats published by Google on the applications so far; DragonFly is one of the surveyed orgs it mentions, and the results are the same – less applications, better quality.
If you’re a potential student for Google’s Summer of Code, please get your application in ASAP. All student applications are due by 19:00 UTC April 3rd. You can revise a submitted application, even after the April 3rd cutoff, but it has to be in.
If you’re a student, you have from now until the 3rd of April to apply for a Summer of Code slot.