DragonFly BSD Digest » Heads Up!

Security problem and a fix

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:38:43 +0000

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.

How long until DragonFly 3.0?

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:56:26 +0000

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.

HEADS UP: package recompilation needed

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:37:28 +0000

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.

The next release and what’s needed

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:12:19 +0000

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.

Old ISA drivers and what to do about them

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:47:33 +0000

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.

x86_64: Rebuild!

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:21:22 +0000

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.

Various old ISA drivers gone

Justin Sherrill — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:11:44 +0000

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.)

Summer of Code midterms due

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:12:11 +0000

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!

Watch out for VM work

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:53:01 +0000

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.

SMP by default

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 25 May 2011 02:06:38 +0000

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.

DragonFly 2.10 released

Justin Sherrill — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:25:36 +0000

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.

binutils, Hammer updates

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:45:06 +0000

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!

GSoC: mentors please sign up

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 22:18:22 +0000

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!

Summer of Code: mentoring wait

Justin Sherrill — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:47:22 +0000

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…

AsiaBSDCon 2011 tutorials canceled

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:37:23 +0000

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)

gcc 4.4 now default

Justin Sherrill — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 21:31:41 +0000

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 returns

Justin Sherrill — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 03:50:15 +0000

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.

git, mirror-master down

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:36:57 +0000

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.

TCP panic possible

Justin Sherrill — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:41:07 +0000

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.

Watch out for scheduler changes

Justin Sherrill — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:41:47 +0000

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!