Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has changed 64-bit DragonFly to be tagged “x86_64″ instead of “amd64″. It seems most other operating systems use that for 64-bit system architechure names. So does pkgsrc, which may fix some recent builds on amd64 x86_64
Results for amd64
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…
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.)
Test images for amd64
If you were bit by the bug where the 64-bit version of DragonFly wouldn’t boot from CD/DVD on your system, Matthew Dillon has some test images of DragonFly 2.4 for testing. Please use and report if it was successful.
ACPI, umass fix for amd64
If you’re running DragonFly 2.4 on amd64, you may have noticed trouble with USB drives or separate issues with ACPI. Both seem to be fixed by the same commit. It’s been merged to the 2.4 branch, so updating on that branch will get the fixes without moving to 2.5.
Watch out for WARNS_WERROR
WARNS_WERROR has been turned on, for i386 and for amd64 builds. This means that warnings will halt a build just like an error. This should mean that the number of warnings from DragonFly source (already lower because of Sasha Wildner’s efforts, among others) should only decrease from now on.
Newest committer: Jordan Gordeev
DragonFly’s newest committer is Jordan Gordeev, whose name may already be familiar. He’s the student behind the 2008/2009 Summer of Code projects for AMD64 support in DragonFly. You’ll notice the 2.4 release has a 64-bit version, in no small part due to his effort. Welcome Jordan!
i386 and amd64 for pkgsrc
The packages directory on avalon.dragonflybsd.org now has a i386 directory and an amd64 directory. I’ve changed pkg_search and pkg_radd to base their search/retrieval on processor arch; this means that once we have pkgsrc packages built on a 64-bit platform, they will be accessible.
More bullets
I’ve got a number of little items, so more roundup: How much disruption happened in DragonFly after introducing a dynamic device system? Surprisingly, very little, as most of pkgsrc still builds. Thanks are due to Hasso Tepper for the corrective work. _why makes some very perceptive comments. Jordan Gordeev’s been working on the very difficult [...]
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…
GSoC 2009: so far for devfs and AMD64
Alex Hornung posted a summary of how his work on devfs is going, and Jordan Gordeev posted a summary of how much AMD64 is functional. If you want to try either one (warning: many parts still broken!), use a vkernel for the devfs so a physical system doesn’t get broken. There’s build instructions for pulling [...]
GSOC: AMD64
Another Summer of Code summary: Jordan Gordeev is returning to AMD64 work. He appears to be ahead of schedule, too.
Summer of Code accepted students
There’s 5 slots for DragonFly in Summer of Code for 2009, and the students in those slots are listed below. We had some very good applications; more than we had room for and higher quality than last year. If you did not get in, please consider working independently. Student: Alexander Hornung Project: DevFS for DragonFly [...]
AMD64 work continues
Matthew Dillon and Jordan Gordeev have done further work on AMD64 support; it’s progressing quickly. Check that first link for a hint on how to install correct boot code.
AMD64 building and testing
Mathtew Dillon has added an automatic building and testing environment for AMD64 support. This one command will build an entire boot image, along with qemu to run it in, though some issues with compiling qemu remain. (Related)
Lots of new code
So much that I’m doing bullet points: Peter Avalos brought in nsswitch and replaced portmap with rpcbind. Aggelos Economopoulos brought in his NETMP branch, where he is removing the BGL from socket code. Sepherosa Ziehau added support (from FreeBSD) for Attansic network chips. Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert brought in the remainder of Jordan Gordeev’s AMD64 work. [...]
Significant AMD64 code committed
Matthew Dillon has committed a significant amount of work from Jordan Gordeev’s Summer of Code project, for AMD64 support. (It is very close to being able to completely boot an AMD64 kernel) As he says in the commit message, the code is the product of many folks, but with much credit to Jordan Gordeev for [...]
More AMD64 work
Matthew Dillon’s been committing parts (example link) of Jordan Gordeev’s Summer of Code project for AMD64 support. It’s not done yet, but it should be by end-of-year.
Google Summer of Code wiki pages
We have a page up for the AMD64 port and another for DMA enhancement. I’ve asked all the students involved to create pages, so as they finish exams, I expect more summaries to arrive.
AMD64 build details
Noah Yan has committed more of his AMD64 work to DragonFly; check the README for details on how to experiment with it.
More AMD64 work
Noah Yan posted how to apply his recent patch for building an AMD64 kernel. Be warned; it does not create a full usable system – yet.
New Committer: Noah Yan
DragonFly’s newest developer with commit access: Noah Yan, already known to be working on the AMD64 version of DragonFly. Welcome, Noah.
Corecode runs amuck
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has been busy; in addition to adding Noah Yan’s work to get a 64-bit world to cross-build, he’s switching to vendor branches in CVS, asking people to pay attention to the AMD64 changes in the tree, and wanting to dump the pc64 platform.
Cross-compilation for 64-bit possible
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has committed Noah Yan’s work on AMD64 support, making it possible to cross-compile a 64-bit world (not kernel, not yet) on a 32-bit system.
AMD64 work, and Git
Noah Yan is working on porting DragonFly to AMD64, with some notes on the wiki. He and Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert have set up a Git repo of the DragonFly code for this.
An AMD64 volunteer
Noah Yan has volunteered himself for porting DragonFly to AMD64; Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert, who has worked previously on this, suggested using git for handling changes, what with the next release coming soon. Simon even gave a short writeup on git.
AMD64 support for 2.0?
Matthew Dillon was considering completing AMD64 support for the next release, and it looks like he might be starting on it.  Update: No, that’s disklabel work. Thanks to ‘anonymous’ for indirectly pointing that out.
No, not yet
The virtual kernel work Matthew Dillon is doing will help support architectures other than x86 someday, but the work isn’t complete yet. I post this in part because I see people ask “Does DragonFly support the AMD64?” relatively often. There’s also other platforms that are becoming more common (ARM) or less (PowerPC) that would be [...]
Error checker for the brave
Matthew Dillon has created a program called ‘ecc‘, specifically for checking for memory errors. It’s limited to AMD64 memory controllers for now, and has some other caveats.
amd64 world support
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has committed his support for building a AMD64-native world. (Not kernel, not yet) I have an example link; it touched a lot of files. Check commits@ for more.
Patches patches
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has more AMD64 patches for testing, and Joerg Sonnenberger has potential support for Tekram controllers (trm(4))
Speed controls, bridges, and new processors
The last 24 hours have brought some interesting improvements: Scott Ullrich committed new code for bridging, YONETANI Tomokazu committed his est (Enhanced Speedstep) support, which was converted from NetBSD, and Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has success building world for the AMD64 architecture. (Kernel is not supported, so fully native AMD64 DragonFly isn’t possible – yet.) Unlike [...]
AMD64 hardware
Matthew Dillon found this interesting collection of quotes from FreeBSD users who have purchased amd64 hardware.
Dogfood time
If you can read this, it means shiningsilence.com has now moved from FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE on a dual P2/333, to a single 1.8G AMD64 running on DragonFly stable.
Libm replacement and improvement
Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai wrote me to mention that his recent libm changes “included optimised assembly routines for certain mathematical functions for x86 and amd64.”
Why Buy Opteron?
Not directly DragonFly related, but I recently read this article in print form, which talks about server motherboard architecture with the new amd64 chips. A number of people running DragonFly have reported excellent results using them, even though DragonFly is not yet 64-bit.
dragonflybsd.org hardware upgrades
dragonflybsd.org will be going though some upgrades soon, as Matthew Dillon noted in a recent post. Notably, leaf.dragonflybsd.org is going to be an AMD64 machine.
Quietly furious activity
It’s been very quiet, but that’s because people are really, really busy working on DragonFly features. Here’s a roundup: – Devon H. O’Dell and others are still working on the installer, promtped by Hiten Pandya. The code for this is available via cvsweb, including the very interesting design notes. (It has diagrams, so it must [...]
AMD64 and P4 comparison
As seen on Daemonnews, The Jem Report has a comparison of FreeBSD 5 on an AMD64 machine and a Pentium 4 machine. FreeBSD 5 performance is not directly comparable to DragonFly, but the architecture comparison is useful.
Goals for 1.0
Matt Dillon has posted his list of personal tasks to finish before the 1.0 release in June of this year.
AMD64 work
Matt Dillon commited a number of files for AMD64 support; it is far from complete at this point. These files come from Peter Wemm’s work on FreeBSD 5. However, he noted that the PMAP/MMU/VM support will be from scratch. Quoted here is his comments on how that will be done:
AMD64 work starting
Matt Dillon’s planning to work on AMD64 support for February. He listed these steps: “* build support and cross compilation work * kernel build * boot 64-bit kernel almost to single user * 32 bit userland support * boot kernel to single user * basic device driver and filesystem testing * boot kernel to multi [...]
Matt Dillon’s schedule
This week Matt Dillon is doing: lwkt_token and IPI code optimization GCC 3.x (just for support of the next item) 64 bit AMD64 support … and networking code with Jeff Hsu. For those of you late to the party and wondering why his work schedule is spotlighted, Matt Dillon is the originator of the DragonFly [...]
FreeBSD-5 boot
Matt Dillon’s added boot code from FreeBSD 5 – this allows AMD64 and ELF64 support. He also pushed in new linker code and some (not yet enabled) support for UFS2. Use installkernel and installworld as part of your build process, and you should be fine with these changes. However, you will manually have to copy [...]
Not long until Long
Matt Dillon posted an interesting bit about what’s needed/planned for non-emulated use of the AMD64: (post quoted)
Slightly broken
Matt Dillon’s putting in some material from FreeBSD-5, so if PNPBIOS is defined, you may not produce a working kernel during the next few days. update: PNPBIOS should not be enabled if you have a AMD64 machine, and the K8V motherboard, as that appears to be broken.
Another driver
The 3c940 ethernet driver (found on ASUS K8V motherboards) is now supported. It’s the ‘sk’ device. Matt Dillon’s AMD64 machine apparently arrived.