December 2009
50 posts
Messylaneous for 2009/12/30 →
It’s New Year’s Eve Eve, and so here are a bunch of links I’ve built up over the past few days.
Hubert Feyrer posted notes on how to mount fixed disks in KDE. This probably works on NetBSD, but…
4k disk sector support →
Newer disks are moving to 4KB sectors (more info), instead of the 512-byte sectors that have been in use for… decades? There’s been some recent discussion on how to support this, for…
pkgsrc-2009Q4 delayed one week →
The headline sums it up: the next quarterly release of pkgsrc, which was due on the 31st of this month, will be released at the end of the first week of January 2010. The alert message cites a…
Multiprocessor work so far →
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…
Chaos Communication Congress notes →
Matthias Schmidt is posting to Twitter about his time at 26c3 with other DragonFly developers, on his own feed and in @dragonflybsd. (if you are reading this via a Twitter link, you may…
pfSense on a podcast →
BSDTalk was recently linked here interviewing Randal Schwartz. Randal Schwartz and Leo Laporte, who create a podcast called “FLOSS 101″, now have an interview with Scott Ullrich and Chris…
Pkgsrc-current packages tested →
I (that’s Justin Sherrill, for those reading this other places than the Digest) finished a build of pkgsrc-current on DragonFly 2.4.1 – these packages are available, though soon to be outdated…
Messylaneous for 2009/12/23 →
Everything that _why the lucky stiff did. (via) _why is one of those things that only the Internet lets exist. And he used DragonFly!
Roguelike games, evaluated via the Berlin…
BSDTalk 183: Randal Schwartz →
BSDTalk (4 years old!) has 24 minutes of talk with Randal Schwartz, talking about a whole pile of different subjects. I met Randal before – he’s a decent guy.
lwkt_token speedups and other improvements →
Matthew Dillon has refactored the lwkt_token code, for an unspecified speed improvement. He’s been doing a lot of MP-lock cleanup recently…
BSD hacker job available →
A recruiter found me through my administrative role for DragonFly in Google’s Summer of Code, and passed along a job description. I’ll paste it after the cut. If you’re looking for a job (or know…
How did I get there? →
I didn’t set anything up with the Digest and tumblr… Please speak up, if you did it. (found via Google)
Avalon (and therefore pkg_radd) is up again →
Avalon.dragonflybsd.org was power cycled, so pkg_radd works now, as does git.dragonflybsd.org.
MPLOCK graphing →
I love love graphs, and Alex Hornung has created a graph showing the lock contention on a DragonFly system during a buildkernel. (ganked from EFNet #dragonflybsd on IRC)
Package download problems →
avalon.dragonflybsd.org is temporarily down, so pkg_radd will not work unless you set $BINPKG_BASE to a new mirror.
Too much RAM for x86_64? →
If you have previously tried 64-bit DragonFly on a system with more than 3G of RAM and it failed to boot, the problem is fixed.
I see vi everywhere →
Following a link from vitunes (which has been updated), I see vimprobable, a vi-ish web browser. Interesting both for its relentless focus on keyboard controls, and for its old-style quietly…
Kernels without warning →
Sascha Wildner has added -Werror to the kernel build process. Warnings will now result in an error that stops the kernel from building. If you’re a developer, this will force you to create…
Digest Twitterfication →
Thanks to the urging and help of Matthias Schmidt and Saifi Khan, posts on the DragonFly Digest now also show on Twitter, as @dragonflybsd. (well, except for this one, as it would be redundant.)
BSDTalk: Josh Paetzel, iXsystems, FreeNAS →
BSDTalk 182 offers a very timely 12 minutes of talk with Josh Paetzel of iXsystems, talking about the recently not-BSD then BSD-again FreeNAS. (see previous item)
Speaking of iXsystems: they…
New version of ncurses to test →
Jan Lentfer has created an update for ncurses in DragonFly, but wants further testing. Give it a try if you use a curses-based application.
Vi, nvi, vim, variety →
Alexander Polakov has suggested that nvi (what you get when you type vi) should be replaced with traditional vi, since that would deliver UTF-8 support, and nvi appears to no longer be updated….
Time for a buildkernel →
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.
Libtool and some other pkgsrc updates →
The package for libtool has been updated in pkgsrc, which touches almost every package. If you follow pkgsrc-current, that may mean a lot of packages get dragged in for upgrades.
In somewhat less…
Pkgsrc 2009Q4 branch coming up →
The freeze for pkgsrc-2009Q4 starts December 16th, which means the tentative date for the branch release is right at the start of the new year.
A little more MP →
Matthew Dillon has moved the Big Giant Lock off of a whole bunch of syscalls. This should make a noticeable difference in a multiprocessing context, though I don’t have measured results to point…
Graphical loader, please →
I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to this before, but: Oliver Fromme has a graphical bootloader (see example) which can work on DragonFly. I’d love to see this on DragonFly.
Coincidentally, this…
simplepbulk: bulk build wrapper →
I have a wrapper script I use for bulk builds of pkgsrc that I think others would find usable. If you are interested in building some/all of pkgsrc to generate binary packages using pbulk, may I…
New BSD Magazine issue out →
The 2010Q1 issue (Is that their numbering now? I’m not sure.) of BSD Magazine is out. (via) Subscribe or pick it up in a local store. Back issues are still available online, too.
USB work on the way →
Several people really want a USB update, even offering a bounty. Alexander Polakov has volunteered himself for it – a large but worthwhile task. It’ll be the USB4BSD code, as Alex Hornung recommends
What if there’s good closed source software? →
Open source is good for clashes, and the latest is a vote by GNOME on whether to continue as a GNU project. (via) The triggering event appears to be a request from Richard Stallman for GNOME to…
Pkgsrc things to do →
Proposed changes in pkgsrc:
JDK 1.4 and perhaps JDK 1.5 will be removed.
Kerberos 4 also will be removed.
There’s not too many packages without DESTDIR support left; please help if you…
Hammer disk removal →
Thanks to Michael Neumann, it’s now possible to remove a drive from a Hammer volume. It’s experimental, so all the standard warnings apply.
This can’t be done on a root volume, for hopefully…
Messylaneous for 2008/12/10 →
I’ve been building this entry up for a while, so some of these entries are newer than others.
From the howling void: OpenSolaris or FreeBSD. I’ll admit I haven’t tried OpenSolaris, but I’m also…
Hammer expanding →
Did you know you a Hammer volume can span multiple disks? And that you can add extra disks later on? There’s no RAID-like features – it’s just a straight multiple-disk volume, but it works. The…
Hammer saves my bacon →
Some of the ikiwiki configuration files on dragonflybsd.org were accidentally overwritten during a software upgrade. Normally this would mean some work to locate and replace them from backups, but…
If T/TCP fell in the forest, would anyone care? →
Aggelos Economopoulos thinks that T/TCP should be removed, and Matthew Dillon agrees. So, it’ll be gone soon. Given the description, I don’t think anyone will miss it, so this is a heads-up…
Dan Langille on BSDTalk 181 →
BSDTalk 181 has a 16 minute conversation with Dan Langille, mostly about the upcoming BSDCan and PGCon.
More people for the 26C3 meetup →
There’s more people showing up for DragonFly at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress, in Berlin December 27th-30th. I’ve posted about it before , but it’s worth mentioning as the end of the…
More development tools →
A number of recent changes will be important to you if you develop on DragonFly:
Sascha Wildner has added a indent(1) profile that matches what is usually done in DragonFly.
Also, there’s a…
New committer: Jan Lentfer →
Please welcome the newest committer for DragonFly: Jan Lentfer.
Hammer version 4 now available →
Matthew Dillon has made version 4 of Hammer the default; the upgrade is a relatively painless ‘hammer upgrade’ command. This new version cuts out a chunk of the disk syncs needed, speeding up…
Two twitters and a source →
If you can produce an article on open source success factors by December 20th, the Open Source Business Resource would like to hear from you. Also, the audio of a recent NYCBUG meeting is…
hotplugd added →
Alexander Polakov has imported OpenBSD’s hotplugd(8). It monitors for hotplug-style events, like disk additions and removals, and executes corresponding scripts to handles those events.
AsiaBSDCon Call for Papers →
AsiaBSDCon, which is happening the 11th through 14th of March, 2010, has issued the normal call for papers. (and they nicely posted it to users@) This looks to be the 4th year of this…
vkernels and NFS booting →
It’s now possible to boot a vkernel using an NFS share as the root. Now, you can have a networked virtual system!
BIND update arrives →
Aggelos Economopoulos has committed Jan Lentfer’s update of BIND to 9.5.2-P1. It fixes CVE-2009-4022, though that bug never affected DragonFly by default.
Holiday links →
The end of year shopping season is on many of us again. I did this last year, and it seemed useful, so here’s another geeky holiday shopping guide.
For DragonFly material, there’s a number of…
December OSBR: Value Co-creation →
It’s a dry-sounding topic, but the articles are interesting: The December issue of the Open Source Business Resource is now available, with “Value Co-creation” for a theme. I’ll point out “A…
BSDCan 2010 proposals →
BSDCan 2010, coming up the 13th-14th of May, has put out the call for papers. The website says proposals start December 19th, but I suppose that’s just the day you start handing them in.
