May 2010
36 posts
New BSD Magazine with DragonFly in it →
The May 2010 issue of BSD Magazine is out, with, among other articles, a writeup by yours truly about using HAMMER to access historical data.
April 2010
52 posts
Another book to read →
I didn’t know about this, but Michael W. Lucas has a new book on the way: Network Flow Analysis. It should be good; his other (BSD-themed, generally) books are surprisingly accessible…
Keeping a mirror-stream going →
A note, in part for my own benefit: the @reboot crontab entry is all you need to get a HAMMER mirror-stream going again after a reboot/shutdown.
0.0.1 more soon →
Because of a number of problems, snapshot building hasn’t worked for some days. To fix this, some updates need to happen within DragonFly. This will mean a minor version bump to 2.6.3 in the next…
Another Summer of Code project →
From a commenter on a previous post: Gentoo has a Google Summer of Code project porting portage to DragonFly, by student Naohiro Aota. I had no idea this was happening – this is interesting!
Summer of Code projects final →
We’ve got 3 projects for Google Summer of Code 2010:
“Device Mapper based Logical Volume Management”, by Alexander Hornung and mentored by Chuck Tuffli.
“Porting kernel mode-setting, GEM and KMS,…
What does DESTDIR mean? →
I’ve made reference to DESTDIR for pkgsrc several times, with only an informal understanding of what it means. From what I’ve learned, and what Joerg Sonnenberger’s told me, DESTDIR support means…
More on Hammer and Samba →
Matthew Dillon went into detail on just how Hammer snapshots could be shared out via Samba.
Images and volunteering →
Two items, via Dru Lavigne: Thunderflash is a new site with images for use in virtual machines, and there could be more of a BSD representation there. Also, if you live near South Carolina in…
Hammer via Windows →
Siju George is making a Hammer volume’s snapshots available through Samba, with the results that some Windows-using developers get historical snapshots for free.
dsched sysctl changes →
There’s a deficit of vowels in the title of this post… Anyway, Alex Hornung has changed the format of some of the sysctls used in the I/O scheduler, dsched. Be ready for this if you’ve been…
Possible PAT project →
Aggelos Economopoulos has posted his patch for Page Attribute Table support; it needs to be able to identify CPUs, which is apparently not that complex. Anyone looking for a task?
Binary pkgsrc build status →
I posted a note about where the 2010Q1 builds are for pkgsrc; if you’re on i386/2.6 right now, you can try it out.
DragonFly in other places →
Linux Weekly News describes the 2.6 release of DragonFly in an extensive article, which even mentions this Digest. (yay!) Also in the comments, a link to a short interview with Matthew Dillon on a…
“OCD Attack” →
… is one of the better commit message descriptions I’ve heard.
pkgsrc-2010Q1 is out →
The newest branch of pkgsrc for 2010 is officially out – read the release announcement for details on what’s updated. Among other things, DESTDIR support is almost complete, and a shift to default…
Another SSD special →
Newegg is running a special on 80G Intel X-25M SSDs – $215, just today. Internet Consensus seems to measure that model of SSD against all others, so it’s a good buy. (assuming you’re living…
New malloc work →
Venkatesh Srinivas has been working on new version of DragonFly’s malloc; he’s published an extensive writeup (which is inexplicably split in two in the mail archives) that includes several of…
2.6.2, 2.7.2 created; please update →
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…
mptutil(8) brought in →
And the torrent of new activity continues: Alexander Polakov has imported FreeBSD’s mptutil(8), good for managing LSI Fusion-MPT controllers.
BSDTalk 188: Dru Lavigne and the PC-BSD Guide →
Dru Lavigne is interviewed for 28 minutes on BSDTalk 188. It’s about her new book, and also about the new BSD Professional Certification.
Tip for ath(4) users →
In this recent note about the new wireless driver framework, Rui Paolo noted how to add a ath(4) device as wlan0 automatically.
2.7.1 created for clerical reasons →
DragonFly 2.7.1 has been tagged, mostly because of a problem with version numbers caused by the recent wireless driver merge.
Even more new things: multimedia card support →
Sascha Wildner has ported MultiMedia Card support from FreeBSD; SD, SDHC, and MMC cards should work in DragonFly now. Man, there’s been a lot of new additions recently.
That’s a lot of servers →
An entertaining infographic, posted over the break cause it’s big:
(via) (Original)
I/O scheduler arrives →
Alex Hornung’s I/O scheduler is now in DragonFly; all reports I’ve seen from users say it makes interactivity much better. It’s not on by default; read his very detailed post and followup for…
NFS client reminders →
Thomas Nikolajsen wrote some tips on starting a NFS client on DragonFly; I’m linking to them both because they’re generally handy and specifically so I can have them for later…
All-new network drivers →
Rui Paulo’s work porting the current set of FreeBSD network drivers over to DragonFly has been committed; there’s about a zillion commits (via Matthew Dillon) today to show for it.
Binary upgrades are possible →
Gergo Szakal mentioned some ideas he had about binary upgrades; among other parts of the conversation, Samuel J. Greear/Sascha Wildner reminded everyone that Matthias Schmidt had ported the…
Last-ditch ways to check your disk →
If you’re worried that your Hammer disk may be going bad – and I mean bad like physically bad – you can check it with dd, or see what the hammer tool lists as bad.
New wireless drivers going into 2.7 →
Rui Paulo’s work on wireless drivers will be entering 2.7 very soon. (2.6 is unaffected.) This will cause problems if you are running acx(4), bwi(4), iwi(4), iwl(4), rtw(4), rum(4), or…
BIND migration steps →
Jan Lentfer’s posted the exact steps to migrate from BIND as part of the base system to BIND out of pkgsrc. The actual commit hasn’t happened yet.
This will only affect you when upgrading 2.7;…
HOWTO test the I/O scheduler →
Antonio Huete Jimenez has posted his results from testing Alex Hornung’s experimental I/O scheduler. Results are positive, and he also lists exactly how to download the code and test it on your…
Updating from 2.4 to 2.6 →
Here’s some explicit instructions for upgrading from 2.4 to 2.6.
If for some reason you don’t have a /usr/src directory:
mkdir -p /usr/src
cd /usr/src && git init
git remote add origin...
Summer of Code applications in →
We’ve got 28 applications for Summer of Code, approximately what we had last year. If you’re a student, hold tight. We’ve got until the 21st to get everyone matched up, student <-> mentor.
Talks at pkgsrcCon 2010 – submit now →
Do you want to give a talk at pkgsrcCon 2010 in Basel, Switzerland, May 28-30? Make sure to mail in the details.
Hooray for DRM work and for testing →
David Shao is working on improving DragonFly’s DRM (kernel graphics drivers, not that other thing). That’s a good project to start, and also Antonio Huete Jimenez is willing to test it. We can…
Lemme get the iPad rant out →
I suspect most people who are interested in BSD or open source in general have the same reaction to the iPad: it’s pretty, it looks neat, and hey Apple wait what do you mean I can’t use it the way I…
BIND on way out; last chance →
Jan Lentfer’s ready to remove BIND from the base system; test out his changes if you’re running a DragonFly-based name server and want to see how it’ll work.
New BSD Magazine issue: Hosting BSD →
The 4th issue of BSD Magazine is out, with the theme “Hosting BSD“. It’s a free download, and they now have a “questions from users” section that you can write in to.
More Gource films →
‘dylanr’ has built 2 interesting films using Gource to visualize DragonFly development; he’s mentioned them in comments here, but I want to make sure people see them.
Even more PostgreSQL benchmarking →
Jan Lentfer’s done some new benchmarking of PostgreSQL on Hammer. There’s further suggestions and a more complete benchmark is planned, taking advantage of the Hammer improvements in 2.6. In the…
72 hours left to apply for Summer of Code →
If you’re a potential Summer of Code student, there’s about 72 hours left in the student application period. Get it in there!
DragonFly 2.6 released! →
DragonFly 2.6 is out! Download from a mirror, check the release page, and enjoy the large number of new features. There’s a full set of binary packages built, too.
Technically, this is 2.6.1,…
pkgsrcCon 2010 coming up →
pkgsrcCon is happening May 28th-30th in Basel, Switzerland. The event web page has note on location and hotel information. (thanks, S.P.Zeidler)
Someone please make this video →
Gource is a tool for visualizations from version control history; the video page has some examples. (via) I’d love to see this run on DragonFly. I’m curious to see what would happen on a huge,…
2.6 release imminent →
2.6 will probably be out within the next 24 hours. We’re just waiting on the packages, though we’re probably in the clear already.
Be ready for mild confusion with this and the current Linux…
Hammer and OS X →
Daniel Lorch has ported Hammer to Mac OS X, of all things. It’s not complete, but he’s moving right along.
New location for Hammer on Linux →
Daniel Lorch’s work on porting Hammer to Linux (read-only, currently) has been moved to a new location.
SSD sale at Newegg →
Newegg is having a big SSD sale; I’m repasting the email with models and prices here. Use it for swapcache! There’s also a promo page with fancy images.
20-148-320 - $569.00 with Free...
