April 2011
12 posts
Supported hardware list appears →
There’s a new Supported Hardware page on dragonflybsd.org. I think the idea is not to be comprehensive, since that’s a nigh-impossible task. Instead, it’s to note the combinations of hardware that…
How much swapcache can help (with graphs) →
I love graphs. Jan Lentfer made some! Both of these show recent speed improvements in DragonFly – especially some spectacular results from swapcache(8) and the recent NCQ tagging improvements….
DESTDIR details →
I mentioned this before, but there’s now an official announcement that pkgsrc is (now, after the 2011Q1 release) going to DESTDIR support and what that means.
Lazy Reading for 2011/04/13 →
Get out your wallet! I encourage purchasing here.
You should buy a SSD. Not necessarily news to you, but that article does a good job of summarizing why.
On the other hand, SSD prices are…
One extra thing: OpenSSH →
Peter Avalos squeezed in one more thing before the DragonFly2.10 branch: an update of OpenSSH to version 5.8-p1. This is mostly a security fix upgrade to 5.7 – see the OpenSSH release notes…
Next release April 23rd →
Branch tomorrow, release in 2 weeks. There’s a ton of new features for 2.10, so this will be a fun release. I’m trying to get pkgsrc-2011Q1 packages built for 2.10 ahead of time, too.
Our newest committer: John Marino →
Welcome John Marino, who has been working on some rather difficult updates for gcc and other toolchain items.
Swapcache updates, long-term status →
Matthew Dillon made some changes to swapcache(8). Swapcache is now able to cache a lot more data, and the result is that general disk performance for _all_ disks is accelerated by an included…
BSD Magazine for April out →
The April issue of BSD Magazine is out! It’s a very full issue, including another news roundup by yours truly.
Double buffering in Hammer usually useful →
Enabling the vfs.hammer.double_buffer=1 sysctl will greatly improve Hammer performance when you’ve exceeded your memory cache (at a possible slight penalty when you have not) and also speed…
Pkgsrc packages possibly pruned →
There’s a number of pkgsrc packages that have a combination of security vulnerabilites and lack of updates for more than a year which is placing them on the chopping block. (Follow the discussion…
March 2011
24 posts
Fairq enhancements →
If you’re using pf to control how your bandwidth is used, you may want to look at the recent fairq updates from Matthew Dillon. It should perform better now in situations where one traffic group…
Refixing mptable problems →
If you’re running the bleeding edge version of DragonFly, because Sepherosa Ziehau’s recent work makes it possible to boot systems that were previously bootable, you may need this sysctl trick…
Student applications open for Summer of Code →
Summer of Code 2011 student applications can be made now. If you’re a student, you’ve got until April 8th to get it done! (Calendar) Remember, you can’t be too organized, too early.
GSoC: mentors please sign up →
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…
Binutils 2.21 added, still optional →
Sascha Wildner has added in binutils version 2.21, replacing 2.20. Note that both 2.20 and 2.21 are ‘optional’, so you have to set BINUTILSVER to use them. Otherwise the system defaults to the…
Summer of Code: mentoring wait →
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…
More memoryallocators manpage material →
Venkatesh Srinivas has added a new memoryallocators(9) man page, to describe the various memory allocation schemes in DragonFly. It gives descriptions of each and leads off to more man
Pkgsrc freeze starts tomorrow →
As noted in announcements, pkgsrc is entering a 10-day freeze period starting tomorrow. If everything goes to plan, the next quarterly release of pkgsrc, 2011Q1, will be released April 3rd.
Getting started on a Summer of Code project →
If you were thinking of working on a disk scheduler for DragonFly, this is your lucky day! Brills Peng asked for some overall guidance on how to start on a Summer of Code project. I threw out …
