April 2016 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2016/04/302016/04/28

In Other BSDs for 2016/04/30

I think I manage to link at least one story for every BSD type this week, or close to it.

FreeBSD GPIO Benchmark. (via)
ASLR now on by default in amd64. (via)
anti-ROP mechanism in libc.
The p2k16 hackathon has begun.
DiscoverBSD for 2016/04/25.
Rethinking Unix: A New Apropos Implementation from NetBSD. (via)
BSD at LinuxFest Northwest 2016.
UPnP on Pfsense: security risks and alternatives. (via)
OpenSMTPD, spamd, SpamAssassin and Dovecot on OpenBSD – part 1 (via)
a prog by any other name. Some BSD history.
OPNsense 16.1.12 released

2016/04/29

garbage[24]: It’s all fun and games until someone’s domain gets hurt

The garbage podcast for this week is up, with discussion of OpenBSD and TRIM, and, well, a very wide range of topics, going by the summary.

2016/04/292016/04/28

NFS tuning tips

If you’re on DragonFly, or maybe even if you aren’t, and you are using NFS, here’s some tips on how to wring the best performance out of it.

2016/04/28

BSDNow 139: Cheri-picking BSD

This week’s BSDNow has some news catchup, since they’ve been on the road, and an interview with Brooks Davis of FreeBSD-on-Cheri. (CheriBSD?)

2016/04/27

Old DragonFly users, please test

Not older people that use DragonFly, but people of any age using an older release of DragonFly: Bezitopo is Pierre Abbat’s topographical program, and he needs testers on versions 4.4 of DragonFly or before. Please give his open-source program a run if you are on the appropriate versions. Trying other BSDs, even though not requested, can’t hurt.

2016/04/26

First KnoxBUG meeting tomorrow night

Posting it now, because it’ll be too late by this weekend’s In Other BSDs: The inaugural meeting of KnoxBUG is tomorrow night. That’s Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. The speaker is Kris Moore, of PC-BSD. The website has directions.

2016/04/25

ACPICA update for qemu users

If you’re using qemu and DragonFly, the latest update of ACPICA to version 20160422 may fix some issues introduced in a previous update. (I don’t have a specific bug report to point you at; sorry!)

2016/04/242016/04/22

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/24

This week filled up fast, despite me having an exam to take in the middle of it.

Site Reliability Engineering, the book and the notes on the book. (via)
Related: O’Reilly has a significant discount right now on the ebook version.
How to recover lost files added to Git but not committed.
How to make a minimalist stereo with an old phone and a $20 amp. This works with an old BSD machine too.
Fun, distracting websites for down-time.
THE 64 – Computer and Handheld Console. In a keyboard, and in a handheld.
Classic Programmer Paintings. (via)
What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups. (via)
A Crypt-Crawling Tactical Roguelike: Ananias. Plays in browser.
There is no cloud. I need one of those. (via)
A Notable Omission. Related to the previous link. Also, there’s going to be some panicked selling over the next few weeks, I bet. (via)
Curing Our Slack Addiction. An old business rule: Increase communication, people ask questions instead of making decisions. Increase available data, people make decisions instead of asking questions. (via)
TEXT-MODE, ASCII/ANSI images. (via)
Why is there a screen that says “It is now safe to turn off your computer”?
The story behind NetHack’s first update since 2003. (via)
ZALGO RLY.
Next generation UNIX shell. Never improve, just reinvent! See also: CADT.(via)
Fred Brooks’ The Mythical Man Month, free to read. One of the better books ever written about software development or even just knowledge projects. (via)

Your unrelated link of the week: HOW TO OPERATE YOUR FROG. (via)

2016/04/232016/04/22

In Other BSDs for 2016/04/23

I apologize for ending with a question.

Why Linux can’t be distributed with ZFS included. “Because it’s not BSD” is the facile answer. (via)
pkgsrcCon2016 call for presentations. (via)
HardenedBSD delivers security PIE. (via)
NetBSD machines at AsiaBSDCon 2016. (via)
OPNsense 1.16.11 released.
Build a FreeBSD 10.3-release Openstack Image with bsd-cloudinit. (via)
libressl – more vague promises.
The BSD family of operating systems.
Does BSD distributions contain any GNU software?
DiscoverBSD for 2016/04/18.
Question about NetBSD — How to update Compiled Binaries
BSD at LinuxFest Northwest
Year of the OpenBSD desktop
Installing ElectroBSD by exploiting “HardenedBSD”. (via)
FreeBSD and NetBSD Google Summer of Code projects. (via multiple places)
This may be a facetious question, but: are the new hyperconverged servers just… servers for people that don’t know what their operating system can do?

2016/04/22

garbage[23]: High-availability real-time clustering dealy

Garbage 23 is up cause it’s Friday and the content is initially summarized like this: “Brandon tries not to use Google for a week”. It’s apparently not that bad?

2016/04/21

BSDNow 138: Rushing into BSD

BSDNow 138, “Rushing into BSD”, has an interview with Benedict Reuschling, about the FreeBSD Foundation and Europe. There’s the usual news roundup, plus some notes about upcoming conventions.

2016/04/192016/04/19

DragonFly 4.4.3 released

The DragonFly 4.4.3 point release is out. There’s a commit page listing the changes between 4.4.2 and 4.4.3. Nobody will be surprised that there’s an OpenSSL update in there.

If you want a complete image, it’s available for download at your nearest mirror. If you want to upgrade an existing install:

cd /usr; make src-update 
    (or  src-create-shallow if you don't already have source)
make buildworld && make buildkernel
make installkernel && make installworld
make upgrade
reboot

2016/04/18

FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS out

I’d save this for an In Other BSDs note, but that’s a whole week away: FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS is published, available in electronic and printed editions. I suspect this would be interesting to non-BSD users, too.

2016/04/172016/04/15

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/17

I’m studying for a test next week, so the amount of random clicking-around that I’ve been able to do has been limited.

Write Opinionated Workarounds.
Devs Answer: What are the best comments left in your code? (via)
restart the void: bot-generated apocalyptic error messages. (via, via)
Brian Kernighan on the Typesetting of “The Go Programming Language” Book. (via)
Vim 8.0 is coming. (via)
The Internet of things you inherit or leave behind. (via)
Parametric, Open source, 3D modelling – in your browser. (via)
not smart is not stupid. “As the old adage goes, if there’s a feature, it’s going to break.”
Here’s What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe. (via)
Some phone history via NANOG.
The Vintage Computer Festival East XI is finishing up right now. (via)
The story of the “battleshort“. (via)

Your off-topic pen link of the week: Remember I asked once about decent fountain pens that were not expensive? I found one, and it’s great.

2016/04/162016/04/14

In Other BSDs for 2016/04/16

This is one of those weeks where a bunch of release all tumble together by chance.

UbuntuBSD Is Looking To Become An Official Ubuntu Flavor. (still confusing)
PC-BSD 10.3 out; PC-BSD 11 out next. 10.3 was out last week; I missed this link before.
pfSense 2.3-RELEASE Now Available! (also seen here and here)
PostgreSQL – Add BSD authentication method. (via)
BSD and Toshiba Chromebook 2.
FreeBSD 10.3-Release on AWS. As Colin Percival points out, the last half-dozen releases have been on AWS too.
Undeadly and HTTPS. (via)
Penguicon 2016 Lucas Track Schedule. For being called “Penguicon”, there’s a lot of BSD events there.
DiscoverBSD for 2016/04/11.
OPNsense 16.1.9 released.
OPNsense 16.1.10 released.
Unix’s file durability problem, which leads in comment to disks from the perspective of a file system (McKusick), which I thought I had linked before but maybe not. (via)
FreeNAS, TrueNAS, and BadLock.
UbuntuBSD Should Heed Kubuntu’s Cautionary Tale.

2016/04/15

garbage 22: potential

Garbage number 22 is out, and talks about a number of things, including NVMe support in OpenBSD, programming in Go, and ‘reader-submitted issues’.

2016/04/14

BSDNow 137: FreeNAS Mini XL

No interview this week on BSDNow because of travel, but there’s still an episode, complete with news and an unboxing video of a new BSD product. I’m linking to a slightly different location because it’s not up on the normal site as of this writing.

2016/04/11

Hammer and FreeBSD

Tomohiro Kusumi would like to port Hammer (1) to FreeBSD, as noted in this bug discussion. It’s not even begun to happen, but if you can contribute, please do.

2016/04/102016/04/09

Lazy Reading for 2016/04/10

I’ve finally used up my Lazy Reading links backlog!

Hand-crafted containers. A good explanation of how containers are set up, and a certain sense of deja vu for anyone familiar with BSD jails. (via)
Punctuation in Novels. I like seeing the conversion of data from text to image. (also via)
Overclocking an old IBM 701. The butterfly keyboard model. (via)
Accurate CRT Simulation. (via)
RS-232 for Commodore PET and Dialing a BBS Over WiFi. (via)
tmux2html: “Render full tmux windows or individual panes as HTML.” (via)
MobaXterm – all-in-one SSH/X client. Anyone use this vs. PuTTY?
Documentation is for the weak.
A Brief History of ClarisWorks. Back when office packages were actually light. (via)
Dwarf Fortress’ creator on how he’s 42% towards simulating existence. (via)
What Infrastructure Should Learn from NPM JavaScript Debacle. “Don’t execute programs directly from the Internet” should not be a hard lesson to learn. (via)
Debian ships very outdated packages. It frustrates upstream creators. The response from most people misses the point, but the maintainer at least has a sane response. (via and via)
Ubuntu on Windows. I think it’s less “Let’s use Linux” and more “Apple’s UNIX tools get everyone to buy Macbooks, let’s try that.” It unfortunately does not do anything (yet?) with process control or user authorization or other things you would actually need. Related: GNU/kWindows. (via).

Your sort-of off-topic link of the week: Michael W. Lucas’s fiction is, for a short time, part of a larger book bundle which is available for less than the price of buying it all individually. Buy now if you want a deal/lots of fiction to read.

2016/04/092016/04/08

In Other BSDs for 2016/04/09

Back to the normal rotation; not done early, not done late.