May 2018 – Page 2 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2018/05/092018/05/09

CVE-2018-8897 fix in, more Spectre fixes for DragonFly

A recent and new CPU bug, CVE-2018-8897, is fixed in DragonFly. THis applies to both Intel and AMD processors. I’m happy to see that the CERT page lists equal notification timing for a whole lot of operating systems, rather than the few that heard about Spectre/Meltdown early.

Following that topic, Matthew Dillon has “fleshed out” Spectre mitigations, and his commit message details the current state. The sysctl ‘machdep.spectre_mitigation’ will tell you what’s set at any given point.

Update: update.

2018/05/082018/05/08

WOL igb BSD

You can now use Wake On LAN functionality with igb(4) cards in DragonFly.

(I like acronymic titles a little too much, I know.)

2018/05/072018/05/06

BSDNow 244: C is a Lie

I managed to miss posting about BSDNow 244, “C is a Lie”. That provocative title is about how C isn’t a low-level language, not that it doesn’t work. Among other things, this week has new-to-me history about the Larrabee architecture, which I only have heard about indirectly.

2018/05/062018/05/04

Lazy Reading for 2018/05/06

A theme of rebellion this week.

The NetHack DevTeam is happy to announce the release of NetHack 3.6.1. They’re going to start using ANSI C. (via)
Real accounts on Instagram are still run by bots. Guess what the next spam/SEO target is.
“the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” – noting that quote found in this newsletter, as a reason to have your own operating system tools.
A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture, an IEEE event for those worried about the end of Moore’s Law. (via)
I love the idea of reprogramming semi-disposable hardware into something better.
Webstock ‘18: Jeremy Keith – Taking Back The Web. Video. Don’t give your data to other platforms; you will never get it back.
You Know How GET Requests are Meant to be Idempotent? (via)
LISA18 CFP now open.
Using only open-source software on Android. (via)
Making a Window Manager (part 1). Not what you think it is. (via)

2018/05/052018/05/04

In Other BSDs for 2018/05/05

BUGs BUGs BUGs!

The May 15th SemiBUG meeting will be a hands-on web server workshop. Bring equipment.
The June 19th SemiBUG meeting will be on BCHS.
The May 2 NYCBUG meeting has no official presentation, but it’s happening.
BSD licensed bc in NetBSD. The GNU version was removed in other BSDs. (Thanks, Bill Sorenson)
SMTP client added to -current.
OPNSense 18.1.6 image refresh.
New talks, and the F-bomb. Michael W. Lucas convention talk mostly on ZFS.
Writing FreeBSD Malware. (via)
Introduction to email (pt. 2): Mail dialog / the “mail” command.
Spectre Variant 2 mitigation for kernel committed to -current.
p2k18 Hackathon report: Solene Rapenne (solene@) on joining the project, packages progress. I like hearing background on how people get brought into a community project.
Bareos Backup Server on FreeBSD.
A crapload of p2k18 hackathon reports.
Getting my new laptop to work. (via)
sndio party.
NetBSD GSoC projects for 2018. (via)

2018/05/04

systat improvements in DragonFly

systat in DragonFly has gained some new fields when using -pv. Read up on the tool if you have not used it before.

2018/05/03

How nice is nice?

Matthew Dillon’s made some changes to the scheduler, with the result that nice(1) is really vigorous now about enforcing priority.

2018/05/02

dfly drm irq

Here’s something that doesn’t have an immediate impact now, but will be useful down the road: Francois Tigeot has been working on DRM support in DragonFly, and has been quite successful with Intel video support. His strategy has been to adopt Linux methods where possible, to reduce the amount of support work. The payoff has been excellent, and prompt, accelerated video support in DragonFly. The most recent work is “git: drm: Implement parts of the Linux irq subsystem“, which is going to come in handy for someone, I’m sure.

2018/05/022018/05/02

NYCBUG, tonight

NYCBUG is having a social (i.e. no presenter) meeting this month – tonight, in fact. Go, talk BSD, drink.

2018/05/01

mpr(4) driver in DragonFly

Sascha Wildner has ported FreeBSD’s driver, for LSI Fusion-MPT 3/3.5 SAS controllers. It includes mpr(4), mps(4), and the mpsutil(8)/mprutil(8) management program. It’s in the kernel by default, in fact.