September 2018 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2018/09/302018/10/01

Lazy Reading for 2018/09/30

I cleared my tab backlog, but I still have a RSS backlog to work through here. Please be patient as I post a crapton of links and still don’t make it to the end.

Close Your Open Tabs. Linked because I didn’t know about tab pinning, and it’s super handy.
BINAC: A Brief Look Back. (video) Mercury delay line memory, which provoked a “how does that even work” reaction in me. (via)
“So you want to make a TUI…” ~~Terminal~~ Text User Interface, if you didn’t realize. (via)
Explaining the ‘mystery’ of numbers stations. (via)
Wizards, Moomins and pirates: the magic and mystery of literary maps. (via)
Exhibiting The Hobbit: A tale of memories and microcomputers. (via)
The Hobbit, via a comment on the previous link source.
De-google-ify Internet: List of Alternatives. Even if you are not specifically trying to avoid Google, it’s a handy mapping of application to need. (via)
A brief history of the numeric keypad. (via)
Myst, 25 years old.
Mailing lists vs Github. People view Github somewhat benignly, but it’s still a company with diverging interests from the people who use it for free hosting.
The printer that wouldn’t print: Fixing an IBM 1401 mainframe from the 1960s.
These Books. Vintage books and posters, modified.
Haiku R1/beta1 has been released. (via)
Most common ingredients by cuisine. Graphs! (via)
Your Calendrical Fallacy Is… (via)
“UNIX is a disaster…” (via)

Your unrelated listening of the week: The Best Metal on Bandcamp: September 2018. Witch Ripper and Pig Destroyer are pretty fun, both to listen to and to say.

2018/09/292018/09/28

In Other BSDs for 2018/09/29

EuroBSDCon 2018 unfortunately had no video, but the presentations are showing up online.

FreeBSD bhyve live migration coming soon. (thanks, subbsd)
Removing ROP Gadgets from OpenBSD. (via)
OpenBSD netcat demystified. (via)
OpenBSD and Diving. The SCUBA kind. (via)
Spoiler alert for BSD packet filter profiling.
r/openbsd_gaming’s Game of the Year 2018 Contest: Call for Nominations.
Advances in OpenBSD packages [pdf] (via)
What’s in store for NetBSD 9.0. (via)
NetBSD machines at Open Source Conference 2018 Hiroshima. (via)
Deploying Anycast DNS using OpenBSD and BGP. (via)
“My FreeBSD Story“.
Display the size of installed packages ordered by size. Should work on any BSD with minor modification.
Add an new OpenBSD partition from unused space.
Ghost in the Shell – Part 3.
FreeBSD Desktop – Part 16 – Configuration – Pause Any Application.
Valuable News – 2018/09/08, 2018/09/15, and 2018/09/22. There’s probably another one today.
The 2018Q3 pkgsrc freeze has started. (via)
pfSense 2.4.4 is out; 2.3.x is almost EOL. (via and via)
OPNSense ~~18.7.2~~ ~~18.7.3~~ 18.7.4 released.
FreeBSD Bootonly ISO failures PXE booting under UEFI.
Oh wait, all the EuroBSDCon 2018 OpenBSD slides are in one spot. (via)
Using acme.sh for Let’s Encrypt certificates on pkgsrc.org servers. (via)

2018/09/282018/09/27

DragonFly on Hyper-V, locally

For the future edification of others: I mentioned I installed DragonFly under Hyper-V on a Windows 10 laptop. I wanted to be able to open a terminal on DragonFly while in my Windows environment. I have that now; here’s what I did:

Installed DragonFly in Hyper-V (see my prior install notes)
Installed xorg on DragonFly. (pkg install xorg)
Installed Cygwin/X on Windows 10 – specifically, the xauth, xorg, xterm, xclock, cygutils-x11, and openssh packages.
In DragonFly, set these items in /etc/ssh/sshd_config :
- X11Forwarding Yes
- X11DisplayOffset 0
- XAuthLocation /usr/local/bin/xauth
Run XWin Server on Windows 10.
Run CygWin64 Terminal on Windows 10
- export DISPLAY=:0.0
- ssh -Y (address of DragonFly host)
- Once logged in, type ‘xterm’.

At this point, a terminal window should pop up on your Windows machine, showing your DragonFly username@hostname as the prompt. You are set!

Next steps – getting this working with PuTTY, Pageant, and Plink.

2018/09/27

BSDNow 265: Software Disenchantment

BSDNow 265 has a con report – the just-finished EuroBSDCon 2018 in Romania, plus the usual roundup of news items. One news item that will be useful someday: how to perform a BIOS update on a non-Windows computer.

2018/09/26

Dumpoffon

If your kernel panics, the current state of memory can show why. That memory dump needs to be saved somewhere. ‘dumpon’ is the command to specify the device that will keep it. If you want to turn it off, you end up using the odd syntax ‘dumpon off’. Thanks to Aaron Li, there’s now a linguistically-sane command: ‘dumpoff’.

2018/09/24

New limits for unix socket sysctls

As a fix for wpa_supplicant, the upper limit on socket datagrams has been increased. What else does this affect? We’ll find out the hard way, which is why I mention it here.

2018/09/232018/09/21

Lazy Reading for 2018/09/23

I still have a backlog. Geez. I’m starting to worry I’m posting too much for anyone to read through.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside. Important to read to see the mind-boggling scale of money flowing into Linux; it’s a corporate UNIX at this point, with priorities determined by a number of major companies. One year of Linus Torvalds’ pay is, I dare say, more than any other entire open source operating system project on the planet has received.
Related: Something is rotten in the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation gives employees non-disparagement clauses? (via)
Commodore 64 BASIC inside your USB Connector. (via)
“the highest throughput of any telecommunications network ever created“
More terminal font discussion.
Teacup holster.
Le Chatelier’s principle.
Today in History, Brought to You by Unix. Always present on BSD, at least. (via)
Leaving Apple and Google: /e/ first beta. (via)
XML, blockchains, and the strange shapes of progress.
Xonsh: Python-powered, cross-platform, Unix-gazing shell. I link mostly because it’s neat to see new shells still getting created. (via)
Glowing mercury thyratrons: inside a 1940s Teletype switching power supply. Thyratrons!
Disk compression history. Read so you recognize the algorithms used.
Pixeldungeon. A roguelike that runs most anywhere; might run on BSD?
“There are two immutable truths about all wireless networks:“
Enclose them all in super clear epoxy! That… is a computer that won’t suffer moisture issues.

Your unrelated dragonfly image this week: Common darter.

2018/09/222018/11/22

In Other BSDs for 2018/09/22

Still running on extra links from previous weeks. Usually it takes a larger convention to cause this sort of backlog.

Exploring NomadBSD – Desktop FreeBSD on a thumb drive. (via)
Mac-like FreeBSD Laptop. Surprisingly similar, visually. (via) Also some comments here.
A FreeBSD 11 Desktop How-to. (via)
“How install a package offline?”
“Are their any BSD Game stores?”
The Ultimate OpenBSD Media Server. (via)
The history of file type information being available in Unix directories.
Silent Fanless FreeBSD Server – DIY Backup.
BSD Myths. Not a new list, but still good to know. (via)
Announcing The HardenedBSD Foundation. (via)
OpenBSD/NetBSD on FreeBSD using grub2-bhyve. (via)
“My new favorite Telegram Sticker.“
SoloBSD 11.2-STABLE-0916 Viva Mexico! Edition.
How does the process title works?
“CBSD is adding bhyve live migration support.“
Why Aren’t More Users More Happy With Our VMs? Part 1 and also part 2. (via)
Uvm: a BSD virtual memory system. (via)
Diskless MP3 jukebox, running NetBSD/shark.

2018/09/212018/09/21

Hyper-V and DragonFly

I tried Hyper-V, and of course, I had to install a virtual DragonFly system. Sascha Wildner very helpfully pointed out that DragonFly on Hyper-V requires a legacy network adapter and a gen-1 image type; both changes you can make during initial setup. I’m noting it here for the benefit of future people walking down the same path.

Note: pick ‘legacy BIOS’ during the actual DragonFly install, too.

2018/09/20

BSDNow 264: Optimized-out

BSDNow 264 is available now and has the usual roundup of news, including discussion of Threadripper performance that I’ve avoided.

2018/09/19

Chromium on BSD

Chromium, the open sourced base of the Chrome browser, builds on BSDs, including DragonFly. But not without some work.

2018/09/182018/09/17

SemiBUG meeting tonight

There’s a SemiBUG meeting at 7 PM tonight. Bring your troubleshooting lightning talks.

2018/09/17

Ryzen buying advice

For anyone considering the purchase of a Ryzen system given the good benchmarks/power usage, here’s some discussion on users@ about which model is which.

2018/09/162018/09/12

Lazy Reading for 2018/09/16

Unofficial history theme this week – but not UNIX-specific, for once.

Why the Future of Data Storage is (Still) Magnetic Tape. Don’t tell the loaders at my workplace; they are crap. (via)
Making Ubuntu bug reports seems to be useless (or pointless).
Hex codes for all emoji. (via)
Mechanical keyboard / Cherry history.
Rise of the Stupid Network. (via)
A software archaeology screwup.
Dealing with a disclosure embargo in the 1970s. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, as programs. (via)
Realtime VGA ASCII Art Converter. It’s hardware, so it can work with any VGA output.
DevTube, developer talks on video. If you can get over universal partially bearded twentysomethings in t-shirts, you can find something useful here. (via)
Document comments as automatic GitHub issues. It’s not without problem, but this is a good solution to an ugly problem.
Knityak, computationally generated knitwear. (via)
Roguelike Universe: Visualising Influence. Neat charts! (via)
8 megabytes of RAM in this picture. Also 7 million dollars. (via)

Your unrelated baking video of the week: Round Cake Production with Unifiller Depositors and Decorating Equipment. I’m not recommending this as a food; it’s just somewhat hypnotic to watch the robot production of something you usually imagine as lovingly handcrafted.

2018/09/152018/09/04

In Other BSDs for 2018/09/15

Built almost entirely with overflow from more than a week ago.

GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. (via)
NextCloud on OpenBSD. (via)
Anon Games, BSD games available freely through ssh. Or telnet, but don’t do that. (via)
Let’s Try on OpenBSD: Baldur’s Gate 1 with gemrb and widescreen mod. Video. I link cause it’s interesting to see the setup work before the gameplay.
Automatic switch wifi/ethernet on OpenBSD.
Highly Available DHCP Server on FreeBSD. This is the first I’ve heard of Kea, though the article itself is about isc-dhcp.
OpenBSD on an iBook G4. (via)
NetBSD: kASan support officially added. kASan == Kernel Address Sanitizer. (via)
FreeBSD 11.1 EOL.
Color vt on FreeBSD.
Syncthing on FreeBSD.
Need help getting eMac G4 graphics to work.

2018/09/13

BSDNow 263: Encrypt That Pool

BSDNow manages to hit a majority of the BSDs this week, talking about Free/Open/Net in various ways. No interview, but lots to hear about.

2018/09/122018/09/03

autorehash now set for root

DragonFly’s root account defaults to tcsh, and that now defaults to autorehash being set on. Useful to remember if you reflexively type ‘rehash’ like I do, and also useful if you come from a shell where ‘rehash’ isn’t needed.

2018/09/112018/09/03

Contributing to Ravenports

Michael Neumann wrote up his first contribution to Ravenports, some time ago, but I just noticed it now. If you find it inspiring, your next step is Chapter 14: Port Creation Walk-though.

2018/09/102018/09/03

Mirror updates for DragonFly

There’s several new mirrors for DragonFly, all listed on the mirrors page thanks to Matthias Schmidt: Checkdomain GmbH, Philipps-University Marburg (both in Germany), and KoDDos (Japan).

2018/09/092018/09/05

Lazy Reading for 2018/09/09

I did finally clean out my “to post” email folder, at least.

History of Gopher. (via)
Learning BASIC Like It’s 1983. (via)
textbeat, write music in Vim or other text source. (via)
2048 in the terminal. (via)
Can you use the terminal for everything? A video, and relevant to the previous two links. (via)
The 30 Best Web Games. I link it to show a sort of technology snapshot from 10-15 years ago. (via)
Good books for deep hacks. Very In-depth reading.
The origins of clip art.
MIT-licensed vector clip art, related. (via)
The Ethical OS Playbook. It’s “only” a PDF of questions, but definitely good questions to ask. (via)
Best RSS feed reader apps. Well, services, but not everyone can run Tiny Tiny RSS. Anyway, you should be taking full advantage of RSS. (via)
You can now pre-order the Edible Games Cookbook even if you weren’t in the Kickstarter.
Stripping tabs in ‘here’ documents. I wish I had known this years ago.
The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software.
Markov chains, explained visually. (via)
Hidden gems of xterm. (via)

Your unrelated item of the week: Please enjoy this masterclass in comedy timing from a pizza. (via)