Hiroki Sato posted to the users@ list about AsiaBSDCon 2014. It’s happening the 13th to 16th of March in 2014. Material from 2013’s convention should be going up soon, and the Call for Papers is already out.
BSDTalk 232 is 15 minutes of conversation with Thomas Cort about “Minix, NetBSD, and Summer of Code”.
Franco Fichtner recently received commit rights for DragonFly. This is so he could import mdocml, a OpenBSD-originating replacement for groff and man page display. Mdocml has been mentioned before on the Digest, and there’s a downloadable book. (See the more-interesting-than-it-sounds History of UNIX Manpages there too, but I digress.)
One advantage of using mdocml, as I understand it, is that groff is no longer required to view man pages. The only thing left in DragonFly that required a C++ compiler was groff. So, rebuilding could be a bit faster, and a bit less complicated.
Here’s the part that makes me happy: Changes made in DragonFly promptly made it back into NetBSD’s mdocml. Other changes rolled from DragonFly back into OpenBSD, too, and mdocml is in FreeBSD 10, though I don’t have a src change to point at right now. It all circled back around to DragonFly, too. It’s really neat to have a BSD-grown cross-BSD product.
(Incidentally, if you have a Thinkpad and keyboard issues, Franco has a patch for you to try.)
Less straight source links this week.
- FreeBSD 9.2 is out.
- FreeBSD no longer has GNU ar or GNU ranlib, or BIND.
- FreeBSD has an Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution update. (OFED info) (helps DragonFly)
- NetBSD has initial support for the OMAP1-183 board.
- NetBSD has updated terminfo to 20130607.
- NetBSD has imported FreeBSD’s new implementation of NFS – does not run yet.
- NetBSD 6.1.2 and 6.0.3 are out.
- The pkgsrc-2013Q3 freeze is over, and here’s the branch announcement.
- There’s some discussion of long-term support in pkgsrc, an idea I like.
- EuroBSDCon 2013 presentations for OpenBSD are online.
- OpenBSD now has a built-in snmp client. Undeadly has a description.
- OpenBSD now has ntpctl(8), for querying ntpd.
- There’s a new MaheshaBSD video on YouTube. (it’s a custom FreeBSD setup, though DragonFly versions exist too.)
Related to DragonFly: Patrick Welche updated glib2 in pkgsrc, and is interested in hearing how it works for DragonFly users. If you have pkgsrc on your system and it’s not a quarterly release, try building t.
There’s 30 days left to register for vBSDCon… except that 30 day mark was a week ago, but I didn’t get it posted. So now there’s 19 days. If you were thinking of going, go for it. This is I think the only east coast BSD convention in the US other than NYCBSDCon.
The BSDNow video series put out another episode already: Stacks of Cache. I didn’t realize this before, but they broadcast their episodes live as they are done on Wednesdays at 18:00 UTC.
If you’re around New York City on Wednesday, Boris Kochergin will be giving a talk at the NYCBUG meeting about how he and his employer, New York Internet, managed to be in the middle of Hurricane Sandy and survive without interruption.
That same announcement lets drop the news that NYCBSDCon will happen next February 1st 8th.
This week was relatively quiet, but also had the most cross-BSD work I’ve seen in a while. Look at the links and you’ll see.
- Here’s some encryption fallout in FreeBSD.
- MegaRAID Invader cards now work on FreeBSD.
- OpenSSH is at version 6.3p1 in FreeBSD.
- FreeBSD has moved to Unbound as a BIND replacement.
- FreeBSD imported a newer version of NetBSD’s readline.
- NetBSD supports the AlphaStation DS15, ported from OpenBSD.
- OpenBSD has updated le(4) to match NetBSD’s version.
- OpenBSD has also moved to Unbound – version 1.4.21.
- OpenBSD now has ldns 1.6.16.
Here’s more on Unbound, since it seems to be a trend.
This week, the sewer drain for my house clogged. Fixing that is not fun. What is fun is reading random semi-technical articles around the Internet. So get clicking!
- Avoiding Repetitious Work with Sed. I know I’ve never used awk and sed to their full potential, but… it’s kinda not fun.
- Bunnie Huang goes to Burning Man 2013, and remote-controlled flamethrowers result.
- The shocking truth behind Tetris. (via)
- The USE Method: Linux performance checklist. This would be interesting to migrate to BSD – and then try it as a comparison method between the various BSDs. (via)
- A Brief History of Lisp Machines. I find these machines built around a language interesting, especially since they are extinct. (via)
- The Walkman Archive. (via)
- Vim as a presentation tool. (via)
- The First Critical Hits. Role-playing game history. (via)
- Kickstarter for open source. (via)
- Tracking disk space usage. Of course, doesn’t work the same way on Hammer.
- Atari box art.
- Atari box art parody.
Finally, a quieter week.
- pfSense (which I use at work; performs great) has updated to 2.1, and now offers a ‘Gold‘ subscription program.
- FreeBSD has a new iSCSI target and initiator. (World rebuild needed and again)
- FreeBSD’s bxe(4) now supports the BCM57712 and BCM578XX.
- FreeBSD now can build LLDB, though you have to do it on purpose.
- FreeBSD’s arcmsr(4) driver for Areca hardware has been updated. (Areca supports BSD; buy them)
- NetBSD has Renesas and ASIX AX88179 USB support.
- NetBSD has a preliminary NVIDIA Geforce driver.
- NetBSD has updated to dhcpcd-6.1.0.
- NetBSD has updated to tzcode 2013e.
- QNAP V200 boards all have the same MAC? Weird.
- OpenBSD updated a large number of xenocara windowing parts.
- The pkgsrc-2013Q3 freeze is on from now to the 29th.
Something I only just recently found out about: BSDNow. They’re planning weekly videos with BSD news and interviews. I say ‘planning’, but as of this writing, both Episode 1 and Episode 2 (which is much better quality) are already available. Another episode is planned this week. Episode 3 is out already.
ZFS was originally created at Sun and open sourced. Sun was absorbed by Oracle and stopped being open (or even really existing), so ZFS was taken up by several separate groups – FreeBSD and Illumos being two examples. OpenZFS has been announced, in part to provide common reference for other platforms that might implement it and probably to avoid capability fragmentation. It’s certainly a good idea.
(If I have my history wrong, please correct me.)
Michael W. Lucas needs tehcnical reviewers for his first draft of ‘Sudo Mastery’. If you know sudo, and know how to criticize (and who doesn’t, for this is the Internet), look at what you’d have to do.
I don’t think I saw it before, but there’s a list of speakers and events up for vBSDCon. There’s no DragonFly-specific talks, but there is a presentation from Baptiste Daroussin, one of the people behind pkgNG, which is used to create parts of DragonFly’s dports framework.
It’s positive to see a BSD conference sponsored by a company that’s not selling a BSD-specific product. It’s happening in about a month and a half, October 25-27, in Dulles, VA.
The September issue of BSD Magazine is out as a free download. The theme is BSD system administration, though there’s always other articles in addition to the issue topic.
(via freebsdnews.net, since I haven’t seen the announcement in the bsdmag.org RSS feed or by email)
There’s been a lot of commit activity across the BSDs, but my list doesn’t seem to reflect that. A lot of incremental work, I suppose.
- FreeBSD has imported the multiqueue VirtIO driver
- FreeBSD has added support for the BCM20702A0 chipset, for Bluetooth adapters.
- FreeBSD can now reach single user mode with Digi i.MX53 / Wi-i.MX53 boards
- FreeBSD supports Synaptics touchpad middle and extended buttons. (Breaks ABI)
- FreeBSD has improved disk encryption speed with AES-NI.
- FreeBSD has updated bmake to 20130904.
- FreeBSD has added support for the DLINK DWA-127 wireless adapter.
- NetBSD has updated to llvm/clang r189662.
- Joyent has put together potential SMF support for pkgsrc.
- PC-BSD has been synced with FreeBSD 9.2.
- NetBSD has bare support for the Cubieboard 1 and 2.
- NetBSD has updated to version 458 of less.
- NetBSD has the beginnings of a Synopsys DWC2 (USB controller) driver.
- OpenBSD has imported Mesa 9.2.0.
- OpenBSD has added the ugold(4) temperature sensor driver.
In BSDTalk 213, Will Backman talks to a number of people about the FreeBSD Documentation Project. It’s about 14 minutes and it comes from the recent BSDCan 2013 event.
Another week of links completed early. And there’s a lot, so get clicking!
- 1BSD, the installation. Interesting to see the procedure and the tools used.
- Over the Rainbow, polychromatic type from Microsoft. I don’t know if this is as exciting as they seem to think it is.
- Do your own backups. Yeesh, what an unfortunate event. I’m fixing up my backups now, after my own troubles.
- Operating System Development series. Dry but interesting. (via)
- Windowing operating systems are too messy, too restrictive. From 1984. (via)
- Home Automation via the Internet. For those who don’t want to deal with x10.
- Chess implemented in Sed. No en passant? Sheesh, I was on board until that point. (I’m making a joke) (via)
- Managing sshd in Ansible. Ansible’s getting more popular, it seems.
- Remember that PDF compression/scanning error I mentioned a few weeks ago? Xerox has fixed it for their devices, and the patch is available. One of the ways to apply the patch is to print the file to a copier, via LPR/raw. Firmware updates via printing – that seems like a good and bad idea all at the same time.
- JAVASCRIPT MESS. 45 different computers all emulated in Javascript. A Javascript Mac SE, for instance.
- An XKCD cartoon slightly related to the previous link.
- Learn to code. (via)
Your unrelated link of the week: The remix of this 1997 Kid’s Guide to the Internet – somewhat NSFW, and has all the best moments. More from EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.
I need to update this post during the week as I see stuff, or else I spend an hour rushing to get it all together before Satuday. I need to start watching PC-BSD src changes, too.
- DiscoverBSD has a recent BSD roundup, too.
- EuroBSDCon registration is 20% off but just today.
- Using 6rd in OpenBSD.
- FreeBSD has imported the Radeon KMS driver.
- FreeBSD’s mfiutil has JOBD support.
- FreeBSD has ARMv6/7 superpages support.
- FreeBSD supports the PCI-E SSD in the Macbook Air. (It needs separate support?)
- FreeBSD has updated support for Centrino 2200-N wireless.
- FreeBSD has a speedup in madvise calls.
- FreeBSD is using PCIDs on Intel chips to reduce process switch latency.
- NetBSD has the start of a potential lint replacement, called ‘mint‘.
- NetBSD supports the BCM57762 and BCM57765 chips, for Thunderbolt <-> Ethernet.
- OpenBSD has support for more ciss(4) devices, via FreeBSD.
- OpenBSD has updated to pixman 0.30.2, DejaVu Fonts 2.34, libX11 1.6.1, and xterm 296, and added ipv6-toolkit 1.4.
- pkgsrc nearly has a signed packages mechanism.
I hope I’m catching the interesting stuff; I’m only reading the src changes.
- A talk about pkgsrc at a YAPC conference.
- FreeBSD has improved parallel read performance by changing how locks work.
- FreeBSD has enabled VFP in QEMU. No, I don’t know what that means.
- FreeBSD has upgraded to BIND 9.9.3-P2.
- FreeBSD has imported NetBSD’s libexecinfo-20130822.
- FreeBSD has imported OpenBSD’s vmx(4) VMWare network driver.
- FreeBSD has upgraded to ACPICA 20130823.
- NetBSD has added ‘multigest’, for calculating multiple digests in parallel.
- NetBSD has updated to Postfix 2.9.7.
- NetBSD now supports the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 Wi-Fi controller.
- OpenBSD has updated a number of x* utilities in xenocara, including xserver.