Something that always got with with Linux binary support was that I couldn’t get the Linux /proc filesystem to automatically mount on boot. I’d end up doing it by hand later, right after I tried to start a Linux binary and had all sorts of issues. Pierre Abbat had this same problem, and Sascha Wildner has the answer: “linux_load=yes” in /boot/loader.conf.
If you were thinking of buying a Western Digital Passport USB drive, it’s supported on DragonFly, thanks to Dylan Reinhold and Alex Hornung.
For those using the release version of DragonFly, the new C-based loader in 2.8 will look like this. Well, not exactly. This is from a proposal from Alex Hornung that removes some extra lines, but I expect this is what you’ll see.
Matt Dillon and Venkatesh Srinivas conspired to fix another nmalloc issue, which should resolve any remaining problems people were having with Firefox, and possibly other applications as well. Due to an oversight of sorts, all locking operations on nmalloc’s depot were ineffective, as if there were no locking at all. Curiously, it worked remarkably well considering such a large race condition was present.
Here’s something: Pratyush Kshirsagar came along, saw the proportional RSS project idea, and did it. It’s nice to have a completed project just sort of fall out of the sky.
If you run any flavor of BSD, you should make sure your ftpd is off, as Mathias Schmidt points out based on this recent security advisory.
I’m going. Venkatesh Srinivas is going. Who else is interested? (See the site.)
When compiling software on DragonFly but outside of pkgsrc, and you have trouble with configure, remember you can always manually pull down new versions. You’re welcome, future me.
I’m linking to this commit message from Matthias Schmidt simply because it has the correct invocation for installing a vkernel, and I know this will come in handy, someday.
Chris Turner wrote some notes about building pkgsrc packages in a chroot, including the handy tip of using
DISPLAY=:0
to run and display a GUI-using app under the chroot.
Based on a recent project list entry for “changing the vm_map lookup” (currently last item on the page), Venkatesh Srinivas wrote up a bit more information on it, linking to different strategies for arranging the data. Good reading for those who like data structures.
Matthias Schmidt has set up a x86_64 DragonFly machine at uther.dragonflybsd.org. Anyone wanting to try 64-bit testing can use a vkernel on that machine. Mail him for an account.
Our mirror of the never-quite-official git repository for pkgsrc is being rebuilt, so it will be temporarily inaccessible. Matthew Dillon is working on building a new one directly from pkgsrc CVS, which will have a different link.
Update: It’s finished. Matthew Dillon’s posted a summary of the changes and what you need to update in order to use it.
It looks like my prior article was incorrect: it was a different issue than MADT causing problems with booting x86_64. Scrambled memory report appears to be at the heart of the issue; in any case, it’s fixed now.
Chris Turner wrote up his experience of getting Flash 9 to work on DragonFly. The usual disclaimers apply.
Update: there’s an improved library available that fixes some audio and video sync problems.
Peter Avalos wrote a note that better summarized my earlier post, and mentioned a problem/workaround with ssh and non-md5 MACs.
John Marino found that when he couldn’t boot a x86_64 development image in Virtualbox, setting the sysctl hw.madt_probe_test=1 seemed to make a difference long enough to boot, though it still crashed later. It’s worth trying if there’s no other way to boot, at least.
I’ve drastically revamped the pkgsrc howto on the dragonflybsd.org website. It’s also linked in that site’s menu, too. Comments please!