Constantine A. Murenin’s been adding more support for various monitoring hardware; I want to link to it not just cause it’s news, but it’s nice to see how complete his coverage has been.
Alex Hornung is working on a new version of the Handbook; my hat is off to him. I brought along the FreeBSD handbook SGML to DragonFly, and converted it through to the current wiki, so I know just how much there is. Check RecentChanges for the new work, and join in if you like.
We actively need more people to do the small but plentiful fixes to make sure as many pkgsrc packages work as possible. Are you interested? Speak up.
There’s a lot to read, so if you understand it, that’s great. I’m passing it on without other comment.
We’ve got a third year in Summer of Code!
The timeline shows about a week and a half for planning, and then student applications begin on the 29th of March, and run to April 9th.
If you want to participate as a student, start planning now by talking with people on IRC (#dragonflybsd on EFNet) or on the mailing lists. You cannot be over-prepared.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert’s host for DragonFly, chlamydia.fs.ei.tum.de, is down for good. Since it had excellent bandwidth, it was frequently used as the source for a lot of the DragonFly mirror sites out there.
If you were using it for your own mirror, switch to mirror-master.dragonflybsd.org, and tell Matthew Dillon at @dragonflybsd.org your contact info so you can be notified of changes. (If you’re not mirroring, please download from the nearest site that is.)
Newegg is running some specials: a 64G Kingston SSD for $140, a 256G (yikes!) Crucial SSD for $660, and a Sans Digital port multiplier for $110. The SSDs are good for using swapcache(8), though 256G is probably overkill. Doesn’t make me want it less, though…
The port multiplier’s SiI3726 chipset might be supported, or potentially supported, by the sili(4) driver. Someone have $110 to spare to try this out?
As if Alex Horning wasn’t busy enough with his Linuxulator update, he’s also made it possible to have a vinum root volume in conjunction with using devfs.
Alex Hornung has committed his initial work on Linux support, which is over 6,500 lines so far. (Thanks, Alex!) He’s continuing to work on it, though going by his commit message, Java, Opera, Tomcat, etc. are supported so far. The only major item missing at this point is Flash. There are other followups, such as this note about chrooting into the Linux subsystem.
“Device initiated power management” via AHCI is now possible, thanks to Johannes Hofmann. If I understand it correctly, it lets the computer handle power reductions automatically, which is more efficient than setting by hand.
I’ve applied for DragonFly for the 2010 Summer of Code program. I posted the details of the application, for the curious. The application period closes in the next 24 hours; hopefully we’ll be in again…
Jan Lentfer has accomplished something rather dramatic: the removal of BIND from the base system. It’s not actually out yet, but I daresay it will be after the 2.6 release, freeing people up to install any DNS server from pkgsrc – including BIND.
‘Walter’ asked about dealing with endless ssh port dictionary attacks. Several suggested changing ports and removing passwords, with opie(4) for when keyfiles aren’t available. Also, there’s various auto-blocking scripts, though they aren’t as useful nowadays.
Alex Hornung has taken on a very overdue and very necessary project: an update of linux binary support. His code is available for anyone who wants to try it. Testing so far is working, but it could really use something complex, like Java with OpenOffice or tomcat, or perhaps Firefox/Flash. Will it make it into the 2.6 release, which is potentially a week away? Maybe – testing like the above would help.
p.s. we would all individually owe Alex a beer for this.
We have several potential Summer of Code mentors already, but if you want to get in on the action, let me know. Org applications start Monday, and I’d like a count before then…
Michael Neumann has added his port of the e1000 driver from FreeBSD, though he doesn’t recommend using it yet. He’s looking for testers who have this hardware.
The ‘freeze’ for pkgsrc-2010Q1 is scheduled to start March 16th, which will be right around the same time of the DragonFly 2.6 release. The freeze lasts 2 weeks, usually, so new packages for 2.6 will be built probably about mid-April, based on this info…
clang, which many people look to as a gcc replacement, is now able to build itself. (Thanks John Marino for the heads-up, some time ago) It can also build world and kernel on DragonFly, going on the work of Sascha Wildner!
Using the pkgsrc package, put
clang_CC=/usr/pkg/bin/clang
in /etc/compilers.conf and then set $CCVER to “clang” when building:
env WORLD_CCVER=clang make -DNO_GCC44 buildworld
I haven’t tried this, so any errors in description are mine, not Sascha’s – can someone verify? I don’t have a test system to run it on right now.
Edit: see Sascha’s comment for the definitive method.
OpenSSL version 0.9.8m has been imported by Peter Avalos; this version contains a bugfix for a security issue.