DragonFly now supports running on up to 256 CPUs. 256 is the initial limit on the basic interrupt controller, and it can be extended further. It’s been tested on 255 CPUs so far, since that’s the highest number of CPUs you can bring up in qemu.
Another ‘quiet’ week – lots of commit activity in the other BSDs, but not a lot to point at directly.
- PostgreSQL/FreeBSD performance and scalability on a 40-core machine. (PDF link, via) There’s comparison to DragonFly’s results, mentioned here before. DragonFly’s solution of shared page tables is dismissed because it would require work to do, though I think that’s a symptom of FreeBSD’s more complex locking model rather than complexity of what’s in DragonFly.
- pkgsrc-2014Q2 is out.
- Here’s some notes on the systemd compatibility GSoC/OpenBSD project.
- The FreeBSD ixgbe(4) driver understands RSS, and so does igb(4).
- FreeBSD GENERIC kernels can now use vt(4), the replacements for syscons.
- FreeBSD images can now boot UEFI.
- FreeBSD 9/10 users using the WITH_NEW_XORG option have a temporary binary ports repository to use, to handle the change in the drivers.
Matthew Dillon changed the default keep-policy in DragonFly to:
set keep-policy keep state (pickups, sloppy)
This is to match other BSDs (which? I don’t know) and reduce overhead, according to the commit.
A note for everyone: use Hammer default on a very busy filesystem, and you will eat a lot of disk space since all file changes are recorded. (I’ve done this to myself a few times.) Francois Tigeot has a list of tips on how to keep that from happening.
The max number of CPUs on DragonFly just went from 63 to 64. This is really just a side effect of preparation to move up that limit, but I am entertained by the single-digit bump.
Are you running a Hammer filesystem on a low-memory system? You may get some warnings. It’s possible to tweak some settings to accommodate it, or just deal.
Predrag Punosevac noticed that turning on pf was slowing his machine down. Rearranging the rules fixed a lot of it for him. However, Matthew Dillon decided it was time to make pf work concurrently instead of in a single thread, and 24 hours later, it does. Quick, someone benchmark this!
If you are upgrading a DragonFly 3.6 system to 3.8, make sure you have the absolute latest version of 3.6 first. A few people have had a crash during install of the new initrd, which leaves the system in an unbootable state.
There’s a fix now in 3.6 from Joris Giovannangeli, so updating 3.6 and then moving to 3.8 will ensure this doesn’t happen. He posted a heads-up notice too.
(Why, yes, that is why shiningsilence.com was down for some hours today… With Matthew Dillon and Sascha Wildner’s help, I was able to copy bits of /boot and /usr from a live CD back on disk and get online again.)
Did you try to install DragonFly relatively recently and it never made it past the bootloader? Apparently there’s a bug in some BIOS when using a smaller USB drive to install. The loader checks multiple places for information, and if it checks somewhere that’s ‘farther’ than the end of the disk (i.e. 6G on a 4G USB key), the machine locks up.
Matthew Dillon and Kyle Davis spent a good number of hours figuring this out today, and Matt committed a fix. So, if you were bit by this problem, try a -LATEST image about 24 hours from now and see if it works.
BSDDay 2014 is happening August 9th in Argentina, and the call for talks is out – there’s been DragonFly speakers and visitors there before.
I have a backlog from stuff I missed last week while traveling, so we all benefit!
- PC-BSD 10.0.2-RC2 is out.
- PC-BSD will be at SouthEast LinuxFest.
- Here’s the roadmap for Lumina, PC-BSD’s new desktop environment.
- DiscoverBSD’s summary for 2014/06/16.
- FreeNAS vs. NAS4Free. Didn’t need to be 8 pages. (via)
- Peter’s pf tutorial is very popular.
- The freeze for pkgsrc-2014Q2 has started. (I’m a bit late on this one.)
- pkgsrc has a new Pkgsrc Management Committee.
- This thread, “Best pdf viewer in pkgsrc?” may be useful even if you aren’t on pkgsrc.
- NetBSD gained vmx(4) from OpenBSD.
- NetBSD now has pigz 2.3.1, which apparently stands for ‘parallel gzip‘.
- Here’s one OpenBSD/GSoC project status update; I haven’t seen others.
- Another OpenBSD desktop project started.
- BoringSSL. (via) Already, benefits.
- Ways to test pf.
- FreeBSD/gnats has gone away, and none too soon.
- Again, I love to see cross–pollination.
- The July and August NYCBUG meetings: timekeeping and OpenBSD ports. Here’s some notes on what to expect for the August meeting.
Sepherosa Ziehau implemented a UDP echo response tool, which not surprisingly meant he also had some UDP performance improvements. As he points out in the commit, it makes lockless firewall state tables possible.
The dports binary packages built for DragonFly 3.4 are removed. If you have a 3.4 system, you can build from source, or preferably just upgrade. Note that the 3.4 release images are still out there if needed.
I tagged DragonFly 3.6.3, at Sascha Wildner’s suggestion. Why do that when there’s a 3.8.1 out? This way there’s a version of 3.6 that has all the fixes included, including the recent OpenSSL updates. This ‘final versioning’ should probably be done for every release. I’ll work on final images.
The 3.8.1 tag was planned for tonight; I’m waiting to find out if there needs to be a new set of binary ports for 3.8.1 before I tag.
I tagged DragonFly 3.8.1; you can see a list of the changes in the tag message. New images are built. If you are already running 3.8.0, a normal make src-update and rebuild will get you everything.
Sascha Wildner has added the mrsas(4) driver, which works on a variety of LSI Thunderbolt devices – a variety of RAID cards, names for which are listed in the commit message. Note that as of right now, these devices by default get taken by the mfi(4) driver, so you need to take extra steps to get mrsas(4) used.
The obvious joke should be “how can you tell?” Anyway, the csprng in DragonFly has been updated and IBAA is being used more often, and there’s more updates on the way.
Matthew Dillon posted a note about the next point release of DragonFly, coming within a few days. Chunks of it like the recent OpenSSL and Sendmail fixes are already on the 3.8 branch.
I assume I’ll be the one rolling it, and I plan to put together a 3.6.3 tag too, just so there’s a final version of 3.6 that has all changes rolled up.
If you’re building ports, it will treat OpenSSL as a dependency and bring in whatever version is available. If perhaps you want to use the version of OpenSSL installed as part of your base system, Robin Hahling has the answer for how. (This probably works on FreeBSD too.)
Sascha Wildner has removed some drivers in the x86_64 config. This will only really affect you if you use a custom kernel and still have entries for those drivers in the config file.