Someday you will need this – Page 10

2015/03/242015/03/23

A PHP upgrade note

The other day, I updated some packages using pkg. The default version of PHP went from 5.4 to 5.6. I ended up doing what /usr/dports/UPGRADING says and making a list of all PHP packages on my system, before removing PHP and its dependencies. I then reinstalled the packages that used PHP, bringing the needed packages back in at the right version. pkg 1.4 didn’t handle the transition cleanly, unfortunately. I also had to specify mod_php56 because pkg was trying to get the 5.4 version despite it not being default.

None of these are insurmountable problems, but it never hurts to be forewarned. pkg 1.5 is on the horizon and may have an easier time with sorting these types of dependency/version changes. This may apply to FreeBSD in addition to DragonFly.

2015/03/12

HDMI sound trick

If you have a HDMI-connected monitor, but no sound, this trick about increasing available memory may help.

2015/02/19

Really turning off Sendmail

This bites many people sooner or later: you think you’ve turned sendmail off, but it still gets opened up on your system. The answer: sendmail_enable=”NONE”.

(It should support sendmail_enable=”NOPE”.)

2015/02/06

DragonFly and Git

DragonFly is the only BSD, I think, to switch fully to Git for version control, and Matthew Dillon wrote up how DragonFly uses Git.

2015/01/21

Slider, Hammer, and how to

John Marino has written up an extensive how-to for slider, the history tool for Hammer filesystems, including screenshots.

2015/01/20

Don’t forget moused

For whatever reason, I’ve seen several people in the last week or so have mouse problems on install, and they were often solved by running moused. So, there’s your little reminder.

2015/01/14

sshlockout in DragonFly

Matthew Dillon’s added a sshlockout utility, to temporarily block SSH traffic from repeated brute force SSH login attempts. It’s been mentioned before, but it’s in the system now. It’s been refashioned to work with pf.

2014/12/30

Slider, for Hammer

John Marino has created something very useful: a graphical tool for Hammer file history. It’s called ‘Slider’, and it uses curses to work in a terminal. It shows historic versions of files and can restore those old versions as needed. This was already possible in Hammer, of course, but it required a sequence of commands that were not straight-forward. I’ve been slow enough posting it that version 2.0 is already out, offering a way to see files that no longer exist, but are still in history. (i.e. deleted some time ago) ‘Time Machine’ sounds like the best name, but that seems to be taken.

2014/12/24

A tip for Hammer disks and history

One way to keep file history on an very active Hammer disk from eating up all the space: more snapshots. This may seem counterproductive, but disk pruning eliminates historical data between snapshots, so you can keep older data at the cost of some temporal accuracy.

2014/12/18

Swapcache and improving performance

From a question about mixing in a SSD and a very slow disk: swapcache can make things better, though I suggest other crazy arrangements.

2014/12/16

dports without X11

If you really, really want to make sure you aren’t pulling in any parts of X when installing dports, and you’re building from source, there’s a few options you can set to keep X11 off your system. You can even go farther.

2014/12/132014/12/13

In Other BSDs for 2014/12/13

Get ready for some reading.

There’s some packages moving from pkgsrc-wip to pkgsrc proper.
pkgsrc-2014Q4 branching is planned for Monday the 15th.
PC-BSD now has an automatic package/security patch upgrade mechanism.
Steam on PC-BSD. Holy grail, there.
PC-BSD needs testers for the new Update Manager, for moving from 10 to 10.1
NetBSD has imported BIND 9.10.1-P1.
OpenBSD has added skgpio(4), a driver for the Soekris net6501 GPIO port and LEDs.
OpenBSD has updated Unbound to 1.5.1.
Some Japanese input methods for OpenBSD that may work on other BSDs, too.
pfqstat, a replacements for pfstat designed to work with Charted.
I don’t know what the ‘BERI Virtio Networking Frontend’ is, but FreeBSD’s got it.
fstyp(8), the filesystem detector.
FreeBSD has added AES-ICM and AES-GCM modes to OpenCrypto.
If you’re stopping in NYC, NYCBUG would like to hear you talk on a topic of interest.
The case for distributed operating systems in the data center. Sounds like DragonFly’s original charter. (via)
BSDNow wants to hear your getting-into-BSD story.
OpenBSD libc version 78.
There’s a lot of FreeBSD systems at NYI.
“FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” is now in physical print.
“Networking for System Administrators” is next to come out.
And “Tarsnap Mastery” is next to be written.
…We’re all benefiting from Michael Lucas going full-time on writing.

2014/12/12

Installworld, no matter what

It’s possible, if you are several releases (years) behind, to end up with a DragonFly system that can’t compile and install the current release, due to incremental changes over time. It’s rare, but it could happen now between, say, version 3.4 and 4.0. The usual solution would be to incrementally upgrade in order, which is a lot of building and updating. The alternative is the new installworld-force option from Matthew Dillon that forces a new set of binaries into place. Use as a last resort.

2014/12/05

The Varialus page

This page, Varialus et Anisoptera, set up by… I’m not sure of the real name but it’s ‘varialus’ on IRC – has a detailed description of the DragonFly install process and installation of MATE, plus extra notes. I always find these sorts of cheatsheets entertaining.

2014/11/28

LDAP and DragonFly

Predrag Punosevac posted his writeup of using LDAP and DragonFly, which I’m noting here for the next person that needs LDAP authentication.

2014/10/28

For DragonFly/nginx users

If you are running DragonFly, and also using nginx, the so_reuseport option will give you a significant speed boost. I’ve mentioned it before, but not this directly.

2014/08/292014/08/30

Special procedure to update pkg 1.3.6

It seems pkg 1.3.6 was slightly scrambled. If you happen to have built and installed it, John Marino has special instructions on how to update to 1.3.7. If you are on DragonFly 3.8, you can follow those instructions now, and if you are on 3.9, that repo should be ready for an update in the next few days.

2014/08/25

New kernel and new target

You should perform a full world and kernel install if on master.

Several people (including me) have been getting bit by a problem: when performing an installworld with a changed kernel, the vn kernel module is loaded, but it was built by the previous kernel and may cause problems when it doesn’t match up.

To fix that, vn is now built in, instead of being a separate module. The rescue initrd (which is what is being mounted when it has this problem) is now installed via a ‘make rescue‘ command that can wait until a successful installworld and reboot.

2014/08/18

iwn trick: ifconfig wlan0 -ht

If you have a DragonFly system with an iwn wireless chipset, and you are having trouble connecting and running in the 5Ghz part of the spectrum only, here’s a tip: the -ht switch may fix it.

2014/07/18

Improvements for qemu

While Matthew Dillon was testing the new up-to-256-processor support for DragonFly, he added a few sysctls, one of which helps qemu performance when emulating a lot of processors. I note it here in case it’s helpful to someone else.