If your DragonFly machine can do it, it will now run an accelerated console by default.
A DragonFly machine with a lot of network traffic will have a significant amount of memory consumed by all the running network connections. (as with any system) It’s now possible to adjust the amount of memory set aside for those operations, live. This sort of fine-tuning will only matter if you run an extremely busy machine, but it’s worth it if you do.
Francois Tigeot has a new i915 video branch for testing, if you are running DragonFly-current. It will be especially useful for people on a Broadwell chipset.
I’m globbing these DragonFly updates together in a single post because I’m running behind:
ACPICA was updated to Intel’s newest version: 20150717.
GCC in DragonFly was updated to the 5.2 release.
DragonFly DRM (that’s Direct Rendering) now supports ValleyView chipsets.
hostapd, for creating a wireless access point, has been included in DragonFly along with wpa_supplicant, for a long time. Like wpa_supplicant, there’s a version in dports that is the latest version and is easier to update (e.g. no system update required to get a newer version.) Unlike wpa_supplicant, there’s no chicken-and-egg installation problem if it’s not in the base system – so out it goes.
If you’ve previously tried to install DragonFly using a USB thumb drive, and it would somehow not be found to boot from, there’s a potential fix.
DragonFly ships with wpa_supplicant, for setting up WiFi. However, there’s no guarantee it’s the latest version. A solution exists: security/wpa_supplicant in dports. However, this has a chicken-and-egg problem, where you need wpa_supplicant to get online and download the dports version of wpa_supplicant. So, DragonFly still includes wpa_supplicant in the base system, but you should upgrade to the dports version when possible.
DragonFly now has the same math library (libm) as OpenBSD, replacing an earlier combined version of I think what NetBSD and FreeBSD ran. This doesn’t necessarily directly affect you, but it’s work worth doing; matching the underlying frameworks between BSDs helps everyone.
Short list this week – no particular reason.
- Profiling your file systems.
- Amiga Reloaded – A new Amiga motherboard using original MOS/CSG chips.
- Caves of Qud, a roguelike that even simulates greenscreen.
- And here’s 700 more roguelikes in a torrent.
- Web Design: the First 100 Years. (via multiple)
- The Mobile Web Sucks. Lots of good pull quotes here. (via)
- The story behind the world’s most ‘Elite’ computer escape key.
A lot of variety this week.
- tame(2) WIP, process sandboxing for OpenBSD.
- pbi vs pkg
- Is there a BSD that fits my needs?
- Which BSD is right for me?
- Hyperthreading + SMP + Intel graphics on OpenBSD
- EuroBSDCon 2015 Registration Is Open
- DiscoverBSD for 2015/07/20.
- Brute-force OpenSSH attacks. The default config is not vulnerable to this on DragonFly. FreeBSD’s config with PAM may be the only one. (via)
- Domesticating applications, OpenBSD style. (via)
- c2k15 reports on Undeadly: one, two, three, four.
- Here is a non-BSD containers explanation, and then here’s Docker on FreeBSD.
- Michael W. Lucas is giving a talk on August 20th at the Livingston County BSD User’s Group meeting. (That’s in Michigan, not the NY county where I work, darnit.)
- FreeBSD now has a Code of Conduct.
- Backgammon bug from at least 4.1a BSD, 3+ decades ago.
- Tag jumping in mandoc. (I like this idea)
- OpenBSD on Linode. Similar techniques might work for any BSD install. (via, via)
The 99th episode of BSDNow is about Gnome on FreeBSD, with interviews of Baptiste Daroussin and Ryan Lortie, plus more news that I was already planning to link to.
Sepherosa Ziehau has been doing a lot of work with various processors states to save power on DragonFly. He’s published a summary of how well the various P-state/C-state/mwait settings work. He found that setting a lower C-state can perversely improve performance.
For those saying “but how do I set these lower power states?”:
sysctl machdep.mwait.CX.idle: AUTODEEP
sysctl machdep.cpu_idle_hlt: 1 (or higher)
Do you have a ValleyView GPU? It now works much better in DragonFly, and there’s a new accelerated rendering branch to try out, too, if you follow that link.
Hey, my stickers arrived! You can order your own.
No theme, though I’ve been thinking about IPv6 lately. Mostly in a “oh man all that PLC equipment at work can barely do IPv4 this won’t be easy” sort of way.
- The Art of Monitoring. Accidentally pretty reports. (via)
- IPv6 usage projections. IPv6 usage is finally taking off. (via)
- Legacy IP. (same source as previous)
- Related: ARIN is down to just /24s for allocation.
- I’m sure everyone’s heard of the Oculus, but this Wearality thing looks a lot more affordable. (via, via)
- Stuff in Space. The neat part is that it’s in realtime. Search for “iss” and the one marked ZARYA, as far as I can tell, is the International Space Station. There’s people in there right now! (also via)
- “Ah, finally got my Emacs setup just how I like it” (via)
- TEMLIB, a SPARC v8 in software. (via)
- The Web We Have to Save. There are people whose entire online presence and business exists only on the ‘free’ platforms of other companies. That would worry me. (via)
- Three Dead Protocols. I like how the unironic enthusiasm comes through. Also haha, butts and sl pranks. (via)
- Announcing Apple IIgs System 6.0.2. (via)
Your unrelated comics link of the week: The Dr. Fun comic archives.
I seem to have In Other BSDs exactly 1 day off from the OPNsense release schedule, so far.
- A wild Puffy appeared! (via)
- FreeBSD 10.2-BETA2 Now Available
- Reducing RAM usage in pkgin
OPNsense 15.7.2 ReleasedOPNsense 15.7.3 Released- Lumina Desktop 0.8.5 Released
- Sudo Replacement Hits the Tree “doas”
- Making my RPI serial console work (on NetBSD)
- pkgsrc-2015Q2 packages for OS X now available
- mandoc: becoming the main BSD manual toolbox (BSDCan 2015 presentation)
- Bit the bullet and installed a pfSense router at work
- This ThinkPad Batteries thread is full of good information.
- The x201/x220/x230 series of ThinkPads seem to be universally recommended for BSD; especially OpenBSD. (My x220 at work, while it does not run a BSD, is fantastic)
- A bug that takes 45 intervening years to have an effect.
- NUMA in FreeBSD.
- CloudABI discussion/explanation, to some extent.
- recoverdisk(1), a program I did not know about. (via)
Michael W. Lucas is having an “open dinner” tomorrow, in Scottsdale, AZ. That means you get to talk about his tech books and BSD and conventions and whatever else enters collectively enters everyone’s heads, I assume, over dinner. (you buy your own food; the talking’s free) It sounds like a potential little mini-convention; you should go.
BSDNow 098 is up with the normal collection of news and links, plus an interview with David Meyer of Xinous – which I infer is using FreeBSD to underpin their main project. I always find the decision/planning around major commercial open source interesting, cause the open source aspect changes the game, so to speak.