sys_pipe has been modified to avoid contention on DragonFly, which means better performance as tasks get handed between processors. See the commit message for details.
Matthew Dillon has added KVABIO, an API for avoiding the need to sync the TLB across all CPUs before continuing. What’s this mean? The more CPUs you are dealing with, the longer it takes to make sure all of them have the same cached view of the virtual memory. There’s a tradeoff – caching that view speeds up memory access, but the time cost of the synchronization can erase those benefits.
This API is now supported for NVMe and swap, HAMMER2, and tmpfs. Note that those last two links show a huge drop in IPI messaging. In the real world, this showed about a 5% improvement in performance for CPU-intensive work like complete synth builds. (Based on IRC conversations.)
This week’s BSDNow has no interview, but goes into in-depth explanations of ZFS caching, man page reading, and more – so there’s lots to keep you busy, just in the show description.
The ppp kernel module has been removed. It’s still possible to run ppp(8) in userland, with tun(4), so it’s only a change in strategy, not result.
Sepherosa Ziehau has an update for the Realtek re(4) network driver. Try it if you have the hardware, whether older or newer.
This is a bugfix release, adding HAMMER2 support in initrd, among other cleanup commits. The tag message lists the changes. There’s no huge changes, but it’s only a bugfix release.
All over the map again, but that’s what Lazy Reading is for.
- OpenVMS: State of the Port to x86_64 – October 2017 Update. PDF. (via)
- The Roguelike Celebration – a festival about roguelike game design. (via)
- More Taste: Less Greed? or: Sending UNIX to the Fat Farm. (via)
- books chapter fifteen.
- A Net Before the Web, Part 1: The Establishment Man and the Magnificent Rogue.
- A Net Before the Web, Part 2: Service to Community.
- TAOS Operating System. (via)
- The Physics of Bread. I am not sure what to think of Modernist Bread. (via)
- An ode to pack: gzip’s forgotten decompressor. (via)
- The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons. (via)
“tag: eyes, computers”, very much so. - miniwebproxy. A good idea.
- Tiny Wearable 8-bit VT100 Console. This I would want to make. (via)
This was an easy week for finding links.
- API provisioning for BCHS web apps. Looks like there’s a new near-monthly article about using BCHS near-monthly, which I did not know. For example: kwebapp. (via)
- Next planned NYCBUG meeting: January 3rd.
- FOSDEM 2018 will have a BSD Devroom; the call for papers is out now – due the 26th.
- os-test. Lots of BSD results. (via)
- Windows 10, VirtualBox 5.2.0 w/ FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT Guest.
- OpenZFS Developer Summit 2017 Report.
- OpenZFS Developer Summit 2017 Recap.
- PFSense for PCI compliant network?
- Two-factor authentication for SSH on FreeBSD 11 – Part 1 – SSH Key+Account Password. (via)
- How to use bta2dpd(8) with Bluetooth headphone under NetBSD-current. (via)
- ZFS Feature Flags.
A writeup that may help someone in the future: if you decide you want to encrypt your /home directory, on DragonFly, this is how you do it.
This week’s BSDNow talks about the Krack Attack, new releases for a number of BSDs, recent conventions, and really just everything.
NYCBUG doesn’t have a technical presentation scheduled for November, they are having an untechnical social meeting at Suspenders, tonight. Go, if you are near NYC.
I’ve got a long backlog of things to link to, so here’s the start: ifconfig now has an ‘lscan’ option, to show long SSIDs. “Long” means 14+ characters, in this case.
(Can you use emoji to create a SSID? That breaks character count and it’s just plain hard to read. Hmm.)
Tonight, KnoxBUG has Ken Moore presenting on Lumina, at iX Systems. Go, if you are near Tennessee. (It’s a day early because of Halloween.)
This is another one of those ‘wide variety’ weeks, so settle in; I am confident at least one of these links will grab you.
- ASCII: A Love Letter. (via)
- Leveling Up. There’s a book offer there.
- The Inside Story of Texas Instruments’ Biggest Blunder: The TMS9900 Microprocessor. Written by one of the people involved. (via)
- A survey of CPU caches. (via)
- Home Assistant, an open-source home automation platform. (via)
- Vim after 15 Years. (via)
- MNT Reform: DIY portable computer. (via)
- Show HN: Vixl44 – Create pixel art inside your terminal using vim movements. (via)
- Mastodon 2.0. (via)
- F-Droid 1.0 released. (via)
- Screen Savers. Screen savers are arguably unnecessary at this point, so they have become a sort of art form, separated from their original utility. I like that. (via)
- A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts from the Programmer’s Manual, 1971-1986. (via)
- The Xerox Alto, Smalltalk, and rewriting a running GUI. Read the comments. (via)
- Alan Kay Demos the Original, PARC GUI from Rescued Disc. (via)
Your unrelated link of the week: Lynda Barry is the funk queen of the galaxy, a fantastic cartoonist, and now the best ever advice columnist.
For once, I was able to work ahead and get this done early!
- Using the Linux find command with caution. It says “Linux” but most platforms have find(1).
- What are BSD’s nonfree firmware blobs?
- Linux to bsd.
- Are BSD binaries portable across the different BSD flavors?
- What’s the current state of optimus support for the BSDs?
- (Video) FreeBSD 11.1 – Configuring And Installing A Custom Kernel
- Playing with the pine64. (via)
- FreeBSD/EC2: Community vs. Marketplace AMIs.
- pfSense as Edge firewall/router with DMZ, Sophos SG UTM as internal firewall/router.
- Kernel ASLR support in NetBSD. (via)
- The BSDCan 2018 site is up.
- OPNsense 17.7.6 released.
- OpenBSD gives a hint on forgetting unlock mutex. (via)
- Issues the BSD license does not have.
This week’s BSDNow turns the tables, and the interviewer is you. Well, viewer questions for the staff, specifically. There’s also the usual news summaries.
You can make them, but you can’t mount them. Tomohiro Kusumi’s note that mkfs_hammer2 works on Linux is of little wide practical use, but it’s a sign of progress to a larger goal.
I should have linked this with yesterday’s post: Sepherosa Ziehau put together some extended benchmarks on his changes between DragonFly 4.8 and 5.0, and their effects on latency using nginx to serve a lot of requests.
An optimization that applies to you only if you are on DragonFly, running nginx, and dealing with many requests: there’s a sysctl that specifically increases available sockets, which will decrease latency; Sepherosa Ziehau’s commit message gives stats.
Some overflow, some new.
- books chapter thirteen, books chapter fourteen
- Why I’m Using Bitmarks on my Products.
- The 68000 Wars, Part 5: The Age of Multimedia.
- Star Control 2 creators finally making sequel. Don’t forget the original game is effectively free and available.
- Comprehensive Guide about Vim. (via)
- Gameboy hello world. (via)
- Connector Alignment Chart.
- Inside the vintage Xerox Alto’s display, a tiny lightbulb keeps it working. (via)
- The PorPor Books Blog: SF and Fantasy Books 1968 – 1988.
- Termination of Transfer tool. (via)
- Web Audio Modem. (via)
- Retro Pi Cases. Put a Pi in a teeny Amiga 500. (via)
- Technology that is perfect despite being obsolete? (via)
Your unrelated shirt design of the week: Mickey Mouth.