I put together a post on users@ about updating to pkgsrc-2011Q2. I’ll just repeat it here after the break:
There’s an OpenGrok install being set up at: http://pkgbox64.dragonflybsd.org/ – right now it just covers DragonFly, but I think there will be more soon.
I really just like that phrase and the action movie feeling of using it, like “Watch out! The pulse-width modulated time-domain multiplexer is targeting us!” Sorta like a PU-36 space modulator. It’s actually a recently-committed mechanism to improve write performance in Hammer, but my idea sounds more exciting.
I recently saw some terse notes on tech-pkg@netbsd.org about compiling using clang for pkgsrc. I haven’t tried this on DragonFly…
Francois Tigeot has fixed wip/jdk16 to build on DragonFly. Note that this is in pkgsrc-wip, not ‘normal’ pkgsrc. The secret is to build lang/kaffe to bootstrap it, which requires CCVER=gcc41 to be set. Apparently kaffe will not build under gcc 4.4.
Why did he do it? To run OpenGrok, of course. He’s posted instructions on getting OpenGrok running on DragonFly. Note the Java crashes he reports in DragonFly 2.11 may already have been fixed.
p.s. I hated “Stranger in a Strange Land”.
17 different ISA device drivers have been removed by Sascha Wildner. The commit message has device descriptions. This may mean you need to change your kernel configuration file on the next buildkernel, since some of them were in the GENERIC kernel. If you need any of them, speak up. (I don’t think I’ve ever used any of them. Oh darn.)
Lazy reading is easy when it’s been this hot out. In fact, I may melt before this article gets published.
- Ecdysis – a NAT64 gateway program. I link to it for two reasons. 1: You will probably need to NAT 6-to-4 sooner or later, and 2: it uses PF and so is BSD-compatible. (via)
- Don’t not copy that floppy! (also via) My original Apple ][ disk for Castle Wolfenstein is probably no longer functional. Not that I have equipment to play it on…
- World timezones, as a visible map. (via) I mention time zone updates here on occasion, and this is a immediate guide to what a strange patchwork of zones it is. You can’t even see some of the really tiny/crazy ones.
- A crappy way to start your day. Nobody ever enjoys that call from work…
And now, a link that has nothing to do with this.
Background: You may remember some time ago, I posted a review of Michael Lucas’s Network Flow Analysis. He’s written several BSD books and so I figured it was worth reading further, knowing that this network-specific book would be BSD-friendly. Also, he made it easier by sending me a copy.
No Starch Press, the company that published all the books linked in the previous paragraph, asked if I’d read/review another book from them. This would be Practical Packet Analysis, 2nd edition. (Review continues after the break…)
I’ve posted about my own results with Hammer deduplication here before, but Siju George put together results from his workplace using actual files in production. He recovered 138G from a 1T disk, and recovered 20% of space from another disk. Not bad for something that’s nearly automatic, and completely free.
The builds of pkgsrc-2011Q2 are finishing up, so we have/will have binaries to download, for those who don’t want to build from source. The uploads should be complete by now for everything except maybe 2.11/x86_64. You’ll have to change $PKG_PATH to point at the new directories for now, though. There’s also some build reports to look at.
I spied a bulk build of pkgsrc using clang. It’s interesting to see the results… It’s on NetBSD, but it should be possible to try the same thing with CCVER on DragonFly. Any takers?
Remember the benchmark tests I linked a few days ago? There’s been ongoing discussion about them, and a recent comment from Matthew Dillon sums it up pretty well: the benchmarks differ depending on whether you favor reads, or favor writes.
Thanks to Michael Neumann, there’s more supported Broadcom network card chipsets. There’s some wierdness in setup, though, so look at his commit message.
BSDday Argentina 2011 is happening the 4th and 5th of November, in Buenos Aires City, Argentina. The Call for Papers is out, if you’d like to contribute.
Tim Bisson has another status report on supporting TRIM in DragonFly. It supports UFS and Hammer slices, and trimming swap too. I’m not sure what else could be done; that sounds pretty complete to me… In any case, if you have a SSD, his code is available to try right now.
If you happen to use a LG P-500 smartphone to get online via USB, as ‘Romick’ does, he’s got a patch that makes that device work under DragonFly. (Sorry, the original users@ email seems to have gone missing.)
About a month from now (August 10-14), the CCC Camp is being held outside Berlin. Bring a tent and (I assume) something capable of getting a wireless connection. It only happens every 4 years, so jump on it now. There will be at least one DragonFly-using person there – Matthias Schmidt is going.
John Marino has made binutils 2.21.1 the default binutils in DragonFly, and gprof is now built but not in the default path.
Man, it’s like the whole Internet decided to take a nap lately. Warm weather in the northern hemisphere does that.
- The Hidden Damage From Waste Data (And How To Deal With It) (via) My answer is more RAMdisks. That’s always my answer for everything, though.
- A replacement for ALTQ.
- Some developer who doesn’t use BSD says it’s not worthwhile. (via) Rather than argue, I’ll just note that the article was linked as “Developer says BSD not worth it” rather than “Interview with man who did PulseAudio” or “What’s happening with systemd”. That may show what people actually care about. Also, see this comment.
Alex Hornung has made a pile of changes for disk encryption, including adding libdm, a “simple BSD-licensed libdevmapper“,and adding tcplay, a 100% compatible implementation of TrueCrypt. This should make you very happy if you like running from an encrypted disk.
Update: Alex has written an in-depth explanation of this work. It’s a huge change!
Update update: Hey, it’s showing on Hacker News too!