Justin Sherrill – Page 238 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2011/03/272011/03/27

Lazy Reading for 2011/03/27

I’ve found enough good links I’m able to schedule this post ahead of time. Yay!

Michael Lucas, BSD book author, is selling a short story via Amazon/Kindle. It has nothing to do with BSD, directly.
Also, he offers beer to anyone who can get KVM working on a BSD. Any BSD. I guess vkernels don’t count, really.
This idea came up at work recently: Etherkiller!
The evolution of computer displays. (via) It covers some pretty ancient stuff – the article doesn’t even get to Pong until page 3.
A paper on the new PBI format for PC-BSD (PDF). This is being presented at AsiaBSDCon.
The Dancing Poultry License (via ftigeot on EFNet #dragonflybsd)
A chart of the evolution of science fiction. (via) There’s some good titles in there, if you can read it.

2011/03/27

GSoC: mentors please sign up

The mentor signup page for Google Summer of Code 2011 is available again, launched using a new interface. If you want to be a mentor, please sign up now. The student application period opens tomorrow!

2011/03/26

Binutils 2.21 added, still optional

Sascha Wildner has added in binutils version 2.21, replacing 2.20. Note that both 2.20 and 2.21 are ‘optional’, so you have to set BINUTILSVER to use them. Otherwise the system defaults to the also-installed binutils 2.17.

2011/03/25

Summer of Code: mentoring wait

The mentor signup page for Google Summer of Code 2011 as of this writing still says “We have temporarily disabled the creation of new requests and invites in preparation of the launch of the new UI for Melange later this week.”, as it has said since the 20th.

So, if you’re wanting to mentor, keep an eye on it. I’ll send mentor requests to any of the names on my list of people that have already expressed interest, if I get to a working version of the page before you do…

2011/03/25

Last-minute pkgsrc progress

As already mentioned on this Digest, the freeze for the next quarterly release of pkgsrc, pkgsrc-2011Q1, has started. I’ve also completed several bulk builds of pkgsrc-2010Q4 and pkgsrc-current using DragonFly system with GCC 4.4. Francois Tigeot has very kindly gone out of his way to get some of the (relatively few) broken packages listed in those builds to be fixed.

2011/03/24

More memoryallocators manpage material

Venkatesh Srinivas has added a new memoryallocators(9) man page, to describe the various memory allocation schemes in DragonFly. It gives descriptions of each and leads off to more man pages.

2011/03/24

libiberty goes byebye

This is the BSD-licensed version of libiberty, which was removed because it didn’t ever actually make it to being a replacement.

2011/03/23

Pkgsrc freeze starts tomorrow

As noted in announcements, pkgsrc is entering a 10-day freeze period starting tomorrow. If everything goes to plan, the next quarterly release of pkgsrc, 2011Q1, will be released April 3rd.

2011/03/23

DragonFly BSD on identi.ca

There’s a DragonFly BSD group on identi.ca, the not-as-creepy-as-Facebook social site.

2011/03/222011/03/22

Pardon my interrupt

APIC support has been updated, so not only will some machines work better/at all with a multiprocessor kernel, more machines will boot. Not only that, but Sepherosa Ziehau has a newer version of ACPI and interrupt routing available. This is wonderful news! We’ve needed this update for some time.

2011/03/22

Results from pkgsrc and gcc4.4

My first bulk build of pkgsrc with gcc 4.4 has completed; the results are available. Notice that most of the errors are from checksum problems with downloads, not actual problems from the compiler change. I’m starting a new build to see if the checksum problems go away with fresh downloads.

2011/03/21

D&P 17: GhostBSD and Parasomnia

The Daemon & Penguin podcast has a new 50-minute podcast about GhostBSD, a FreeBSD/Gnome install, and a review of the horror movie Parasomnia.

2011/03/21

Summer of Code student application

For the curious, or for those who plan ahead, I posted what’s on the Google Summer of Code student application for DragonFly.

2011/03/20

Lazy Reading

This all came together at the last second.

The DragonFly Doji – unrelated, but I like the juxtaposition.
I found it interesting to read this vinyl enthusiast magazine (PDF) and contrast it to BSD Magazine as a narrow-focus publication. (via)
Self-publishing a technical book. (via) Compare and contrast this with repeat BSD author Michael Lucas’s recent note about not wanting to self-publish.
Along those same lines,the Electronic Publishing Bingo Card. (via)
Some more fun code stories, this time involving Ultima Underworld. (One of the Ultimas I did not get to play.)

2011/03/19

Getting started on a Summer of Code project

If you were thinking of working on a disk scheduler for DragonFly, this is your lucky day! Brills Peng asked for some overall guidance on how to start on a Summer of Code project. I threw out some general tips, Alex Hornung talked up resources on kernel programming, and Venkatesh Srinivas described exactly what you’d need to write a disk scheduler. There’s about 50% of a whole proposal, prewritten.

2011/03/182011/03/18

Summer of Code 2011: We’re in!

We made it into Google Summer of Code for a 4th year! (yay!)

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/dragonflybsd

If you want to mentor, apply here:

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/mentor/request/google/gsoc2011/dragonflybsd

(You will need to create a login if you don’t have one.) I’m assuming the applicants are going to be people I know with a direct history with DragonFly; otherwise be prepared to give a good history. Signing up to mentor does not mean you must mentor if there aren’t any projects that interest you; it does mean you need to review applications and provide feedback for students March 28th – April 8th.

If you want to be a student with DragonFly:

Check the projects page for ideas:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/gsocprojectspage/

… or come up with your own.

Get your application together by March 28th. Start talking about it on the mailing list or IRC or however as soon as you can; there’s a direct relationship between the amount of preparation we see beforehand and people getting accepted.

Here’s the timeline:

http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/timeline

Copied from my email to users@/kernel@, cause it has everything you need.

2011/03/17

BSDTalk 203: Dan Langille, BSDCan, PGCon

The newest BSDTalk has a roughly 15-minute talk with Dan Langille about the upcoming 2011 BSDCan and PGCon events.

2011/03/16

AsiaBSDCon 2011 tutorials canceled

This shouldn’t be a surprise considering recent events: AsiaBSDCon 2011 has had some event cancellations; specifically the tutorials and meetings. The paper presentations starting on the 19th, and the banquet, are still on, however. (via)

2011/03/15

Daemon and Penguin podcast

Google Search turned up something new: Daemon & Penguin oggcast. It’s a podcast, with every episode covering something Unix-ish – usually BSD. Each episode also reviews a horror movie. It’s not a mix I would have predicted, but I can see how it would work. The first oggcast has him installing DragonFly.

2011/03/142011/03/14

Hammer/Samba shadow copy support started

Samuel Greear has been working on a module to translate Hammer snapshots into Windows-style shadow copies, so a Hammer volume’s snapshots would be accessible when shared to a Windows machine, or anything that understood shadow copies, so Samba.

He’s put up his work so far; it’s not finished, but he has schoolwork to get to and wants to make it available for anyone who wants to run with it. (say, for Summer of Code…) Apparently the macros in the shadow_copy2 or onefs modules are similar to what a Hammer module would need…