We actively need more people to do the small but plentiful fixes to make sure as many pkgsrc packages work as possible. Are you interested? Speak up.
There’s a lot to read, so if you understand it, that’s great. I’m passing it on without other comment.
We’ve got a third year in Summer of Code!
The timeline shows about a week and a half for planning, and then student applications begin on the 29th of March, and run to April 9th.
If you want to participate as a student, start planning now by talking with people on IRC (#dragonflybsd on EFNet) or on the mailing lists. You cannot be over-prepared.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert’s host for DragonFly, chlamydia.fs.ei.tum.de, is down for good. Since it had excellent bandwidth, it was frequently used as the source for a lot of the DragonFly mirror sites out there.
If you were using it for your own mirror, switch to mirror-master.dragonflybsd.org, and tell Matthew Dillon at @dragonflybsd.org your contact info so you can be notified of changes. (If you’re not mirroring, please download from the nearest site that is.)
PHP version 5.3 has some differences from previous versions, so there’s now a lang/php53 port. Use this if you want to upgrade right away, or stick with lang/php if you want to play it safe.
Newegg is running some specials: a 64G Kingston SSD for $140, a 256G (yikes!) Crucial SSD for $660, and a Sans Digital port multiplier for $110. The SSDs are good for using swapcache(8), though 256G is probably overkill. Doesn’t make me want it less, though…
The port multiplier’s SiI3726 chipset might be supported, or potentially supported, by the sili(4) driver. Someone have $110 to spare to try this out?
The BSD Conferences channel on YouTube now has updated captioning, which will be useful if you don’t follow spoken English too well.
As if Alex Horning wasn’t busy enough with his Linuxulator update, he’s also made it possible to have a vinum root volume in conjunction with using devfs.
Alex Hornung has committed his initial work on Linux support, which is over 6,500 lines so far. (Thanks, Alex!) He’s continuing to work on it, though going by his commit message, Java, Opera, Tomcat, etc. are supported so far. The only major item missing at this point is Flash. There are other followups, such as this note about chrooting into the Linux subsystem.
I’ve been building this one up:
- Marc Espie’s post about autoconf holds true; Linux is in danger of becoming a monoculture in itself, similar to Windows.
- The BSDCan 2010 schedule has been posted. (via) Will this be the year I finally make it to BSDCan? Maybe.
- This post about communities (in general, online, not just software) is interesting. So far DragonFly has managed to avoid the drama-with-a-capital-D that afflicts other communities over time. Here’s a reason to not want growth…
- Always have working backups. ALWAYS. (via)
- I once went through almost exactly this, except it was a phone system that spanned several U.S. states and China/Mexico. Asterisk is awful, except that every commercial phone system is worse.
- A very on-target assessment of the iPad from a longtime Apple developer makes me think of something: will the iPad be good for open source? Not as a platform, but as a way to push developers to open source systems, where program development doesn’t require approval from a single company with unclear guidelines. Even the single interface port on an iPad is proprietary, and requires licensing.
- It’s really nice to read about a successful open-source software business that did not hinge on investors or being bought out, but rather on, you know, actually doing business, as seen in this writeup of OpenNMS. (via)
“Device initiated power management” via AHCI is now possible, thanks to Johannes Hofmann. If I understand it correctly, it lets the computer handle power reductions automatically, which is more efficient than setting by hand.
Damian Vicino has posted about plans for an expanded second “BSDDay-AR” (a BSD event in Argentina) this year. If you want to show and give a talk, let him know. It’s always good to hear about a BSD event expanding.
I’ve applied for DragonFly for the 2010 Summer of Code program. I posted the details of the application, for the curious. The application period closes in the next 24 hours; hopefully we’ll be in again…
Jan Lentfer has accomplished something rather dramatic: the removal of BIND from the base system. It’s not actually out yet, but I daresay it will be after the 2.6 release, freeing people up to install any DNS server from pkgsrc – including BIND.
‘Walter’ asked about dealing with endless ssh port dictionary attacks. Several suggested changing ports and removing passwords, with opie(4) for when keyfiles aren’t available. Also, there’s various auto-blocking scripts, though they aren’t as useful nowadays.
Alex Hornung has taken on a very overdue and very necessary project: an update of linux binary support. His code is available for anyone who wants to try it. Testing so far is working, but it could really use something complex, like Java with OpenOffice or tomcat, or perhaps Firefox/Flash. Will it make it into the 2.6 release, which is potentially a week away? Maybe – testing like the above would help.
p.s. we would all individually owe Alex a beer for this.
I gots a Summer of Code org application to write up, so you get a linkdump:
An mp3 of “PFSense II, Rocking The Datacenter” at NYCBUG, via Dru Lavigne. Also, her “BSD for Linux Users” at the SCALE website.
A 5-part series about Scripting Vim, written by a terribly smart guy? Interesting! (Yeah, I did link to a part of it before…)
Have you ever wondered if building more than one pkgsrc package at a time can be a problem? Others have too, and apparently there’s a fix. If you don’t want to have to get to a command line to find the answer, it’s:
PKGSRC_LOCKTYPE?= none
The type of locking that will be done if competing processes
attempt to do work on one package directory simultaneously.
Possible values:
* none: No locking takes place at all.
* once: When the lock has already been aquired by another
process, the current process is terminated.
* sleep: When the lock has already been acquired by another
process, the current process will sleep for PKGSRC_SLEEPSECS
seconds and then try again.You should also set OBJHOSTNAME when you are using the same
copy of pkgsrc on different hosts, maybe via NFS. This is because the locking process writes its process ID into the lockfile, and process IDs on different hosts are unrelated.See also: LOCALBASE_LOCKTYPE, WRKDIR_LOCKTYPE.
We have several potential Summer of Code mentors already, but if you want to get in on the action, let me know. Org applications start Monday, and I’d like a count before then…