A running description of activity related to DragonFly BSD.
The title says it all – visit the download page for 1.8 to get it. Most every mirror appears to have it right now – not just the ones on the 1.8 page.
Note that some sites have an early version of the 1.8.1 release that lacks the installer; that image is ‘dfly-1.8.1.iso.gz’. Instead, be sure to download ‘dfly-1.8.1_REL.iso.gz’, which should be the newer file of the two.
I’ve given the main page of leaf.dragonflybsd.org a slight update, to show more of the resources available to developers.
Peter Avalos has upgraded DragonFly to use libarchive 2.0.25, for increased speed relative to both libarchive 1.x and GNU tar, and other bugfixes.
A task where much of the heavy lifting has been done: making a kernel boot no matter how many processors are in the system. (notes)Â Right now, SMP kernels can’t boot on a system with 1 CPU, so the LiveCD runs only a non-SMP kernel.
Sepherosa Ziehau warned bleeding-edge users that recent network interface changes will require a rebuild of both kernel and world when next updating. This does not apply to 1.8 users.
A few packages are going to be dropped from pkgsrc – mostly older versions of software. Speak up on the pkgsrc-users@netbsd.org mailing list if you don’t want this to happen.
I’ve removed some of the inconvenient antispam features (comments from new people are always moderated, http:// links get a post filtered, etc) and switched to different antispam software. Email me if you add a comment and can’t get through…
The next pkgsrc freeze, in preparation for the quarterly release, starts 2007/03/24.
On UnixReview.com this week: “Test Your Knowledge of Ethernet Topics“, two book reviews: “Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference” and “Building the Perfect PC“, along with a product review of “The Ultimate CompTIA Network+ Resource Kit” and the host integrity tool “Osiris“.
DragonFly 1.8.1 will be released this weekend, so if you have something that you need added, speak up! This release will include the rtld fixes that enable parts of KDE to work again, among other things.
As part of a discussion about issues with the current methods of adding third-party software to base, Matthew Dillon noted that much of it could be replaced safely using pkgsrc packages.
Seen on the pkgsrc-users@ mailing list: a way to dramatically speed up FireFox.
A recurring argument that pops up from time to time is replacing Sendmail in the base system with something else – Postfix , qmail, or a similar product. Licensing, complexity, or user preference usually lead to a long discussion that doesn’t change the matter. Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has come up with an answer: none of the above. He’s writing a simple MTA that will handle delivery on the local machine, which is enough for a system that doesn’t handle normal mail. For people who need more, sendmail and Postfix and others are all in pkgsrc.
Matthew Dillon pointed out a relatively easy vkernel exercise: making them run without being attached to a terminal. You could spin off multiple virtual systems, all from one command line.
There’s a new Estonian mirror up for DragonFly, in IPv4 and IPv6:
ftp://ftp.estpak.ee/pub/DragonFly
http://ftp.estpak.ee/pub/DragonFly
rsync://ftp.estpak.ee/DragonFly
Doubly useful right now, because dragonflybsd.org appears to be having slight network issues.
Hasso Tepper has produced an interesting patch that allows for notification on network link state changes.
Early registrations for the Sys Admin Technical Conference for 2007 are due by the end of March. It’s being held in a nice town (Baltimore, MD) and has some interesting speakers, including security talks from BSD user Richard Bejitlich.
Jonathan Buschmann has posted an initial patch to get a much-requested feature onto DragonFly: CARP.
With Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert’s recent 1:1 threading work, a recent conversation exposed future plans to experiment with M:NCPU support in DragonFly. (That’s M kernel threads supporting N userland threads, where N == number of CPUs.)
Matthew Dillon has written up the initial documentation for the SYSLINK protocol. (Also available as a PDF, thanks to Sascha Wildner.) SYSLINK is the inter-system communication method for DragonFly clusters.
If you read carefully, you may notice that the proposed clustering file system for DragonFly is named in the document as “ANVIL”.