So, there’s a Gentoo/FreeBSD project, that attempts to graft the two systems together. The lead developer in that project misread the old 4-clause BSD license on some older files, and paniced repeatedly. (It even made it to the howling wasteland.) Of course, the problem is not actually a problem – it’s caused by worry about a clause that was removed years ago. Dru Lavigne has a nice writeup, and Wes Peters summed it up best in comments: “Now everybody get back to work. This is a 7-year-old nonissue…”
Matthew Dillon reports it is now possible to boot a virtual kernel and log in using that virtual system. The big remaining step (other than bugfixing) is a virtual network interface.
Matthew Dillon is renaming some I/O calls. It shouldn’t cause major problems, but as always, make sure to do a complete buildworld/buildkernel when next upgrading your bleeding-edge system.
Matthew Dillon is making trapframe changes – it will require a complete buildworld if you are following bleeding edge code. Read his post for more details.
Matthew Dillon posted more and more about his vkernel progress, including build instructions. Further discussion described the vkernel work as similar to User Mode Linux, with the potential for acceleration.
Matthew Dillon has posted a list of what remains on his virtual kernel work, along with the news that it can partially boot – see his post for the progress. It should be ready shortly after the next release. If you want to help, one of the needed things is a virtual network interface, perhaps similar to Qemu’s tap.
TLS system calls are being renamed by Matthew Dillon. If you’re running HEAD (bleeding edge code), this will require both a kernel and world rebuild on your next update.
The Register has an interesting old story that describes (and links to more of the story) how Bill Joy put together vi. (Thanks, duplicate postville)
Pkgsrc version 2006Q4, a ‘known stable’ release, has been announced. It’s available through cvs, and Joerg’s binary archive should be updated soon to match the new packages.
Jeremy C. Reed wrote in to announce a new book. He’s created this wiki for the purpose of writing the “Quick Guide to BSD Administration”, which uses the BSDA Certification Requirements Document as a guideline. There’s regularly generated PDFs to show progress.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has committed his giant sound update, supporting (among other things) High Definition Audio and bringing in changes from FreeBSD. Aside from a change in the generic kernel module name, it should work the same.
From OpenCon 2006, a presentation on OpenBSD Culture. I link to this in part because soft of the community ideas apply to DragonFly, and also because what makes up an open-source development group is rarely discussed beyond the code level. (Thanks Undeadly)
A few of the mirrors out there have DragonFly source available through rsync; Peter Avalos describes the correct command to retrieve it from theshell.com. (Note: read that post for details before trying it yourself.)
One of the eternal chicken-and-egg problems is kernel modification. Sometimes, a freshly installed system requires a different kernel, but you can’t download the source to build that new kernel until those changes are made. However, kernel source will be included with the 1.8 release, so this should theoretically not be a problem.
Matthew Dillon posted a list of the various ways testing could be done over the next 4 weeks for the 1.8 release. Help out, if you’ve got the inclination.
Matthew Dillon has announced that the next release will be branched in two weeks (Jan. 14th), with the 1.8 release scheduled for Jan. 28th. Get stuff in/tested now if you want to be in 1.8! He’s also updated his online diary with the extensive list of what’s gone in since 1.6.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert, having recently finished his thesis, has started up work on 1:1 userland threading again, with a status report in his latest commit.
Sepherosa Ziehau has an ath(4) (that’s wireless atheros chipsets) patch available for testing. It’s scheduled to go in January 7th if nobody has issues.
Victor Balada Diaz has committed his jail work, which adds support to jails for having more than one IP address, and also the ability to use IPv6.