A running description of activity related to DragonFly BSD.
NetBSD is using/will be using? ‘npf’, a new version of pf similarly-named-but completely-different firewall from pf. Hubert Feyrer put together a bunch of links talking about it. I link this because DragonFly is using a version of pf equivalent to what OpenBSD 4.8, and there’s been some discussion of what to do next; it appears FreeBSD and NetBSD are forking off separately from OpenBSD’s version.
Update: npf and pf share 2 letters in the name and nothing else, as Joerg told me – corrected.
Peter Avalos has committed another batch of updates to sh(1), from FreeBSD. I was going to comment on how strange it was to see software getting updated so many years later; you’d think everything there was to update for /bin/sh had been done at this point. Digging casually, the oldest bit on sh that I can find is from 1991 – 22 years old. The man page mentions a rewrite in 1989 based on System V Release 4 UNIX, and there were versions of sh all the way back to version 1.
Here’s a trivia question – what’s the oldest Unix utility, and what’s the oldest code still in use? I don’t know the answer.
The March issue of BSD Magazine is out, with topics like handling crash dumps. Apparently April’s issue is going to be all FreeNAS.
Michael W. Lucas has announced his next two books are coming out in April: Absolute OpenBSD 2nd Edition, from No Starch Press, and DNSSEC Mastery, self published.
Found by way of a NYCBUG newsletter: sws, a webserver written in sh. Brett Wynkoop is the author, and as he points out, sws works on any platform with “/bin/sh, dirname, cat, and date”. The author’s giving a talk at an upcoming NYCBUG meeting – tomorrow!
I wasn’t aware of this, but apparently DragonFly’s version of patch(1) comes from OpenBSD and NetBSD. FreeBSD’s old version of patch is being replaced by this and modified to match the old one’s behaviors. It would be worthwhile to bring these changes back, if possible, just to reduce the differences in a utility that’s already been around the world, so to speak.
As an aside, I always thought patch was one of Larry Wall’s unsung successes, and I’m entertained by any program that has “Hmm…” as one of its official outputs.
I am all over the place with links this week – some of them pretty far off the path. There’s a lot, too, so enjoy!
Your unrelated link of the week: I’ve already been offbeat enough in this Lazy Reading; I don’t have anything else.
Michael W. Lucas is looking for someone to improve the Extended DNSSEC Validator. Specifically, add BSD support. It’s an idea worth supporting, because the standard it works with makes self-signed certificated perfectly feasible.
Here’s 3 recent and different commits to DragonFly that I’m commenting on all at once:
I really wish the other BSD projects would include commit lines in the mail message subjects, so it was easier to catch things like these.
A calm week, for once.
Your unrelated comics link of the week: Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman. All the early issues, available in electronic form, for pay-what-you-want. (And I advise paying; it’s a fun comic) Look at a sample page if you are curious.
Constantine A. Murenin has put together a new man page resource for all the BSDS: mdoc.su. The options for shortened URLs are entertainingly diverse.
Michael W. Lucas needs people who know DNSSEC, BIND, have some time, and are willing to criticize him. He’s finished his first draft of DNSSEC Mastery, and needs reviewers.
BSDTalk 223 is out, with 23 minutes of conversation with Michael Dexter about bhyve.
The fine folks at the New York City BSD User Group have created a mailing list specifically for using The Onion Router on BSD. Please join if you are interested in TOR, and especially if you are using something other than FreeBSD, since that’s the only ‘supported’ BSD TOR runs on right now.
The February 2013 issue of BSD Magazine, available as a free PDF, talks about VAX/VMS ‘rehosting’, has a PC-BSD preview, and other things. The teaser paragraph for the “Fear, Loathing and Misunderstandings” article (shown on that linked page) is perfect.
This week I will both post this on the correct day AND get the date in the title correct.
Your unrelated tea link of the week: Epic Tea House Server. Interesting just because of what he does and because I’ve never encountered tea from a samovar, though I’ve read of it. (via)
Wait, this is better! That previous link led to this film from an English chemistry professor about tea chemistry. At first I was just entertained by his hair and his accent, but when he put tea in a NMR spectrometer, I decided this was the best tea thing ever. Even better than Elemental!
Or is it ‘statii’? English is wonderfully inconsistent. Anyway, Michael W. Lucas has posted an update on his two upcoming publications: the second edition of Absolute OpenBSD and DNSSEC Mastery. Both are in progress, and you can download the ‘pre-release’ version of DNSSEC Mastery now.
Remember I mentioned FOSDEM a few days ago? The X.Org presentation slides are up, and the mostly-about-BSD “The future of X.org on non-Linux systems” presentation slides are included.
No theme evolved this week, but that’s OK.
Your unrelated link of the week: MeTube: August sings Carmen ‘Habanera’. Might be NSFW, probably will make you mildly confused or uncomfortable. Here’s the ‘making of’ video which is all in German, I think. If that’s too much, try a recent Cyriak-animated video. I never thought I’d recommend a Cyriak video as the less disturbing thing to watch.
The Phoronix benchmark has been pretty Linux-specific over recent history. However, whatever your feelings about benchmarks in general, it looks like there’s a distinct effort to improve BSD support.
