Dru Lavigne’s started a PC-BSD Blog. This is great news – I don’t tend to cover other BSDs because I think there’s enough space in the blogosphere to others to do it. (and I only have so many hours in a day.) Dru’s already shown she knows posting, so I’m very happy to see more specific BSD outlets.
The August issue of BSD Magazine is ready. It’s titled “BSD as Operating System“, and it’s available for download now.
Dru Lavigne linked to AboutBSD.net; it’s an aggregate site that compiles the RSS feeds from a number of BSD sites.
It doesn’t list any news from this site. I had a conversation with “Psyber.Monkey”, the maintainer some months ago and I pointed out that since it was copying posts wholesale, it sounded like I was writing for that website instead of my own, and it didn’t note the source, or even keep my name with my work. He said he’d address that and remove my copied posts until it was fixed. It looks like it hasn’t been addressed.
The BSD license (for example) allows for copying work, but it doesn’t allow you to strip the author’s name off the work. The AboutBSD.net articles at least link back to the original articles now, but I’d like to see more specific attribution, as is done at other places that quote people’s work, like KernelTrap or even (usually) Slashdot.
I don’t want to sound too cranky about it, as he did reach out and check, which is a first – normally I just see my writing surface on aggregate feed sites, and that’s the earliest I hear of it.
Update: I take it back.
Michael Lucas sent me a copy of his newest book, Network Flow Analysis, on the grounds that I read it and write what I thought. While book reviews aren’t usual fare for this site, it’s appealing to write something different from my usual brief summaries.
(more after the jump…)
Dru Lavigne has posted a list of upcoming locations for BSDA exams; look for one near you, as this list is globe-spanning.
There’s several publications with new issues out. It’s a long weekend (in the U.S.) so you can catch up on the reading/listening:
BSD Magazine has a new issue out, on OpenBSD. There’s also the happy news that they’ve managed to more than double their circulation.
The July issue of the Open Source Business Resouce is out, with the theme “Go To Market”. Next month is “Interdisciplinary Lessons”, and submissions are due in the next two weeks.
BSDTalk 192 is out with an interview of Colin Percival, the FreeBSD Security Officer. It’s another interview from BSDCan 2010. Colin Percival is also responsible for, among other things, tarsnap.com, which I find interesting because of its clear and modern business model.
NYCBSDCon, happening November 12-14th, in New York City, at Cooper Union, has a call for papers out. (via here and also George) They’re due by the end of July.
BSD Magazine sent out a link to all the BSD Magazine back issues, reproduced here for your enjoyment:
Link catchup!
- The BSD Certification Group needs reviewers for the BSDA exam objectives. It’s as easy as writing on a wiki.
- Undeadly has a lengthy article up about the OpenBSD equivalent of pkgsrc bulk builds, called dbp3. Interesting, because it was constructed on purpose, for that purpose. It’s interesting to me because I have pbulk running all the time, and it’s not as liner a process as I’d like.
- The PC-BSD installer is now present in FreeBSD; I think this is based on the same original installer used for DragonFly. Maybe, maybe not, but I’m curious about the feature set if it’s able to displace the venerable and firmly lodged FreeBSD sysinstall.
- Off topic: I bought an Android-based phone recently, so this (kinda grody) comment on how Apple handles bad reception for the new iPhone is entertaining.
- Really off topic: this man’s conversation about polyhedral dice (Youtube) is strangely compelling. You may or may have needed to play tabletop games previously to really appreciate it. (via)
Michael Lucas is giving away a limited number of copies of his new Network Flow Analysis book. Post something clever and you may get it. Please don’t be more clever than me, though, as I want a copy.
Dru Lavigne is the new “Director of Community Development” for PC-BSD. I am totally jealous, and she is the perfect person for the job.
November 12-14th, in New York City, at Cooper Union.
EuroBSDCon 2010 is happening October 8th-10th in Karlsruhe, Germany. (I’ll let you guess the year.) The Call for Papers is out now. The website lists it as “Call for Speakers“, but you have to write an abstract so I suppose that’s close enough. (via lots of places)
- IBM’s developerWorks has an article up about GNU screen. It’s not BSD-specific, but the tips in using screen are useful. (Before someone brings it up: yes, tmux too.)
- Another article talks about inspecting network traffic using various tools including tcpdump and wireshark. It is a tremendous advantage to see what happens on a network at the most basic level, so this is a good skill to pick up.
- Oh, and “Setting up UNIX file systems” and “10 steps to Unix nirvana“.
- FreeBSD now ships with clang. (via) I know DragonFly (mostly?) works with clang… Could we switch?
- “hwstat” will gain DragonFly support soon.
- Firmware for ral(4) has been added by Joe Talbott.
- Thomas Klausner has a writeup of some project ideas or goals taken from the recent pkgsrcCon. A followup has me thinking: if the -uu option updates dependent packages with pkg_add, does that mean ‘pkg_radd -uu packagename” will do all updating possible based on available binary packages? Worth trying.
I did some cleanup on the various BSD links I have on the sidebar of this site; are there any sites I’m missing? I’d like to be as complete as possible. Please supply URLs.
(Be warned that some messages may not show up immediately because links in comments will rarely trigger the spamfilter – I’ll check for them.)
BSDTalk has a very timely interview with Roman Divácký and Ed Schouten about the switch to clang/LLVM in FreeBSD. It’s 17 minutes, recorded at the recent BSDCan 2010.
The compiler pcc, while having both history and speed, doesn’t get the attention that clang/LLVM gets. There’s a NetBSD blog article about building NetBSD with pcc. (via) I recall it couldn’t be used for DragonFly because of TLS support; I don’t know if that’s still an issue. It’s been covered here before.
The June issue of BSD Magazine is out, and the theme is: Firewalls.
Joe Talbott wants to write DragonFly/BSD drivers for a whole slew of wireless devices. These are also all the adapters he doesn’t physically have. You can fix this by purchasing something off that page, which will ship right to him. A bwi(4) driver is next, for instance.
BSDTalk 190 has 20 minutes of conversation with Michael Lucas, one of my favorite authors, about his new book, “Network Flow Analysis“. He is also responsible for other BSD books.