If you’d like to set a particular sysctl(8), you enter it into /etc/sysctl.conf. A common mistake is to copy the command line and put “sysctl foo=bar” in sysctl.conf instead of “foo=bar”. This used to cause a warning, but it still bit people, as it would cause a long stream of error messages during boot – with no clear reason, as the kernel tried to understand the command. Now, that typo is handled automatically.
I usually get all happy when I see sharing happen across BSDs, and note it here. Here’s an unexpected one: between DragonFly and Haiku.
As planned, there will be a 5.4. 1 release for DragonFly. Matthew Dillon’s work on HAMMER2 will be in there, as will be a fix for keyboard attachment and updates from Aaron LI on dhcpcd support. I will tag and build this weekend, so it’ll be just in time for Christmas.
I didn’t get a chance to mention this before release: script(1) has had a refresh, now sharing more options with the FreeBSD version. The update is in DragonFly-master and in the 5.4 release.
If you happen to have a Intel Centrino advanced 6035 wireless card, it now works on DragonFly, thanks to Tobias Heilig.
Bear with me; this is the history: wpa_supplicant is the program DragonFly uses to connect to most wireless networks. It’s been part of the base system for some time, but if you start it up, you will see a warning (at boot time) about how this version is deprecated. Installing from dports puts a newer version in place.
As is the case with most third-party include in any operating system’s base, there’s always lag between the newest version of software and what’s been included in. Dependencies creep in, or it’s duplicated work between packaging and basic OS maintenance, etc. (Who here used Perl on FreeBSD 4? That was frustrating, but a good example here.) Anyway, the dilemma is that since wpa_supplicant is a program that may be required in order to get online, it must be in the base install. However, since it has / had vulnerabilities, it must be updated. The base install doesn’t update as fast as the origin of the software, and there’s the mismatch.
All that’s a long explanation as to why network/wpa_supplicant is now on the DragonFly install CD, and gets automatically used if installed. Thanks for Aaron LI and Matthew Dillon for making it happen. The base package is still there, in case someone deletes their installed ports and needs to get online before they can reinstall. This is in master now and will be in the 5.4 release.
I tagged the first release candidate for DragonFly 5.4 last night. The commit message has summary lines from all the commits in this release, if you want to go through them – or wait for the release notes. I’m happy to see some new-to-me committer names in there, too.
I’m actually surprised this wasn’t already there: Aaron Li added terminfo entries for tmux and tmux-256color into DragonFly’s terminfo(5) file. I’ve been using tmux without issue for some time on DragonFly… but I may not be exercising it as hard as I could.
Aaron LI has brought dhcpcd into DragonFly-current, as a replacement to dhclient(8) and rtsold(8). dhclient does support IPv6 but it’s bundled with server and BIND applications, so it’s harder to support.
Aaron LI’s added ip6addrctl(8) to DragonFly; on by default. There should be a man page entry for it within a couple hours, online.
arp(8) can now be limited to a particular interface on DragonFly; a minor change but I mention it because otherwise you may not realize it.
There’s a fix for memory contention in NUMA (meaning Threadripper in this case) configurations on DragonFly; the commit has before-and-after numbers. They are somewhat context-free, so I can’t easily translate to what this means for performance.
Matthew Dillon’s moved tty_token from a global to per-CPU token in most cases in DragonFly. This is good for performance as with any global->local shift, but I can’t tell you what aspect it improves.
Something I didn’t know existed but makes sense now that I do: a virtualized randomness device, added to DragonFly. Entropy is usually provided through hardware, so of course you’d need something for it in a VM.
If your kernel panics, the current state of memory can show why. That memory dump needs to be saved somewhere. ‘dumpon’ is the command to specify the device that will keep it. If you want to turn it off, you end up using the odd syntax ‘dumpon off’. Thanks to Aaron Li, there’s now a linguistically-sane command: ‘dumpoff’.
As a fix for wpa_supplicant, the upper limit on socket datagrams has been increased. What else does this affect? We’ll find out the hard way, which is why I mention it here.
Chromium, the open sourced base of the Chrome browser, builds on BSDs, including DragonFly. But not without some work.
DragonFly’s root account defaults to tcsh, and that now defaults to autorehash being set on. Useful to remember if you reflexively type ‘rehash’ like I do, and also useful if you come from a shell where ‘rehash’ isn’t needed.
DragonFly’s default compiler is now gcc-8. This will help with some amount of dports builds.
tuning(7) had some updates from Matthew Dillon. It’s minor, as he says, but it’s such a useful man page I want to make sure people are reading it.