DragonFly – Page 132 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2010/03/242010/03/24

Messylaneous for 03/24/2010

In an effort to catch up…

Matthew Dillon made a change to how material in memory is paged out; it may improve things depending on how much paging your system already does.
The AsiaBSDCon OpenBSD papers are online, with mention of video of the presentations.
Use keys for your SSH login, cause this will only get worse.
Ten Shell One-liners. The first one, using your favorite editor on the command line, is one of those things I knew about, but didn’t know to do. (caveat: some Linuxisms)
Want to test a big xorg update for pkgsrc? Of course you do.

2010/03/24

2.6 very soon

The next release, 2.6, will be branched in the next few days. The official release: next week, with some last-minute benefits.

2010/03/232010/03/23

Snapshot and mirror changes

The naming convention for the daily snapshots of DragonFly has changed, to make the file names more readable. This may lead to some confusion as the mirrors settle, but it’ll pan out. If you run a mirror, double-check your downloads.

2010/03/23

OpenOffice, lpr, and a future reminder

Stephane Russel was having trouble printing with OpenOffice and lpr on DragonFly. He fixed it, and I’m linking to his explanation because someday, someone will have the same problem and be looking for the solution…

2010/03/22

Easy reading for what’s broke

Every time a bulk build of pkgsrc packages is completed, a report is uploaded listing what built and what didn’t. Since there’s so many reports from the now-automated build, I’ve sorted it by architecture and release, to make lookups faster.

This is handy if you’re looking to fix pkgsrc apps on DragonFly, and you need a target. It’s also a good way to see if a desired module exists as a binary.

2010/03/22

Many ways to tell when the computer overheats

Constantine A. Murenin’s been adding more support for various monitoring hardware; I want to link to it not just cause it’s news, but it’s nice to see how complete his coverage has been.

2010/03/20

New handbook activity

Alex Hornung is working on a new version of the Handbook; my hat is off to him. I brought along the FreeBSD handbook SGML to DragonFly, and converted it through to the current wiki, so I know just how much there is. Check RecentChanges for the new work, and join in if you like.

2010/03/19

Interested in pkgsrc? DragonFly?

We actively need more people to do the small but plentiful fixes to make sure as many pkgsrc packages work as possible. Are you interested? Speak up.

2010/03/19

A lot of text about work on malloc

There’s a lot to read, so if you understand it, that’s great. I’m passing it on without other comment.

2010/03/18

Summer of Code 2010: DragonFly BSD

We’ve got a third year in Summer of Code!

The timeline shows about a week and a half for planning, and then student applications begin on the 29th of March, and run to April 9th.

If you want to participate as a student, start planning now by talking with people on IRC (#dragonflybsd on EFNet) or on the mailing lists. You cannot be over-prepared.

2010/03/172010/03/17

No chlamydia; change your mirror

Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert’s host for DragonFly, chlamydia.fs.ei.tum.de, is down for good. Since it had excellent bandwidth, it was frequently used as the source for a lot of the DragonFly mirror sites out there.

If you were using it for your own mirror, switch to mirror-master.dragonflybsd.org, and tell Matthew Dillon at @dragonflybsd.org your contact info so you can be notified of changes. (If you’re not mirroring, please download from the nearest site that is.)

2010/03/16

Some specials: SSDs, port multipliers

Newegg is running some specials: a 64G Kingston SSD for $140, a 256G (yikes!) Crucial SSD for $660, and a Sans Digital port multiplier for $110. The SSDs are good for using swapcache(8), though 256G is probably overkill. Doesn’t make me want it less, though…

The port multiplier’s SiI3726 chipset might be supported, or potentially supported, by the sili(4) driver. Someone have $110 to spare to try this out?

2010/03/15

Vinum root mounts possible again

As if Alex Horning wasn’t busy enough with his Linuxulator update, he’s also made it possible to have a vinum root volume in conjunction with using devfs.

2010/03/15

Linuxulator progress

Alex Hornung has committed his initial work on Linux support, which is over 6,500 lines so far. (Thanks, Alex!) He’s continuing to work on it, though going by his commit message, Java, Opera, Tomcat, etc. are supported so far. The only major item missing at this point is Flash. There are other followups, such as this note about chrooting into the Linux subsystem.

2010/03/12

Another power solution

“Device initiated power management” via AHCI is now possible, thanks to Johannes Hofmann. If I understand it correctly, it lets the computer handle power reductions automatically, which is more efficient than setting by hand.

2010/03/112010/03/11

Summer of Code organization application details

I’ve applied for DragonFly for the 2010 Summer of Code program. I posted the details of the application, for the curious. The application period closes in the next 24 hours; hopefully we’ll be in again…

2010/03/10

BIND goes byebye?

Jan Lentfer has accomplished something rather dramatic: the removal of BIND from the base system. It’s not actually out yet, but I daresay it will be after the 2.6 release, freeing people up to install any DNS server from pkgsrc – including BIND.

2010/03/10

Ways to improve SSH security

‘Walter’ asked about dealing with endless ssh port dictionary attacks. Several suggested changing ports and removing passwords, with opie(4) for when keyfiles aren’t available. Also, there’s various auto-blocking scripts, though they aren’t as useful nowadays.

2010/03/092010/03/09

Linuxulator update finally happening

Alex Hornung has taken on a very overdue and very necessary project: an update of linux binary support. His code is available for anyone who wants to try it. Testing so far is working, but it could really use something complex, like Java with OpenOffice or tomcat, or perhaps Firefox/Flash. Will it make it into the 2.6 release, which is potentially a week away? Maybe – testing like the above would help.

p.s. we would all individually owe Alex a beer for this.

2010/03/09

wbsio(4) sensor support added

Constantine Murenin has added wbsio(4) to DragonFly. It’s the ISA-attached version of the lm(4) sensor, if I remember correctly.