The packages directory on avalon.dragonflybsd.org now has a i386 directory and an amd64 directory. I’ve changed pkg_search and pkg_radd to base their search/retrieval on processor arch; this means that once we have pkgsrc packages built on a 64-bit platform, they will be accessible.
If you back up the pseudo-file-systems (PFS) on your Hammer volume to a non-Hammer disk, and then need to restore them to a new Hammer volume, and then realize you forgot to write down the shared-uuid, well, then, YONETANI Tomokazu has a patch for you. I haven’t seen this committed yet, but it appears valuable.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert added a tool, chkmoddeps, which checks for missing modules that are required by other modules. Useful if you are working with the kernel.
Alex Hornung has added support for ATA command passthrough. As a pleasant side effect, smartmontools works with AHCI again.
Matthew Dillon’s changed the scheduler to fix a problem with small writes taking longer than they should. This should have a noticable, though not necessarily perfect effect on interactivity, especially for those using DragonFly as a desktop.
Alexander Polakov has made it possible to use UTF8 as the default system encoding, which makes non-ASCII characters viewable everywhere. It makes a full buildworld/buildkernel process necessary. He also did it without making /bin and /sbin dynamic, which is good news for anyone who might happen to lose /usr.
Matthew Dillon posted the results of a full bulk build of pkgsrc on a 64-bit DragonFly system; the success rate was relatively high for a new platform and pkgsrc-current. The pkg_radd(1) and pkg_search(1) utilities will need some changes.
The dragonflybsd.org site(s) were down due to a network provider problem over the last 24 hours; they’re back now.
Hubert Feyrer posted a link to a set of benchmarks of various BSDs (and Linux) using Ruby. DragonFly, despite not working with a SMP kernel on the test software, had comparatively good results.
Are you running DragonFly on a laptop system? Please mention the brand and model number on the appropriate page on the DragonFly website. (Also: Laptop tips and tricks, thanks to Alexander Polakov)
The main page of the dragonflybsd.org site now has a feed of the most recent 10 articles from this Digest.
I don’t know how recently this recording was made, but Dru Lavigne found a recording of Jeffrey Hsu (longtime DragonFly committer) taking about How To Get Started with Kernel Programming.
The 2.4 release looks to be about a week and a half away; if you’re a committer, please plan to make drastic changes after the release, if possible,
It’s alliterative, so it must be good. Brian Gianforcaro has offered to set up Doxygen for DragonFly, which if nothing else would show where more comments were needed.
The 2.4 release will be later this month; Matthew Dillon has details. He appears to have already fixed the Hammer bug he mentions as a final issue before release.
Oh, look – Alex Hornung made Linux emulation work again. Thanks!
There’s some new HP server hardware out there, and Hasso Tepper found some problems (and lists some potential solutions) with installing DragonFly, mostly centered around keyboard handling. It sounds like NetBSD’s keyboard mux may solve it for us, if someone’s willing to add it…
Alex Hornung has posted a summary of what Unix98 pty devices are, and how they are supported under DevFS. If something screwy happens, there’s even a debug option to turn on.
Say hello to the newest DragonFly committer: Alexander Polakov. Hello, Alex!