DragonFly – Page 145 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2009/08/122009/08/11

GCC 4.4. and NO_GCC44

As Hasso Tepper pointed out, having GCC 4.4 in DragonFly is unique to DragonFly. Systems like pkgsrc don’t work due to the changes in headers and etc. between gcc 4.2 and 4.4, and since no other BSD uses gcc 4.4, the fixes would all have to come from DragonFly (and be backward compatible). This is unlikely to change in the near term, since this newer version of gcc is being refused due to the V3 GNU Public License, not a technical issue. It’ll stay in DragonFly for now.

However, you can specifically exclude it and speed up buildworlds with the new NO_GCC44 option. It’s also possible to use NO_GCC34 in make.conf to keep the old version of gcc from building, for those who don’t like to wait.

2009/08/122009/08/11

Welcome new commiter: Alex Hornung

I totally missed this, but Sascha Wildner reminded me: Alex Hornung now has commit access to DragonFly, due to all the devfs work he’s done.

2009/08/112009/08/11

DevFS cleanup, iSCSI start

Matthew Dillon provided a summary of the state of the dynamic device filesystem work, plus a note about the preliminary iSCSI work. He also brings up the notion that iSCSI would eventally allow booting off a drive no matter where it’s physically connected.

2009/08/102009/08/10

Minor format change in mailing lists

Any commits to DragonFly go to the commits@dragonflybsd.org mailing list. The subject format has been reduced to “git: “, branchname, and the first line of the commit message. Keep that in mind when constructing your commit messages, and if you have any filters based on subject line for your mail.

2009/08/082009/08/07

pkg_radd improvments

If you’re on DragonFly 2.3.1 or 2.3.2: I’ve uploaded a full pkgsrc build to avalon.dragonflybsd.org based on pkgsrc-2009Q2. It’s possible to use pkg_radd to automatically download and install packages for those systems. (and pkg_search will search the remote repository for you.)

If you’re on DragonFly 2.2.x, I’ve modified the pkg_radd target for that release so that when pkg_radd makes a request, it is redirected to the appropriate place on avalon.dragonflybsd.org instead of attempting (and potentially failing) to find a matching mirror.

I said close to the same thing as the above text on users@; the short form of all this is that pkg_radd should generally work for everyone. Tell me if that’s not your experience.

2009/08/06

Serial number details

There’s some more explanations of how disk serial number support is working from Matthew Dillon, plus a warning that a full kernel/world rebuild is needed because of these changes.

If I’m reading it right, serial number support, combined with a dynamic /dev, makes it possible to identify a disk by serial number, assign a name to it, and then refer to that disk directly by name in places like /etc/fstab. Much, much easier than remembering /dev/ad0c or /dev/ad1a, and so on.

2009/08/062009/08/05

DevFS and vinum do not get along

DevFS breaks vinum. Will it be fixed? Yes, hopefully very soon.

2009/08/05

Serial number support for devices

Preliminary serial number support for drive identification has been added to DragonFly, with /dev/serno listing the appropriate devices and numbers.

2009/08/042009/08/04

DevFS arrives

DevFS has been added. There’s some issues, each with a workaround. Please test, as it’s certain that a major change like this will cause new problems around video and sound. Once those are fixed, however, device management will be a lot easier.

2009/08/04

How long those packages will last

I published a retention policy for pkgsrc packages. It works out to “current release and last release” for what will be kept as pkgsrc binaries that you can add with pkg_radd. If you need longer-term support, speak up, but I don’t think this will be a problem for anyone.

2009/08/03

Spreading Hammer

Want to bring Hammer to Slackware Linux? People want it, and there’s some work already in progress.

2009/08/03

New gcc coming in

Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has been working on an import of gcc 4.4 to DragonFly; it’s not usable yet, but when it is, it means the 3.x gcc code can be dropped.

2009/08/02

Fixed links on site

The web pages on www.dragonflybsd.org now show individual page history through gitweb, and the RecentChanges page will link to diffs for each new edit.

(My apologies for not figuring this out sooner.)

2009/08/01

Postgres 8.1 removal soon

Postgres version 8.1 is going to be removed from pkgsrc soon, since Postgres 8.4 is now available (in general, and in pkgsrc). Speak up on the pkgsrc mailing lists if this is a significant problem for you.

2009/08/01

NFS clients work after a reboot

A recent change from Matthew Dillon makes it possible for a NFS client connection to be cleanly re-established after a reboot. Previously, the server would lose track of the client.

2009/07/31

Gzip expands

Thanks to Xin Li, gzip now supports pack and can unpack archives in that format.

2009/07/30

DevFS this weekend

The DevFS Summer of Code project is going into DragonFly this weekend; be ready for surprises if you update. It’s not complete yet; there’s a few more weeks for Summer of Code, but there’s other work that this code will enable.

2009/07/30

ACPI update to test

Sepherosa Ziehau working on merging some of Alexander Polakov’s ACPI work; testers needed. If you have a system that pitches a fit with ACPI enabled, you would make a perfect subject.

2009/07/28

pkgsrc 2009Q2 announced

The latest quarterly release of pkgsrc, 2009Q2, is out. The release announcement has details on what’s new.

2009/07/27

Autosizing available

Peter Avalos has made it possible for TCP buffers to be automatically sized according to need, which improves performance when latency goes up. It’s already in.