DragonFly – Page 65 – DragonFly BSD Digest

2014/08/25

New kernel and new target

You should perform a full world and kernel install if on master.

Several people (including me) have been getting bit by a problem: when performing an installworld with a changed kernel, the vn kernel module is loaded, but it was built by the previous kernel and may cause problems when it doesn’t match up.

To fix that, vn is now built in, instead of being a separate module. The rescue initrd (which is what is being mounted when it has this problem) is now installed via a ‘make rescue‘ command that can wait until a successful installworld and reboot.

2014/08/232014/08/22

In Other BSDs for 2014/08/23

Another long list. These are making my Friday nights take some extra effort.

Oolite, an open source game based on Elite. Yes, it runs on BSD. I’m surprised I haven’t posted about it before. (via)
My Experience Switching from Slackware Linux to FreeBSD.
A week of pkgsrc, #3.
DiscoverBSD for 2014/08/18.
OpenBSD is gaining a rcctl(8) tool for automation.
Phabricator on FreeBSD installation notes.
20 years of FreeBSD ports.
“Does BSD perform disk caching less aggressively?” I bet the person asking was using two different machines at different times with different loads, which means he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.
The FreeBSD Foundation’s August Update is out.
Some people don’t like pkg.
The EuroBSDCon 2014 travel grant has been extended, and Google has grants to bring more female computer scientists there.
Spatializer support in NetBSD.
NetBSD is keeping up with the gpl2 version of GNU Make.
PC-BSD 10.0.3-RC1 has been tagged.
FreeBSD has a new automounter.
FreeBSD has a set of keymap conversion tools. Might be useful to someone?
FreeBSD now goes up to 256 CPUs. (I thought this already happened?)
Yay cross-pollination!
Apparently people don’t pay attention to file contents.
IPv6 tunneling on OpenBSD.
OpenBSD has replaced BIND with unbound in the base system.

2014/08/22

Acer Chromebook c720p support

If you remember the earlier work to support DragonFly on An Acer c720 Chromebook, it’s been repeated for the c720p. The “p” means it’s a touchscreen.

2014/08/21

pkg upgrade tip for pkg 1.3

DragonFly’s using pkg 1.3, at least on master, and I’ve seen a few people report an error message when performing ‘pkg upgrade’. The error message usually includes something like:

pkg: need to re-create repo Avalon to upgrade schema vers

If you get this, do ‘pkg update -f’ and it will complete.

2014/08/20

New dhclient and other improvements

DragonFly’s dhclient will now retry failed interfaces and handle being re-run gracefully. This is a blessing for anyone who has had a flaky link. Matthew Dillon’s made two other improvements for booting that will also improve boot time when networks go missing.

2014/08/192014/08/18

Moving past ports

Here’s a nice advantage for dports and DragonFly: since it’s an overlay on FreeBSD ports, it’s possible to move to newer or different versions of software without waiting for it to happen in FreeBSD. For example: there’s a newer version of the xorg intel driver now in dports – newer than what’s in ports.

2014/08/182014/08/18

Full kernel build for DragonFly

If you are tracking DragonFly master, your next kernel build should be full, not quick.

2014/08/18

iwn trick: ifconfig wlan0 -ht

If you have a DragonFly system with an iwn wireless chipset, and you are having trouble connecting and running in the 5Ghz part of the spectrum only, here’s a tip: the -ht switch may fix it.

2014/08/15

DragonFly 3.8.2 images uploaded

It took me a little while, but DragonFly 3.8.2 images are uploaded now to the main site. Check the 3.8.2 changelog if you didn’t before. This is a recommended upgrade for the newer OpenSSL, and should otherwise have little impact on the programs you have installed.

2014/08/11

Haswell GPU support in DragonFly

There’s been good progress in Francois Tigeot’s work on Haswell graphics support in DragonFly. If you have one of those newer units, you should be able to use the i915 driver with it now – as long as you keep acceleration off. (You won’t notice any difference in 2D anyway.)

2014/08/082014/08/08

DragonFly 3.8.2 rolled

I’ve tagged DragonFly 3.8.2, which exists mostly to accommodate the latest release of OpenSSL. (Security fixes, which should not be a surprise.) I will build images as soon as I get a chance.

2014/08/082014/08/08

drm/i915 support update

If you have a i915 video chipset (which appears to be most every recent laptop), Francois Tigeot would like you to try his huge patch. It doesn’t support Haswell chips yet, though it lays some of the groundwork for it.

2014/08/072014/08/08

Name your favorite DragonFly features

If you have a particular favorite thing in DragonFly, Damian Vincino would like to know about it.

2014/08/062014/08/06

pkg 1.3 out

There’s a new version of pkg out – 1.3. (via) That’s an announcement on the FreeBSD-ports-announce list. Since DragonFly also uses pkg, that means it’s available for DragonFly too. John Marino reported on IRC that he’s testing a bulk build now, using it on DragonFly.

2014/07/30

Hammer and mirrored disks

A frequent question people ask when trying Hammer is “How can I do software RAID to cover a disk failure?” Hammer provides for streaming one volume to another, so you can duplicate drives, but there isn’t an automatic failover mechanism as there is with a RAID setup. The first answer is usually “get hardware RAID“; my preferred solution. The remaining software solutions are vinum, ccd, and lvm for DragonFly.

2014/07/292014/07/29

Rust ported to DragonFly

Rust has been ported to DragonFly by Michael Neumann. His blog has implementation details, and you can pull from his repo to get a buildable version. This may be useful, as he notes, for anyone wanting to build Rust on other BSDs.

2014/07/242014/07/23

rcreload in DragonFly

Thanks to Zachary Crownover, rcreload is available in DragonFly. (It’s always good to see a new contributor name.)

2014/07/23

libradius updates

Nuno Antunes brought in a significant number of fixes for libradius. He’s been doing other work recently on netgraph7 support, so I’m linking to this as a ‘signpost’ commit.

2014/07/22

A sound project for you

If you were looking for something to do, finishing Francois Tigeot’s sound update would help a lot of people. He’s currently tied up with i915 support work. The patches need device cloning to work with devfs, and midi removal.

2014/07/212014/07/22

mrsas(4) made default for Thunderbolt RAID

As mentioned before, the mrsas(4) driver works best for ‘Thunderbolt’ RAID controllers. Now, the switch has happened.