A running description of activity related to DragonFly BSD.
DragonFly 5.4.0 has been released. This release bring a new compiler (gcc 8.0), asymmetric NUMA support, and a number of new and updated drivers for virtual machine devices and network.
My users@ post has the details on upgrading, as do the release notes. Note there’s a step in there to update initrd, which has been available for the last few releases, though I’ve never mentioned it. It’s probably a good idea, since that builds a mini “rescue” system, in case disaster strikes.
I’ve mentioned it before, but the tool ‘synth‘ is what DragonFly uses to build all the dports binaries – over 30,000 packages, though I’m typing that from memory and not from looking at a tool. Anyway, the one part of the release process I’ve never touched was the package building – and now it’s documented. This document is oriented towards DragonFly releases – but if you wanted to create your own package repo with custom options, this is the way to do it.
I uploaded the current 5.4 release candidate – there’s an ISO and an IMG file, though your local mirror may be a better place to get it than those links. Or just wait; I think the release won’t be long.
Note that I was smart for once and named it ‘rc1’, so if there’s another release candidate, it can be named ‘rc2’. I used ‘rc’ in previous releases and was never sure if I should name a second candidate rc1, rc2…
This week’s BSD Now (notice I’m spelling it correctly now, with a space) has, along with NetBSD and OpenBSD material, happens to talk about NomadBSD, which I’ve never really managed to cover.
If you were looking to run DragonFly on the same disk as another operating system, Dr. Martin Ivanov has advice for you. Similarly, karu.pruun and Pierre-Alain TORET also have something on EFI booting.
We’re overdue for 5.4 to be released. New releases are due every 6 months; I lost track! I plan to work on tagging and building over the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday later this week.
For better or worse, there’s different browser options out there, especially for non-mainstream platforms. You know what I mean. DragonFly developer tuxillo has put together a helpful page listing options and how to get them to build.
If you happen to be using DragonFly from a network location that only allows http/https as outbound traffic, you won’t be able to update /usr/src using defaults. /usr/Makefile pulls DragonFly source using a git:// URL.
The fix is to use the read-only Github mirror. You can set origin manually or just change GITHOST in /usr/Makefile (or GITURL_SRC if you are on DragonFly-master) to “https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD”.
(Guess what I did today? Updated to note it’s different on -master. Thanks tuxillo for reminding me of this whole thing.)
Aaron LI has added openresolv to DragonFly. According to the commit message, this is for dhcpcd(8) support later. It’s added as resolvconf(8), needed for IPv6 DHCP support and a replacement for rtsold(8).
DragonFly has an automated installer, called PFI, for “pre-flight installer”. It’s not well-known, and there isn’t a man page to link to for it that I can find. Because of that, I jump at any chance I can get to link documentation or example configs.
The performance page on dragonflybsd.org has been updated with numbers on symmetric multiprocessing performance. (Scroll to the 2018 section.)
If you were looking to install DragonFly into part of your already-in-use hard drive, here’s some conversation about the process.
To add to my ongoing slow fiddle with DragonFly: I’ve noted how to install in Hyper-V, and how to use Cygwin to connect to run X. Here’s another step: if you are using PuTTY/Pageant, as I am, and want to connect, Cygwin/X needs to be told to listen on TCP. Find your /usr/bin/startxwin file in Cygwin and change serverargs to:
serverargs=”-listen tcp”
And then in PuTTY, under Connection -> Session -> X11, check “Enable X11 forwarding”, set X display location to “:0.0”, and locate your .Xauthority file. It will be in your user’s Cygwin home directory. (tips found here)
plink can be used to create shortcuts – open an xterm directly into your DragonFly VM from your Windows desktop, for instance, with a shortcut that runs ‘plink <sessionname> xterm’.
If you are running a slightly newer version of Windows and aren’t trying to accommodate a ‘legacy’ PuTTY install, using Windows Subsystem for Linux may work better; I have not yet tried.
For the future edification of others: I mentioned I installed DragonFly under Hyper-V on a Windows 10 laptop. I wanted to be able to open a terminal on DragonFly while in my Windows environment. I have that now; here’s what I did:
At this point, a terminal window should pop up on your Windows machine, showing your DragonFly username@hostname as the prompt. You are set!
Next steps – getting this working with PuTTY, Pageant, and Plink.
BSDNow 265 has a con report – the just-finished EuroBSDCon 2018 in Romania, plus the usual roundup of news items. One news item that will be useful someday: how to perform a BIOS update on a non-Windows computer.
I tried Hyper-V, and of course, I had to install a virtual DragonFly system. Sascha Wildner very helpfully pointed out that DragonFly on Hyper-V requires a legacy network adapter and a gen-1 image type; both changes you can make during initial setup. I’m noting it here for the benefit of future people walking down the same path.
Note: pick ‘legacy BIOS’ during the actual DragonFly install, too.
Michael Neumann wrote up his first contribution to Ravenports, some time ago, but I just noticed it now. If you find it inspiring, your next step is Chapter 14: Port Creation Walk-though.
There’s several new mirrors for DragonFly, all listed on the mirrors page thanks to Matthias Schmidt: Checkdomain GmbH, Philipps-University Marburg (both in Germany), and KoDDos (Japan).
Reminder: the next KnoxBUG meeting is tomorrow, September 5th, with a demo of TridentOS.
There’s a social meeting for NYCBUG tomorrow, September 5th, at Suspenders. As far as I can tell, the only difference between “technical meeting” and “social meeting” is if there’s a presentation. Go, if you are near.