You should set hostname in /etc/rc.conf. I am mentioning this now because not doing it kept me from running X apps from a DragonFly system on a Windows 10 system with vcxsrv, and I wasted half an hour of my life figuring that out. Apparently this is a lesson I need to keep relearning.
Lazy Reading for 2019/09/08
This week is a nice mix between useful and entertaining.
- Oregon Trail, the cabinet game. (via)
- Cover story: The curious case of a shared database. (via)
- The Art of Warez. (via)
- The humane way to take control of your phone. (via)
- A terminal user interface for Mastodon. (via)
- Write Fuzzable Code.
- At least one Vim trick you might not know.
- Reliable after 50 years: The Apollo Guidance Computer’s switching power supplies.
- GPG2 cheatsheet.
- Workarounds for semantic problems and More workarounds for semantic problems.
- Found in previous link: this is working Perl and PostScript at the same time.
- A List of My Twenty Favorite Works of Interactive Fiction.
- One byte used to cost a dollar.
- The “Tonya Harding Solution” to computer benchmarks.
- The History of Tetris Randomizers. (via)
Scrolling in X
I’ve seen a similar config other places, but it never hurts to note: scrolling in X requires just a few xorg config lines.
Synaptics touchpad notes
pkg and pkg-static
If you upgrade DragonFly and one of the shared libraries used by pkg gets updated, you can’t run pkg until you get files, but pkg is the program you use to bring in new files. This chicken-and-egg problem is solved with pkg-static, a version of pkg built without shared libraries.
You may have noticed some format flip-flopping between pkg and pkg-static if you had to run it after the most recent DragonFly upgrade; that is fixed. There’s a larger issue of certificate installation identified there; I don’t know a solution to it, but I do want to mention this for next time pkg breaks for someone – pkg-static will work as backup, including to bring in a new version of pkg.
A ps tip
If you want to see all running threads on your system, grouped by process, with who ran it and how much memory it’s taking, it’s easy: ps -alxRH.
I mention this because it’s easier to remember ‘alxRH’ than it is to find all the right options in the ps man page.
A small rconfig update
Aaron LI’s fixed a bug in rconfig tag names. This is minor, but I think rconfig(8) is a very powerful and underappreciated utility, so I point it out whenever possible.
First time dbus reminder
I’ve mentioned dbus and DragonFly a few times; here’s one of those “you will eventually do this” tidbits: if for some reason you are installing it for the first time, remember to start it with the rc script.
An easier upgrade on DragonFly
You’re probably used to the ‘make buildworld; make buildkernel; make installkernel; etc etc’ dance on each upgrade at this point. ‘Tse’ has created a script that rolls that all up into a single action.
Tip for multiple system emulation
In a larger users@ thread about multiple BSD development systems and how to set them up, I spied this tip on making multiple local virtual machines all reachable via SSH.
HAMMER2 and crypto
‘daftaupe‘ has updated the installation page for DragonFly to note what different steps you use when doing a manual install over encrypted HAMMER2.
vkernel as background process
A question on starting up a virtual kernel on DragonFly and sticking it in the background led to some suggestions – follow the thread.
DragonFly, mysql, ipv6, and defaults
I am posting this so it can help someone else, someday.
I have a DragonFly-5.4 system. I installed mysql56-server, and started it up. By default, it listens on “*”, which meant it listens on a local socket and IPv6 ::1 – not 127.0.0.1.
2019-06-04 13:35:03 15833 [Note] IPv6 is available.
2019-06-04 13:35:03 15833 [Warning] Failed to reset IPV6_V6ONLY flag (error: 45). The server will listen to IPv6 addresses only.
I put bind_address=127.0.0.1 into my.cnf to get IPv4 loopback to work. Local socket connections still worked either way. I’m not using IPv6 on this machine, so this solution works in this situation. I’m not sure my mysql decides to go only IPv6 based on a strange flag, but mysql is reliably unreliable.
part-by-label: an additional benefit
Remember the commit that autocreates human-readable disk device names under /dev? (Here’s a reminder.) It’s now in 5.4 – technically, since 5.4.2. Anyway, it will automatically identify the root USB disk when you boot from a USB .img file, so you no longer have to guess which /dev/daX file it was – usually da8 but sometimes you got a surprise instead.
AWS sample file for DragonFly
Here’s something that might be useful: an example cleaning file for creating an AWS DragonFly image. Here’s the blob if you want to see what’s in it. I assume you will want to install awscli to use.
DragonFly on AWS
This timer fix enables booting DragonFly on AWS. Well, that and the ena(4) driver. I haven’t tried it yet.
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarks
DragonFly now has ministat(1), imported from FreeBSD thanks to Aaron LI. Use it on the output from your next run of benchmarking tools.
Lazy Reading for 2019/04/21
It’s bizarre links week this week. Well, more than usual, I mean.
- The Infocom dump, via multiple places.
- Related: What is ZIL anyway?
- Techbros ruin eating, again.
- The Very Mathematical History of a Perfect Color Combination. I’ve mentioned Solarized before. (via)
- A fully reversible USB cable. (via)
- Brix System, life size LEGOs. (via)
- Useful/curious datasets. (also via)
- Cut / Fold Templates. Neat paper, neat interface, neat animations. (via)
- Quake is for everyone. (via)
- A look at IBM S/360 core memory: In the 1960s, 128 kilobytes weighed 610 pounds.
- One reason ed(1) was a good editor back in the days of V7 Unix.
- The Failure of the Great Tip-Free Restaurant Experiment. Linked because of the eternal truth of that last paragraph.
- Storage Performance Reference Guide: Interconnect Maximum Effective Data Rates. BSD site bit not BSD-related.
- Dwarf Fortress diary: The Basement Of Curiosity episode eight – All Hail the War Mayor.
- Dwarf Fortress diary: The Basement Of Curiosity episode nine – Titanfall.
- Efficiency Machines: The Operating System Recontextualized. It’s about a game.
- ArchiveBox. The open source self-hosted web archive. (via)
- Avoiding the gravity well of webbiness in gopher. (via)
- Retro web, simple web, and alternatives to the web. (via)
- I like the whole “computers-in-wood” asthetic [sic].
- Avalanche Noise Generator Notes.
HAMMER2 snapshots, a story
It’s always helpful to see other people’s questions and answers; in this case it’s a conversation about HAMMER2 snapshots and how to manage them. (Follow the thread)
Unrelated: GPS Rollover soon
Unrelated to BSD: GPS rollover is happening a few days from now. This affects most people very little, and a few people a lot, but I mention it also to make you think about the systems that underpin our technology.