Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has updated gcc to version 3.4.6, and Thomas E. Spanjaard has committed ACPI quirks support, which can fix over-fast timer problems when running DragonFly under VMWare, among other things.
Now on UnixReview.com: Examining the Novell Certified Linux Professional 10 Certification, a review of the Komodo IDE (which I can’t get to work on DragonFly, darnit), and a book review of “Cisco Network Admission Control Volume II: NAC Framework Deployment and Troubleshooting“.
Matt Emmerton has ported a number of the *context calls to DragonFly; this should assist with building some 3rd-party software. It has led to some discussion of syscalls and where they need to happen. (Start at the most recent post and read back.)
Virtual kernels seems to be running stable; the branch for the 1.8 release will happen Tuesday after cleanup. While virtual kernels are primarily for development work, there’s other options. (even more options)
Virtual kernel development is proceeding quickly enough that I already have to summarize two days of development. Virtual kernels are able to finish a complete buildworld, at relatively good speed for an unoptimized system a few days old. This will be improved soon, with more room for development. Also, networking is working well, even with multiple virtual network interfaces. Oh, and various stat functions now work too.
Petr Janda wants someone to create a pkgsrc package for mod_cfg_ldap. Any takers?
Sepherosa Ziehau was able to get ping working between a virtual and real host, though Matthew Dillon had trouble with DHCP. Matthew’s status report indicates floating-point works now and a buildworld (a stress test if ever there was one) comes close to completing.
Jonathan Buschmann along with some other folks is taking on the porting of CARP to DragonFly, as a student project. The idea has met with universal acclaim.
Sepherosa Ziehau has already managed to construct a virtual network connection to match virtual kernels, ridiculously quickly.
So, there’s a Gentoo/FreeBSD project, that attempts to graft the two systems together. The lead developer in that project misread the old 4-clause BSD license on some older files, and paniced repeatedly. (It even made it to the howling wasteland.) Of course, the problem is not actually a problem – it’s caused by worry about a clause that was removed years ago. Dru Lavigne has a nice writeup, and Wes Peters summed it up best in comments: “Now everybody get back to work. This is a 7-year-old nonissue…”
Matthew Dillon reports it is now possible to boot a virtual kernel and log in using that virtual system. The big remaining step (other than bugfixing) is a virtual network interface.
Matthew Dillon is renaming some I/O calls. It shouldn’t cause major problems, but as always, make sure to do a complete buildworld/buildkernel when next upgrading your bleeding-edge system.
Matthew Dillon is making trapframe changes – it will require a complete buildworld if you are following bleeding edge code. Read his post for more details.
Matthew Dillon posted more and more about his vkernel progress, including build instructions. Further discussion described the vkernel work as similar to User Mode Linux, with the potential for acceleration.
Matthew Dillon has posted a list of what remains on his virtual kernel work, along with the news that it can partially boot – see his post for the progress. It should be ready shortly after the next release. If you want to help, one of the needed things is a virtual network interface, perhaps similar to Qemu’s tap.
TLS system calls are being renamed by Matthew Dillon. If you’re running HEAD (bleeding edge code), this will require both a kernel and world rebuild on your next update.
The Register has an interesting old story that describes (and links to more of the story) how Bill Joy put together vi. (Thanks, duplicate postville)
Pkgsrc version 2006Q4, a ‘known stable’ release, has been announced. It’s available through cvs, and Joerg’s binary archive should be updated soon to match the new packages.
Jeremy C. Reed wrote in to announce a new book. He’s created this wiki for the purpose of writing the “Quick Guide to BSD Administration”, which uses the BSDA Certification Requirements Document as a guideline. There’s regularly generated PDFs to show progress.