MidnightBSD Developer Journal

This weekend, crash@ and I started updating Gnome ports to 2.22.3 (from 2.22.0).  Not all Gnome related ports will be changed.  Several bug fixes are included in this update.   

We hope to have a magus run this week provided the updated cluster software is ready.  ctriv@ has been working on parallel operation for nodes with more than one core.  Some of the new GX270 dell systems the computer science department at Eastern Michigan University donated have hyperthreading.  We also have 3 dual core systems with amd64 MidnightBSD available for runs (potentially).  We may do a test run tomorrow if the software is ready.  In this case, hyperthreading is beneficial.  Often, the nodes are fetching files or in some way waiting on IO operations. 

 I just added viewvc to the website.  You may use this in addition to cvsweb.

We've had a lot of mport activity this week.  In particular, several dependancies were fixed for Gnome, mono was updated to 1.2.5.2 (and it's doc port), and crash@ is working on bugzilla 3.x.  There are several new ports and portlint fixes.

I'm in the process of doing some merges from FreeBSD in our CURRENT for things we can't work on ourselves at the moment.  This will be the last "large" merge from FreeBSD.  We largely ignored certain aspects of the system as we were focusing on magus, mports, and general setup.  After the merge is complete, we plan to diversify this project a great deal more.  The decision to do this merge was a tough one and in the end it came down to a poll among developers.  Most of us felt that we could benefit from improved hardware support, updated linux emulation, and jemalloc.  Another words, we're using some of the good aspects of FreeBSD 7.0, but not the whole thing.  

Assume CURRENT is broken and will not compile until November.  That's my estimate on this.  Upon completion, I plan to focus on the installer (finally).  Our next anticipated release is 0.2.1-RELEASE for sparc64, followed by 0.3-RELEASE sometime next year.  We hope to make 0.3 the last in the 0.x releases.  That would mean a 1.0 release in 2010.  If we're ahead of the curve, 0.3 might become 1.0.  This comes down to usability and reliability.

Most of the requests after 0.2.1 have been for improved hardware support and changes to the gui setup.  (graphical desktop)  I've also had a few people complain about the 3 CDs.  We're considering switching to DVD releases in the future (except sparc64).  I'd like feedback on hardware support, and how many people still need CDs on i386 (x86).  I think it's safe to go dvd with amd64 as newer machines tend to read DVDs.  

The other request I've been getting is for a new live dvd.  I plan on working on that in November as well.  The installer project requires a livecd or livedvd anwyay.  I've heard requests for GNUstep and KDE live dvds.  Is there anything else users would like on them?

The sparc64 package build completed.  It's taken like two weeks.  We had 63 failures and 160 ports that were not tested.  57 ports were skipped.   That leaves us with 1479 passes and 456 warns.  Very good considering this isn't a highly active architecture.  

I'm planning on rolling a release in the next week, but I am very busy so I don't want to promise a date.  I doubt the line is very big for this one anyway.  Packages will be put on the FTP server soon.

 I just installed a new SSL certificate for www.midnightbsd.org.  You can use it with cvsweb, etc.  

I added several ports last night at the request of a user.  Amarok is now available.  I recommend that you grab the gcc 4.1 package before building as this will save you a lot of time.  Without a newer version of GCC, I received several C++ errors.  It sucks, but it's better than not having the port.  GNUstep users will already have this installed most likely.

With that port, I brought in several additional audio libraries including support for Dell and Creative mp3 players.  

I also updated the Opera  browser and XChat.  

Some of these ports may require more testing.  ctriv@ is working on some exciting new features for magus so we must wait to run the new ports until that has been well tested.  We're also setting up the build cluster at EMU again with some newer nodes.  

One of the most common problems we've had is getting MidnightBSD.  Previously, I wrote about a torrent available for disc1.  One user has reported problems with that torrent.   The other options are typically the mirrors.  

The main site is currently rsyncing with two mirrors to distribute the new amd64 release.  The site will most likely be slow for the next 24 hours.  

I've been asked why I don't distribute using bittorrent myself. There are several reasons.

1. I need my bandwidth for the website, etc.
2. I have Comcast (business class) which does not officially block torrents, but things mysteriously get very slow after using one.  

I did post a torrent using a third party tracker for 0.1-RELEASE and things went very poorly.  The tracker was often down.  I don't have the speed to run my own tracker.  I can't get away with this at work either.  

 Purchase CDs

For those of you who can't download ISOs.... 

I started the build for 0.2.1-RELEASE amd64 today.  If everything goes according to plan (insert Dr. Evil laugh) we'll have a release on the FTP soon.  

Unlike i386, this version will not contain GNUstep or related ports.  We had some build issues with GNUstep on this platform.  Oddly, it appears to have built on sparc64.   

I managed to get mports/www/browser working on two machines today.  There are still some issues to work out with dependancies and some tweaks to plists depending on those dependancies.  Still, it's a big step forward as we can distribute Gnome with this.

I recently released MidnightBSD 0.2.1 for i386. Now, I'm working toward a release for amd64 and sparc64. Tonight, the packages finished building for AMD64.

It's taken six days to build them. I only have one machine available and although it's a core 2 duo, it can only use one core.

I'm copying the packages to the FTP server now. Then I'll have a nightmare rsync cycle and finally I'll be ready to make the release ISOs.

Someone has posted a torrent for disc1 of MidnightBSD 0.2.1-RELEASE i386. 

The website has been very slow today.  In addition to some rsync activity with the mirrors (limited), we had 3,763 visits and 10363 page views for 9/2/2008 according to Google Analytics. 

If you want to download ISOs, use the ISC or cs.emich.edu mirrors.  The metalink files might be helpful too.  I don't think allbsd has been able to mirror yet.  

DistroWatch.com has updated their MidnightBSD entry to coincide with the new 0.2.1-RELEASE. MidnightBSD is currently the top entry on their main home page.  We've had over 500 referrals today from their website so far. 

The page also includes information about packages available on MidnightBSD.  It allows you to compare our offerings with other BSD and Linux systems.

 The 32bit version of MidnightBSD is now available on the FTP server.  Mirrors are rsyncing.  This version is 3 ISOs where the first one is the OS and a few packages (X.org), and disc 2 and 3 contain packages.  

The version number is 0.2.1 due to a problem with sysinstall found late in the engineering process.  It was easier to fix it, bump the os version, and tag cvs rather than retag and deal with that mess.  The versions are identical aside from sysinstall and src/etc/firstboot.  No need to update if you have 0.2-RELEASE installed.

Here is the changelog for 0.2.x.  Please note that the dates at the end are before 0.1 and 0.1.1 as we branched at that time.  A few of the changes were present in 0.1.x releases, but not many.

CHANGES

20080830:
MidnightBSD 0.2.1-RELEASE

Oops, fix some bugs with sysinstall's handling of packages found on the release ISOs.  Tweak etc/firstboot while where here.

20080829:
MidnightBSD 0.2-RELEASE

20080703:
Correct problem with pcc and DESTDIR that affected creating live cds
and jails. 

        sysinstall would incorrectly truncate DHCP info when configuring
        ipv4 networking.  This was the result of a bad patch several months
        ago.  Fix this error.  Found via testing a snapshot.

20080627:
Add firmware(9), WEP, CCMP, TKIP to GENERIC.

Add glabel to GENERIC.

Intel ICH8 mobile chipset used on some iMacs included with ata.

pcc connected to the build on i386. (alternative compiler)

20080613:
Begin work for MidnightBSD 0.2-PRERELEASE

20080528:
Sendmail 8.14.3

20080516:
ssh-vulnkey allows you to look for vulnerable ssh keys that
were generated on Debian and Ubuntu hosts over the last
few years.  sshd can block offending keys with a configuration
option.

The elf note on binaries is now set to MidnightBSD.

20080514:
Fixed a number of problems with pcc.  It is not yet connected
to the build, but usable on i386 hosts.  You may use it 
by make; make install in /usr/src/usr.bin/pcc.  It will
install in /usr/local as some of the files conflict with
GCC versions. __MidnightBSD__ is defined in PCC as well.

System headers were fixed to allow pcc to compile many binaries
on MidnightBSD.  bin/cp will work now for instance.

20080430:
__MidnightBSD__ is now defined via gcc.  This can be tested
to determine we're running on MidnightBSD in the preprocessor.

20080429:
Import bind 9.4.2 with threading

libpthread (KSE) and libthr are built earlier

pcvt(4) removed!

Alias added for core2 cpus.

Alpha and PC98 only utilities removed from usr/sbin

syslogd, adduser, rmuser, mergemaster and mailwrapper have been
improved.  See the man pages for info.

periodic scripts will not send emails with empty message bodies.
See mailwrapper fix.

20080410:
Sync cpdup with DragonFly.  Add parallel transaction support and
-l flag to line-buffer stdout and stderr.

20080406:
Import bzip2 1.05
Import OpenSSH 4.9p1

20080322:
The default umask was changed to 022.

/usr/X11R6 paths were removed from several config files.

.mkshrc files are now installed for root.

20080316:
FIx a problem with gif0 tunnels and neighbors with IPV6.

20080312:
Add lndir from X.org.  This aides in the porting of MirPorts.

New OS versions were added to the mapage code (groff)

20080310:
Correct a buffer overflow in ppp.

20080308:
Remove /usr/X11R6 from manpath config.

20080307:
Atheros driver no longer has several options set
which corrects building in tinderbox on all three platforms.

Added a new macro to sx.h which returns true if the current
thread holds an exclusive lock on a specifix sx.

Removed OS/2's HPFS file system.   It's not maintained and
I don't know anyone using OS/2 or ecomstation these days.
My copy is in the closet collecting dust.

20080306:
Synced tinderbox with FreeBSD.  Modified it for MidnightBSD.
Developers can now use it to check src builds.

20080303:
Add mksh to /etc/shells, made some adjustments to options
for mksh builds per suggestion upstream.

USB HID table updated with modern hardware list.

Updated BSD family true (we're not in there yet)

iso3166 file updated and import of tzdata2007k for 
new time zones.

Updated mksh to latest version R33.

20080228:
Remplaced the random IP id generation code with a new
version by Amit Klein.

20080221:
Sendfile write only permissions fix.

Removed some HPFS and PC98 code.

iso639 file sycned with DragonFly.

20080128:
Changed NTP configuration so that ips aren't cached
so multiple servers are used.

Fix an issue with fork() in libpthread.

20080121:
Add virtualization detection to set the HZ rate
according to a VM present.  VMWare and Parallels
should work better like this.

Change to full x11 install in sysinstall.  Add
xorg 7 support.

20080115:
Fix the handling of PTY's.  CVE-2008-0216

20080105:
mport delete code added, USE_MPORT_TOOLS knob aded.

20080101:
Happy New Year

20071123:
Update sendmail to 8.14.2

20071120:
Update system compiler to gcc 3.4.6.

20071023:
Updated mksh to R31d.

20070911:
Updated mksh to version R31b.

Fixed stderr output in libpthread.  Previously it was
written to stdout.

20070831:
Added dot.mkshrc file to support the recent change to 
mksh from OpenBSD's ksh derived from pdksh.  

Added new firewall configuration.  ipfw is enabled by default
with a "desktop" configuration.  Consult /etc/rc.firewall
or ipfw show to see the ruleset used.  You can disable
ipfw by setting firewall_enable="NO" in /etc/rc.conf This
change only effects IPv4.  IPv6 does not have a firewall
enabled by default.

20070814:
Removed GNU tar source.  We've been using BSD tar 
for awhile.

20070806:
Finished removing umapfs and autofs from the tree.

20070804:
BIND and Tcpdump have been patched for recent vulnerabilities.

We switched to BSD cpio (pax).

20070719:
Imported cpdup from DragonFly as /bin/cpdup

20070716:
Update GNU cpio to 2.8. 

20070410:
cvs was updated to 1.12.13.  cvsbug was removed.
cvs now behaves similarly to DragonFly's cvs with
most of their local changes.  

I hope to get another architecture uploaded in a few days, but I want to look at a few outstanding issues listed below.

There are a few issues with packages for this release.

• gtkjj missing?
• vim failed  - ctags & cscope?
• gvfs, goffice failed
• wine failed?
• gimp-app failed - missing libgtkhtml
• emacs and xemacs conflict - can't both be installed.
• xchat - failed missing gtk spell
• classpath failed
• mutt failed missing depends
• samba failed?

 I'm starting a magus run for sparc64.  This will build on deltaflyer, which is a 500mhz netra t1 with 512MB RAM.  If this goes well, I'll try to do a sparc release later in the week.

Due to my snafu with sysinstall, 0.2-RELEASE has problems installing packages.  I could kick myself for not testing this properly, but it happens when you're drinking and coding.  

Here's the new schedule:

i386

We'll have 0.2.1-RELEASE ready for i386 in the next few days.  I'm not going to rush testing it this time just so we can be "done".  I've already created some patches to fix the above mentioned problem and am building a test snap with packages to verify.  If that goes well, I'll tag 0.2.1 and do the final build. 

amd64

This can't be started until 0.2.1 is done for i386.  I'm hoping mid-week, but I start getting busy on Wednesday.

sparc64

While I haven't made a final decision on this, I decided to start updating one of my sun machines to 0.2.1 so that I can build packages.  It usually takes a week with 3 machines on magus and I've only got one setup at the moment.  If my second machine and ctriv@'s comes into play, the earliest would be Friday.  If so, this would be our first sparc64 release.

 and i found a problem with the ISOs.  I'll generate new ones tomorrow.  The packages aren't included correctly.

 There's a preliminary release on the FTP server now.  I haven't gone through full testing yet, so avoid it until the developers get through testing the ISOs.  I'll post release notes tomorrow.

Only i386 is up at this time.   If everything goes according to plan, amd64 will be built in the next week.  It will take at least 2 days to build packages and I've had to use that machine for i386 work.  I haven't made a call on sparc64 yet.  

Please tell me if package symlinks are bad on the ftp or files that shouln't be there are there.  I've tried to go through and remove restricted ports and ports listed in mports/LEGAL, but i might have missed something.  It's late and I'm tired.

The magus build cluster has completed the 98 run, so we now have packages for the release.  I'm using scp to move the files to a machine at home.  I plan to get them on the FTP tonight or tomorrow and do a test build.

I've added some documentation on our wiki for make release found in src/release.  It explains how to build MidnightBSD ISOs.