MidnightBSD Developer Journal

The Opera Software browser was updated to 9.21.  /usr/mports/opera

I added a Limewire port tonight. This will only work with i386 and you must have a binary Java port installed.

I did a little ports work tonight. screen and rtorrent were updated. rtorrent is at 0.11.4 which is the most recent stable version. screen is now at 4.0.3.

I also added screenie which allows you to get a list of backgrounded tasks using the screen facilities.

Steven Kreuzer has ported OpenBSD's BSD licensed sdiff to FreeBSD.  I'm experimenting with this tonight.  If it seems to be working well, I will commit it to current.  Please send in objections.  Below is the e-mail:

On 5/17/07, Steven Kreuzer <skreuzer at f2o.org> wrote:
>
> Greetings-
>
> OpenBSD includes a version of sdiff written by our very own Ray
> Lai, and released to the public domain.
>
> In a quest to remove as much GPL code from FreeBSD as possible, I
> ported it over.
>
> If you want to try it out, You can download the source at
> http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer/code/sdiff.tar.gz
>
> To install:
> $ su -
> # cd to /usr/src
> # patch -p0 < /path/to/sdiff-cvs-merge.patch
> # sh /path/to/sdiff.shar
> # make buildworld && make installworld
>
> Let me know if you encounter any problems. I would like to see if
> I can get the GNU version of sdiff removed and replaced with this
> in FreeBSD. It might be somewhat of an uphill battle, but it is
> worth a shot.
>
> --
> Steven Kreuzer
> http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer 

Just adding my Technorati Profile

Both the sendmail and dovecot ports were updated to the most recent versions.

I've added a new torrent for the latest 0.1 snapshot. The link is 0 1-20070525-SNAP-i386-disc1 iso

I updated the MySQL port to 5.0.41.  I added a bittorrent client, ctorrent.  adodb for php was added to mports/databases. 

I've updated linux-firefox to 2.0.0.4.  This is a recommended security update for all users of that port. 

The GENERIC kernel configuration is now SMP enabled.  With new processors shipping with at least two cores, it makes sense to look forward with MidnightBSD.  By the time we ship 1.0, these new systems should be commonplace.  This change is only in CURRENT and will not be done in STABLE. 

I just purchased a Widescreen display for my PC.  It was a low cost (read cheap) display from westinghouse.  I couldn't get X11 to display anything except at 1280x1024 which isn't even supported by the display!  Very strange.  After a little googling, I learned about the ModeLine property for monitors in X11.  I've written a blog entry on the setting changes here.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1629259

This could effect MidnightBSD distribution in Germany. 

ctriv has created a new i386 snapshot. Look for 0.1-20070525-SNAP which includes the latest security update.

Security Update

The recent file magic issue discovered in FreeBSD has been patched in MidnightBSD. Current and Stable have been updated. cvsup to get the latest updates.

Documentation Update

ctriv updated the documentation on mports.  Please review the new policy document if you are developing ports. 

Installation Instructions

Our current snapshots are out of date.  It is recommended that you download the most recent update and do the following:

1. Install the most recent snapshot for your architecture
2. Use anonymous cvs or cvsup to update the src and mports collections.  See the MidnightBSD website for more on this.
3. Update MidnightBSD using the checked out source by building the new code.  (buildworld + buildkernel + installkernel + reboot + installworld + mergemaster)  Note that mergemaster -p is probably not needed unless you get an error about audit
4. Build and install mports using the new version. 
   
5. Report any bugs to http://bugreport.midnightbsd.org

I've been quite busy with real life lately.  ctriv and wintellect have been working on the MidnightBSD mports system.  Our ports tree changes have been coming along nicely.  Many ports are working on i386 and amd64. 

Tonight I've been adding some benchmarking applications.  Here's a run from bonnie

defiant# bonnie
File './Bonnie.7486', size: 104857600
Writing with putc()...done
Rewriting...done
Writing intelligently...done
Reading with getc()...done
Reading intelligently...done
Seeker 1...Seeker 2...Seeker 3...start 'em...done...done...done...
              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
          100 38765 33.0 26854  8.0 32064  7.0 111012 99.9 1663688 100.0 62714.6 176.0

This isn't a real "benchmark" since I didn't follow proper testing procedures, but its still interesting.  I'm running UFS2 on a Western Digital SATA I 80GB 7200 RPM disk, Pentium D 805 2.5 GB RAM, and an intel ICH8 chipset. 

WIth the mozilla port, chatzilla, composer and mail work but not ldap.

We've got Seamonkey building natively on MBSD now.  We have only tested the browser and this is not 100% yet, but its a good start.  The port was committed.  We did notice some problems with the install process.  It was tested on amd64 so far. 

If you subscribe to mbsd's rss feed, this might be more friendly.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mbsd

While we're still working on it, I am now able to make install the mozilla browser.  We still need to get mail, chatzilla and other things working with it.

seamonkey or firefox would be nice as mozilla is a bit old.  I do hope we'll get there eventually.  Mozilla still runs faster than the linux browser on my system.

Special thanks to archite and ctriv for helping with this port.

The linux versions of these ports should be properly installing their linux-portname script to start them.  Previously, the path was wrong and set to a fake destdir.  I fixed this last night.  The port versions were not bumped though.  If you installed any of these ports before the mports changes, you don't need to do anything.

I'm committing a few improvements to src/sys/dev/firewire today.  Most of these changes were done in the FreeBSD project by Hidetoshi Shimokawa. 

I committed a fix for the architecture issue with the mozilla port.  Next step is to try to fix make package and work on some of the other "options" like mail, calendar, etc.

The other BSD projects seem to be actively working on SMP.  This could promote more code reuse between the BSDs. 

OpenBSD has added some nice UltraSparc III support.

Lastly, if you've been reluctant to check out ports since our big todo, this might finally be a good time to do it.  Quite a few ports do work now.  We've also started updating ports again with security updates and things. 

I'm debating what to do with the installer.  For the first release, we planned on using sysinstall and then writing a new installer.  sysinstall does not scale well in terms of adding distribution sets.  It uses a bit for each one limiting the total to 32.  Since we have a lot of packages to install for a desktop system this isn't very helpful.  The easy hack is out.