MidnightBSD Developer Journal

GNU cpio was updated to 2.7 in CURRENT last night. Many of the other BSDs use pax for cpio including NetBSD and OpenBSD. We may think about that down the road.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm trying to update many of the applications in contrib. We've got quite a bit of stale software in there.

In the last few days, I've updated bzip2, cpio, less, and tcsh.

I'm considering updates to amd (auto mount...) , diff and so on. diffutils was released in 2002 which was the first update since 1994. FreeBSD did a number of local patches over the years that we inherited so a feature comparison might need to be done and a verification that we aren't depending on anything weird for ports before I can update that. (same goes for patch which is now included in it)

In the case of amd, we wouldn't benefit from new features just a few bug fixes.

Welcome Fred Gibbs (fgibbs) to the MidnightBSD project. He has joined the project to work on documentation. He is a technical writer.

cvs 1.12.13 is now in CURRENT.
tcsh 6.15.00 is now in CURRENT.

We've created a branch which should be more stable. We hope to have a basic release ready by sometime in June.

The first release will include binary packages using the old system. mport will (hopefully) be available between .2 and .4. For the .2 release, we plan to work on the installer. From now on, each release will have a specific goal.

If you find bugs in 0.1, please report them using our bugtracking system (ideally) or our forums.

The first system will most likely be text based with options to install xorg and GNUstep. I have not completed the changes to the installer for GNUstep installation yet. As soon as that is done, I'll post an RC for 0.1.

Also, we had to back out propolice due to breakage in the threading libraries. As we had hoped to do a release, it only made sense not to leave an obvious flaw in the system before branching. We're re-evaluating the patch and also considering just moving toward gcc 4.1.

RELENG_0_1 will have the following (unless a security issue arises):
OpenSSH 4.6p1
tcsh 6.14 (6.15 in CURRENT soon)
Bind 9.3.4
gcc 3.4.4
ksh
OpenNTPD 3.9p1
sendmail
...

bsd.mport.mk is in "alpha" now. There will be continuous testing and changes to ports over the next week as we clean up problems. The new system does a fake install and rolls packages similar to OpenBSD's ports system. As we've been using modified FreeBSD ports for most things, there are several problems with this approach. Ports which do not honor PREFIX are broken. We're working on this issue.

Today, I added two linux flash plugin ports. I also added the linux-mplayer-plugin port but it appears there might be problems with mplayer. I'm going to work on that issue.

I fixed the dependancy in the xine port on an old version of curl so that should be working again. I'm waiting for the test compile to finish.

I've been working on adding several missing tk ports so that we can bring in the FreeBSD mbone category. Most of us don't have a great deal of experience with ipv6 so its a good time to pick it up.

We've also did several changes to the Opera port. The "native" version stopped working unless we used shared QT. The reason for this is our recent pro police patch. That means we can not add the opera linux plugins port, but we were able to get opera to work again on i386 and now on AMD64. (its still 32bit)

I decided to install AMD64 MBSD on my destkop. We didn't have any active developers running it as we've been trying to focus so much on the common desktop case. I'm working on fixing mports and any bugs I encounter. Its actually running much more smoothly on my desktop than the i386 version. There have been some ports problems but i'm taking care of them as I go. I'm also building some packages which I will post on the FTP server at a later date. You will need the propolice patch to use the packages.

I will be making new snapshots soon with propolice included. We're still cleaning up a few things for that snap. Also, I'd like to wait until mports settles down a bit since the index must be clean.

GNUstep compiled after a little hiccup on AMD64. It was actually an excternal dependancy. I need to do more testing on that.

A word of warning, if you have an old install of midnightbsd, consider that propolice is a very intrusive change and you may have problems. After following /usr/src/UPDATING and before buildworld try to compile a simple program linked with pthread or thr. If it works, you're OK.

We've removed giant lock from portions of geom. Please report any unusual behavior.

I just updated sed(1) with several interesting changes from FreeBSD. Yar has done a lot with that lately. I still need to update the man page.

Finally, we're experiencing a lot of HTTP traffic. Our security officer posted a piece on osnews about the Pro Police patch. We've had several people volunteer so its certainly worth the exposure, but our site might be slow. If you are downloading, please be sure to use a mirror.

So far several users have had great success with the new patch. One of my systems experienced a problem with the patch. Any program linked with pthread or thr would seg fault. A few ports are not working well.

If you installed opera, be sure to use the shared library qt version. We are still reviewing other ports.

From our security officer:

After a long weekend and much testing, I have integrated propolice into our system.. This will translate into both a more secure and stable userland, kernel, and mports system. While this is very well tested on OpenBSD and a few other systems, it is still very much beta for us. We will be requiring a lot of testing of both the base system as well as that of mports. While many mports will not be affected, I am certain that many of them have horrid code that will turn up when we least expect it.

This is only the first step in what will become numerous security changes to our base system. While we are creating a Desktop system that will be easy to use, another aspect is that we must keep it secure with little needed interaction from a user unless they want to.

Please send any issues or concerns that you find with this change to security@ and we will be happy to explain and or try and resolve your issue.



archite@

There are quite a few new developments with the project.  Archite is experimenting with some very interesting patches.  I'm hoping they'll work out as the enhanced security would be nice. 

ctriv has a good start on the changes to mports.  A bsd.mport.mk file was created which will eventually replace bsd.port.mk.  He's working on several new targets, changing existing targets and has prototypes of a new database format for packages and some perl prototype scripts.  We will most likely implement the final system in C, but perl is an excellent language to prototype with. 

raven has been working on a prototype package management GUI application.  (GNUstep)

I've been very busy the last week and haven't done much.  I did update Enhanced Speedstep (ESS) support with cpufreq to support several Pentium M chips.

 I also increased the default loopback MTU (LOMTU is now 32768).  In some cases, the speed was slightly less but in others it made a significant improvement.   NetBSD has been using a similar value since 4.4 lite and OpenBSD also uses it.  FreeBSD and DragonFly use 16384.  I believe some adjustments to the network stack could improve throughput on lo0 with the new value.

Archite also made adjustments to the umask default to make installing mports easier.  He also added a .kshrc file to the system. 
I've had some feedback on the new website design.  Everyone I've talked to has found one element about it strange.  Surprisingly, its not the new "logo" with the cat eyes.  Most people dislike the gray background or the layout.  We're considering some changes to the design and changing the layout of content.  I designed the current site with a little feedback from archite. 

wintellect has been working with ctriv on the mports overhaul.  ctriv has almost completed the x11 ports transition to /usr/local.  We need to do more testing. 

I've also had some requests to change the CVSup server to add CVSROOT and some other modules.  I'll try to get to that soon.  I'm no expert with CVSup  (just pretend the registered trademark is there) .  I'd appreciate if there are any other changes or addition to CVSup, rsync or the ftp layout that it would be shared with me soon.  I'd rather be coding. 

I was talking with archite today about the DragonFly 1.0 RC1 announcement on slashdot from a few years back.  We talked about the struggle that project went through in the community for forking as well as the amount of work they accomplished going into 1.0 Release. We realized that we don't have a very structured list of goals and a timeframe as that project did from the beginning.  It was rather nice looking back.  Several of us plan to write up some goals in our respective areas of interest and hopefully publish that on midnightbsd.org soon.  I made up a list of changes for userland a few weeks ago that I'll be posting as well.  The DragonFly project focused heavily on the kernel design early on.  In our case, we are more concerned with getting a basic desktop environment working.  That means immediate goals include creating a live cd based installation system with a new installer, overhauling mports to improve package management  (including GUI tools), working on improving management of services as well as providing graphical system preferences, etc.  At the same time, I have a personal wish list which includes doing a lot of work on the network stack, improving file system interopability, adding a journalized file system, possibly trying to get gjournal working, and there's even been talk about eventually bringing zfs in.  We'd like to improve the wiereless user experience including new drivers, easier administration, and so on.  I'd also like to overhaul syscons at some point. 

Then we have the normal userland related changes we'd like to do:
update gcc to something more recent (3.4.6 and later 4.1.x)
binutiles
bind 9.4
sendmail (no i don't plan on switching to postfix)

merge some of the changed to dhclient from OpenBSD and FreeBSD

less

OK, i forget the rest right now.  rc.d cleanup is also planned. 

We've got a new MidnightBSD HTTP mirror.  The Eastern Michigan University Computer Science department is now mirroring our FTP server via HTTP.  Updates are not as fast with this mirror.

You can now download a qemu disk image with MidnightBSD pre-installed. 

I just published a new website design I had been working on.  I haven't had time to polish it, but it was still significantly better than the old design.  This one is not a ripoff of another BSD project.  The new "logo" uses an actual photo of Midnight's eyes.  I thought it was a little creepy.

BtichX is now in mports.  I think this will make several of us happy. Gnome support does not work since we don't have gnome in our tree. 

We're still talking over the proposal for transitioning mports to another system.  It looks like we will probably stay with our own ports tree.  Aside from MirBSD ports, we also talked about pkgsrc.  The conclusion so far is that we need our own ports to maintain the control for tight desktop integration that we'd need.  We didn't see any particular deficiencies in the other projects, just the fact that we don't feel we could get the user experience we are working for. 

In my blog, I will probably continue to call it mbsd but for official channels I guess we'll start calling it Midnight for short.  Someone suggested MNBSD but i don't like that much. 

Our first bug report is in so it appears bugzilla is working now.  http://bugreport.midnightbsd.org

bugreport.midnightbsd.org was fixed.  Apparently I can't type in URLs properly.  Users should now be able to login.  bugzilla stores the base url in the database and this was entered incorrectly. 

linux-firefox needs to be updated to 2.0.0.3 which I will hopefully get to tonight. 

sparc64 release building is broken.  It appears sunlabel is broken so if you upgrade from an older release keep an old copy of this lying around until its fixed.  I was going to add a bug for this when I noticed bugzilla :)

x11-tookits/vte was reported broken today.  I'll be looking at that soon.  The transition is continuing to keep ports out of /usr/X11R6. 

We've been asked about migrating/merging to another ports system which may or may not happen.  We're talking it over right now.  In the mean time, we are operating on the assumption we'll keep our own ports.  There are pros and cons to this approach such as not worrying about some of the ports issues.  We would still need to build guis, package management and other tools on that system and it may or may not hold us back with GNUstep related elements.  The last point is my largest concern at the moment. 

Something to think about is ipfw.  Apple's working on some new extensions to ipfw for 10.5 that might be interesting to do in mbsd (see below lol)  Dynamic rulesets that alter rules based on conditions so that say large storms of traffic to port 80 that are "unusual" would be blocked by 10.5 server, etc.  The concept isn't amazing but their implementation might be.

And now for some good news.  Allbsd.org will start mirroring our CVS and possibly our FTP server.  I'll post details on the midnightbsd website later.

Lastly, I guess the MirBSD project doesn't like us using mbsd as an abbreviation.  I was under the impression they were just using mir or else I wouldn't have gone there.  I suppose some people might be confused so I'd love suggestions on alternatives.  mibsd seems weak.  I guess we could just call it Midnight as DragonFly does with their stuff....  ideas welcome.

I just uploaded an AMD64 snap to the FTP server. It includes all the recent enhancements such as OpenSSH 4.6, new sound code, etc. It does not include binary packages. The mports collection included was taken during transition with xorg. It would be useful to update mports after installing this snap.

The sparc64 snap is not ready yet. There are still some problems with sparc compatibility.

An informal count of ports shows 1077. I guess that means we have 1/16 of the freebsd ports :)

I added spam assassin tonight.

The patch was accepted upstream.

I've had a few complaints about including Opera(c) with MidnightBSD. Some people feel closed source software does not belong in open systems. I would love some feedback on what you think. (comment on this entry or use the forum)

A few changes in the tree have broken AMD64 and sparc64. i386 should be fine. I'm working on it. It was discovered when I was trying to make new snaps.

ctriv is working on migrating X11 ports to install in /usr/local/ instead of /usr/X11R6. This will allow us to migrate to xorg 7.x in the future. Some ports might be broken for a few days while he does the transition.