MidnightBSD Developer Journal

 There's been a flurry of activity lately with mports.  We've added a number of new ports including qt4.  

Results from our last magus run:

• untested: 187 
• pass: 1656 
• fail: 29 
• warn: 408 
• internal: 1 
• skip: 23
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Magus is running again.  It's the first run since 0.2.1-RELEASE.  We've already found 20 ports that need some TLC and the run is still going.   

Various security issues have been reported in the last two months.  It is important that users update their OS if they use IPV6 or ftpd.  Updates have been committed to our src repository.  At this time, we don't have a binary update system, so there is no method to update in that fashion.  

All patches have been applied to RELENG_0_2 which is recommended for 0.2-RELEASE or 0.2.1-RELEASE users.  0.1 users can get some of the updates on RELENG_0_1 (cvs branch), but it's recommended to update to 0.2.x as soon as possible. 

We now have xfce 4.4.2 in mports.  You may install xfce by using the new meta port mports/x11-wm/xfce4  

 We do not have a package at this time.  

xfce

Today, I added an xfce port to mports.  It is only version 3, but the missing gdk-pixbuf dependancy was finally fixed.  In case anyone is curious, I had to use our port of libtool to get it to build properly with shared libraries.  xfce 4 is very large so I don't know about supporting it right away.  This was done after a user request for xfce. I don't care for it.

flock

linux-flock was updated to 1.2.5 today.  This includes several security fixes and feature enhancements. For instance, Digg was added in 1.2.  It also includes a working copy of flash player so you can enjoy youtube without much hassle.

twitter

I added a new port, deskutils/twitter which is a shell script that allows you to update your twitter account from the command line.  usage is like: 

# twitter username password "my entry here"

midnightbsd-backgrounds

Another port of interest is the x11-themes/midnightbsd-backgrounds that installs desktop wallpaper with the MidnightBSD logo.  There are several variations created by myself and "smultron".  We'll be adding more to that port at a later time.  It currently installs in a way that KDE can pick up.  We'd like to get gnome aware at a later time.  

bind 9.5.0-p2

I've updated our bind 9.5 port to p2.

x11/themes/midnightbsd-backgrounds was added today. It includes several MidnightBSD inspired desktop backgrounds in PNG and JPEG format.

 I've changed the frequency that ds9's cvs mirror updates.  It no longer rsync's every 30 minutes, but rather every 6 hours.  The previous cycle was giving people trouble over slow links.

I've created a new CVS activity blog.  It will display the commits to MidnightBSD in real time.   Since CIA.vc is having reliability problems, this is a way for developers to check on recent activity while avoiding the large emails on the midnightbsd-cvs@midnightbsd.org list.  However, the formatting sucks and I don't have messages included yet.  I'll try to tackle that after I get some sleep.

The upside to this approach is that we've also got RSS and ATOM feeds of the cvs history automatically. 

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.