MidnightBSD Developer Journal

Over the last two days, I've updated mDNSResponder in MidnightBSD to 258.14.  I've also added a new nsswitch module (nss_mdns) for resolving mdns entries.

To enable this, you would need to be on current, have mDNSResponder enabled, and then add mdns to the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf

hosts: files mdns dns

To enable mDNSResponder, add the following to /etc/rc.conf

mdnsd_enable="YES"

It might be necessary to implement additional routines in nss_mdns, but at this point I'm able to ping hosts and run basic programs like ssh while connecting to hosts on my local network.

I've been working on getting the mport tool to list packages that need updating.  Some of this code was already in place, but there was no driver for it.  It also required creating a new utility to generate an index from our magus package cluster system.  

A new command is available:

mport list updates

Output currently looks like this:

# mport list updates

apache: 2.2.17 < 2.2.17_1

clamav: 0.96.3 < 0.96.5

dirmngr: 1.0.2_1 < 1.1.0_1

docbook: 4.1_3 < 4.2_1

The system supports aliases for package names.  We could eventually add aliases like apache for the apache22 port to make it easier to work with popular packages.

Indexes are created from the MySQL based magus database for a specific run (os version + arch are unique).  The index is a sqlite3 database containing the package meta data such as the name, version and license as well as the aliases and list of mirrors to download from.  The index file is bzip2 compressed and placed on the HTTP server for distribution to clients.  If an index is older than twenty-four hours, mport will download an updated index, extract it and then perform operations on it.

The next step is writing the upgrade and update commands in mport to automatically fetch and update packages. When this work is complete, mport will be come the new default package format. 

This is an interesting page on the evils of AllowEmptyInput in X.org config files.   In short, if you use hald, you don't need input sections in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.  If you don't want to use hald for input devices, use

  Option "AutoAddDevices" "Off"

If  you are running BIND 9.7  or 9.8 from mports, please update to the latest release.  There is a security issue affecting these versions which is rather serious.  See the ISC website for details.

Over the weekend, I updated the amdtemp(4) driver to support the sensors framework.  This serves the same function as kate(4) in OpenBSD and DragonFly, but it supports K10 and K11 AMD CPUs as well. I based some of the design on how the coretemp(4) works, but it's exposed differently in hw.sensors because of the bus it's on. 

We've got a news mention discussing 0.4-CURRENT in this month's issue of BSD Magazine. 

Right after the release, I focused on getting some contrib software up-to-date.  While writing the release notes for 0.3, it was apparent that we needed to get on the ball.  

OpenSSL, OpenSSH, file, GNU sort, awk, sqlite, tcsh, BIND and sudo have all been updated in the last month.  I've added it(4) and lm(4) to work with the sensors framework introduced in 0.3.  eeemon(4) was recently added for hardware monitoring on some Asus eee PCs.  alc(4) was introduced for atheros gigabit lan cards.  ale, alc, ae were all added to GENERIC in current.  

Intel coretemp(4) monitor was modified to work with the sensors framework. It's now possible to monitor the CPU temp with sensorsd on Intel CPUs.  I'm working on adding similar functionality to amdtemp.  

A locking fix was introduced today on the route code related to ICMP traffic.  

I just posted a non security update to the 0.3 branch.  sqlite 3 was misreporting it's version in the pkg-config script.  This has been corrected.  It shouldn't have any real impact on the base system or packages shipped with MidnightBSD. 

I also fixed the example cvsup file so that it checks out RELENG_0_3 on that branch.

In mports, autotools meta port along with libtool, libltdl, automake and autoconf were updated to newer versions.  We're no longer using an insane number of autoconf ports.  

It appears autoconf now "knows" about MIdnightBSD as well.  That's great news.

mports/emulators/wine was updated to 1.3.12 today.

In 0.4-CURRENT src, we now have tcsh 6.17.00.  0.3 has 6.15.00.   

I've uploaded the AMD64 release of MidnightBSD 0.3.  It should be available on the mirrors shortly.  Distrowatch and freshmeat have the release announcements now. 

I'm starting the build process for 0.3-RELEASE i386 now.  Hopefully, we'll have some nice ISOs available by this evening.

There is a new i386 snapshot on the FTP server.  It includes packages.  This will probably be very similar to the final release.   

Awhile back, I imported the sensors framework into MidnightBSD.  For more information on it, visit these sites:

http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/BSDCan_2008_Hardware_Sensors_Framework 

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan08-sensors.pdf

http://wiki.freebsd.org/GSoC2007/cnst-sensors

0.3-release will include the core patch, and 0.4-CURRENT includes three devices using it so far. (including intel cpu temp monitoring)

I'm attempting to build a snapshot with a package split right now.  If everything goes according to plan, we'll have our first test build for 0.3-RELEASE tomorrow.

I've published the preliminary packages for amd64 to the FTP server.  The symlinks need to be setup yet for pkg_add -r to work.  There's roughly 2420 packages available.

i386 is still building. 

This is the run for AMD64 that I intend to use for the 0.3-RELEASE. Some of the failed packages can be safely built outside of magus and I'll post those on the FTP server later.   210 might be the i386 run depending on the results. 

• pass: 2447 
• untested: 96 
• skip: 57 
• fail: 79 
• ready: 0
•  
•  

The amd64 package run is complete and we're in a ports freeze right now until the release is completed.  Currently waiting on i386 packages.   I plan to create a snapshot with packages for testing before the branch is tagged.  I'll post it on the FTP server for public testing.

Several little bugs were fixed yesterday with some newer functionality and with the check-old target.  

This is the current status of mports on amd64 arch for 0.3-prerelease.  We're getting close now.  I'm not going for 100% pass, but several of the fails must be fixed before release.

• untested: 155 
• pass: 2388 
• skip: 58 
• fail: 76 
• warn: 1 
• ready: 0

 mports look much better.  Here are the latest amd64 results:  2355 is the highest pass rate we've had in some time.  Part of qt4 is working again and we're starting to get a good part of gnome 2.30 ready.

• untested: 168 
• pass: 2355 
• fail: 92 
• skip: 60 
• warn: 1 
• ready: 0

We're working on stabalizing mports for the next release.  There are several ports known to be broken that are important.  Currently, we've got about 2200 ports building on amd64 and a little less on i386 (although that environment is using the new mport tools).  

When KDE 3 and a good part of gnome are stable, we'll do RE.  Now is the time to look for security updates or to help with port fixes for 0.3.  Also, any issues with 0.3 (src) should be noted.