The April-June, 2006 status report is now + available with 39 entries.
+New committer: Rong-En Fan (ports)
New committer: Boris Samorodov (ports)
New committer: Shaun Amott (ports)
New committer: Konstantin Belousov (src)
New committer: Martin Wilke (ports)
The FreeBSD Project received over 120 applications for Google's Summer of Code program, amongst which 14 were selected for funding. Unfortunately, there were far more first rate applications than available spots for students. However, we encourage students to work together with us all year round. The FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums. Contributing to an open source software project is a valuable component of a computer science education and great preparation for a career in software development.
A complete list of the winning students and projects is available here. A Summer of Code wiki is also available with additional information.
Paolo Pisati, a successful student from last year's Summer of Code program, has continued working with the FreeBSD Project and is now a full src/ committer.
In his latest bsdtalk podcast, Will Backman interviews FreeBSD developer Poul-Henning Kamp about his work on FreeBSD. The podcast is available at http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk048.mp3.
FreeBSD 5.5-RELEASE is now available. Please check the errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with this release. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
FreeBSD is now able to complete a full run of the "make buildworld" command on machines running the Sun T1 processor with CoolThreads technology, and is thus self-hosting. The code currently resides in the FreeBSD Perforce revision control system and will be merged to the official CVS repository when support for logical domaining is complete. A log file of the boot process can be found here.
New committer: Thomas Wintergerst (src)
The first and most likely last release candidate of FreeBSD 5.5 is now available. The RC1 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 6.1. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
The application period for Google's Summer of Code 2006 program has been extended until Tuesday 11:00AM PDT. More information about FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors is available here.
New committer: Ion-Mihai Tetcu (ports)
New committer: Stefan Walter (ports)
New committer: Andrew Pantyukhin (ports)
The second and most likely last release candidate of FreeBSD 6.1 is now available. The RC2 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
The FreeBSD Project is now accepting applications for the previously announced Google Summer of Code 2006 program. This program will provide funding for students to spend the summer contributing to open source software projects. A list of FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors is available here.
Once a suitable project and mentor have been identified, interested students should complete a proposal and submit it to Google. Proposals are now being accepted and the final deadline is May 8, 2006 at 17:00 Pacific Daylight Time (midnight May 9, 2006 0:00 UTC). Winning candidates will be announced in late May. Please see the Student FAQ for more information.
A driver for HighPoint's RocketRAID 232x series of SATA RAID controllers, rr232x(4), has been added to FreeBSD-CURRENT as well as the RELENG_6 and RELENG_6_1 branches. It will be included in the upcoming FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE.
Enhanced commit privileges: Xin LI (src, doc, ports)
New committer: Lars Balker Rasmussen (ports)
In his latest bsdtalk podcast, Will Backman interviews FreeBSD developer Joe Marcus Clarke about the GNOME desktop environment on FreeBSD. The podcast is available at http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk032.mp3.
The January-March, 2006 status report is now available with 29 entries.
The FreeBSD Project is happy to participate in Google's Summer of Code 2006 program. This program will provide funding for students to spend the summer contributing to open source software projects. A list of FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors is available here.
The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.1 is now available. The RC1 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
A driver for the Broadcom NetXtreme II family of Gigabit Ethernet chips, bce(4), has been added to FreeBSD-CURRENT. It will be merged to the FreeBSD 6-STABLE branch in the near future.
The FreeBSD Foundation now provides native Java JDK and JRE 1.5 binaries for FreeBSD. For further details, please see the FreeBSD Foundation press release.
New committer: Alejandro Pulver (ports)
New committer: Johan van Selst (ports)
New committer: Jean Milanez Melo (ports)
The fourth beta releases of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1 are now available. The respective BETA4 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
New committer: Wojciech A. Koszek (src)
The second beta releases of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1 are now available. The respective BETA2 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
In his latest bsdtalk podcast, Will Backman interviews FreeBSD developer Marshall Kirk McKusick. The podcast is available at http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk018.mp3.
In issue 17 of his bsdtalk series of podcasts, Will Backman interviews FreeBSD release engineer Scott Long about the upcoming FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.1 releases and related topics. The podcast is available at http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk017.mp3.
New committer: Chuck Lever (src)
The ``FreeBSD Kernel Internals: An Intensive Code Walkthrough'' course will be taught during the Spring of 2006. The class will be held at the historic Hillside Club at 2286 Cedar Strett, Berkeley, CA 94709 just three blocks north of the Berkeley campus once per week from 6:30PM to 9:45PM starting Wednesday February 22nd and finishing Tuesday June 13th. You can get more information or sign up for the class here.
The first beta releases of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1 are now available. The respective BETA1 ISO images are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
Enhanced commit privileges: Colin Percival (src, ports)
The October-December, 2005 status report is now available with 26 entries.
New committer: Matteo Riondato (src)
New committer: Vasil Dimov (ports)
New committer: Rink Springer (src)
The FreeBSD Foundation has published its December Newsletter, which summarizes the activities the Foundation has undertaken this year.
Returned committer: Jason Evans (src)
The release engineering team, represented by Scott Long, has announced the release schedule for 2006. Please refer to the announcement for more information.
Read-only support for the XFS file system has been committed to FreeBSD-CURRENT. The code is derived from sources provided by SGI and is covered by the GPL. Additional information can be found in the announcement.
New committer: Andrey Slusar (ports)
The FreeBSD project has hundreds of active developers spread all over the world, and many of them have their own parts of the source-tree that they work on. However, there are always a lot of new interesting projects and ideas that needs to be investigated and evaluated, and this is where the FreeBSD project relies on heroic efforts from volunteers. A new section on the FreeBSD website has been created with the purpose of listing such projects. The list is in no way complete, but it should serve as a nice starting point for volunteers who would like to become committers in the future. You can view the projects list here.
The FreeBSD Foundation received a donation of a blade system from Hewlett-Packard for use as a third-party software build cluster. This 20-node HP BladeSystem cluster triples the speed of the build process for i386 packages. You can see more details from here.
New committer: Tim Bishop (ports)
New committer: Oleg Bulyzhin (src)
A new article, Building Products with FreeBSD describes the benefits of collaborating with the FreeBSD project when developing products. Much of the engineering cost of software product development for a successful product comes from the need to evolve to keep pace with the market. By working with a mature, reuse-friendly source base like that of the FreeBSD project, and by following the best-practices listed in this article, organizations can reap the benefits of reduced engineering costs and improved market adaptability.
The July-October, 2005 status report is now available with 37 entries.
KDE 3.4.3 has been merged into the ports tree. For a detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.4.2 release, please refer to the KDE 3.4.2 changelog. For more information, see the KDE 3.4.3 info page. For general information about KDE on FreeBSD, please see the KDE on FreeBSD project page.
Now that 6.0 is out the door, GNOME 2.12.1 has been merged into the ports tree. Be sure to checkout our upgrade FAQ for all the changes, upgrade instructions, and known issues. Additional resources can be found at the FreeBSD GNOME homepage.
FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 6.0. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
We are pleased to announce the winner of our logo competition: Anton K. Gural. For competition details, please see the result page. With our new logo, we will be able to show our own identity on the 'net, and this will make our marketing efforts much easier. We will publish soon a guideline page which gives usage rules and usable (vector format) logo data under the same BSD license as the rest of FreeBSD.
New committer: Aaron Dalton (ports)
New committer: Ariff Abdullah (src)
The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.0 is now available. The RC1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
A new case study, argentina.com, describes how a successful ISP in Latin America excels in a competitive market with FreeBSD.
A new website has been launched. We hope you find the new design easier to navigate. The site was implemented by Emily Boyd as part of Google's Summer of Code program. A copy of the old site for comparison purposes is archived here. Please post your comments and suggestions about the new site to the freebsd-www@FreeBSD.org list.
New committer: Vitaly Bogdanov (doc)
New committer: Emanuel Haupt (ports)
New committer: Andrej Zverev (ports)
New committer: Tom McLaughlin (ports)
New committer: Marcus Alves Grando (ports)
New committer: Gary W. Swearingen (doc)
After 43 months Jacques Vidrine has passed the Security Officer hat to Colin Percival, known for his FreeBSD Update, portsnap, and bsdiff utilities, and recently for his paper "Cache missing for fun and profit" regarding sensitive information disclosure within hyperthreaded processor systems. You can read more about this here.
Users with organisational software that understands iCalendar format files can now subscribe to the FreeBSD Events Calendar.
A new article, Choosing the FreeBSD Version That Is Right For You, discusses considerations that should go into the selection of the most suitable version of FreeBSD for individual needs. Included are such concepts as the differences between a Release and a Branch, and between FreeBSD-STABLE and FreeBSD-CURRENT. Also covered is how FreeBSD development is moving towards a goal of more frequent major releases, each of which introduces smaller feature sets, as compared to how releases were done in the past. The target audience is both the user who is considering installing FreeBSD, and also existing users who wish to plan their future upgrades.
Dru Lavigne has just published FreeBSD: An Open Source Alternative to Linux. The objective of this whitepaper is to explain some of the features and benefits provided by FreeBSD, and where applicable, compare those features to Linux. This paper provides a starting point for those interested in exploring Open Source alternatives to Linux.
The March-June, 2005 status report is now available with 43 entries.
New committer: Vsevolod Stakhov (ports)
New committer: Bruno Ducrot (src)
The FreeBSD Project received over 350 applications for Google's Summer of Code program, amongst which 18 were selected for funding. Unfortunately, there were far more first rate applications than available spots for students. However, we encourage students to work together with us all year round. The FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums. Contributing to an open source software project is a valuable component of a computer science education and great preparation for a career in software development.
More information about the funded student projects is available from the FreeBSD Summer of Code Wiki.
Next milestone in 6.0-RELEASE process is reached. RELENG_6 CVS branch is forked from HEAD. The upcoming 6.0-RELEASE, and all following 6.x releases will be cut from this branch. For more information see: 6.0-RELEASE schedule, RELENG_6 announcement.
New committer: Renato Botelho (ports)
New committer: Jung-uk Kim (src)
The FreeBSD 6-CURRENT snapshot releases in July 2005 are now available. This will likely be the last snapshot of 6.0-CURRENT before the RELENG_6 branch is made. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has released snapshot releases of 5-STABLE and 6-CURRENT to encourage people to test new features and improve the reliability. For more details, please visit the snapshots page.
New committer: Wayne Salamon (src)
New contributor: Matteo Riondato (PR database)
New committer: Kip Macy (src)
The FreeBSD 6.0 code freeze has begun. Developers must have approval from re@FreeBSD.org to commit to the HEAD branch of src/. 6.0 snapshots are available from the FTP sites for those able to help test the upcoming major new release of FreeBSD. For more information, please see the release engineering area of the web site.
The FreeBSD Project is happy to participate in Google's Summer of Code 2005 program. This program will provide funding for students to spend the summer contributing to open source software projects. A list of FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors is available here.
New committer: Brad Davis (doc)
New committer: Andrew Thompson (src)
New committer: Craig Rodrigues (src)
Another great BSD conference in Ottawa has just concluded. There was a highly successful 2 day FreeBSD Developer summit preceding the official conference. Special thanks should go to Dan Langille for organizing the conference and to Scott Long for organizing the developer summit.
FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 5.4. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
The FreeBSD 5.4-RC4 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC4, the last Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 unless a major problem is discovered as part of RC4. The RC4 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
The packet filter (pf) code has been updated to the upcoming OpenBSD release 3.7. Several new features including nested anchors and connection rate limiting are now available to the FreeBSD userbase.
The January-March, 2005 status report is now available with 39 entries.
The FreeBSD 5.4-RC3 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC3, the third Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. The RC3 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
New committer: Qing Li (src)
New committer: Jean-Yves Lefort (ports)
New committer: Sam Lawrance (ports)
The FreeBSD 5.4-RC2 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC2, the second Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. We encourage people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The RC2 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
New committer: Joel Dahl (doc)
The FreeBSD 5.4-RC1 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC1, the first Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. We encourage people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The RC1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
Enhanced commit privileges: Alexander Leidinger (src, ports)
The FreeBSD 5.4-BETA1 release is now available. This is the first BETA release for the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle and the Release Engineering Team encourages people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The BETA1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.
The FreeBSD 6-CURRENT snapshot releases in March 2005 are now available. Note that 5-STABLE snapshots are not available in this month because 5.4-PRERELEASE builds will be available soon. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has released snapshot releases of 5-STABLE and 6-CURRENT on a monthly basis to encourage people to test new features and improve the reliability. For more details, please visit the snapshots page.
GNOME 2.10.0 has been released and merged into the ports tree in time for 5.4-RELEASE. Be sure to checkout our upgrade FAQ for all the changes, upgrade instructions, and known issues. Additional resources can be found at the FreeBSD GNOME homepage.
New committer: Roman Bogorodskiy (ports)
New committer: Damien Bergamini (src)
New committer: Jesus R. Camou (doc)
New committer: Florent Thoumie (ports)
New committer: Simon Barner (ports)
Logo design competition is open
New committer: Tai-hwa Liang (src)
FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 4.11. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
The July-December, 2004 status report is now available with 44 entries.
The third Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here.
The second Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here.
The Mozilla License Team has granted permission to the FreeBSD Gnome Team for use of the Firefox and Thunderbird names, official icons, and permission to do officially branded builds.
New committer: Sam Hopkins (src)
The FreeBSD Foundation has published its Quarterly Newsletter, which includes a call for donations so the Foundation can keep its non-profit public charity 501(c)3 status.
The first Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here.
New committer: Niels Heinen (ports)
The FreeSBIE 1.1 FreeBSD Live CD is released -- see the release announcement for details.
New committer: Palle Girgensohn (ports)
The schedule for the FreeBSD 4.11 Release has been announced, with a target release date of January 24th, 2005. The full schedule is here.
New committer: Jean-Sébastien Pédron (src)
The 'FreeBSD' trademark, which was originally granted to Walnut Creek CDROM (now FreeBSD Mall, Inc.) in 1996, has been transferred to the FreeBSD Foundation.
New committer: Vicente Carrasco (doc)
New committer: Johann Kois (doc)
GNOME 2.8.1 was merged into the ports tree following the release of FreeBSD 5.3. See the FreeBSD GNOME Homepage for more details as well as upgrade instructions.
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 5.3. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC2. Two critical issues came up during RC1 testing and it is felt the fixes warrant one more RC so they receive widespread testing. If no more show-stopper problems are found this will be the last test release done before 5.3-RELEASE. Please see the full announcement on FreeBSD-CURRENT here.
New committer: Michael Johnson (ports)
New committer: Remko Lodder (doc)
New committer: George V. Neville-Neil (src)
New committer: Stephan Uphoff (src)
New committer: Koop Mast (ports)
New committer: Xin Li (src, doc)
New committer: Alexey Dokuchaev (ports)
New committer: Dejan Lesjak (ports)
New committer: Cheng-Lung Sung (ports)
New committer: Dmitry Morozovsky (doc)
New committer: Herve Quiroz (ports)
New committer: Pyun YongHyeon (src)
New committer: Bjoern A. Zeeb (src)
The May-June status report is now available; see the status reports Web page for more information.
New committer: Suleiman Souhlal (PowerPC)
FreeBSD-CURRENT now ships with X.Org's X Window System per default, though XFree86 is still supported. For more information on how to upgrade for -CURRENT and -STABLE, take a look at this HEADS UP.
New committer: Gleb Smirnoff (src)
New committer: Sergey Matveychuk (ports)
New committer: Lars Thegler (ports)
FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 4.10. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
New committer: Koichi Suzuki (doc)
The March-April status report is now available; see the status reports Web page for more information.
New committer: Christian S.J. Peron (src)
New committer: Stefan Farfeleder (src)
New committer: Jeremy Messenger (ports)
New committer: Tony Ackerman (src)
New committer: Marius Strobl (src)
New committer: Daniel Hartmeier (src)
New committer: Niklas J. Saers (doc)
Because of the hard maintenance and low benefit the gallery pages bring to the Project and the listed websites, it has been decided to spend the time working on other stuff related to FreeBSD than these pages. The gallery will be removed in two weeks, no further submissions will be processed. However, this has no influence on the Commercial Gallery.
New committer: Mark Santcroos (src)
The January-February status report is now available; see the status reports Web page for more information.
New committer: Thierry Thomas (ports)
New committer: Volker Stolz (ports)
New committer: Peter Edwards (src)
New committer: Vinod Kashyap (src)
FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 5.2.1. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
New committer: Markus Brüffer (Ports)
New committer: Jim Rees (src)
Core member resigned: Greg Lehey
New committer: Max Laier (src)
New committer: Lukas Ertl (src)
New committer: Pawel Jakub Dawidek (src)
The October-December status report is now available; see the status reports Web page for more information.
New committer: Philip Paeps (src)
New committer: Colin Percival (src)
New committer: Josef El-Rayes (docs)
FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 5.2. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.
New committer: Vincent Tougait (Documentation Project)
With the release of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1, the second + quarter of 2006 has been productive. Google is sponsoring 14 students + to work on FreeBSD as part of their Summer of Code Program (most of + which already submitted a report for elaboration on their + projects).
+ +Sun's open-source software is starting to make its way into + FreeBSD as a port of DTrace is nearing completion and a port to the + UltraSparc T1 processor (which gives a great push to the ongoing SMP + efforts). Having a powerful debugging tool combined with a CPU that + can run up to 32 concurrent threads helps to identify scalability + issues.
+ +BSDCan 2006 was yet again a smashing success and much was covered + in the 2-day developer summit. As a product of the conference, a new + focus on FreeBSD for the embedded sector has started. Various ARM + boards are targeted, a MIPS32 port is gearing up and people are + looking for other interesting platforms to port FreeBSD to. + Preparation for the EuroBSDCon (in Milan, Italy) on November has + already issued a call for papers.
+ +In addition, a lot of spring cleaning is taking place in the + network stack. After conclusion of the KAME project, IPv6 code + integration has been refocused and a fully locked port of SCTP is in + the final stage of integration. Of course, all this goes without + noting all the progress made with the other network projects.
+ +Please read below for more detailed news on the projects that + happened in FreeBSD during the last three months. If you are + interested in helping, consider the "Open Tasks lists" provided with + some reports. In addition we would like to point you at the + list of projects and + ideas for volunteers + + and hope to receive a status report from you next time.
+ +Thanks to all reporters for your excellent work and timing!. Enjoy + reading.
++ BSDCan 2006 + + continues to impress. Again this year, we had a good collection of + talks from a wide range of speakers. In all, we had over 200 people + from 14 different countries.
+ +Our sponsorship pool continues to grow. This year we had + sponsorship from: +
The 2007 planning has already begun and we look forward to + another popular and successful event.
+ +My thanks to the 2006 program committee, the speakers, the + volunteers, the sponsors, and, of course, the attendees.
+ +See you at BSDCan 2007.
+ +The release engineering (RE) team announced the availability of + FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.1, both in May 2006. FreeBSD 5.5 is the last + planned release from the RELENG_5 branch in CVS. For the most part, + its main features consist of bugfixes, security patches, and minor + updates. We encourage users to move towards the 6.x series of + releases whenever practical. FreeBSD 6.1 is the latest of the + releases to come from the RELENG_6 branch in CVS. It includes + (among many other things) improved support for WiFi devices, + additional network and disk controller drivers, and a number of + fixes for filesystem stability. The next release to be issued from + this branch will be FreeBSD 6.2, which is currently scheduled for + September 2006.
+ +The RE team is currently in a ``between releases'' mode. Current + activities include working with security-team@ on some errata fixes + for the RELENG_6_1 branch and producing snapshots of HEAD and + RELENG_6 at the start of each month.
+ +Several personnel changes have taken place recently. Scott Long + has stepped down from his position on the RE team; we thank him for + his considerable efforts over the past four years. In his place, + Ken Smith has taken over the role of lead release engineer. Bruce + A. Mah has rejoined the RE team after a two-year sabbatical.
+ +For some time now I have been working on converting the existing + USB device drivers to my new and mutex enabled USB API. I have + converted "ulpt", "ums", "uhid", "ukbd", "ugen", "uaudio", and a + few others. Around 10 USB device drivers are left to convert. Most + of these are network device drivers.
+ +At the present moment I am working on getting scatter and + gathering support working for all USB host controllers. Scatter and + gathering means that one allocates PAGE_SIZE bytes of memory at a + time, and then fills these memory blocks up as much as possible + with USB host controller structures and buffers. This should solve + problems allocating DMA-able memory when the system memory becomes + fragmented.
+ + +Some + FPU system + + and + kernel memcpy/copyin/copyout + + changes have been performed. In particular, a per-CPU save area has + been introduced (protected with an interlock) in order to assure a + stable saving mechanism. + copyout/copyin + + have changed in order to use vectorised version of + memcpy + + and an xmm version of memcpy has been provided.
+ + +As part of my SoC 2006 project I am working on implementing a + BRIDGE monitoring module for FreeBSD's BSNMP daemon. Initial + prototyping is done and some kernel changes are coming to be able + to access all needed data. In addition to IETF RFC 4188, which was + designed for monitoring a single bridge, this snmp module will + support monitoring of multiple bridge devices as supported by + FreeBSD.
+ + +Anonymous enablings now work. There is a new option in the boot + loader menu to load the DTrace modules and trace the kernel boot + process.
+ +Sun Microsystems has been very supportive of the FreeBSD port + and has generously provided a Sun Fire T2000 server to allow Kip + Macy's sun4v port to be merged into the DTrace project tree.
+ +The DTrace project tree sources are now exported to + cvsup10.freebsd.org
+ +Refer to the project page for more details.
+ + +There are several projects moving forward in the embedded area. + For now the main location for new information is + www.embeddedfreebsd.org. We have also created a new mailing list, + + freebsd-embedded@freebsd.org + + , which is meant to eventually replace the freebsd-small. A call + was put out on small for people to move to embedded.
+ + +This year's EuroBSDCon will be held in Milan, Italy, on November + 10th through 12th.
+ +Hosted in the foggy northern Italy, the fifth EuroBSDCon aims at + being a new successful chapter in the itinerant series of European + BSD conferences.
+ +EuroBSDCon represents the biggest gathering for BSD developers + from the old continent, as well as users and passionates from + around the World. It is also a chance to share experiences, + know-how, and cultures.
+ +For the first time, parallel to the main event, an event for + wives/girlfriends/friends will be organised. It will consist of + guided tours of the city of Milan, a probable trip to Como and + visits to various museums. We're also working towards offering a + show at the Teatro alla Scala.
+ +The FreeBSD developer summit will be also held on November + 10th.
+ + +Continuing to add IPv6 support to FAST_IPSEC. Test environment + is now stable. Can build and run kernels with FAST_IPSEC and INET6 + enabled but IPSec in IPv6 is now broken and being worked on.
+ + +FreshPorts has seen several new features recently: +
A 2U server was recently donated to the + FreshPorts + + / + FreshSource + + / + FreeBSD Diary + + / + BSDCan + + group. We have also received a RAID card. Now we're looking for + some hard drives.
+ +Over the past few weeks, work has concentrated on benchmarking + the new server and getting it ready for production. Eventually it + will need a new home as I don't really want it running in my + basement all the time (it's really loud!).
+ +Thanks to + iXsystems + + and + 3Ware + + for their contributions to this project.
+ + +GJournal is a GEOM class which provides journaling for GEOM + providers. It can also be used to journal various file system with + just a minimal filesystem-specific portion of code. Currently only + UFS journaling is implemented on top of gjournal. Being + filesystem-independent and operating below the file system level, + gjournal has no way to distinguish data from metadata, thus it + journal both. One of the nice things about gjournal is that it + works reliable even on disks with enabled write cache, which is + often not the case for journalled file system. And remember... fsck + no more.
+ + +The purpose of + gvirstor + + module is to provide the ability to create a virtual storage device + of arbitrarily large size (typically several terabytes) which + consists of an arbitrary number of physical storage devices + (actually any lower-level GEOM providers, including RAID devices) + of arbitrary size (typically 50 GB - 400 GB hard drives). Storage + space from these components is carved into small chunks (for + example 4 MB) and allocated (committed) to the virtual device on + as-needed basis.
+ +Development has started and progressing as planned (though a + little bit slow). Metadata format and virtual storage allocation + formats have been defined and more serious coding is in + progress.
+ + +The FreeBSD list of projects and ideas for volunteers is doing + well. Several items were picked up by volunteers and have found + their way into the tree. Others are under review or in progress. We + are looking forward to hear about new ideas, people willing to act + as technical contacts for generic topics such as USB or specific + entries (already existing or newly created) and suggestions for + existing entries or completion reports for (parts of) an entry.
+ + +Initial changes include: +
Clement has been working both with libnet and gnn's Python based + packet library (PCS) to produce code to test for vulnerabilities in + IPv6. To Clement has found some issues, all of which have been + reported to his mentor and to Security Officer at FreeBSD.org + Vulnerabilities will not be reported here.
+ + +Project is in development with initial working software expected + mid-July 2006. CPU limits will be implemented with a hierarchical + scheduler: (initially) using a round-robin scheduler to select + which jail to run a task in and then delegating which task in the + jail to be run to a per-jail scheduler.
+ + +A simple lexer and parser have almost been completed. Also + significant planing for future additions to K have been thought + up.
+ + +FreeBSD linux emulation layer (linuxolator) currently implements + most of the functionality necessary to emulate 2.4.2 linux kernel, + but linux world has moved forward and current linux world requires + 2.6.x features. The aim of this SoC task is to make Fedora Core 4 + linux-base to be able to run with 2.6.x kernel. Currently this + means extending clone() syscall and implement pthread related + things. This involves TLS implementation (sys_set_thread_area + syscall) and possibly tid manipulation (used for pthread_join etc.) + and finally futexes (linux fast user-space mutexes implementation). + This should enable pthread-linked programs to work. After this is + done there may be other things necessary to implement however, only + time will tell. I am funded by google.com in their SoC to do this + work and I'll continue to work on this after the summer hopefully + as a part of my MSc. thesis.
+ + +The improved support for the i386 binaries are ready for -exp + run. It only allows installing such ports on amd64 and ia64 when + there's a compatibility layer compiled into the kernel and the + 32-bit libraries are installed under /usr/lib32.
+ +The DESTDIR support are in progress. It works for the simplest + ports without USE_* that don't have a [pre|do|post]-install target. + There are more complicated issues with e.g. conflict checking in + DESTDIR, deinstalling from DESTDIR, those have to be fixed as + well.
+ + +The translated webpage is almost ready now. This Hungarian + translation is a "lite" version of the original English webpages, + since there are parts that are irrelevant for the Hungarian + community, or has pieces of data that change quickly, so it's no + use to translate these pages now, maybe later, if we have more + Hungarian contributors, but this webpage would be a good starting + point in translating the documentations, and we need a good place + to put translated documentations anyway.
+ +I'm going to be very busy with SoC this summer, but I'll try to + find people that can help me out in this project. Any help + appreciated.
+ + +As an intermediate step until FreeBSD will have full network + stack virtualisation this work shall provide support for multi-IP + IPv4/v6 jails.
+ +These changes are based on Pawel Jakub Dawidek's work for + multi-IPv4 jails and some initial work from Olivier Houchard for + single-IPv6 jails.
+ +The changes need some more testing but basically things + work.
+ +This is not considered to be the right thing todo so do
+ not
+
+ ask for official support or if this will be committed to the
+ FreeBSD source repository.
+
+
+ After some more cleanup of non-jail related IPv6 changes I will
+ publish a patch for HEAD and perhaps RELENG_6 for everyone who
+ wants to give it a try anyway.
Mohan Srinivas committed his changes to make the NFSv2/3 client + MP safe to HEAD this quarter. Changes may be back-ported to 6.x + soon.
+ +Robert Watson and Chuck Lever held a discussion about the future + of the in-kernel NFSv4 client during BSDCan 2006. The current NFSv4 + client is unmaintained. Chuck also pointed out the long series of + unfixed PRs against the legacy client (NFSv2/3). These are at the + top of his priority list. Robert is also interested in making + NFSv4-style ACLs the lingua franca for FreeBSD file systems. There + was some discussion about integrating Rick Maclem's NFSv4 server + into 7.x.
+ +Chuck Lever became a full source committer during this + quarter.
+ +The basic goals of this SoC 2006 project are moving + nsswitch-modules out of the libc, extending the caching daemon and + importing nss_ldap into the base source tree. 2 milestones of the + project are currently completed.
+ +1. Nss-modules were successfully moved out of the libc into the + separate dynamic libraries. In order for static binaries to work + properly (they can't use dynamic nss-modules), nss-modules are + linked statically into the libc.a. As the side-effect of + nss-modules separation, getipnodeby***() functions were rewritten + to use gethostby***() functions and not the nsdispatch(3) call. + Caching daemon's "perform-actual-lookups" option was extended to + support all implemented nsswitch databases.
+ +2. A set of regressions tests was made to test nsswitch-related + functions. These tests are also capable of testing the stability of + these functions' behaviour after the system upgrade.
+ + +pfSense is rapidly approaching release. We are down to a + handfull of bugs that should be fixed in the coming weeks. We + should have a release around the time of our 2nd annual hackathon + which is taking place on July 21st - July 28th. Many exciting + sub-projects are taking place within pfSense and the project is + gaining new developers monthly.
+ + +As an intermediate step towards implementing support for + callgraphs and cross-architecture performance measurements, I am + creating a BSD-licensed library for ELF parsing & manipulation. + This library will implement the SysV/SVR4 (g)ELF[3] API.
+ +Current status: Implementation of the library is in progress. A + TET-based test suite for the API and manual pages documenting the + library's interfaces are being concurrently created.
+ +Work is being done in FreeBSD's Perforce repository. I hope to + be ready for general review by the end of July '06.
+ + +During this time, a huge number of ports PRs were committed, + bringing us back down below 800 for the first time since the + 5.5/6.1 release cycle. This is due to a great deal of work, + especially from some of our newest committers.
+ +This is all the more notable given the fact that we have been + adding new ports at a rapidly accelerating rate. We have now + exceeded the 15,000 port mark!
+ +Three sets of changes have been added to the infrastructure, + including updates of default versions of MySQL, PHP, LDAP, and + linux_base, and numerous bugfixes and improvements. About 2 dozen + portmgr PRs were closed due to this.
+ +In addition, a large-impact commit was made that attempts to + move us to a single libtool that is as unmodified from 'stock' + libtool as we can. Plans are also in place to do this for the + autotools.
+ +Several people are at work on implementing the modularised xorg + ports. Most of the work is done but several key pieces remain. Once + this is finished, an -exp regression test will be needed (most + likely, more than one :-) ) It is possible that before this we will + need to do a regression test that moves X11BASE back into + LOCALBASE. This is still under study.
+ +Gabor Kovesdan started a Google Summer of Code project on some + highly needed improvements on the ports infrastructure (see + elsewhere in this report). As this is a long term project, gtetlow + kindly imported the most important ports infrastructure files into + perforce to ease development. Other developers are encouraged to + use perforce for ports development, especially as it can help + keeping patches up-to-date while going stale in GNATS. Even though + linimon has been pushing hard on running experimental builds on the + test cluster, it will take some time to work through the + backlog.
+ +erwin added a ports section to the list of projects and ideas + for volunteers at the FreeBSD website. Have a look if you want to + work on the ports system. Don't hesitate to send additional ideas, + and committers are encouraged to add themselves as technical + contacts.
+ +sem adopted portupgrade after it had been neglected for some + time and has been very active on upgrades and bugfixing.
+ +dougb has continued to enhance his portmaster script and people + are finding success with it; although not designed to be as + full-featured as portupgrade, it does seem to be easier to + understand and use.
+ +shaun has contributed portscout, a scanner for updated + distfiles, to the ports collection.
+ +marcus upgraded GNOME to 2.14.1.
+ +As well, there have been new releases of the ports tinderbox + code.
+ +edwin has been hard at work on a PR-autoassigner for ports PRs, + which has saved a lot of time and been well-received. It has now + been installed on a freebsd.org machine (hub).
+ +linimon has been more active in pursuing maintainer-timeouts, + and has reset a number of inactive maintainers, with more in the + pipeline. The intent is to try to reduce the number of PRs that sit + around unanswered for two weeks. In almost all cases the resets are + due to no response at all; maintainers who are merely "busy" are + not the source of most of these problems, and deserve the benefit + of the doubt. Some of the maintainers that have been reset haven't + contributed in months or even years.
+ +We have added 10 (!) new committers since the last report.
+ + +Since the last status report ports have been created for all + parts of the BSDInstaller except the backend.
+ +A snapshot of the BSDInstaller was released during this quarter. + This has shown a number of bugs with the installation process. Most + have now been fixed.
+ +The patches to allow UFS operate with quotas in Giant-less mode + are brewed for long now. Since recent huge pile of fixes into + snapshots code, I think the problems you could encounter are caused + solely by the patch.
+ +Aside performance benefits, patch has another one, much more + valuable. It makes UFS operating in one locking regime whatever + options are compiled into kernel. I think, in long term, that would + lead to better stability of the system.
+ + +We updated the default linux base port to Fedora Core 4 and the + default linux X11 libs port to the X.org RPM in FC4.
+ +An update to FC5 or FC6 has to wait until the kernel got support + for syscalls of a newer linux kernel. See the corresponding SoC + project report for more.
+ +Since the last status report we fixed some more bugs, added + basic support for envy24 chips and cleaned up the source for the + emu10kx driver in the ports to make it ready for import into the + base system.
+ +We also got some patches with a little bit of infrastructure for + Intel HDA support. It's not finished and also not usable by end + users yet.
+ + +The XFS for FreeBSD project is an effort to port the publically + available GPL'd sources to SGI's XFS filesystem to FreeBSD.
+ +In December, we imported a version of XFS into FreeBSD-CURRENT + which allows FreeBSD to mount an XFS filesystem as read-only.
+ +As a side effort, we have been continuing on the work that PHK + started to clean up the mount code in FreeBSD. We can use the + existing FreeBSD mount(8) utility to mount an XFS partition, + without introducing a new mount_xfs utility.
+ + +For the last several months Randall Stewart has been working in + HEAD and STABLE to get us ready to integrate the SCTP protocol + (Stream Transmission Control Protocol) into FreeBSD. He is + currently working on a patch to share with a wider audience but + needs to do some integration work first. Randall has a provisional + commit bit and will be working with gnn on getting code committed + to the HEAD of the tree.
+ + +In the time since the last status report, four security + advisories have been issued concerning problems in the base system + of FreeBSD; of these, one problem was "contributed" code, while + three were in code maintained within FreeBSD. The Vulnerabilities + and Exposures Markup Language (VuXML) document has continued to be + updated by the Security Team and Ports Committers documenting new + vulnerabilities in the FreeBSD Ports Collection; since the last + status report, 71 new entries have been added, bringing the total + up to 757.
+ +The following FreeBSD releases are supported by the FreeBSD + Security Team: FreeBSD 4.11, FreeBSD 5.3, FreeBSD 5.4, FreeBSD 5.5, + FreeBSD 6.0, and FreeBSD 6.1. The respective End of Life dates of + supported releases are listed on the web site; of particular note, + FreeBSD 5.3 and FreeBSD 5.4 will cease to be supported at the end + of October 2006, while FreeBSD 6.0 will cease to be supported at + the end of November 2006.
+ +I have been working on porting missing features in gvinum from + vinum, as well as adding new features.
+ +So far the resetconfig, detach, dumpconfig, setstate (on plexes + and volumes) and stop commands have been implemented, as well as + some other minor fixes. The attach command is currently being + implemented, and started on disk-grouping. Currently most of this + is in p4, but patches will be submitted as soon as possible.
+ +The wireless suport has been stable for a while so most work has + focused on bug fixing and improving legacy drivers.
+ +Max Laier and I worked on improving support for Intel wireless + cards. The results of this work included significant improvements + to the iwi(4) driver (for 2195/2200 parts) and the firmware(9) + facility for managing loadable device firmware. There is also an + updated ipw(4) that has improvements similar to those done for iwi + that is in early test. Support for the latest Intel devices, the + 3945 pci-express cards, is planned for later this summer.
+ +Atheros support was updated with a new hal that fixes a few + minor issues and provides known working builds for SPARC, PPC, and + ARM platforms. There is also working MIPS support that will be used + when the MIPS port is ready to test. Otherwise one useful bug was + fixed that affected AP operation with associated stations operating + in power save mode.
+ +wpa_supplicant and hostapd were updated to the latest stable + build releases from Jouni Malinen.
+ +Experimental changes to support injection of raw 802.11 frames + using bpf were posted for comment. This work was done in + collaboration with Andrea Bittau.
+ + +With the help of Jim Thompson of Netgate ( + http://www.netgate.com/ + + ) the FreeBSD Foundation arranged a purchase of xscale-based boards + for folks interested in ARM support. Developers were able to + purchase boards at a reduced cost. The goals were to accelerate + and/or improve support for the ARM platform and to set forth at + least one board as a reference platform for the ARM support. + Netgate will be stocking lower-cost models of the board later in + the year (a special order was made for boards with only 2 mini-pci + slots).
+ +With the introduction of fine grained locking in the SMPng + project, the FreeBSD kernel went under a major redesign, and many + subsystem changed significantly with it. In particular, device + driver's interrupt context ("the bottom half") had the necessity to + synchronise with process context ("the top half") and share data in + a consistent manner without using spl*(). To overcome this problem, + a new interrupt model based around interrupt threads was employed, + together with a fast interrupt model dedicated to particular driver + handlers that don't block on locks (i.e. serial port, clock, + etcetc). Unfortunately, even if the interrupt thread model proved + to be a reliable solutions, its performance were not on par with + the pre SMPng era (4.x), and thus others solutions were + investigated, with interrupt filtering being one of that.
+ +As part of my Summer of Code 2006 work, i'm implementing + interrupt filtering for FreeBSD, and when the framework will be in + place i'll compare the performance of filters, against all the + previous models: pre-SMPng(4.x), ithread and polling.
+ +The most important modifications to the src tree so far where: +
The project is slowly starting to ramp up after a long + move-induced hiatus.
+ +Alan Cox has almost completed making the pmap module + Giant-free.
+ +TrustedBSD Audit provides fine-grained security event auditing + in FreeBSD 7.x, with a planned merge to 6.x for FreeBSD 6.2. Work + performed in the last three months: +
With the release of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1, the second + quarter of 2006 has been productive. Google is sponsoring 14 students + to work on FreeBSD as part of their Summer of Code Program (most of + which already submitted a report for elaboration on their + projects).
+ +Sun's open-source software is starting to make its way into + FreeBSD as a port of DTrace is nearing completion and a port to the + UltraSparc T1 processor (which gives a great push to the ongoing SMP + efforts). Having a powerful debugging tool combined with a CPU that + can run up to 32 concurrent threads helps to identify scalability + issues.
+ +BSDCan 2006 was yet again a smashing success and much was covered + in the 2-day developer summit. As a product of the conference, a new + focus on FreeBSD for the embedded sector has started. Various ARM + boards are targeted, a MIPS32 port is gearing up and people are + looking for other interesting platforms to port FreeBSD to. + Preparation for the EuroBSDCon (in Milan, Italy) on November has + already issued a call for papers.
+ +In addition, a lot of spring cleaning is taking place in the + network stack. After conclusion of the KAME project, IPv6 code + integration has been refocused and a fully locked port of SCTP is in + the final stage of integration. Of course, all this goes without + noting all the progress made with the other network projects.
+ +Please read below for more detailed news on the projects that + happened in FreeBSD during the last three months. If you are + interested in helping, consider the "Open Tasks lists" provided with + some reports. In addition we would like to point you at the + list of projects and + ideas for volunteers + + and hope to receive a status report from you next time.
+ +Thanks to all reporters for your excellent work and timing!. Enjoy + reading.
++ BSDCan 2006 + + continues to impress. Again this year, we had a good collection of + talks from a wide range of speakers. In all, we had over 200 people + from 14 different countries.
+ +Our sponsorship pool continues to grow. This year we had + sponsorship from: +
The 2007 planning has already begun and we look forward to + another popular and successful event.
+ +My thanks to the 2006 program committee, the speakers, the + volunteers, the sponsors, and, of course, the attendees.
+ +See you at BSDCan 2007.
+ +The release engineering (RE) team announced the availability of + FreeBSD 5.5 and 6.1, both in May 2006. FreeBSD 5.5 is the last + planned release from the RELENG_5 branch in CVS. For the most part, + its main features consist of bugfixes, security patches, and minor + updates. We encourage users to move towards the 6.x series of + releases whenever practical. FreeBSD 6.1 is the latest of the + releases to come from the RELENG_6 branch in CVS. It includes + (among many other things) improved support for WiFi devices, + additional network and disk controller drivers, and a number of + fixes for filesystem stability. The next release to be issued from + this branch will be FreeBSD 6.2, which is currently scheduled for + September 2006.
+ +The RE team is currently in a ``between releases'' mode. Current + activities include working with security-team@ on some errata fixes + for the RELENG_6_1 branch and producing snapshots of HEAD and + RELENG_6 at the start of each month.
+ +Several personnel changes have taken place recently. Scott Long + has stepped down from his position on the RE team; we thank him for + his considerable efforts over the past four years. In his place, + Ken Smith has taken over the role of lead release engineer. Bruce + A. Mah has rejoined the RE team after a two-year sabbatical.
+ +For some time now I have been working on converting the existing + USB device drivers to my new and mutex enabled USB API. I have + converted "ulpt", "ums", "uhid", "ukbd", "ugen", "uaudio", and a + few others. Around 10 USB device drivers are left to convert. Most + of these are network device drivers.
+ +At the present moment I am working on getting scatter and + gathering support working for all USB host controllers. Scatter and + gathering means that one allocates PAGE_SIZE bytes of memory at a + time, and then fills these memory blocks up as much as possible + with USB host controller structures and buffers. This should solve + problems allocating DMA-able memory when the system memory becomes + fragmented.
+ + +Some + FPU system + + and + kernel memcpy/copyin/copyout + + changes have been performed. In particular, a per-CPU save area has + been introduced (protected with an interlock) in order to assure a + stable saving mechanism. + copyout/copyin + + have changed in order to use vectorised version of + memcpy + + and an xmm version of memcpy has been provided.
+ + +As part of my SoC 2006 project I am working on implementing a + BRIDGE monitoring module for FreeBSD's BSNMP daemon. Initial + prototyping is done and some kernel changes are coming to be able + to access all needed data. In addition to IETF RFC 4188, which was + designed for monitoring a single bridge, this snmp module will + support monitoring of multiple bridge devices as supported by + FreeBSD.
+ + +Anonymous enablings now work. There is a new option in the boot + loader menu to load the DTrace modules and trace the kernel boot + process.
+ +Sun Microsystems has been very supportive of the FreeBSD port + and has generously provided a Sun Fire T2000 server to allow Kip + Macy's sun4v port to be merged into the DTrace project tree.
+ +The DTrace project tree sources are now exported to + cvsup10.freebsd.org
+ +Refer to the project page for more details.
+ + +There are several projects moving forward in the embedded area. + For now the main location for new information is + www.embeddedfreebsd.org. We have also created a new mailing list, + + freebsd-embedded@freebsd.org + + , which is meant to eventually replace the freebsd-small. A call + was put out on small for people to move to embedded.
+ + +This year's EuroBSDCon will be held in Milan, Italy, on November + 10th through 12th.
+ +Hosted in the foggy northern Italy, the fifth EuroBSDCon aims at + being a new successful chapter in the itinerant series of European + BSD conferences.
+ +EuroBSDCon represents the biggest gathering for BSD developers + from the old continent, as well as users and passionates from + around the World. It is also a chance to share experiences, + know-how, and cultures.
+ +For the first time, parallel to the main event, an event for + wives/girlfriends/friends will be organised. It will consist of + guided tours of the city of Milan, a probable trip to Como and + visits to various museums. We're also working towards offering a + show at the Teatro alla Scala.
+ +The FreeBSD developer summit will be also held on November + 10th.
+ + +Continuing to add IPv6 support to FAST_IPSEC. Test environment + is now stable. Can build and run kernels with FAST_IPSEC and INET6 + enabled but IPSec in IPv6 is now broken and being worked on.
+ + +FreshPorts has seen several new features recently: +
A 2U server was recently donated to the + FreshPorts + + / + FreshSource + + / + FreeBSD Diary + + / + BSDCan + + group. We have also received a RAID card. Now we're looking for + some hard drives.
+ +Over the past few weeks, work has concentrated on benchmarking + the new server and getting it ready for production. Eventually it + will need a new home as I don't really want it running in my + basement all the time (it's really loud!).
+ +Thanks to + iXsystems + + and + 3Ware + + for their contributions to this project.
+ + +GJournal is a GEOM class which provides journaling for GEOM + providers. It can also be used to journal various file system with + just a minimal filesystem-specific portion of code. Currently only + UFS journaling is implemented on top of gjournal. Being + filesystem-independent and operating below the file system level, + gjournal has no way to distinguish data from metadata, thus it + journal both. One of the nice things about gjournal is that it + works reliable even on disks with enabled write cache, which is + often not the case for journalled file system. And remember... fsck + no more.
+ + +The purpose of + gvirstor + + module is to provide the ability to create a virtual storage device + of arbitrarily large size (typically several terabytes) which + consists of an arbitrary number of physical storage devices + (actually any lower-level GEOM providers, including RAID devices) + of arbitrary size (typically 50 GB - 400 GB hard drives). Storage + space from these components is carved into small chunks (for + example 4 MB) and allocated (committed) to the virtual device on + as-needed basis.
+ +Development has started and progressing as planned (though a + little bit slow). Metadata format and virtual storage allocation + formats have been defined and more serious coding is in + progress.
+ + +The FreeBSD list of projects and ideas for volunteers is doing + well. Several items were picked up by volunteers and have found + their way into the tree. Others are under review or in progress. We + are looking forward to hear about new ideas, people willing to act + as technical contacts for generic topics such as USB or specific + entries (already existing or newly created) and suggestions for + existing entries or completion reports for (parts of) an entry.
+ + +Initial changes include: +
Clement has been working both with libnet and gnn's Python based + packet library (PCS) to produce code to test for vulnerabilities in + IPv6. To Clement has found some issues, all of which have been + reported to his mentor and to Security Officer at FreeBSD.org + Vulnerabilities will not be reported here.
+ + +Project is in development with initial working software expected + mid-July 2006. CPU limits will be implemented with a hierarchical + scheduler: (initially) using a round-robin scheduler to select + which jail to run a task in and then delegating which task in the + jail to be run to a per-jail scheduler.
+ + +A simple lexer and parser have almost been completed. Also + significant planing for future additions to K have been thought + up.
+ + +FreeBSD linux emulation layer (linuxolator) currently implements + most of the functionality necessary to emulate 2.4.2 linux kernel, + but linux world has moved forward and current linux world requires + 2.6.x features. The aim of this SoC task is to make Fedora Core 4 + linux-base to be able to run with 2.6.x kernel. Currently this + means extending clone() syscall and implement pthread related + things. This involves TLS implementation (sys_set_thread_area + syscall) and possibly tid manipulation (used for pthread_join etc.) + and finally futexes (linux fast user-space mutexes implementation). + This should enable pthread-linked programs to work. After this is + done there may be other things necessary to implement however, only + time will tell. I am funded by google.com in their SoC to do this + work and I'll continue to work on this after the summer hopefully + as a part of my MSc. thesis.
+ + +The improved support for the i386 binaries are ready for -exp + run. It only allows installing such ports on amd64 and ia64 when + there's a compatibility layer compiled into the kernel and the + 32-bit libraries are installed under /usr/lib32.
+ +The DESTDIR support are in progress. It works for the simplest + ports without USE_* that don't have a [pre|do|post]-install target. + There are more complicated issues with e.g. conflict checking in + DESTDIR, deinstalling from DESTDIR, those have to be fixed as + well.
+ + +The translated webpage is almost ready now. This Hungarian + translation is a "lite" version of the original English webpages, + since there are parts that are irrelevant for the Hungarian + community, or has pieces of data that change quickly, so it's no + use to translate these pages now, maybe later, if we have more + Hungarian contributors, but this webpage would be a good starting + point in translating the documentations, and we need a good place + to put translated documentations anyway.
+ +I'm going to be very busy with SoC this summer, but I'll try to + find people that can help me out in this project. Any help + appreciated.
+ + +As an intermediate step until FreeBSD will have full network + stack virtualisation this work shall provide support for multi-IP + IPv4/v6 jails.
+ +These changes are based on Pawel Jakub Dawidek's work for + multi-IPv4 jails and some initial work from Olivier Houchard for + single-IPv6 jails.
+ +The changes need some more testing but basically things + work.
+ +This is not considered to be the right thing todo so do
+ not
+
+ ask for official support or if this will be committed to the
+ FreeBSD source repository.
+
+
+ After some more cleanup of non-jail related IPv6 changes I will
+ publish a patch for HEAD and perhaps RELENG_6 for everyone who
+ wants to give it a try anyway.
Mohan Srinivas committed his changes to make the NFSv2/3 client + MP safe to HEAD this quarter. Changes may be back-ported to 6.x + soon.
+ +Robert Watson and Chuck Lever held a discussion about the future + of the in-kernel NFSv4 client during BSDCan 2006. The current NFSv4 + client is unmaintained. Chuck also pointed out the long series of + unfixed PRs against the legacy client (NFSv2/3). These are at the + top of his priority list. Robert is also interested in making + NFSv4-style ACLs the lingua franca for FreeBSD file systems. There + was some discussion about integrating Rick Maclem's NFSv4 server + into 7.x.
+ +Chuck Lever became a full source committer during this + quarter.
+ +The basic goals of this SoC 2006 project are moving + nsswitch-modules out of the libc, extending the caching daemon and + importing nss_ldap into the base source tree. 2 milestones of the + project are currently completed.
+ +1. Nss-modules were successfully moved out of the libc into the + separate dynamic libraries. In order for static binaries to work + properly (they can't use dynamic nss-modules), nss-modules are + linked statically into the libc.a. As the side-effect of + nss-modules separation, getipnodeby***() functions were rewritten + to use gethostby***() functions and not the nsdispatch(3) call. + Caching daemon's "perform-actual-lookups" option was extended to + support all implemented nsswitch databases.
+ +2. A set of regressions tests was made to test nsswitch-related + functions. These tests are also capable of testing the stability of + these functions' behaviour after the system upgrade.
+ + +pfSense is rapidly approaching release. We are down to a + handfull of bugs that should be fixed in the coming weeks. We + should have a release around the time of our 2nd annual hackathon + which is taking place on July 21st - July 28th. Many exciting + sub-projects are taking place within pfSense and the project is + gaining new developers monthly.
+ + +As an intermediate step towards implementing support for + callgraphs and cross-architecture performance measurements, I am + creating a BSD-licensed library for ELF parsing & manipulation. + This library will implement the SysV/SVR4 (g)ELF[3] API.
+ +Current status: Implementation of the library is in progress. A + TET-based test suite for the API and manual pages documenting the + library's interfaces are being concurrently created.
+ +Work is being done in FreeBSD's Perforce repository. I hope to + be ready for general review by the end of July '06.
+ + +During this time, a huge number of ports PRs were committed, + bringing us back down below 800 for the first time since the + 5.5/6.1 release cycle. This is due to a great deal of work, + especially from some of our newest committers.
+ +This is all the more notable given the fact that we have been + adding new ports at a rapidly accelerating rate. We have now + exceeded the 15,000 port mark!
+ +Three sets of changes have been added to the infrastructure, + including updates of default versions of MySQL, PHP, LDAP, and + linux_base, and numerous bugfixes and improvements. About 2 dozen + portmgr PRs were closed due to this.
+ +In addition, a large-impact commit was made that attempts to + move us to a single libtool that is as unmodified from 'stock' + libtool as we can. Plans are also in place to do this for the + autotools.
+ +Several people are at work on implementing the modularised xorg + ports. Most of the work is done but several key pieces remain. Once + this is finished, an -exp regression test will be needed (most + likely, more than one :-) ) It is possible that before this we will + need to do a regression test that moves X11BASE back into + LOCALBASE. This is still under study.
+ +Gabor Kovesdan started a Google Summer of Code project on some + highly needed improvements on the ports infrastructure (see + elsewhere in this report). As this is a long term project, gtetlow + kindly imported the most important ports infrastructure files into + perforce to ease development. Other developers are encouraged to + use perforce for ports development, especially as it can help + keeping patches up-to-date while going stale in GNATS. Even though + linimon has been pushing hard on running experimental builds on the + test cluster, it will take some time to work through the + backlog.
+ +erwin added a ports section to the list of projects and ideas + for volunteers at the FreeBSD website. Have a look if you want to + work on the ports system. Don't hesitate to send additional ideas, + and committers are encouraged to add themselves as technical + contacts.
+ +sem adopted portupgrade after it had been neglected for some + time and has been very active on upgrades and bugfixing.
+ +dougb has continued to enhance his portmaster script and people + are finding success with it; although not designed to be as + full-featured as portupgrade, it does seem to be easier to + understand and use.
+ +shaun has contributed portscout, a scanner for updated + distfiles, to the ports collection.
+ +marcus upgraded GNOME to 2.14.1.
+ +As well, there have been new releases of the ports tinderbox + code.
+ +edwin has been hard at work on a PR-autoassigner for ports PRs, + which has saved a lot of time and been well-received. It has now + been installed on a freebsd.org machine (hub).
+ +linimon has been more active in pursuing maintainer-timeouts, + and has reset a number of inactive maintainers, with more in the + pipeline. The intent is to try to reduce the number of PRs that sit + around unanswered for two weeks. In almost all cases the resets are + due to no response at all; maintainers who are merely "busy" are + not the source of most of these problems, and deserve the benefit + of the doubt. Some of the maintainers that have been reset haven't + contributed in months or even years.
+ +We have added 10 (!) new committers since the last report.
+ + +Since the last status report ports have been created for all + parts of the BSDInstaller except the backend.
+ +A snapshot of the BSDInstaller was released during this quarter. + This has shown a number of bugs with the installation process. Most + have now been fixed.
+ +The patches to allow UFS operate with quotas in Giant-less mode + are brewed for long now. Since recent huge pile of fixes into + snapshots code, I think the problems you could encounter are caused + solely by the patch.
+ +Aside performance benefits, patch has another one, much more + valuable. It makes UFS operating in one locking regime whatever + options are compiled into kernel. I think, in long term, that would + lead to better stability of the system.
+ + +We updated the default linux base port to Fedora Core 4 and the + default linux X11 libs port to the X.org RPM in FC4.
+ +An update to FC5 or FC6 has to wait until the kernel got support + for syscalls of a newer linux kernel. See the corresponding SoC + project report for more.
+ +Since the last status report we fixed some more bugs, added + basic support for envy24 chips and cleaned up the source for the + emu10kx driver in the ports to make it ready for import into the + base system.
+ +We also got some patches with a little bit of infrastructure for + Intel HDA support. It's not finished and also not usable by end + users yet.
+ + +The XFS for FreeBSD project is an effort to port the publically + available GPL'd sources to SGI's XFS filesystem to FreeBSD.
+ +In December, we imported a version of XFS into FreeBSD-CURRENT + which allows FreeBSD to mount an XFS filesystem as read-only.
+ +As a side effort, we have been continuing on the work that PHK + started to clean up the mount code in FreeBSD. We can use the + existing FreeBSD mount(8) utility to mount an XFS partition, + without introducing a new mount_xfs utility.
+ + +For the last several months Randall Stewart has been working in + HEAD and STABLE to get us ready to integrate the SCTP protocol + (Stream Transmission Control Protocol) into FreeBSD. He is + currently working on a patch to share with a wider audience but + needs to do some integration work first. Randall has a provisional + commit bit and will be working with gnn on getting code committed + to the HEAD of the tree.
+ + +In the time since the last status report, four security + advisories have been issued concerning problems in the base system + of FreeBSD; of these, one problem was "contributed" code, while + three were in code maintained within FreeBSD. The Vulnerabilities + and Exposures Markup Language (VuXML) document has continued to be + updated by the Security Team and Ports Committers documenting new + vulnerabilities in the FreeBSD Ports Collection; since the last + status report, 71 new entries have been added, bringing the total + up to 757.
+ +The following FreeBSD releases are supported by the FreeBSD + Security Team: FreeBSD 4.11, FreeBSD 5.3, FreeBSD 5.4, FreeBSD 5.5, + FreeBSD 6.0, and FreeBSD 6.1. The respective End of Life dates of + supported releases are listed on the web site; of particular note, + FreeBSD 5.3 and FreeBSD 5.4 will cease to be supported at the end + of October 2006, while FreeBSD 6.0 will cease to be supported at + the end of November 2006.
+ +I have been working on porting missing features in gvinum from + vinum, as well as adding new features.
+ +So far the resetconfig, detach, dumpconfig, setstate (on plexes + and volumes) and stop commands have been implemented, as well as + some other minor fixes. The attach command is currently being + implemented, and started on disk-grouping. Currently most of this + is in p4, but patches will be submitted as soon as possible.
+ +The wireless suport has been stable for a while so most work has + focused on bug fixing and improving legacy drivers.
+ +Max Laier and I worked on improving support for Intel wireless + cards. The results of this work included significant improvements + to the iwi(4) driver (for 2195/2200 parts) and the firmware(9) + facility for managing loadable device firmware. There is also an + updated ipw(4) that has improvements similar to those done for iwi + that is in early test. Support for the latest Intel devices, the + 3945 pci-express cards, is planned for later this summer.
+ +Atheros support was updated with a new hal that fixes a few + minor issues and provides known working builds for SPARC, PPC, and + ARM platforms. There is also working MIPS support that will be used + when the MIPS port is ready to test. Otherwise one useful bug was + fixed that affected AP operation with associated stations operating + in power save mode.
+ +wpa_supplicant and hostapd were updated to the latest stable + build releases from Jouni Malinen.
+ +Experimental changes to support injection of raw 802.11 frames + using bpf were posted for comment. This work was done in + collaboration with Andrea Bittau.
+ + +With the help of Jim Thompson of Netgate ( + http://www.netgate.com/ + + ) the FreeBSD Foundation arranged a purchase of xscale-based boards + for folks interested in ARM support. Developers were able to + purchase boards at a reduced cost. The goals were to accelerate + and/or improve support for the ARM platform and to set forth at + least one board as a reference platform for the ARM support. + Netgate will be stocking lower-cost models of the board later in + the year (a special order was made for boards with only 2 mini-pci + slots).
+ +With the introduction of fine grained locking in the SMPng + project, the FreeBSD kernel went under a major redesign, and many + subsystem changed significantly with it. In particular, device + driver's interrupt context ("the bottom half") had the necessity to + synchronise with process context ("the top half") and share data in + a consistent manner without using spl*(). To overcome this problem, + a new interrupt model based around interrupt threads was employed, + together with a fast interrupt model dedicated to particular driver + handlers that don't block on locks (i.e. serial port, clock, + etcetc). Unfortunately, even if the interrupt thread model proved + to be a reliable solutions, its performance were not on par with + the pre SMPng era (4.x), and thus others solutions were + investigated, with interrupt filtering being one of that.
+ +As part of my Summer of Code 2006 work, i'm implementing + interrupt filtering for FreeBSD, and when the framework will be in + place i'll compare the performance of filters, against all the + previous models: pre-SMPng(4.x), ithread and polling.
+ +The most important modifications to the src tree so far where: +
The project is slowly starting to ramp up after a long + move-induced hiatus.
+ +Alan Cox has almost completed making the pmap module + Giant-free.
+ +TrustedBSD Audit provides fine-grained security event auditing + in FreeBSD 7.x, with a planned merge to 6.x for FreeBSD 6.2. Work + performed in the last three months: +
Use the xml generator or download and edit the xml-template.
One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus on centralized design and implementation, in which the operating system is maintained in a central repository, and discussed on centrally maintained lists. This allows for a high level of coordination between authors of various components of the system, and allows policies to be enforced over the entire system, covering issues ranging from architecture to style. However, as the FreeBSD developer community has grown, and the rate of both mailing list traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it difficult even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all the work going on in the tree.
The FreeBSD Quarterly Development Status Report attempts to address this problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers to make the broader community aware of their on-going work on FreeBSD, both in and out of the central source repository. For each project and sub-project, a one paragraph summary is included, indicating progress since the last summary. If it is a new project, or if a project has not submitted any prior status reports, a short description may precede the status information.
These status reports may be reproduced in whole or in part, as long as the source is clearly identified and appropriate credit given.
