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The recent outage of this blog
As you may be aware, this blog has been unexpectedly down 27 hours of the past 32 hours. We suspect this outage was due to a soft failure of the power supply but analysis of this problem is difficult and still ongoing.
Currently the blog is hosted in a different location than usual and does not have the benefit of the usual remote management infrastructure (nor is it in the care of the usual admins team, so there is no timezone diversity for its system management either).
The service will be moved to a TNF system in the near future (not as a reaction to the outage; the current housing is a stopgap measure fixing performance problems the blog experienced in its earlier incarnation until the new TNF owned system is deployed).
In the meantime please be patient should you experience any further outages.
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pkg_install update
The current version of pkg_install has been included in the latest NetBSD release branch. This post highlights some of the many changes and improvements made to pkg_install.
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Google Summer of Code zfs-port project
Progress report of zfs-port Google Summer of Code project. This project aims to continue effort to port zfs file system to NetBSD. ZFS is a well known filesystem developed by Sun Microsystems, inc. for their Solaris operating system.
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End of life for 3.x
In keeping with NetBSD's policy of supporting only the current (5.x) and next most recent (4.x) release branches, the release of 5.0 marks the end of life for the 3.x branches. We have provided an extra month of support for 3.x in order to give people time to migrate their machines to a newer release, and this one month period will be part of our support policy in the future.
The following branches will no longer be maintained:
- netbsd-3-0
- netbsd-3-1
- netbsd-3
This means:
- There will be no more pullups to the branches (even for security issues)
- There will be no security advisories made for any of the 3.x releases
- The existing 3.x releases on ftp.NetBSD.org will be moved into /pub/NetBSD-archive/
Here's hoping 5.0 serves you all as well (but preferably much better) as 3.0 did!
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BSDCan 2009: Kernel Development in Userspace - The Rump Approach
At BSDCan 2009 I gave a presentation about using rump for kernel development. The associated paper has two target audiences:
- regular users who wish to easily learn about how the kernel works without having to setup complex kernel development environments
- kernel developers who wish to learn how to use rump for kernel development and requesting more detailed information from users in problem reports
Downloads:
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pkgin, a tool to manage pkgsrc binary packages
From the day I began using NetBSD I felt that there was a need for a binary
package manager. pkgsrc is great of course, I use it, love it and contribute
to, but I'm not brave enough to build my entire environment with it. Of
course the esteemed pkg_add(1) and pkg_delete(1)
can handle binary packages installation, but when it comes to upgrades,
binary packages manipulation is far from being straightforward.
netpgp
NetBSD-current has recently had a new addition - that of netpgp, a BSD-licensed library that can perform digital signature signing and verification, and also encryption and decryption of files. An email explaining netpgp was sent to the tech-security mailing list, but I thought I'd give a short summary of that email here...
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Runnable Userspace Meta Programs in NetBSD 5.0
The rump (Runnable Userspace Meta Program) framework, unique to NetBSD, provides lightweight virtualization of kernel components such a file systems and networking. This short article explores the key ideas behind rump and gives examples on how to use rump on NetBSD 5.
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Impromptu bugathon
Yesterday, prompted by the threat of reaching 5000 active bug reports several developers began fixing and closing.
As of this writing the count of active PRs has dropped from 4976 to 4893 -- that's 83 resolved -- and quite a few more have been placed in submitter feedback awaiting confirmation that they are in fact fixed.
This is a positive step, and a pretty big number for a single day that wasn't a previously scheduled bugathon. Unfortunately, to clear through the backlog we'd have to do this much every single day for two full months.
Despite all the cleanup work over the past year and a half, the database is still full of reports of already-fixed problems. These not only inflate the total counts; they get in the way and make it harder to find real problems to work on. Finding and closing them needs to be a group effort.
If you're a developer: when you fix a problem please include the PR number in the commit message so it gets pulled into the database; also, please close PRs that you fix, or leave a comment explaining what still needs to be done (e.g. pullups, real fixes vs. quick hacks, etc.)
If you're a user: if you have filed a bug report and it's been fixed, but the report is still open, please follow up to let us know it can be closed. And also, note that GNATS is particular about followups: they need to be sent to gnats-bugs AT netbsd.org (not gnats-admin) and the Subject: line needs to begin with "Re:" and the category and bug number in the form "port-eniac/12345". Other followups are likely to be dropped as spam, or may end up opening a new PR instead. In any event, if you send a followup and you don't get a copy back from GNATS, it probably got lost. If you can't figure out what's wrong, post to the netbsd-bugs mailing list.
And finally, if you are tired of the Gnats search interface you may find these lists helpful... but be aware that they often don't update very rapidly as there are manual steps involved.
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Bluetooth stack/sdp protocol update
NetBSD bluetooth stack was updated to properly support Service discovery protocol spec. SDP daemon sdpd(8) was rewritten to be much simpler, and finally updated the sdpquery(1) program to display complete service records in a meaningful manner.
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EuroBSDCon 2009 - Call for Papers
EuroBSDCon 2009 - Call for Papers
9th European BSD Conference
September 18 - 20, 2009
University of Cambridge, UK
http://2009.eurobsdcon.org/
Introduction
The European BSD Community is once again gathering for EuroBSDcon. In 2009, we invite you to join us in Cambridge, England for the latest in discussion, dissemination and development of material from the many BSDs and their related communities. This, the ninth European BSD conference is a great opportunity to present new ideas to the community and to meet some of the developers behind the different BSDs. The two day conference program (September 19 - 20) will be complemented by a tutorial day preceding the conference (Sept 18).Call for Papers
The Conference is inviting authors to submit innovative and original papers not submitted to other European conferences on the applications, architecture, implementation, performance and security of BSD-derived operating systems. Investigations on economic aspects regarding the operation of BSD systems are also welcome. Topics of interest for the EuroBSD Conference 2009 include, but are not limited to:- application development and deployment
- device drivers
- security and safe coding practices
- methods others should know about
- system administration: techniques and tools of the trade
- operational and economic aspects
Call for Tutorial Proposals
Selected tutorials on practical and problem-solving aspects of BSD-derived operating systems will be offered on the day before the Conference. The tutorials will be presented by speakers who have wide experience in developing and administering the different BSDs. Potential tutorial themes could include, but are not limited to:- Safe coding practices to provide secure solutions
- System load testing and tuning
- BSD in a large network
- Solving sets of problems
Sponsorship Opportunities
We are seeking companies or institutions to sponsor various elements of the conference in order to keep delegate fees as low as possible. Sponsorship opportunities include: paying for a speaker's travel or accommodation; providing bursaries for delegates who cannot pay the conference fee themselves; sponsoring catering, lunches, or the conference dinner. All sponsors will be listed in the conference proceedings and included on our website with a link back to your site. You will also have the opportunity to provide literature for distribution in delegate packs. Please contact the UKUUG Secretariat (office@ukuug.org) to discuss the possibilities or see http://www.eurobsdcon.org/.Important Dates
| Final abstract deadline: | May 31st 2009 |
| Final tutorial deadline: | May 31st |
| Final papers due: | August 1st |
| Tutorial day: | September 18 |
| Conference: | September 19 - 20 |
NetBSD 5.0: benchmarks and an introduction
I have prepared a presentation giving an overview of some of the new features, technology and performance improvements debuting in NetBSD 5.0. You can find the slides from this presentation here:
A comparison of the scalability and performance improvements found in NetBSD 5.0 was conducted against NetBSD 4.0, Fedora Core 10 and FreeBSD 7.1, and is part of the presentation. An outline is below, but for full details on the tests, please refer to the slides. Please click on the images to view a larger version of each.
Benchmark: hackbench
This benchmark tests the efficiency and scalability of the scheduler and IPC (inter-process commmunication) mechanisms. It was created by and is popular with Linux kernel developers. Hackbench quickly exposes problems with SMP scaling, and with high numbers of active tasks.
Benchmark: MySQL sysbench
This test simulates an OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) style database workload. From the OS developer's viewpoint, it measures the efficiency and scalability of threading, memory allocation, and IPC.
Benchmark: build.sh, NetBSD's build system
This test measures how well the operating system scales when given hosting an intensive software development or shell type workload.
Fedora continues to excel due to the significant investment in improving the efficiency and scalability of Linux over the last few years. Our hats are off to the GNU/Linux/Fedora developers. We aim to reverse the position with the release of NetBSD 6.0.
