FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report - First Quarter 2017

From: Benjamin Kaduk <bjk_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 23:42:45 -0500
FreeBSD Project Quarterly Status Report - 1st Quarter 2017

   While a few of these projects indicate they are a "plan B" or an
   "attempt III", many are still hewing to their original plans, and all
   have produced impressive results. Please enjoy this vibrant collection
   of reports, covering the first quarter of 2017.

   --Benjamin Kaduk
     __________________________________________________________________

   The deadline for submissions covering the period from April to June
   2017 is July 7, 2017.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Team Reports

     * The FreeBSD Core Team
     * The FreeBSD Foundation
     * The FreeBSD Ports Collection
     * The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team

Projects

     * Ceph on FreeBSD
     * OpenBSM
     * Porting Software to CloudABI: Sandboxed Bitcoin!
     * Support for eMMC Flash and Faster SD Card Modes
     * TrustedBSD

Kernel

     * FreeBSD on Hyper-V and Azure
     * Intel 10G and 40G Network Driver Updates
     * Linuxulator
     * MMC Stack Using the CAM Framework
     * pNFS Server Plan B

Architectures

     * 64-bit PowerPC Book-E Support
     * FreeBSD on Marvell Armada38x
     * FreeBSD/s390x Attempt III

Ports

     * MySQL
     * Rust

Documentation

     * The FreeBSD Dutch Documentation Project
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Team Reports

The FreeBSD Core Team

   Contact: FreeBSD Core Team <core_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Core's primary function is to ensure the long-term viability of the
   FreeBSD project. A very large part of that is to ensure that the
   interactions between developers remain cordial, and consequently that
   the project appears welcoming to newcomers.

   Normally, most of Core's activities around this are done in private --
   a quiet word in the right ear, some discrete peacemaking, occasional
   reading of the riot act. Most of the time, this is all that is
   necessary.

   Unfortunately, this quarter we had an instance where such private
   measures failed to achieve the desired result, and we ended up ejecting
   a developer. This developer is an extremely talented programmer and has
   made significant contributions to the Ports Collection. Despite this,
   portmgr found him to be sufficiently disruptive and abrasive that in
   their judgement, the project was better off overall to sever his
   connection to itself, and core backed them up in that. We are sorry
   that events came to this sad conclusion, but we remain convinced that
   this was a necessary step to safeguard the character of our community.

   In a more positive light, Core has been working on a proposal to
   recognise notable contributors to the FreeBSD project who are not (or
   perhaps not yet) suitable to be put forward as new committers. In
   addition to the usual routes of recognising people that write numbers
   of good bug reports or that supply patches or that volunteer to
   maintain ports, this will also allow recognition of people who
   contribute by such things as organising FreeBSD events or who promote
   FreeBSD through social media. A formal announcement of Core's proposal
   is imminent.

   During January, the core secretary held an exercise to contact all
   source committers who had been inactive for more than 18 months and
   persuade them to hand in their commit bits if they were not planning to
   resume working on FreeBSD in the near future. This is meant to be a
   routine function -- the "grim reaper" -- that aims to keep the list of
   people with the ability to commit pretty much in synchrony with the
   list of people that are actively committing. The regular process had
   fallen out of activity several years ago, and we needed to clear the
   decks before restarting. Ultimately, this resulted in some 20
   developers-emeritus handing in their commit bits.

   No new commit bits were awarded during this quarter.

   Core is also taking soundings on producing a 10.4-RELEASE. This is not
   in the current plan, but a number of developers and important FreeBSD
   users would be keen to see it happen, given some of the work that has
   gone into the stable/10 branch since 10.3-RELEASE. On the other hand,
   this would represent an additional support burden for the Security
   Team, including maintaining versions of software that have been
   declared obsolete upstream, in particular OpenSSL. As an even-numbered
   release, 10.4-RELEASE would have a "normal" rather than an "extended"
   lifetime which means it should not result in extending the support
   lifetime of the stable/10 branch.

   In other news, Core arranged for the old and largely inactive
   marketing_at_FreeBSD.org mailing list to be wound up, and for any
   remaining activities to be transferred to the FreeBSD Foundation.

   Core also asked clusteradm to turn off Internet-wide access to the
   finger server on freefall.freebsd.org. Many developers have included
   details such as phone numbers into the GECOS field of their FreeBSD
   password database entries, and these would be revealed by the finger
   server -- details which are nowadays generally felt inadvisable to
   expose publicly. finger is still available internally within
   freefall.freebsd.org. Core recommends that GECOS data is limited to
   just your full name, and we have updated the standard "new committer"
   e-mail template to reflect that.

   Core is looking for new volunteers to help out with several of the
   teams that manage various aspects of the project. In particular,
   Postmaster and the Security Team are in need of new blood. Recruiting
   for a new member of the Security Team is well under way, but anyone
   interested in joining any of the teams is encouraged to make themselves
   known either to Core or directly to the teams concerned.
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD Foundation

   Links
   FreeBSD Foundation Website
    URL: https://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org/
   Quarterly Newsletter
    URL: https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/FreeBSD-Foundation-Q1-2017-Update.pdf
   2017 Storage Summit
    URL: https://wiki.FreeBSD.org/201702StorageSummit

   Contact: Deb Goodkin <deb_at_FreeBSDFoundation.org>

   The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated
   to supporting and promoting the FreeBSD Project and community
   worldwide. Funding comes from individual and corporate donations and is
   used to fund and manage software development projects, conferences and
   developer summits, and provide travel grants to FreeBSD contributors.
   The Foundation purchases and supports hardware to improve and maintain
   FreeBSD infrastructure; publishes marketing material to promote,
   educate, and advocate for the FreeBSD Project; facilitates
   collaboration between commercial vendors and FreeBSD developers; and
   finally, represents the FreeBSD Project in executing contracts, license
   agreements, and other legal arrangements that require a recognized
   legal entity.

   Our work is 100% funded by your donations. We kicked off the new year
   with some large contributions from Intel and NetApp, to help us raise
   over $400,000 last quarter! We engaged in discussions with new and old
   commercial users to help facilitate collaboration, explain how the
   Project works, and to ask for financial contributions to help us keep
   FreeBSD the innovative, secure, and reliable operating system they
   depend on. Please consider making a donation today!
   https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/donate/.

   The Foundation improves the FreeBSD operating system by employing our
   technical staff to maintain and improve critical kernel subsystems, add
   features and functionality, and fix problems. Our contributions also
   include funding separate project grants like the arm64 port, blacklistd
   access control daemon, and integration of VIMAGE support, to make sure
   FreeBSD remains a viable solution for research, education, computing,
   products and more.

   This quarter's project development highlights include:
     * 168 commits sponsored by the FreeBSD Foundation in the src tree
       (base system) development branch, across three staff members and
       four grant recipients/other developers.
     * Multiple funded grants, including the cfumass project, now
       committed to FreeBSD-HEAD, and improvements to the blacklistd
       daemon and FreeBSD/arm64 port.
     * Staff contributions including improvements to toolchain and build
       tool components, run time libraries, arm64, mips64 and 32- and
       64-bit x86 architectures, release image build tooling, packaged
       base, and VM subsystem bug fixes.
     * Significant progress on the 64-bit inode project, which is nearly
       ready for commit.

   FreeBSD Advocacy and Education

   A large part of our efforts are dedicated to advocating for the
   Project. This includes promoting work being done by others with
   FreeBSD; producing advocacy literature to teach people about FreeBSD
   and help make the path to starting to use FreeBSD or contribute to the
   Project easier; and attending and getting other FreeBSD contributors to
   volunteer to run FreeBSD events, staff FreeBSD tables, and give FreeBSD
   presentations.

   Some of the highlights of our advocacy and education work over the last
   quarter:
     * Promoted FreeBSD at: FOSDEM, SCALE, AsiaBSDcon, and FOSSASIA
     * Promoted BSDCan, SCALE, USENIX LISA, vBSDcon and EuroBSDcon Calls
       for Participation
     * Promoted Google Summer of Code participation on social media and
       created a flyer for people to post at their universities
     * Published a New Faces of FreeBSD Story: Joseph Kong
     * Set up a Marketing Partnership with the USENIX Association and SNIA
     * Published and Promoted the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of the FreeBSD
       Journal: https://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/journal/
     * Published monthly Development Projects Updates on our blog
     * Secured a FreeBSD table at OSCON and promoted available discounts

   Conferences and Events

   The FreeBSD Foundation sponsors many conferences, events, and summits
   around the globe. These events can be BSD-related, open source, or
   technology events geared towards underrepresented groups.

   We support the FreeBSD-focused events to help provide a venue for
   sharing knowledge, to work together on projects, and to facilitate
   collaboration between developers and commercial users; this all helps
   provide a healthy ecosystem. We support the non-FreeBSD events to
   promote and raise awareness about FreeBSD, to increase the use of
   FreeBSD in different applications, and to recruit more contributors to
   the Project.

   We also sponsored and/or attended the following events last quarter:
     * FOSDEM FreeBSD developer summit (sponsor)
     * AsiaBSDCon -- Tokyo, Japan (sponsor)
     * Organized and ran the FreeBSD Storage Summit in Santa Clara, CA
     * Board member Philip Paeps gave a FreeBSD presentation at FOSSASIA
     * Attended FOSSASIA, FOSDEM, and SCALE

   Release Engineering

   The Foundation provides a full-time staff member to lead the release
   engineering efforts. This has provided timely and reliable releases
   over the last few years. Some highlights from last quarter include:
     * Continued the production of weekly development snapshots for the
       12-CURRENT, 11-STABLE, and 10-STABLE branches.
     * Published the initial FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE schedule to the Project
       website.

   Legal/FreeBSD IP

   The Foundation owns the FreeBSD trademarks, and it is our
   responsibility to protect them. We continued to review requests and
   grant permission to use the trademarks.

   Many more details about how we supported FreeBSD last quarter can be
   found in our Q1 newsletter!
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD Ports Collection

   Links
   About FreeBSD Ports
    URL: https://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/
   Contributing to Ports
    URL: https://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing/ports-contributing.html
   FreeBSD Ports Monitoring
    URL: http://portsmon.FreeBSD.org/index.html
   Ports Management Team
    URL: https://www.FreeBSD.org/portmgr/index.html
   FreeBSD portmgr on Twitter (_at_FreeBSD_portmgr)
    URL: https://twitter.com/FreeBSD_portmgr/
   FreeBSD Ports Management Team on Facebook
    URL: https://www.facebook.com/portmgr
   FreeBSD Ports Management Team on Google+
    URL: https://plus.google.com/communities/108335846196454338383

   Contact: René Ladan <portmgr-secretary_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: FreeBSD Ports Management Team <portmgr_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The number of ports is currently just 500 short of 30,000. The current
   number of PRs is close to 2,400, of which 620 are unassigned. The last
   quarter saw 6656 commits from 167 comitters. Both the number of ports
   and the number of unassigned PRs have increased in the last quarter.

   In the last quarter, we welcomed 7 new committers: Eugene Grosbein
   (eugen), Johannes Dieterich (jmd), Larry Rosenman (ler), Mahdi Mokhtari
   (mmohki), Matthew Rezny (rezny), Tobias Kortkamp (tobik), and Vladimir
   Kondratyev (wulf). dumbbell_at_ was already a src committer and got an
   extension for the Ports Tree. We also welcomed back krion_at_ and miwi_at_.
   We took 6 bits in for safe-keeping: itetcu_at_, leeym_at_, mva_at_, olivierd_at_,
   pgollucci_at_, and sanpei_at_.

   There were no changes to the membership of portmgr.

   antoine_at_ worked on USES=samba to prepare for the removal of the
   long-outdated Samba 3.6 ports and replace them with modern versions.
   The new default versions are: FreePascal 3.0.2, Ruby 2.3, and Samba
   4.4. A new variable USE_LOCALE was created to add the LANG and LC_ALL
   environment variables to all builds. Out-of-tree patches can now be
   added with the new EXTRA_PATCH_TREE variable. The error messages for
   invalid OPTIONS_SINGLE options were improved.

   Some of the major port updates last quarter were: pkg 1.10.1, linux
   c6_64, Firefox 52.0.2, Chromium 57.0.2987.110, GCC 4.9.4, Gnome 3.18.0,
   Xorg 1.18.4, Qt 4.8.7 and 5.7.1, and PHP 7.1.

   antoine_at_ ran 31 exp-runs to test version updates and under-the-hood
   changes.

Open tasks:

    1. The number of unassigned and open PRs is still growing, so if you
       have some spare time, please close some of those.
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team

   Links
   FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE Schedule
    URL: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/schedule.html
   FreeBSD development Snapshots
    URL: http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/ISO-IMAGES/

   Contact: FreeBSD Release Engineering Team <re_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is responsible for setting and
   publishing release schedules for official project releases of FreeBSD,
   announcing code freezes, and maintaining the respective branches, among
   other things.

   The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team continued producing weekly
   development snapshots for the 12-CURRENT, 11-STABLE, and 10-STABLE
   branches.

   In addition, the FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE schedule was added to the Project
   website. Please note, however, the schedule on the website is still
   subject to change.

   This project was sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation.
     __________________________________________________________________

Projects

Ceph on FreeBSD

   Links
   Ceph Main Site
    URL: http://ceph.com
   Main Repository
    URL: https://github.com/ceph/ceph
   My FreeBSD Fork
    URL: https://github.com/wjwithagen/ceph

   Contact: Willem Jan Withagen <wjw_at_digiware.nl>

   Ceph is a distributed object store and file system designed to provide
   excellent performance, reliability and scalability.
     * Object Storage
       Ceph provides seamless access to objects using native language
       bindings or radosgw, a REST interface that is compatible with
       applications written for S3 and Swift.
     * Block Storage
       Ceph's RADOS Block Device (RBD) provides access to block device
       images that are striped and replicated across the entire storage
       cluster.
     * File System
       Ceph provides a POSIX-compliant network file system that aims for
       high performance, large data storage, and maximum compatibility
       with legacy applications.

   I started looking into Ceph because the HAST solution with CARP and
   ggate did not really do what I was looking for. But I aim to run a Ceph
   storage cluster of storage nodes that are running ZFS. User stations
   would be running bhyve on RBD disks that are stored in Ceph.

   Compiling for FreeBSD will now build most of the tools available in
   Ceph.

   Notable progress since the last report:
     * The most important change is that a port has been submitted:
       net/ceph-devel. However, it does not yet contain ceph-fuse.
     * Regular updates to the ceph-devel port are expected, with the next
       one coming in April.
     * ceph-fuse works, allowing one to mount a CephFS filesystem on a
       FreeBSD system and perform normal operations.
     * ceph-disk prepare and activate work for FileStore on ZFS, allowing
       for easy creation of OSDs.
     * RBD is actually buildable and can be used to manage RADOS BLOCK
       DEVICEs.
     * Most of the awkward dependencies on Linux-isms are deleted -- only
       /bin/bash is here to stay.

   To get things running on a FreeBSD system, run pkg install
   net/ceph-devel or clone https://github.com/wjwithagen/ceph and build
   manually by running ./do_freebsd.sh in the checkout root.

   Parts not (yet) included:
     * KRBD: Kernel Rados Block Devices are implemented in the Linux
       kernel, but not yet in the FreeBSD kernel. It is possible that
       ggated could be used as a template, since it does similar things,
       just between two disks. It also has a userspace counterpart, which
       could ease development.
     * BlueStore: FreeBSD and Linux have different AIO APIs, and that
       incompatibility needs to resolved somehow. Additionally, there is
       discussion in FreeBSD about aio_cancel not working for all
       devicetypes.
     * CephFS as native filesystem: though ceph-fuse works, it can be
       advantageous to have an in-kernel implementation for heavy
       workloads. Cython tries to access an internal field in struct
       dirent, which does not compile.

Open tasks:

    1. Run integration tests to see if the FreeBSD daemons will work with
       a Linux Ceph platform.
    2. Compile and test the userspace RBD (Rados Block Device). This
       currently works but testing has been limitted.
    3. Investigate and see if an in-kernel RBD device could be developed
       akin to ggate.
    4. Investigate the keystore, which can be embedded in the kernel on
       Linux and currently prevents building Cephfs and some other parts.
       The first question is whether it is really required, or only KRBD
       requires it.
    5. Scheduler information is not used at the moment, because the
       schedulers work rather differently between Linux and FreeBSD. But
       at a certain point in time, this will need some attention (in
       src/common/Thread.cc).
    6. Improve the FreeBSD init scripts in the Ceph stack, both for
       testing purposes and for running Ceph on production machines. Work
       on ceph-disk and ceph-deploy to make it more FreeBSD- and
       ZFS-compatible.
    7. Build a test cluster and start running some of the teuthology
       integration tests on it. Teuthology wants to build its own libvirt
       and that does not quite work with all the packages FreeBSD already
       has in place. There are many details to work out here.
    8. Design a vitual disk implementation that can be used with bhyve and
       attached to an RBD image.
     __________________________________________________________________

OpenBSM

   Links
   OpenBSM: Open Source Basic Security Module (BSM) Audit Implementation
    URL: http://www.openbsm.org
   OpenBSM on GitHub
    URL: https://github.com/openbsm/openbsm
   FreeBSD Audit Handbook Chapter
    URL: https://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/audit.html
   DTrace Audit Provider
    URL: https://reviews.FreeBSD.org/D10149
   DARPA CADETS project
    URL: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/cadets/
   TODO List on GitHub
    URL: https://github.com/openbsm/openbsm/blob/master/TODO

   Contact: Christian Brueffer <brueffer_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: TrustedBSD audit mailing list
   <trustedbsd-audit_at_TrustedBSD.org>

   OpenBSM is a BSD-licensed implementation of Sun's Basic Security Module
   (BSM) API and file format. It is the userspace side of the CAPP Audit
   implementations in FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Additionally, the audit trail
   processing tools are expected to work on Linux.

   During this quarter, experimental support for UUIDs in BSM trails was
   added to OpenBSM. A DTrace audit provider using this functionality has
   been developed as part of the DARPA CADETS project and is in review
   (https://reviews.FreeBSD.org/D10149). In the OpenBSM GitHub repository,
   support for Coverity static analysis was added via TravisCI.
   Additionally, the OpenBSM 1.2-alpha5 release has been merged into the
   FreeBSD HEAD branch.

   This project was sponsored by DARPA/AFRL (in part).

Open tasks:

    1. Test the latest release on different versions of FreeBSD, Mac OS X
       and Linux. Testing on the latest versions of Mac OS X would be
       particularly appreciated.
    2. Fix problems that have been reported via GitHub and the FreeBSD bug
       tracker.
    3. Implement the features mentioned in the TODO list on GitHub.
     __________________________________________________________________

Porting Software to CloudABI: Sandboxed Bitcoin!

   Links
   How to Use CloudABI on FreeBSD
    URL: https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/
   LevelDB for CloudABI
    URL: https://nuxi.nl/blog/2017/02/18/porting-leveldb-to-cloudabi.html
   Memcached for CloudABI
    URL: https://nuxi.nl/blog/2017/03/15/sandboxed-memcached.html
   Bitcoin for CloudABI
    URL: https://laanwj.github.io/2017/03/02/porting-bitcoin-core-to-cloudabi.html

   Contact: Ed Schouten <ed_at_FreeBSD.org>

   CloudABI is a framework that allows you to develop strongly sandboxed
   applications a lot more easily. It is a programming environment that
   exclusively uses FreeBSD's Capsicum facilities. Any features
   incompatible with Capsicum have been removed entirely, which means that
   it is easier to determine how code needs to be adjusted to behave
   correctly while sandboxed. In essence, you only need to patch up the
   code until it builds.

   Last year we have managed to port a lot of exciting libraries over to
   CloudABI. Highlights include sandboxing aware versions of Boost and
   LevelDB. Now that these libraries are readily available, we are at the
   point where we can shift our focus towards porting full applications.

   In late February one of the lead developers of the Bitcoin reference
   implementation got in touch, as he is very interested in creating a
   copy of Bitcoin that is better protected against security bugs. You do
   not want a security bug in the networking/consensus code to allow an
   attacker to steal coins from your local wallet!

   As I think that this is a use case that demonstrates the strength of
   CloudABI well, I've made addressing any issues reported by the Bitcoin
   developers a top priority. Once the Bitcoin port is complete, we want
   to provide binary packages of it as well.

   This project was sponsored by Nuxi, the Netherlands.

Open tasks:

    1. Though getting Bitcoin to work is pretty awesome, don't let that
       distract us from porting other pieces of software over as well! Are
       you the maintainer of a piece of software that could benefit from
       sandboxing? Be sure to try building it using the CloudABI
       toolchain!
    2. One of the pieces of software that got ported over to CloudABI some
       time ago is Memcached. Are you a user of Memcached? If so, feel
       free to give the sandboxed version of Memcached for CloudABI a try!
    3. So far, CloudABI can be used to run software written in C, C++ and
       Python. Would you like to see any other programming language work
       on CloudABI as well? Be sure to help out!
     __________________________________________________________________

Support for eMMC Flash and Faster SD Card Modes

   Contact: Marius Strobl <marius_at_FreeBSD.org>

   In r315430, support for eMMC partitions has been added to mmc(4) and
   mmcsd(4) in FreeBSD 12. Besides the user data area, i.e., the default
   partition, eMMC v4.41 and later devices can additionally provide up to:
     * 1 enhanced user data area partition
     * 2 boot partitions
     * 1 RPMB (Replay Protected Memory Block) partition
     * 4 general purpose partitions (optionally with an enhanced or
       extended attribute)

   Apart from simply subdividing eMMC flash devices or having UEFI code in
   the boot partition, as is done on some Intel NUCs, another use case for
   partition support is the activation of pseudo-SLC mode, which
   manufacturers of eMMC chips typically associate with the enhanced user
   data area and/or the "enhanced" attribute of general purpose
   partitions.

   In order to be able to partition eMMC devices, r315430 also added a
   Linux-compatible ioctl(2) interface to mmcsd(4). This allows the use of
   the GNU mmc-utils (found in ports as sysutils/mmc-utils) on FreeBSD.
   Besides partitioning eMMC devices, the mmc tool can also be used to
   query for lifetime estimates and pre-EOL information of eMMC flash, as
   well as to query some basic information from SD cards.

   CAVEAT EMPTOR: Partitioning eMMC devices is a one-time operation.

   Additionally, in order to make eMMC flash devices more usable, support
   for DDR (Dual Data Rate) bus speed mode at a maximum of 52 MHz (DDR52)
   has been added to mmc(4) and sdhci(4) in r315598, which will appear in
   FreeBSD 12. Compared to high speed mode (the previous maximum) at 52
   MHz, DDR52 mode increases the performance of the tested eMMC chips from
   ~45 MB/s to ~80 MB/s.

   So far, support for DDR52 mode has been enabled for the eMMC
   controllers found in the Intel Apollo Lake, Bay Trail and Braswell
   chipsets. Note, however, that the eMMC and SDHCI controllers of the
   Apollo Lake variant occasionally lock up due to a silicon bug (which is
   independent of running in DDR52 mode). The only viable workaround for
   that problem appears to be the implementation of support for ADMA2 mode
   in sdhci(4) (currently, sdhci(4) supports only the encumbered SDMA mode
   or no DMA at all).

   However, r315598 also brought in infrastructure and a fair amount of
   code for using even faster transfer modes with eMMC devices and SD
   cards respectively, i.e., up to HS400ES with eMMC and the UHS-I modes
   up to SDR104 with SD cards.

   The intent is to merge these changes back to FreeBSD 10 and 11.

Open tasks:

    1. Add support for eMMC HS200, HS400, and HS400ES transfer modes.
    2. Add support for SD card UHS-I transfer modes (SDR12 to SDR104).
    3. Make mmcsd(4) more robust and correctly follow the relevant
       specifications for existing features, e.g., calculate and handle
       erase timeouts, do a SEND_STATUS when CMD6 is invoked with an R1B
       response to the extent not already fixed as part of r315430, get
       the remainder of the existing code to properly check and handle
       return codes, etc.
     __________________________________________________________________

TrustedBSD

   Links
   TrustedBSD Website
    URL: http://www.trustedbsd.org
   TrustedBSD on GitHub
    URL: https://github.com/trustedbsd

   Contact: Christian Brueffer <brueffer_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: TrustedBSD announce mailing list
   <trustedbsd-announce_at_TrustedBSD.org>

   The TrustedBSD Project is an open-source community developing advanced
   security features for the open-source FreeBSD operating system. Started
   in April 2000, the project developed support for extended attributes,
   access control lists (ACLs), UFS2, OpenPAM, security event auditing,
   OpenBSM, a flexible kernel access control framework, mandatory access
   control, and the GEOM storage layer. The results of this work may be
   found not just in FreeBSD, but also NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, and Apple's
   Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. Today, the project continues to
   maintain and enhance these mature features in FreeBSD.

   During this quarter, the TrustedBSD project transitioned from the
   FreeBSD Perforce server to GitHub. This was made possible by Alexis
   Sarghel, who owned the user "trustedbsd" on GitHub and graciously
   transferred this account to the TrustedBSD project. To date, the
   repositories hosting the TrustedBSD website and the SEBSD repository
   have been moved.
     __________________________________________________________________

Kernel

FreeBSD on Hyper-V and Azure

   Links
   FreeBSD Virtual Machines on Microsoft Hyper-V
    URL: https://wiki.FreeBSD.org/HyperV
   Supported Linux and FreeBSD Virtual Machines for Hyper-V on Windows
    URL: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn531030.aspx

   Contact: Sepherosa Ziehau <sepherosa_at_gmail.com>
   Contact: Hongjiang Zhang <honzhan_at_microsoft.com>
   Contact: Dexuan Cui <decui_at_microsoft.com>
   Contact: Kylie Liang <kyliel_at_microsoft.com>

   SR-IOV support for NICs is implemented. So far, we have only tested
   with the Mellanox ConnectX-3 VF card, which works despite some issues
   (Bug 216493: https://bugs.FreeBSD.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216493).

   Updates for UEFI VMs (i.e., Hyper-V Generation 2 VMs):
    1. After the loader issue (Bug 211746) is fixed, UEFI VMs can now boot
       with Secure Boot disabled;
    2. A synthetic keyboard driver has been added. Currently it is only in
       HEAD, but MFCs to stable/10 and stable/11 are planned to occur
       soon;
    3. A SCSI DVD detection issue (Bug 218248) was fixed. Without the fix,
       the VM would fail to boot.

   This project was sponsored by Microsoft.
     __________________________________________________________________

Intel 10G and 40G Network Driver Updates

   Links
   Commit adding X553 ix/ixv Support for iflib
    URL: https://reviews.FreeBSD.org/D9851
   Commit converting ixgbe to iflib
    URL: https://reviews.FreeBSD.org/D5213

   Contact: Jeb Cramer <jeb.j.cramer_at_intel.com>
   Contact: Eric Joyner <eric.joyner_at_intel.com>
   Contact: Krzysztof Galazka <krzysztof.galazka_at_intel.com>

   This driver update is for the Intel ix/ixv and ixl/ixlv network
   drivers, and includes support for several new hardware releases.

   ix/ixv:
     * Added support for X553 SoC devices based on the Denverton platform

   ixl/ixlv:
     * Added support for X722 10G SoC devices based on the Lewisburg
       chipset
     * Added an interface for the upcoming iWarp driver for X722 devices
     * Added support for XXV710 25G devices

Open tasks:

    1. ix/ixv iflib support is currently under review in Phabricator. It
       will be refactored to include D5213.
    2. Initial work for ixl/ixlv iflib support is in progress.
     __________________________________________________________________

Linuxulator

   Contact: Dimitry Chagin <dchagin_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Edward Tomasz Napierała <trasz_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Mahdi Mokhtari <mmokhi_at_FreeBSD.org>

   In this quarter, we are pleased to announce two (of many) works
   achieved in the Linuxulator.

   We added a new placeholder marker UNIMPLEMENTED to accompany the
   previously existing DUMMY, for distinguishing syscalls that the Linux
   kernel itself does not implement from those that we currently do not
   implement. Now our linux_dummy.c is clearer for newcomers to follow,
   and they will quickly know which areas they can start working on.

   Support for two new syscalls, preadv and pwritev, was added to the
   Linuxulator.

Open tasks:

    1. We plan to implement the execveat syscall for the native FreeBSD
       syscall table and then port/wrap it for use in the Linuxulator.
     __________________________________________________________________

MMC Stack Using the CAM Framework

   Links
   Project Information
    URL: https://bakulin.de/freebsd/mmccam.html
   Source Code
    URL: https://github.com/kibab/FreeBSD/tree/mmccam-collapsed-commits

   Contact: Ilya Bakulin <kibab_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The goal of this project is to reimplement the existing MMC/SD stack
   using the CAM framework. This will permit utilizing the well-tested CAM
   locking model and debugging features. It will also be possible to
   process interrupts generated by the inserted card, which is a
   prerequisite for implementing the SDIO interface. SDIO support is
   necessary for communicating with the WiFi/BT modules found on many
   development boards, such as the Raspberry Pi 3.

   Another feature that the new stack will have is support for sending SD
   commands from userland applications using cam(3). This will allow for
   building device drivers in userland and make debugging much easier.

   The new stack is able to attach to an SD card and bring it to an
   operational state so that it is possible to read and write to the card.

   The stack has been tested to work on the Beaglebone Black and Wandboard
   Quad platforms.

   Currently the code is being prepared for inclusion in the FreeBSD
   source tree. cam(3) is being extended to support SDIO-specific
   functions (reading registers, managing interrupts, etc.).

Open tasks:

    1. Integrate the code into FreeBSD HEAD to facilitate testing.
    2. Begin writing a driver for Broadcom-based WLAN chips (found on the
       Raspberry Pi 3 and Wandboard).
    3. Begin writing a driver for Marvell-based WLAN chips (found on the
       GlobalScale Dreamplug and some Chromebooks).
     __________________________________________________________________

pNFS Server Plan B

   Contact: Rick Macklem <rmacklem_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Parallel NFS (pNFS) is an extension to the NFSv4 protocol that allows
   for file accesses within a single logical mount to be performed against
   multiple file servers, with the potential for data access to occur in
   parallel. The pNFS "layout" in use specifies how the division occurs,
   with metadata operations occurring against the main server, and bulk
   data operations (read/write/setattr/etc.) occurring via a
   layout-specific scheme between the client and data servers.

   My first attempt at a pNFS server using GlusterFS was a dud. It worked,
   but performance was so poor that it was not usable. This attempt that I
   call "Plan B", only uses FreeBSD, with one FreeBSD server handling the
   metadata operations and multiple FreeBSD servers configured to serve
   data. An NFSv4.1 client that supports the pNFS File Layout will be able
   to read and write to the data servers directly, spreading out the RPC
   load and allowing growth beyond that of what a single FreeBSD NFS
   server could achieve.

   There is no support for the Flex Files Layout or mirroring at this
   time. I hope to use the Flex Files Layout to add mirroring support over
   the next year or so. Striping is also not supported, but I have no
   plans for implementing it at the moment.

   Plan B is working quite well now and should be available for testing by
   the end of April. I will announce how to do this on the
   freebsd-fs_at_FreeBSD.org mailing list when it is available.

Open tasks:

    1. Testing by others will be needed, once it is available.
     __________________________________________________________________

Architectures

64-bit PowerPC Book-E Support

   Contact: Justin Hibbits <jhibbits_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The Book-E platform target now supports 64-bit mode ("powerpc64"). It
   includes a 63-bit address space split, but the page table directory
   list uses holes to expand to the full address space, leaving gaps in
   the address space where page mappings are repeated. This may change in
   the future.

   As with the AIM powerpc64 port, Book-E supports running powerpc
   (32-bit) binaries as well, and has even been tested with a 32-bit init
   and 64-bit shell.

   Several of the SoC drivers are supported, however, the dTSEC ethernet
   controller is not yet supported. Work is ongoing to support it.

   A QORIQ64 config is included, targeting the P5 and T* series SoCs from
   Freescale.

   Thanks to Juniper Networks for providing patches against an older
   internally maintained FreeBSD version, which enabled this porting
   effort, and for providing historical context for quirks of the pmap
   changes.

Open tasks:

    1. Port the dTSEC driver to 64-bit. There are assumptions in the
       reference driver of operating in a 32-bit environment. It may be
       easier to port the Linux driver instead, which would also give ARM
       support for this ethernet controller.
    2. Take advantage of pointer alignment to squeeze more bits out of the
       page tables; it should be possible to squeeze at least 3 more bits
       out, one at each level.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD on Marvell Armada38x

   Contact: Marcin Wojtas <mw_at_semihalf.com>
   Contact: Zbigniew Bodek <zbb_at_semihalf.com>

   Final testing and productionization of support for the Marvell
   Armada38x platform is under way. The rebase and cleanup is going well,
   with patches functioning on top of HEAD and ready for upstreaming.

   Specific tasks completed include:
     * Platform benchmarking and low-level optimizations (internal bus,
       L1/L2 cache prefetch) -- already submitted)
     * Enable the PL310 L2 cache controller -- currently under review
     * NETA tests, optimizations and PHY-handling rework
     * e6000sw PHY handling rework and fixes
     * Fix and enable performance counter support
     * Fix timers and extract watchdog support to a separate driver
     * Crypto driver fixes -- merged
     * AHCI controller support -- merged
     * Thermal driver -- merged
     * Merge additional support for new boards (SolidRun ClearFog and
       DB-88F6285-AP)

   This project was sponsored by Stormshield, and Semihalf.

Open tasks:

    1. Submit the remaining fixes and drivers.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD/s390x Attempt III

   Contact: Bjoern A. Zeeb <bz_at_FreeBSD.org>

   A long time ago, in the FreeBSD 5 times, there was an initial port of
   FreeBSD to s390 (32bit) and s390x (64bit) which booted past init on
   good days in an emulator.

   As an attempt to revive the s390x/systemz efforts I started to get
   FreeBSD s390x to build with clang/llvm 3.9. At this time, it is
   possible to build world and a GENERIC kernel skeleton (not doing
   anything yet) using external binutils.

   The primary idea of this initial work was to allow for incremental
   addition of the necessary architecture-specific code. Having the build
   framework in place will allow third-party developers to simply type
   make, as they are willing to contribute to the port without having to
   know FreeBSD build specifics. After some cleanup and further updates to
   a more recent HEAD I am planning to push the current work to a public
   repo to facilitate collaboration.

Open tasks:

    1. Write a wiki page with per-architecture specific tasks that need to
       be done, based on the current work and the experience from arm64
       and riscv.
    2. Implement both the userspace and kernel per-architecture gaps.
    3. Figure out a way to get access to IBM's zPDT or better emulators to
       ease implementation, testing, and debugging.
     __________________________________________________________________

Ports

MySQL

   Links
   MySQL80 Overview
    URL: https://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/presentations/mysql-80-overview/
   MySQL80 InnoDB New Features
    URL: https://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/presentations/innodb-whats-new-mysql-80/

   Contact: Mahdi Mokhtari <mmokhi_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Mark Felder <feld_at_FreeBSD.org>

   This quarter a new -dev version of MySQL landed in the Ports
   Collection, MySQL 8.0. It introduces many new features, though we had
   to (re)-patch parts of it which were merged by MySQL from MySQL5.7.

   We also updated MySQL 5.6 to its latest version and closed many PRs
   related to it, mostly relating to using FreeBSD-provided ports for
   libraries instead of the bundled copies. And of course there were
   plenty of security updates.

   We can also report that the problem of having to specify
   ${mysql_optfile}, which some people encountered while using MySQL, is
   now considered to be solved in all MySQL versions: 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0.
   Now the init script will search all default locations, for backwards
   compatibility with the variety of locations used for configuration
   files, before it gives up and reports an error.

Open tasks:

    1. Test the new version and report problems.
     __________________________________________________________________

Rust

   Links
   Wiki Portal
    URL: https://wiki.FreeBSD.org/Rust
   Guide to Bootstraping Rust on FreeBSD
    URL: https://gist.github.com/dumbbell/b587da50ef014078da9e732a4331ebad
   Bug Report to Track Progress on Bootstrapping
    URL: https://bugs.FreeBSD.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=216143

   Contact: Jean-Sébastien Pédron <dumbbell_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Thomas Zander <riggs_at_FreeBSD.org>

   In the Ports Collection, Rust was updated to 1.16.0 and Cargo to
   0.17.0, the latest versions at the time of this writing.

   lang/rust-nightly was also updated to a snapshot from February and it
   is now enabled on i386. It is lagging a bit behind upstream, but Rustup
   works nicely on FreeBSD if you need to try any versions/channels of
   Rust.

   Work has started to bootstrap Rust on non-x86 architectures. Patches to
   add FreeBSD/aarch64 support were submitted and accepted upstream.
   FreeBSD/sparc64 is in progress. The lang/rust-nightly port is also
   being adapted to compile natively on FreeBSD/aarch64. This work is
   critical, in particular because Firefox will shortly require Rust. If
   you want to help, please refer to the guide linked above.

   The compiler, rustc, is crashing sometimes when there is a compilation
   error. Therefore, there is a bit of work to do to improve stability.

   There is some code duplication between lang/rust* and devel/cargo.
   Those Makefiles deserve a bit of cleanup. It might be useful to create
   a USES=rust Makefile helper.

Open tasks:

    1. Bootstrap Rust on more platforms.
    2. Investigate compiler crashes.
    3. Create a USES=rust Makefile helper and simplify the Rust and Cargo
       ports.
    4. Investigate how to speed up lang/rust* compilation time.
     __________________________________________________________________

Documentation

The FreeBSD Dutch Documentation Project

   Links
   The Dutch Translation Project
    URL: https://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/translations.html#dutch

   Contact: René Ladan <rene_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Remko Lodder <remko_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Work has started on an initial translation of the FreeBSD Handbook to
   the Dutch language via the "po" system. While we have an (outdated)
   version of the Handbook available via the older XML files, we are now
   trying to get back into shape with the PO file.

   Rene started working on two articles already and did some translation
   of strings for the FDP-Primer, while Remko has started working on the
   Handbook. If you think you can assist with either, please send Rene and
   Remko an email so that we can start coordinating work.

   In addition, since we have a translation set already from the XML
   files, it would be interesting to see whether we can merge them easily
   into the PO structure. If you have ideas on that, contact us a.s.a.p.

   This project was sponsored by Snow B.V. (in part).

Open tasks:

    1. Identify a way to merge the current XML translations into the
       nl_NL.po files.
    2. Merge the translations into the .po files.
    3. Update the remaining open items into the po files.
    4. Remove the old/outdated translation files from the main repo and
       use the po and book.xml files to generate the Dutch handbook and
       other files.
    5. Identify whether we can also translate the htdocs pages via the PO
       system.
     __________________________________________________________________


Received on Tue May 16 2017 - 02:48:03 UTC

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