cvs-src summary for December 7-13

From: Mark Johnston <mjohnston_at_skyweb.ca>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 17:37:59 -0600
FreeBSD cvs-src summary for 07/12/04 to 13/12/04
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is a regular weekly summary of FreeBSD's cutting-edge development.
It is intended to help the FreeBSD community keep up with the fast-paced
work going on in FreeBSD-CURRENT by distilling the deluge of data from
the CVS mailing list into a (hopefully) easy-to-read newsletter.  This
newsletter is marked up in reStructuredText_, so any odd punctuation
that you see is likely intended for the reST parser.

.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

You can get old summaries, and an HTML version of this one, at
http://www.xl0.org/FreeBSD/.  Please send any comments to Mark Johnston
(mark at xl0.org).

For Lukasz Dudek and Szymon Roczniak's Polish translations of these
summaries, which may lag the English ones slightly, please see
http://mocart.pinco.pl/FreeBSD/.

.. contents::

======
Errata
======
Last week, I mentioned_ Scott Long (scottl)'s work on the amr driver for
Adaptec MegaRAID cards, which inconveniently turned out not to exist. amr
actually stands for AMI MegaRAID, which is the same American Megatrends,
Inc. of BIOS fame.  The MegaRAID card is no longer made by AMI, though:
they sold their RAID business to LSI several years ago.  Therefore, amr
stands for "LSI MegaRAID", and Adaptec was entirely uninvolved until I
came along.

.. _mentioned: http://excel.xl0.org/FreeBSD/06-12-04.html#other-bug-fixes

I apologize to anyone confused or annoyed by this.  Thanks to Andre
Guibert de Bruet for pointing out this slip, and to Scott for the
background story on AMI and LSI.

============
New features
============
Major enhancements to 802.11 support
------------------------------------
Sam Leffler (sam) committed some major enhancements to the 802.11
wireless network support code.  Some of the improvements he listed are:

- 802.11g support, for 802.11g cards supporting up to 54 Mbps
- WPA and 802.11i, the new security standard to replace WEP
- 802.1x, which provides access control and key management
- WME and WMM (Wireless Media Extensions and Wireless Multimedia), which
  provide basic quality-of-service to 802.11
- Power saving functionality
- Cryptography, authentication, and access control plugin frameworks

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412081726.iB8HQml7083411

Improvements to Atheros 802.11 support
--------------------------------------
Sam Leffler (sam) significantly improved the support for Atheros's 802.11
chips, found in numerous cards from D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, SMC, Sony,
and other manufacturers.  Please see the `ath(4) manual page`_ for a full
list of adapters.

.. _`ath(4) manual page`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ath&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format=html 

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412081734.iB8HYahi083965

Driver added for extra features on IBM laptops
----------------------------------------------
Takanori Watanabe (takawata) added support for extra features on IBM
laptops.  These features include extra buttons and lights, as well as
volume control and handling of built-in wireless networking.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412091354.iB9DsTVt062465

Initial support for Promise SATAII chips
----------------------------------------
Soeren Schmidt (sos) committed a preliminary driver for the Promise SATAII
Serial ATA chip.  The hardware for this work was donated by pil.dk.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412081002.iB8A2fSg054682

ITE IT8212F (Gigabyte) RAID controller supported
------------------------------------------------
Soeren Schmidt (sos) added support for the ITE IT8212F RAID controller,
which is found on many Gigabyte motherboards.  The hardware for this was
donated by Yahoo.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412081117.iB8BHcvL057203

axe driver for USB 2.0 NICs merged to 4.x
-----------------------------------------
Scott Mitchell (rsm) committed the axe driver, which supports USB NICs
with chips from ASIX Electronics, to 4.x.  Supported devices include parts
from Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear; please see the `axe(4) manual page`_
for more details.

.. _`axe(4) manual page`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=axe&manpath=FreeBSD+4.10-stable&format=html

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412082217.iB8MHSRL002785

===============
Notable changes
===============
4.11 freeze begins
------------------
Ken Smith (kensmith) began the code freeze of 4-STABLE in preparation for
the release of FreeBSD 4.11.  Any commits to the branch require release
engineering approval.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412132234.iBDMYvrE084892

PPP no longer enables ECHO if LQR negotiation fails
---------------------------------------------------
Brian Somers (brian) updated the PPP code to add an option to enable and
disable ECHO requests.  When PPP connects with LQR enabled, it tries to
negotiate with its peer to exchange LQR (Link Quality Report) data.  This
allows for detailed link quality monitoring.  Previously, if the peer
didn't agree to this, PPP would send ECHO LQR requests instead.  These
requests don't contain useful quality data, but they allow PPP to monitor
the peer's status, and it would drop the connection if five in a row went
unanswered.

Since the change, this is no longer the case.  Full LQR and echo-only LQR
can be enabled and disabled independently; to get the old behavior, set
"enable echo" in your PPP configuration file.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412131251.iBDCpKLG044509

NOSECURE build knob removed from 4.x, use NOCRYPT instead
---------------------------------------------------------
Marius Strobl (marius) removed the NOSECURE build knob from 4-STABLE,
since it was not working as intended (eliminating crypto but allowing
Kerberos), and to make it work would have made it the same as the NOCRYPT
knob.  If you are using NOSECURE, please switch to NOCRYPT.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412131350.iBDDo3AC047115

=================
Committer changes
=================
Gleb Smirnoff (glebius) is no longer in need of a mentor.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412092310.iB9NA9q2095455

Mark Santcroos (marks) is also free of mentoring.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412122112.iBCLCg63076594

===============
Other bug fixes
===============
Alan Cox (alc) fixed a bug that could cause a kernel panic when
memory-mapped IO is done on files larger than 2 GB.  This closes `PR
73010`_.

.. _`PR 73010`: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=73010

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412072205.iB7M5cMT010990

Christian S. J. Peron (csjp) fixed a bug that could cause lockups when
userid-based firewall rules (like uid) were used in conjunction with a
Giant-free network stack.  With this fix, it is no longer necessary to set
the sysctl debug.mpsafenet to 0 to use userid-based rules.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412100217.iBA2HI2L008474

Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) fixed a bug in the UFS2 filesystem that could
cause the system to refuse to mount a good disk if a blank disk was
previously present in the same drive.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200412121419.iBCEJBg4048788
Received on Tue Dec 14 2004 - 22:38:01 UTC

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