FreeBSD Status Report January-March, 2011

From: Daniel Gerzo <danger_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:58:24 +0000
FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report January-March, 2011

Introduction

   This report covers FreeBSD-related projects between January and March
   2011. It is the first of the four reports planned for 2011. During this
   quarter, the work was focused on releasing the new minor versions of
   FreeBSD, 7.4 and 8.2, which were released in February 2011. Currently,
   the project is starting to work on the next major version, 9.0.

   Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! This report
   contains 34 entries and we hope you enjoy reading it.

   Please note that the deadline for submissions covering the period
   between April and June 2011 is July 15th, 2011.
     __________________________________________________________________

Projects

     * Bringing up OMAP3
     * GEOM-based ataraid(4) Replacement -- geom_raid.
     * HAST (Highly Available Storage)
     * New FreeBSD Installer
     * OpenAFS Port
     * pfSense
     * RCTL, aka Resource Containers
     * ZFSv28 available in FreeBSD 9-CURRENT

FreeBSD Team Reports

     * FreeBSD Bugbusting Team
     * FreeBSD NYI Admins Status Report
     * The FreeBSD Foundation Status Report

Network Infrastructure

     * DIstributed Firewall and Flow-shaper Using Statistical Evidence
       (DIFFUSE)
     * Five New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms for FreeBSD

Kernel

     * Journaled Soft Updates
     * Linux Compatibility Layer - DVB and V4L2 Support

Documentation

     * New FreeBSD Handbook Section Covering HAST
     * The FreeBSD German Documentation Project Status Report
     * The FreeBSD Japanese Documentation Project
     * Webcam and DVB Compatibility List

Architectures

     * FreeBSD/arm on Marvell Raid-on-Chip
     * FreeBSD/EC2
     * FreeBSD/powerpc on Freescale QorIQ
     * MIPS/Octeon Support and bootinfo

Ports

     * FreeBSD as Home Theater PC
     * FreeBSD Chromium
     * FreeBSD Haskell Ports
     * KDE-FreeBSD
     * Linux Emulation Ports
     * Portmaster
     * Ports Collection
     * www/apache22 Default

Miscellaneous

     * BSDCan

Google Summer of Code

     * Extfs Status Report
     * Google Summer of Code 2011
     __________________________________________________________________

Bringing up OMAP3

   Contact: Warner Losh <imp_at_bsdimp.com>
   Contact: Mohammed Farrag <mfarrag_at_FreeBSD.org>

   OMAP3 Emulation:
     * Step #1: qemu-omap3 isn't ported to FreeBSD yet. So,
     * Step #2: Use qemu-omap3 on Gentoo Host ..
     * Step #3: Is the end reached ?! No, bcz qemu-omap3 is not full. So,
       go to step #4.
     * Step #4: Use Meego >> Download Ubuntu 10.10 >> Install it, and
     * Step #5: Compile FreeBSD kernel, Create root file system, mkimage,
       Emulate using Meego.

Open tasks:

    1. Device Drivers for OMAP3 Processors.
     __________________________________________________________________

BSDCan

   URL: http://www.bsdcan.org/2011/

   Contact: Dan Langille <dvl_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Our list of talks has been settled, and the schedule is pretty much
   finalized. There is still time to get into the Works In Progress
   session.

   Best to book your on-campus accommodation now. Or stay at one of the
   nearby hotels.

Open tasks:

    1. Show up. Enjoy. Profit.
     __________________________________________________________________

DIstributed Firewall and Flow-shaper Using Statistical Evidence (DIFFUSE)

   URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/diffuse/
   URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/diffuse/downloads.html

   Contact: Sebastian Zander <szander_at_swin.edu.au>
   Contact: Grenville Armitage <garmitage_at_swin.edu.au>

   DIFFUSE is a system enabling FreeBSD's IPFW firewall subsystem to
   classify IP traffic based on statistical traffic properties.

   With DIFFUSE, IPFW computes statistics (such as packet lengths or
   inter-packet time intervals) for observed flows, and uses ML (machine
   learning) to classify flows into classes. In addition to traditional
   packet inspection rules, IPFW rules may now also be expressed in terms
   of traffic statistics or classes identified by ML classification. This
   can be helpful when direct packet inspection is problematic (perhaps
   for administrative reasons, or because port numbers do not reliably
   identify applications).

   DIFFUSE also enables one instance of IPFW to send flow information and
   classes to other IPFW instances, which then can act on such traffic
   (e.g. prioritise, accept, deny, etc.) according to its class. This
   allows for distributed architectures, where classification at one
   location in your network is used to control fire-walling or
   rate-shaping actions at other locations.

   DIFFUSE is a set of patches for FreeBSD-CURRENT. It can be downloaded
   from the project's web site. The web site also contains a more
   comprehensive introduction, including application examples, links to
   related work and documentation.

   In February 2011 we released DIFFUSE v0.2.2. This release contains a
   number of bug fixes and new features. Most notably since version 0.2
   there is a tool to build classifier models, and there is a feature
   module and classifier model to classify Skype traffic.

   We hope to release DIFFUSE v0.3 soon. Keep an eye on the freebsd-ipfw
   and freebsd-net mailing lists for project-related announcements.
     __________________________________________________________________

Extfs Status Report

   URL:
   http://p4web.FreeBSD.org/_at_md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2010/extfs/src/sy
   s/fs/&c=rFV_at_//depot/projects/soc2010/extfs/src/sys/fs/ext2fs/?ac=83
   URL:
   http://p4web.FreeBSD.org/_at_md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2010/ext4fs/src/s
   ys/fs/&c=cc4_at_//depot/projects/soc2010/ext4fs/src/sys/fs/ext4fs/?ac=83

   Contact: Zheng Liu <lz_at_FreeBSD.org>

   I have implemented a reallocblks in ext2fs, like in ffs, and submitted
   a patch file to mailing list. Next I will try to implement htree
   directory index in ext2fs.
     __________________________________________________________________

Five New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms for FreeBSD

   URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/freebsd/5cc/
   URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/newtcp/
   URL: http://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org/projects.shtml
   URL:
   http://FreeBSDfoundation.blogspot.com/2011/03/summary-of-five-new-tcp-c
   ongestion.html
   URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~lstewart/patches/5cc/

   Contact: David Hayes <dahayes_at_swin.edu.au>
   Contact: Lawrence Stewart <lastewart_at_swin.edu.au>
   Contact: Grenville Armitage <garmitage_at_swin.edu.au>
   Contact: Rui Paulo <rpaulo_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Bjoern Zeeb <bz_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The project is now complete, with the following code available in the
   svn head branch:
     * Modular congestion control framework.
     * Khelp (Kernel Helper) and Hhook (Helper Hook) frameworks.
     * Basic Khelp/Hhook integration with the TCP stack.
     * Enhanced Round Trip Time (ERTT) Khelp module.
     * Modularised implementations of NewReno, CUBIC, H-TCP, Vegas,
       Hamilton-Delay and CAIA-Hamilton-Delay congestion control
       algorithms.

   In addition to the code, a large set of documentation was committed
   (see the following man pages: cc(4), cc_newreno(4), cc_cubic(4),
   cc_htcp(4), cc_vegas(4), cc_hd(4), cc_chd(4), h_ertt(4), cc(9),
   khelp(9), hhook(9)) and a technical report was released which evaluates
   the computational overhead associated with TCP before and after the
   project's changes.

   A candidate patch to MFC the modular congestion control framework to
   the 8-STABLE branch is ready for testing here. If you try the patch,
   please send a note detailing your experience (positive or negative) to
   Lawrence Stewart.

   Thanks go to the FreeBSD Foundation for funding this work, to the
   project's technical reviewers for providing detailed feedback, and to
   all FreeBSD users who have provided testing feedback thus far.

Open tasks:

    1. Test 8-STABLE MFC candidate patch and do the merge in time for
       8.3-RELEASE.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD as Home Theater PC

   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/HTPC

   Contact: Bernhard Froehlich <decke_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Juergen Lock <nox_at_FreeBSD.org>

   FreeBSD could be a much better platform for a Home Theater PC than it
   currently is. We are focusing on improving support for media center
   applications by extending the major ports (MythTV, VDR, XBMC) and
   creating some documentation to guide interested people.

   In the last months we continued to work on HTPC relevant ports,
   improved lirc and multimedia/webcamd remote control support. The last
   missing major HTPC application VDR (Video Disk Recorder) has finally
   been committed to the portstree as multimedia/vdr including 17 vdr
   plugin ports.

Open tasks:

    1. Improve remote control support in webcamd and with lirc.
    2. Port more Media Center applications (Enna, me-tv, ...)
    3. Create a small guide on how to build a great FreeBSD Home Theater
       PC.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Bugbusting Team

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html#gnats
   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/BugBusting
   URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~linimon/studies/prs/

   Contact: Gavin Atkinson <gavin_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Mark Linimon <linimon_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Remko Lodder <remko_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Volker Werth <vwe_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The bugmeister team is happy to welcome Eitan Adler (eadler_at_) as the
   newest GNATS-only contributor. Eitan has been helping triage new bugs
   as they come in, as well as making good progress on many of the older
   bugs, closing duplicates and obsolete bugs and contacting submitters
   for extra information where necessary. For the first time in a long
   time we managed to get below 6000 open PRs, in no small part due to
   Eitan's efforts. Welcome aboard!

   PRs continue to be classified as they arrive, by adding 'tags' to the
   subject lines corresponding to the kernel subsystem involved, or man
   page references for userland PRs. Reports are generated from these
   nightly, grouping related PRs into one place, sorted by tag or man
   page. This allows an interested party working in one area or on one
   subsystem to easily find related bugs and issues in the same area,
   which has proven quite effective in getting some of the older bug
   reports closed. These reports can all be found by following the third
   link above.

   We continue to look for ideas for other reports that may help improve
   the PR closure rate. If you have any suggestions for reports which
   would contribute positively to the way you work, please email
   bugmeister_at_ and we shall try to produce such a report.

   Our clearance rate of PRs, especially in kern and bin, seems to be
   improving. The number of non-ports PRs has stayed almost constant since
   the last status report.

   As always, anybody interested in helping out with the PR queue is
   welcome to join us in #freebsd-bugbusters on EFnet. We are always
   looking for additional help, whether your interests lie in triaging
   incoming PRs, generating patches to resolve existing problems, or
   simply helping with the database housekeeping (identifying duplicate
   PRs, ones that have already been resolved, etc). This is a great way of
   getting more involved with FreeBSD!

Open tasks:

    1. Try to find ways to get more committers helping us with closing PRs
       that the team has already analyzed.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Chromium

   URL: http://trillian.chruetertee.ch/chromium
   URL: http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chromium
   URL: http://www.chromium.org/Home

   Contact: FreeBSD Chromium Team <chromium_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Thanks to a great collaborative effort from the FreeBSD community, the
   OpenBSD community, and the Chromium developers, Chromium has been
   updated in the Ports tree.

   In the spirit of release early and release often, updates to Chromium
   happen frequently. The contributors of the FreeBSD Chromium team have
   demonstrated great agility in keeping pace with updates in the
   development repository hosted at
   http://trillian.chruetertee.ch/chromium.

Open tasks:

    1. A task that lies ahead is working with the Chromium developers at
       integrating the FreeBSD patches into the codebase. Volunteers are
       welcome.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Haskell Ports

   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/Haskell
   URL: https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell
   URL: http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-haskell/

   Contact: Gábor János PÁLI <pgj_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Ashish SHUKLA <ashish_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Giuseppe Pilichi <jacula_at_FreeBSD.org>

   We are proud to announce that the FreeBSD Haskell team has updated GHC
   to 7.0.3, and all other existing Haskell ports to the latest stable
   versions, as well as added new ports. The total number of Haskell ports
   in the FreeBSD repository is now more than 200. These ports are still
   waiting to be committed. At the moment, they are available from FreeBSD
   Haskell ports repository. Any users who would like to get early access
   to them, please refer to the FreeBSD Haskell ports Call For Testing.

Open tasks:

    1. Create a metaport for Haskell Platform.
    2. Create a port for Happstack.
    3. Create a port for gitit.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD NYI Admins Status Report

   Contact: NYI Admins Team <nyi-admin_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The FreeBSD.org site at New York Internet is progressing, though more
   slowly than we had hoped. Due to problems with the old power
   controllers and serial console servers, new equipment has been bought
   by the FreeBSD Foundation. Installing the new equipment required
   re-racking all the existing servers which was done by the local FreeBSD
   team (Steven Kreuzer and John Baldwin).

   For basic infrastructure at the site (such as DHCP, DNS, console etc.)
   the FreeBSD Foundation bought some new servers which are in the process
   of being configured.

   The FreeBSD Ports team are currently using 9 of the NYI servers for
   package building.

Open tasks:

    1. We are looking for a storage system (15TB+) for keeping replicas of
       all the main FreeBSD.org systems, a full ftp-archive mirror, site
       local files etc.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD/arm on Marvell Raid-on-Chip

   Contact: Grzegorz Bernacki <gjb_at_semihalf.com>
   Contact: Rafal Jaworowski <raj_at_semihalf.com>

   Marvell 88RC8180 is an integrated RAID-on-Chip controller, based on the
   Feroceon 88FR331 CPU core (ARMv5TE). The 88RC9580 is a next generation
   version, based on the Sheeva 88SV581 CPU core (ARMv6) of this
   system-on-chip devices family.

   Current FreeBSD suppport for 88RC8180 and 88RC9580 includes:
     * Booting via U-Boot bootloader
     * L1, L2 cache
     * Serial console support (UART)
     * Interrupt controller
     * Integrated timers
     * PCI Express (root complex and endpoint modes)
     * Doorbells and messages
     * Ethernet controller

Open tasks:

    1. Complete, clean up, merge with HEAD.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD/EC2

   URL: http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/

   Contact: Colin Percival <cperciva_at_FreeBSD.org>

   FreeBSD is now able to run on t1.micro and cc1.4xlarge instances in the
   Amazon EC2 cloud. FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE is stable subject to the
   limitations of the instance type (e.g., running ZFS on a micro instance
   with only 600 MB of RAM doesn't work very well), but FreeBSD 9.0 has
   significant stability issues.

   A list of available FreeBSD AMIs (EC2 machine images) appears on the
   FreeBSD/EC2 status page.

Open tasks:

    1. Bring FreeBSD to a wider range of EC2 instance types.
    2. Completely rework the locking in head/sys/i386/xen/pmap.c to
       eliminate races and make 9.0-CURRENT stable under
       paravirtualization.
    3. Track down several possibly-related problems with scheduling and
       timekeeping.
    4. Fix other issues shown on the FreeBSD/EC2 status page.
     __________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD/powerpc on Freescale QorIQ

   Contact: Michal Dubiel <md_at_semihalf.com>
   Contact: Rafal Jaworowski <raj_at_semihalf.com>

   QorIQ is a brand of Power Architecture-based communications
   microprocessors from Freescale. It is an evolutionary step from the
   PowerQUICC platform (MPC85xx) and is built around one or more Power
   Architecture e500/e500mc cores. This work is bringing up FreeBSD on
   these system-on-chip devices along with device drivers for integrated
   peripherials.

   Current FreeBSD QorIQ support includes:
     * QorIQ P2020 support
     * Booting via U-Boot bootloader
     * L1, L2 cache
     * Serial console (UART)
     * Interrupt controller
     * Ethernet (TSEC, SGMII mode)
     * I2C
     * EHCI controller (no Transaction Translation Unit)
     * Security Engine (SEC) 3.1
     * PCI Express controller (host mode)
     * Enhanced SDHC (no MMC support)
     * Dual-core (SMP) support
     __________________________________________________________________

GEOM-based ataraid(4) Replacement -- geom_raid.

   Contact: Alexander Motin <mav_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: M. Warner Losh <imp_at_FreeBSD.org>

   A new RAID GEOM class (geom_raid) was added to FreeBSD 9-CURRENT, to
   replace ataraid(4) in supporting various BIOS-based software RAIDs.
   Unlike ataraid(4) this implementation does not depend on legacy ata(4)
   subsystem and can be used with any disk drivers, including new
   CAM-based ones (ahci(4), siis(4), mvs(4) and ata(4) with `options
   ATA_CAM`). To make code more readable and extensible, this
   implementation follows modular design, including a core part and two
   sets of modules, implementing support for different metadata formats
   and RAID levels.

   Support for such popular metadata formats is now implemented: Intel,
   JMicron, NVIDIA, Promise (also used by AMD/ATI) and SiliconImage.

   Such RAID levels are now supported: RAID0, RAID1, RAID1E, RAID10,
   SINGLE, CONCAT.

   For any all of these RAID levels and metadata formats this class
   supports full cycle of volume operations: reading, writing, creation,
   deletion, disk removal and insertion, rebuilding, dirty shutdown
   detection and resynchronization, bad sector recovery, faulty disks
   tracking, hot-spare disks. For Intel and Promise formats there is
   support for multiple volumes per disk set.

   See the graid(8) manual page for additional details.

   Sponsored by: Cisco Systems, Inc. and iXsystems, Inc.

Open tasks:

    1. Implement metadata modules for other formats (DDF, Highpoint, VIA,
       ...).
    2. Implement transformation modules for other RAID levels (RAID5,
       ...).
     __________________________________________________________________

Google Summer of Code 2011

   URL: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2011/freebsd
   URL: http://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2011

   Contact: Brooks Davis <brooks_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson_at_FreeBSD.org>

   FreeBSD is proud to be participating in our seventh year of Google
   Summer of Code. On Monday, April 25th we accepted 17 proposals from an
   overall excellent field. A full list of accepted proposals can be found
   on the GSoC website. We look forward to working with these students
   over the summer.

   As we did last year we plan to ask students to submit weekly status
   reports to the soc-status mailing list. Those wishing to keep up with
   the work in progress and offer review may wish to subscribe.
     __________________________________________________________________

HAST (Highly Available Storage)

   Contact: Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Contact: Mikolaj Golub <trociny_at_FreeBSD.org>

   HAST development is progressing nicely. Mikolaj Golub who contributes
   to HAST is now a FreeBSD src committer. Some changes worth noting since
   the last report:
     * Compression of the data being sent over the network. This can speed
       up especially synchronization process.
     * Optional checksuming for the data being send over the network.
     * Capsicum sandboxing for secondary node and hastctl.
     * Chroot+setuid+setgid sandboxing for primary node.
     * Allow administrators to specify source IP address for connections.
     * When changing role wait for a while for the other node to switch
       from primary to secondary to avoid split-brain.
     * Many bug fixes.
     __________________________________________________________________

Journaled Soft Updates

   Contact: Jeff Roberson <jeff_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Kirk McKusick <mckusick_at_mckusick.com>

   All known problems with journaled soft updates have been fixed in head.
   If you have any problems while running with journaled soft updates,
   please report them to us.

   We have addressed several performance issues that have been brought to
   our attention. If you have any performance problems while running with
   journaled soft updates, please report them to us.

   We have improved the recovery of resources when running with soft
   updates on small (root) filesystems. We anticipate being able to use
   soft updates for root filesystems in the 9.0 system.

   We expect to have journaled soft updates default to enabled in the 9.0
   system. We encourage users of -CURRENT to enable journaled soft updates
   to help shake out any remaining performance problems and bugs.
     __________________________________________________________________

KDE-FreeBSD

   URL: http://FreeBSD.kde.org

   Contact: KDE FreeBSD <kde-freebsd_at_kde.org>

   The KDE on FreeBSD team have continued to improve the experience of KDE
   and Qt under FreeBSD. The latest round of improvements include:
     * Improved shared resources (i.e. pixmaps for KDE)
     * Improved file monitoring (using kevent)
     * Improved KSysGuard support (new and refined sensors)

   The team have also made many releases and upstreamed many fixes and
   patches. The latest round of releases include:
     * Qt: 4.7.2
     * KDE: 4.5.5; 4.6.1; 4.6.2
     * KOffice: 2.3.3
     * KDevelop: 4.2.0; 4.2.2 (KDevPlatform: 1.2.0; 1.2.2)
     * many smaller ports

   The team needs more testers and porters so please visit us at
   kde-freebsd_at_kde.org

Open tasks:

    1. Continue improvements of KSysGuard.
    2. General maintenance.
    3. General testing.
    4. Porting.
     __________________________________________________________________

Linux Compatibility Layer - DVB and V4L2 Support

   URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~nox/dvb/

   Contact: Juergen Lock <nox_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Following (separate) discussions on the mailing lists I have made
   patches to add DVB and V4L2 ioctl translation support to the Linux
   compatibility layer, allowing Linux apps like SageTV, Skype, and Flash
   to use DVB/ATSC tuners and webcams that previously only worked for
   native FreeBSD apps. (Most of this hardware uses Linux drivers via the
   multimedia/webcamd port.)

Open tasks:

    1. Handle the remaining ioctls that (I think) are not used by DVB
       tuners/cameras supported by webcamd (it only supports USB devices,
       the unhandled ioctls mostly have to do with video overlays and
       hardware MPEG2 decoding on analog or DVB tuners, features that
       AFAIK don't exist on USB hardware.)
    2. Make the DVB support a port because there were concerns putting it
       in base due to the LGPL in one of the header files even though I
       already separated out the code into an extra kld.
       (linux_dvbwrapper.ko)
    3. Get the patches polished and committed. :) (Until they are you can
       check my DVB page and the freebsd-emulation_at_ mailing list for
       updates.)
     __________________________________________________________________

Linux Emulation Ports

   URL:
   http://www.leidinger.net/blog/2011/02/25/howto-creating-your-own-update
   d-linux-rpm-for-the-freebsd-linuxulator/

   Contact: Alexander Leidinger <netchild_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Emulation Mailinglist <freebsd-emulation_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Old linux_base ports (all which are not used by default in some
   release) where marked as deprecated with a short expiration period. The
   reason is that all those ports are long past their end of life and do
   not receive security updates anymore. Unfortunately this is also true
   for the linux_base ports which are still used by default in the
   releases, but no replacement is available ATM (see open tasks).

   The linux-f10-pango port was updated to a more recent version whoch
   does not have a security problem by generating a linux-RPM in a VM with
   "FreeBSD" as the vendor (see the links section for a HOWTO).

Open tasks:

    1. Decide which RPM based linux distribution+version to track next for
       the linux_base ports, create ports for it and test for
       compatibility with our kernel code.
     __________________________________________________________________

MIPS/Octeon Support and bootinfo

   Contact: Andrew Duane <aduane_at_juniper.net>

   Working on improving support for Octeon processors and integrating with
   other MIPS processor families. Currently working on support for the
   standard MIPS bootinfo structure as a boot API (to supplement/replace
   the Caviums-specific structure). Other Octeon improvements including
   cleanups to CF and USB drivers to come.
     __________________________________________________________________

New FreeBSD Handbook Section Covering HAST

   URL:
   http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks-hast.ht
   ml

   Contact: Daniel Gerzo <danger_at_FreeBSD.org>

   A new FreeBSD Handbook section covering the Highly Available STorage,
   or HAST developed by Pawel Jakub Dawidek has been recently added. In
   this section, you will learn what HAST is, how it works, which features
   it provides and how to set it up. It also includes a working example on
   how it can be used together with devd(8) and CARP. Enjoy your reading.
     __________________________________________________________________

New FreeBSD Installer

   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/BSDInstall
   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/PCBSDInstallMerge

   Contact: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn_at_FreeBSD.org>

   On March 14th, sysinstall was replaced on the 9.0 snapshot media by a
   new, modular installer called BSDInstall. This adds support for a wide
   variety of new features while simplifying the installation process.
   Testing before the 9.0 release will be very much appreciated -- CD and
   memory stick images for a variety of platforms are linked from the
   BSDInstall wiki page.

   Interesting features:
     * Install CD media are always live CDs
     * Installations spanning multiple disks
     * Wireless setup
     * GPT disk formatting
     * Virtualization friendly: can install from a live system onto disk
       images
     * Easily hackable and more modular than sysinstall
     * Greater flexibility: shells available throughout the installation

   Work is presently ongoing to integrate this installer with the backend
   provided by pc-sysinstall (second wiki link).

Open tasks:

    1. ZFS installation support.
    2. IA64 disk setup.
     __________________________________________________________________

OpenAFS Port

   URL: http://openafs.org
   URL: http://web.mit.edu/freebsd/openafs/openafs.shar

   Contact: Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk_at_mit.edu>
   Contact: Derrick Brashear <shadow_at_gmail.com>

   AFS is a distributed network filesystem that originated from the Andrew
   Project at Carnegie-Mellon University. The OpenAFS client
   implementation has not been particularly useful on FreeBSD since the
   FreeBSD 4.X releases. Work covered in previous reports brought the
   OpenAFS client to a useful form on 9.0-CURRENT, though with some rough
   edges. Since our last report, we have fixed several bugs that were
   impacting usability, and we expect the upcoming 1.6.0 release to be
   usable for regular client workloads (though not heavy load).
   Accordingly, we have submitted packaging for inclusion in the Ports
   Collection (PR ports/152467).

   There are several known outstanding issues that are being worked on,
   but detailed bug reports are welcome at port-freebsd_at_openafs.org.

Open tasks:

    1. Update VFS locking to allow the use of disk-based client caches as
       well as memory-based caches.
    2. Track down races and deadlocks that may appear under load.
    3. Integrate with the bsd.kmod.mk kernel-module build infrastructure.
    4. Eliminate a moderate memory leak from the kernel module.
    5. PAG (Process Authentication Group) support is not functional.
     __________________________________________________________________

pfSense

   URL: www.pfsense.org

   Contact: Scott Ullrich <sullrich_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Chris Buechler <cmb_at_pfsense.org>
   Contact: Ermal Luci <eri_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Work on 2.0 is rapidly coming to an end. We released RC1 around Feb 25
   2011 and so far it seems to be rather stable. 2.0 is our first major
   release in 2 years and almost all limitations of the previous version
   has been overcome.

Open tasks:

    1. Finish testing RC1 and certify for release.
     __________________________________________________________________

Portmaster

   URL: http://dougbarton.us/portmaster-proposal.html

   Contact: Doug Barton <dougb_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The latest version of portmaster contains numerous improvements aimed
   at large-scale enterprise users. Particularly, support for the
   --index-only/--packages-only code has been significantly improved. Some
   of the highlights include:
     * New --update-if-newer option which takes a list of ports and/or a
       glob pattern on the command line and only updates those that are
       out of date. This feature is very useful for ensuring that the
       packages needed for updating a system are all available and up to
       date on the package building system.
     * The portmaster.rc file can now be stored in the same directory as
       the script itself, which aids in shared access to the script (for
       example over an NFS mount)
     * More features now work (or work better) with --index-only,
       including --check-depends

Open tasks:

    1. I have received some support for items E.2 and E.3 on the web page
       listed above so I will be putting some effort into those areas in
       the coming months. I also have in mind to split out the "fetch"
       code to be its own script, in part to support goal E.2, and to
       allow for more efficient parallelization when downloading multiple
       distfiles (especially for multiple ports that download the same
       distfile). This will also allow me to set a global limit for the
       number of parallel fetches which should aid users on slow links.
     __________________________________________________________________

Ports Collection

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/
   URL:
   http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing-ports/
   URL: http://portsmon.FreeBSD.org/index.html
   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/portmgr/index.html
   URL: http://blogs.FreeBSDish.org/portmgr/
   URL: http://www.twitter.com/freebsd_portmgr/
   URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=135441496471197
   URL: http://tinderbox.marcuscom.com/

   Contact: Thomas Abthorpe <portmgr-secretary_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Port Management Team <portmgr_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The ports tree slowly moves up closer to 23,000. The PR count still
   remains at about 1000.

   In Q1 we added 2 new committers, and took in 4 commit bits for safe
   keeping.

   After a year of serving as the team secretary, Thomas Abthorpe's
   membership was upgraded to full voting status.

   The Ports Management team have been running -exp runs on an ongoing
   basis, verifying how base system updates may affect the ports tree, as
   well as providing QA runs for major ports updates. Of note, -exp runs
   were done for:
     * erwin did a clang -exp run, and sent results to interested parties
     * kde_at_ requested an -exp run for KDE 4.6.1 and Qt 4.7.2
     * linimon -exp for update of default zope version to 3.2
     * miwi performed the following -exp runs, make fetch-original, xorg,
       cmake, pear, kde4 / py-qt / sip, and python2.7
     * mm requested an -exp run to test the last GPLv2 version of gcc
       4.2.2
     * pav completed open-motif and mono -exp runs for respective
       submitters
     * ports/127214, -exp run to make copy/paste of portaudit user
       friendly
     * ports/144482, -exp run to fix package depends
     * ports/152102, -exp run to make dirrmtry more friendly
     * ports/152268, -exp run to update binutils
     * ports/153539, -exp run to allow checking STRIP when WITH_DEBUG is
       defined
     * ports/153547, -exp run to remove NO_SIZE
     * ports/153625, -exp run to pass CPPFLAGS to MAKE/CONFIGURE_ENV
     * ports/153634, -exp run to remove redundant PKGNAMEPREFIX for
       localised ports
     * ports/154121, -exp run to use --title for new libdialog
     * ports/154122, -exp run to update libtool to 2.4
     * ports/154186, -exp to allow using linux 2.4 emulation on FreeBSD 8+
     * ports/154390, -exp run to make fetching output copy/paste friendly
     * ports/154653, -exp run to remove superfluous slash
     * ports/154799, -exp run to update glib + gtk
     * ports/154994, -exp run for MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN enhancements
     * ports/155502, -exp run to remove sanity check for X_WINDOW_SYSTEM
     * ports/155504, -exp run to remove USE_XPM from b.p.m.
     * ports/155505, -exp run to update GNU m4

Open tasks:

    1. Looking for help fixing ports broken on CURRENT.
    2. Looking for help with Tier-2 architectures.
    3. Most ports PRs are assigned, we now need to focus on testing,
       committing and closing.
     __________________________________________________________________

RCTL, aka Resource Containers

   Contact: Edward Tomasz Napierala <trasz_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Most of the code has already been merged into CURRENT. There are two
   remaining problems I would like to solve before 9.0-RELEASE - see below
   - but otherwise, the code is stable; please test and report any
   problems. You will need to rebuild the kernel with "options RACCT" and
   "options RCTL". The rctl(8) manual page should be a good introduction
   on how to use it.

   This project was sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation.

Open tasks:

    1. Reimplementing %CPU accounting and CPU throttling.
    2. Making jail rules persistent - right now, one cannot add jail rule
       before that jail is created, which makes it impossible to put them
       into /etc/rctl.conf; also, rules disappear when jail gets
       destroyed.
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD Foundation Status Report

   URL: http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org

   Contact: Deb Goodkin <deb_at_FreeBSDFoundation.org>

   We created our 2011 budget. Some of our plans for 2011 include spending
   $125,000 on project development and $75,000 on equipment to build up
   FreeBSD facilities in three locations.

   We were proud to be a sponsor for AsiaBSDCon 2011 in Tokyo. We also
   committed to sponsoring BSDCan 2011 in May, and EuroBSDCon 2011 in
   October. The Foundation was also represented at SCALE in Los Angeles,
   Indiana LinuxFest in Indianapolis, and Flourish in Chicago.

   Completed Foundation-funded projects: Five New TCP Congestion Control
   Algorithms project by Swinburne University and Resource Containers
   project by Edward Napierala.

   In February we visited companies in the Bay Area that use FreeBSD. Our
   goal was to promote FreeBSD, better understand their interests and
   needs, and help facilitate stronger relationships between these
   companies and the Project. The presentations we gave included the
   benefits of FreeBSD, Project road-map, potential areas of
   collaboration, case studies, and how the Foundation supports the
   project. By visiting in person we were able to show our commitment to
   the Project and respond directly to questions and concerns they may
   have had. We were pleased with the positive responses we received and
   plan on visiting more companies in the future.

   We are funding two new projects. The first project is Implementing
   Support of GEM, KMS, and DRI for Intel Drivers by Konstantin Belousov.
   The second is Improving the Maturity of IPv6 Support of FreeBSD and
   PC-BSD by Bjoern Zeeb.

   We continued our work on infrastructure projects to beef up hardware
   for package-building, network-testing, etc. This includes purchasing
   equipment as well as managing equipment donations.

   Stop by and visit with us at BSDCan (May 13-14) and SouthEast LinuxFest
   (June 10-12).

   The work above as well as many other tasks we do for the project,
   couldn't be done without donations. Please help us by making a donation
   or asking your company to make a donation. We would be happy to send
   marketing literature to you or your company. Find out how to make a
   donation at http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/donate/.
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD German Documentation Project Status Report

   URL: http://doc.bsdgroup.de

   Contact: Johann Kois <jkois_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Benedict Reuschling <bcr_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Benedict Reuschling contributed the translation of the new handbook
   section about HAST, while Benjamin Lukas was working on the first
   translation of the firewall chapter of the handbook. The committers to
   the German Documentation Project were busy with keeping the existing
   German documentation up-to-date. The website translations were also
   kept in sync with the ones on FreeBSD.org.

   We tried to re-activate committers who did not contribute for some time
   but most of them are currently unable to free up enough time. We hope
   to gain fresh contributor blood as we are getting occasional reports
   about bugs and grammar in the german translation.

Open tasks:

    1. Submit grammar, spelling or other errors you find in the german
       documents and the website.
    2. Translate more articles and other open handbook sections.
     __________________________________________________________________

The FreeBSD Japanese Documentation Project

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ja/
   URL: http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/doc-jp/

   Contact: Hiroki Sato <hrs_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Ryusuke Suzuki <ryusuke_at_FreeBSD.org>

   The www/ja and doc/ja_JP.eucJP/books/handbook have constantly been
   updated. During this period, translation of the handbook installation
   page was finished. The following chapters are now synchronized with the
   English version:
     * introduction
     * install
     * ports
     * x11
     * desktop
     * multimedia
     * mirrors
     * pgpkeys

   Merging translation results from the www tree on a separate repository
   for the translation work into the main tree was also finished. Since
   outdated and/or non-translated documents also remain in both
   doc/ja_JP.eucJP and www, further translation work is still needed. Some
   progress has been made in the Porter's Handbook as well in this period.
     __________________________________________________________________

Webcam and DVB Compatibility List

   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/WebcamCompat

   Contact: Matthias Apitz <guru_at_unixarea.de>

   Webcam and DVB Compatibility List

   This is the FreeBSD Webcam, DVB, and Remote Control Compatibility List.
   The main goal of this page is to give an exact answer about which
   application works with a given cam or DVB. Combinations of the hardware
   and software mentioned in this table are known to work.

   Please add more lines to the table or ask me to do so by just sending a
   mail with your Cam/DVB information. Please note: you should only add
   information you have seen working and not you may think of or imagine
   that they could work. The contact information (name and/or email addr)
   is optional.

Open tasks:

    1. Move this to a real database in where FreeBSD enduser could self
       insert their gadgets, like the FreeBSD Laptop Compat List.
     __________________________________________________________________

www/apache22 Default

   URL:
   http://people.FreeBSD.org/~pgollucci/FreeBSD/prs/maintainers.html#apach
   e
   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/147009
   URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/Apache
   URL:
   http://lists.FreeBSD.org/pipermail/freebsd-apache/2011-March/002174.htm
   l

   Contact: Philip Gollucci <pgollucci_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Olli Hauer <ohauer_at_FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Apache Apache <apache_at_FreeBSD.org>

   95% done, pending final -exp run, and pulling the switch. HEADS-UP
   announcement already sent to relevant lists. This will be for 8.3/9.0.
     __________________________________________________________________

ZFSv28 available in FreeBSD 9-CURRENT

   Contact: Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd_at_FreeBSD.org>

   Contact: Martin Matuska <mm_at_FreeBSD.org>

   ZFS v28 is now in HEAD! Test, test, test and test. Pretty please. New
   features include:
     * Data deduplication.
     * Triple parity RAIDZ (RAIDZ3).
     * zfs diff.
     * zpool split.
     * Snapshot holds.
     * zpool import -F. Allows to rewind corrupted pool to earlier
       transaction group.
     * Possibility to import pool in read-only mode.
Received on Wed Apr 27 2011 - 08:58:24 UTC

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