Subject: NetBSD "Quarterly" Status Report (Q1 2007)
To: None <netbsd-announce@netbsd.org>
From: Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netbsd.org>
List: netbsd-announce
Date: 05/30/2007 20:43:23
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
NetBSD "Quarterly" Status Report
NetBSD is an actively developed operating system. With 54 different system
architectures in total and binary support of 53 architectures in our last
official release (NetBSD 3.1), our widely portable Packages Collection
"pkgsrc" and large userbase there is a lot going on within the project. In
order to allow our users to follow the most important changes over the
last few months, we provide a brief summary in these official status
reports, released with irregular regularity. These reports are suitable
for reproduction and publication in part or in whole as long as the source
is clearly indicated.
This status report summarizes the changes within NetBSD from January 2007
until June 2007.
- -Jan Schaumann <jschauma@NetBSD.org>
January 2007 - June 2007:
Administrative:
- New build cluster hosted at WWU [20070302]
- New Developers [20070501]
Miscellaneous:
- Docathon [20070406]
- mklivecd update [20070411]
- linux plugins in native browser [20070406]
- Google Summer of Code
- NetBSD on the road
pkgsrc:
- pkgsrc-2007Q1 has been branched [20070419]
- pkgsrcCon 2007 [20070427]
Ports:
- evbmips: Netgear WGT624 v3 netbooting support added [20070320]
- i386: Microsoft Xbox support added [20070107]
- powerpc: OEA PowerPC cleanup [20070502]
- macppc: AOAKeylargo and AOAK2 audio support added
Security:
- Security advisories
Technical:
- uGuru hardware system monitor support added [20070121]
- Daylight Saving Time Changes come and go [20070227]
- IPv6 Fast Forward integrated [20070307]
- aiboost(4) added [20070320]
- Direct Rendering Manager imported into -current [20070401]
- yamt-idlelwp branch merged [20070517]
- wide-curses support added [20070529]
- On Demand Clock Modulation added
- Branch updates
Administrative:
===============
New build cluster hosted at WWU [20070302]
- ------------------------------------------
The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that we have now have a
second "build cluster" building releases of NetBSD daily. The
Computer Science Department at Western Washington University in
Bellingham Washington (USA) is using part of their cluster of i386
machines to build daily releases for NetBSD when they are not required
for other use. The cluster is composed of 24 machines: the build
master and 23 slaves. This cluster is currently building about
two complete releases every day.
Because this is the second build cluster and to allow for the build
clusters to not use the same snapshot name, the WWU cluster checks
out the sources of two minutes past midnight instead of midnight
like the first build cluster. So releases named something like
200702250000Z are built on the original cluster and releases with
names like 200702270002Z are built on the WWU cluster.
The NetBSD daily builds are available at http://releng.NetBSD.org.
New Developers [20070501]
- -------------------------
The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developers
during the first quarter of 2007:
* Arnaud Degroote (login: degroote), who will be working on
fast_ipsec, ipv6 mobility and routing code.
* Daniel Sieger (login: dsieger) will be working on the kernel and
documentation.
* Keiichi SHIMA (login: keiichi) will be working on IPv6.
* Mark Kirby (login: mkirby), who will be working on website documentation.
* Nicolas Joly (login: njoly), who will be working on port-amd64,
compat_linux and miscellaneous tasks.
* Mindaugas Rasiukevicius (login: rmind), who will be working on kernel
and threading.
* Stephen Borrill (login: sborrill), who will be working on the NetBSD
Packages Collection, multimedia and support for embedded systems.
* Tobias Nygren (login: tnn) will be working in the NetBSD Packages
Collection, port-sparc64 and port-hp700.
Miscellaneous:
==============
Docathon [20070405]
- -------------------
The 5th NetBSD Hackathon took place from Friday, 6th of April, until
Sunday, 8th of April 2007. The main focus of this hackathon was to bring
the NetBSD WWW pages and documentation into a consistent and more
up-to-date state, hence the name "docathon".
This docathon was organized by Daniel Sieger and announced on April 5th,
2007, and results were posted on April 9th, 2007 (see
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/netbsd-docs/2007/04/09/0002.html).
The great efforts of everybody involved allowed Daniel to later on provide
other design suggestions easily implemented by applying new stylesheets to
the .xml files. We are grateful for the work done and are looking forward
to reaping the benefits in the future!
mklivecd update [20070411]
- --------------------------
Juan RP <xtraeme@NetBSD.org> has updated the mklivecd package to version
0.15.1, providing these new features:
* Added support to download the sets via the target 'fetch'.
* Many error checks for options were added.
* Support for NetBSD/amd64
linux plugins in native browser [20070406]
- ------------------------------------------
David Brownlee has committed patches and diffs from various people to
allow linux netscape compatible plugins to work with a NetBSD native
browser (such as Firefox), via the help of the www/nspluginwrapper
package. One popular plugin is the multimedia/ns-flash linux Flash
plugin, which can now be used by NetBSD/i386 without the need of a
linux-binary version of Firefox (firefox-bin).
See http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/port-i386/2007/03/22/0014.html,
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/port-i386/2007/03/23/0015.html and
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/tech-kern/2007/04/06/0001.html for details.
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/netbsd-java/2004/04/16/0000.html and
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/pkgsrc-users/2007/02/07/0008.html include
instructions on how to use this to allow the native browser to use the
java plugin as well.
Google Summer of Code
- ---------------------
For the third time in a row, the NetBSD Project has been chosen as one of
the mentoring organizations in Google's Summer of Code program.
Preparations for this year's iteration began in early March
(http://www.NetBSD.org/Changes/#soc200707), when a list of possible
projects (http://www.NetBSD.org/contrib/soc-projects.html) was updated and
polished by NetBSD developers, to encourage students to apply as well as
to provide them with realistic expectations and detailed guidelines for each
project.
Following the applicant's deadline in April
(http://www.NetBSD.org/Changes/#soc200707appeval), the difficult task of
selecting the best proposals among the many submitted applications had to
be completed, ultimately leading to the following list of selected
students:
1. Project: Automated Testing Framework
Student: Julio M. Merino Vidal
Mentor: Martin Husemann
2. Project: Porting ZFS
Student: Oliver Gould
Mentor: Dieter Baron
3. Project: A Framework For Enforcing QoS Inside the NetBSD UVM
Student: Sumantra R. Kundu
Mentor: William Stouder-Studenmund
4. Project: Running Kernel File Systems in Userspace
Student: Antti Kantee
Mentor: William Stouder-Studenmund
5. Project: Improving the pkgsrc Build System
Student: Jörg Sonnenberger
Mentor: Johnny C. Lam
6. Project: Hardware Monitoring and HAL Port
Student: Jachym Holecek
Mentor: Quentin Garnier
For a full press release about the beginning of the Summer of Code, please
see http://www.NetBSD.org/Foundation/press/soc2007.html.
By now, the Summer of Code is in full swing, and students and mentors are
busy collaborating on their respective project.
NetBSD on the road
- ------------------
The NetBSD Project was represented by developers and other volunteers at a
number of conferences and tradeshows during the first quarter of 2007.
Patiently, the following people invested a lot of their personal time,
money and resources to tell attendants about NetBSD, to explain (again and
again) the difference between NetBSD and Linux or NetBSD and the other
BSDs, sold CDs and other merchandise and in general deserve thanks for
helping the NetBSD Project:
- - Stefan Schumacher offered a talk on how to secure a NetBSD system using
Systrace at the German Unix User Group's "Frühjahrsfachgespräch" in
Berlin, Germany on March 1st, 2007. See
http://net-tex.dnsalias.org/~stefan/nt/netbsd/systrace.html.
- - Hubert Feyrer manned a booth at the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage in Chemnitz,
Germany, on March 3rd and 4th, 2007.
- - AsiaBSDCon 2007 took place in Tokyo, Japan from March 8th to 11th, 2007.
A number of NetBSD related talks were given. See
http://asiabsdcon.org/papers/index.html for a list of papers and
presentation.
- - The Japan NetBSD Users' Group staffed a booth at the Open Source
Conference 2007 Tokyo, in Tokyo, Japan on March 16th and 17th, 2007.
- - A joint BSD booth was organized for the Linux-Infotag in Augsburg,
Germany, on March 24th, 2007. See
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/netbsd-advocacy/2007/03/26/0000.html for
details.
- - BSDCan 2007 took place in Ottawa, Canada, from May 18th and 19th, 2007.
As in previous years, number of NetBSD related talks and presentations
were given. See http://www.bsdcan.org/2007/schedule/events.en.html.
- - Amitai Schlair gave a presentation on pkgsrcCon 2007 at the New York BSD
User Group on May 2nd, 2007. See
http://www.nycbug.org/index.php?NAV=Home;SUBM=10102 and
http://www.pkgsrccon.org/2007/slides/schmonz/nycbug-pkgsrccon.html
pkgsrc:
=======
pkgsrc-2007Q1 has been branched [20070419]
- ------------------------------------------
On April 19ththe pkgsrc team branched the first stable branch of 2007 with
support for 6588 packages. At the same time, the pkgsrc-2006Q4 branch has
been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2007Q1
branch.
The source tar files for the new branch can be found at:
- - ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2007Q1/pkgsrc-2007Q1.tar.gz
- - ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2007Q1/pkgsrc-2007Q1.tar.bz2
You can also use the pkgsrc-2007Q1 tag to check it out yourself from
anoncvs.NetBSD.org or any of the mirrors.
Please see the detailed pkgsrc-2007Q1 announcement in Alistair G. Crooks's
email to the pkgsrc-users mailing list for more information:
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/pkgsrc-users/2007/04/19/0005.html
pkgsrcCon 2007 [20070427]
- -------------------------
The fourth annual pkgsrcCon took place in Barcelona, Spain on Apr 27 - 29,
2007. pkgsrcCon is a technical conference focusing on the technology and
the use of the NetBSD Packages Collection. The slides for all the
presentations given in Barcelona are available online at
http://www.pkgsrccon.org/2007/presentations.html
Ports:
======
Due to the large number of supported platforms, this status report will
only point out the very significant changes to some of the ports. For a
full list of port-specific changes, please refer to
http://www.NetBSD.org/Changes/changes-3.0.html#port_specific and
http://www.NetBSD.org/Changes/changes-3.1.html#port_specific
evbmips: Netgear WGT624 v3 netbooting support added [20070320]
- --------------------------------------------------------------
The evbmips port now supports netbooting the Netgear WGT624 v3
wireless router thanks to Garrett D'Amore and Jared McNeill. The WGT624
v3 is based on an Atheros AR2315 system-on-a-chip.
http://www.invisible.ca/space/netgear-wgt624-v3-hacking
i386: Microsoft Xbox support added [20070107]
- ---------------------------------------------
Andrew Gillham and Jared McNeill have committed basic support for
Microsoft's Xbox to the i386 port.
Supported hardware:
Framebuffer in all supported modes (NTSC/PAL 4:3 / 16:9, EDTV, HDTV)
via xboxfb wsdisplay driver
XFree86 / Xorg support via wsfb
Onboard ethernet (nfe)
Onboard audio (auich)
DVD-ROM drive (cd)
USB 1.1 (ohci)
Onboard SMBus (amdpm)
Temperature sensors, power control, LED control (pic16lc)
Serial EEPROM (xbseeprom)
Xbox Gamepad as a mouse device (xboxcontroller)
Onboard ATA (viaide)
Onboard Hard Disk (wd)
Not yet supported:
Xbox partition table and FATX filesystem support
Accelerated X server (work in progress)
Memory cards
http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/bx/blosxom.cgi/nb_20070106_1655.html
macppc: AOAKeylargo and AOAK2 audio support added
- -------------------------------------------------
Jared McNeill added support for the AOAKeylargo and AOAK2 series audio
devices, typically found in G4 Mac Minis. This is a fun device because it
doesn't have a hardware mixer; the kent-audio1 audio filter pipeline work
was leveraged to add a software volume control filter to the PCM stream
before it hits the hardware to provide accurate volume controls. man
page: snapper(4)
powerpc hackathon [20070502]
- ----------------------------
The 6th NetBSD Hackathon took place on May 2nd, 2007 with a focus on OEA
PowerPC ports and chips (601, 603, 604, and similar chips). This
hackathon was organized by Tim Rightnour (see
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/port-powerpc/2007/04/24/0000.html for his
announcement). Results of the event were posted at
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/port-powerpc/2007/05/04/0000.html and work
continued on the "ppcoea-renovation" branch (see below).
Security:
=========
Security Advisories
- -------------------
The NetBSD Project published the following NetBSD Security Advisories in
the first half of 2007:
* NetBSD-SA2007-001 - Integer overflow in ktruser()
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2007-001.txt.asc
* NetBSD-SA2007-002 - Integer overflows in Render and DBE extensions
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2007-002.txt.asc
* NetBSD-SA2007-003 - BIND multiple denial of service vulnerabilities
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2007-003.txt.asc
* NetBSD-SA2007-004 - Insufficient length checking in iso(4)
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2007-004.txt.asc
Technical:
==========
uGuru hardware system monitor support added [20070121]
- ------------------------------------------------------
Juan RP <xtraeme@NetBSD.org> has committed a driver for the uGuru hardware
system monitor found in Abit motherboards. It can report the value from
all sensors connected to the motherboard. uGuru was written by Mihai
Chelaru. See ug(4). The ug(4) driver will be available in NetBSD 4.x
Daylight Saving Time Changes come and go [20070227]
- ---------------------------------------------------
In February and March of 2007, many organizations scrambled to get their
systems ready for the change in Daylight Saving Time in a number of
countries, including the US. NetBSD has, of course, shipped with the
appropriate timezone files for years; even though changes to timezones in
general and DST rules in particular happen a few times a year throughout
the world, the NetBSD operating system has of course always provided
accurate and up to date zone files as soon as possible.
See http://www.NetBSD.org/Changes/#dst2007 for details.
aiboost(4) added [20070320]
- ---------------------------
Juan RP <xtraeme@NetBSD.org> has ported the ASUS AI Booster ACPI Hardware
monitor driver, found in all newer ASUS motherboards from FreeBSD. See
aiboost(4) for details.
Direct Rendering Manager imported into -current [20070401]
- ----------------------------------------------------------
Jared McNeill imported supported for DRM and DRI into -current. He also
provided the start of a mesa-dri package that can be found in
pkgsrc-wip/mesa-dri now, and which is the OpenGL library that uses the
DRI/DRM interface. A lot of this is work in progress, and there's also a
status report with some hints on how to get various cards going (at
http://www.NetBSD.org/~jmcneill/index.html), together
with some more hints on how to get things going at
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/tech-x11/2007/03/31/0012.html and
http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/tech-x11/2007/03/31/0004.html.
See also the manual page for drm(4) in NetBSD-current.
yamt-idlelwp branch merged [20070517]
- -------------------------------------
YAMAMOTO Takashi merged the yamt-idlelwp branch into -current on
2007-05-17. This branch had the following goals:
1. separate context switching and thread scheduling.
(cf. gmcgarry_ctxsw)
2. implement idle lwp.
3. clean up related MD/MI interfaces.
4. make scheduler(s) modular.
It greatly reduces and simplifies the amount of machine-dependent code for
doing lwp switching in the kernel. A major effect of these changes is
that there will now always be a lwp active, even if that lwp is just
running the idle loop.
On Demand Clock Modulation added
- --------------------------------
Juan RP <xtraeme@NetBSD.org> has ported the Intel On Demand Clock
Modulation driver from FreeBSD/OpenBSD. This driver is used to save power
and power and overheating in CPUs supporting the Thermal Monitor feature
on Intel CPUs.
Enabled with "options INTEL_ONDEMAND_CLOCKMOD", if supported a
'machpdep.clockmod' node in sysctl will be created, use sysctl -d
machdep.clockmod to see descriptions.
IPv6 Fast Forward integrated [20070307]
- ---------------------------------------
IPv6 Fast Forward has been integrated into NetBSD by Liam J. Foy. This is
the counterpart to IPv4 Fast Forward, and is implemented by using flows.
Each flow of packets describes a connection between two end points. The
flow caches details like the route used, and it's accessed using simple
hashing techniques. This technique allows IPv6 forwarding to use a lot
less CPU resources, which may be scarce on legacy and/or embedded systems,
and throughput is effectively limited by the bus bandwidth and the network
driver's performance only.
To enable IPv6 Fast Forward, your kernel must be built with "options
GATEWAY". The ip6.maxflows sysctl can be used to set the maximum number
of cached flows, a value of 0 disables IPv6 Fast Forwarding. See the
options(6) and sysctl(7) manpages for more information.
Both IPv6 and IPv4 Fast Forward also have a new sysctl:
net.inet6.ip6.hashsize
net.inet.ip.hashsize
These sysctls control the size of the hash table - a larger hash table
results in less collisions.
wide-curses support added [20070529]
- ------------------------------------
Brett Lymn announced on May 29th, 2007, that together with Julian Coleman,
he had merged the wide curses modifications that were originally
done by Ruibiao Qiu as a Google Summer of Code 2005 project (see
http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wcurses/). This now allows the
new curses library to properly display wide character locales, such as
Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese.
http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wcurses/report.html
http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wcurses/gb.jpg
http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wcurses/big5.jpg
http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/wcurses/japanese.jpg
Branch updates:
- ---------------
- From time to time, branches are created in the CVS repository to allow for
independent development of certain features. Work on these branches is
often driven by individual developers and changes are eventually fed back
into the main development tree. The following provides a brief update of
some of the different branches marked as 'active' in CVS at the time of
this writing:
Branch update: ppcoea-renovation
- --------------------------------
General renovation and cleanup of all OEA PowerPC ports.
The work on the branch is approximately 60% complete. Currently macppc,
mvmeppc, prep, ibmnws, sandpoint, and pmppc have been converted over to the
new shared code. Conversion of bebox is currently underway. Still remaining
to do on the branch: Rewrite ofppc, soft intr pic integration, fix macppc
bus_dma, convert marvell code to shared code.
Branch update: wrstuden-fixsa
- -----------------------------
Fix a number of issues present with Scheduler Activations
This is a new branch created on May 15th, 2007. It is based off of the
netbsd-4 branch and is intended to stage improvements for the Scheduler
Activations system for NetBSD 4. Improvements include not allocating
memory while preparing to tsleep(), reducing inappropriate upcall delivery
(hopefully also eliminating the need to mlock stacks), and being able to
pthread_kill() running threads.
More Information
================
To learn more about NetBSD visit its homepage hat
<http://www.NetBSD.org/>, for a list of code changes see the
src/doc/CHANGES and pkgsrc/doc/CHANGES files at
<http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/doc/CHANGES?rev=HEAD> and
<http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/doc/CHANGES?rev=HEAD>.
Individual changes to the NetBSD source and pkgsrc can be monitored on
the "source-changes" and "pkgsrc-changes" mailing lists, see the
archives at <http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/source-changes/> and
<http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/pkgsrc-changes/>.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (NetBSD)
iD8DBQFGXkQ+fFtkr68iakwRAsT5AKCAkLvQ4Zo+EF5vowik7AlB+EpOuwCfaE5e
tjOioWg5/IxgbuBZryRlHbg=
=aADS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----