Subject: BSD BoF at NetWorld+Interop Tokyo
To: None <netbsd-advocacy@netbsd.org>
From: Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino <itojun@iijlab.net>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 06/09/2001 10:31:26
on jun7, BSD BoF was held as one of the night sessions at
NetWorld+Interop Tokyo. this is a short summary of the discussion.
thank you for all of those attended and presented.
most of the URLs are in japanese... sorry for that.
itojun
About the event itself
The event is subtitled "BSD, Life with Revolution Evolution DEVOlution"
(the title was taken from a song title for a Japanese cult rock band).
We have been doing this kind of events a couple of times.
NetWorld+Interop have provided us the meeting room as a courtesy.
We would like to thank them here.
300+ people attended in person (there were fewer chairs than the number
of people - so some of them had to sit on the floor).
50-100 people attended over irc (volunteers type the discussions to
a couple of irc channels), and some have watched the discussion
over RealVideo transmission.
To summarize the event in 4 words, it was A LOT OF FUN.
http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/event/N+I2001_BOF/
http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/event/N+I2001_BOF/program.html
Mr. Mano of root-hq.com, on wireless internet devices
The company manufactures an embedded NetBSD device, with 802.11 and
ethernet device built in, as the last one-mile internet reachability
solution. The specification of the device is as follows:
Hitachi SH3 CPU, 167MHz, ROM: 32+1M, RAM: 32M
10Base-T, RS232C, RS422, RTC, PCMCIA slot for a 802.11 card
NetBSD 1.4.2, zebra ripd, apache
He also started a company very recently, called "mobile internet
solutions". The company aims to deliver internet reachability
everywhere by the wireless technologies, and promote (non-PC)
ubiquitous internet environment.
http://www.root-hq.com/jp/html/pressrelease/01.6.5.html
The answer to "why NetBSD?" was "pure luck". Someone recommended
NetBSD by chance (if the recommendation was different, he could have
picked Linux or other *BSD). Luckily for us NetBSDers, he is happy
with his choice.
He also announced a scolarship possibility, for those presented their
ideas for the usage of root-hq.com wireless devices.
ToDo: IPv6, mobile-ip4/6, OSPF, PDA/cellphone-like handset device
(rather than an infrastructure device).
http://www.root-hq.com/
Shigeru Yamamoto of IIJ, on SEIL-T1
SEIL-T1 is a small router device for small offices and such.
IIJ is actually an ISP, and it is rare for ISP to manufacture routers.
IIJ has router-integrated services, like router maintenance outsourcing
and such. Also it should be noted that IIJ is highly active in IPv6
arena. This is the first ISP to launch official IPv6 connectivity
service in Japan.
Specs: SH3, NetBSD 1.4 + KAME (next version of the firmware will be
1.5.1), T1 and 10Base-T. 32M RAM, 4M flash memory.
web and telnet config interface (next version of the firmware comes
with Secure Shell logins, and all config interfaces are IPv6
accessible). IPv6, IPsec including IKE, traffic shaping, monitoring
(MRTG-ish stat tool inside).
Good things about using NetBSD: the availability of source code,
multi architecture (and cleanness because of this), UNIX programming
environment for user interface portion.
Troubles: compiler bugs (-O2 sometimes emit non-working code),
alignment pickiness of SH3, debugging environment (DDB sometimes does
not work right).
The development team pays very large amount of effort on user interface.
Web interface is for novice admins, and telnet/ssh interface is for
advanced admins. Even for telnet/ssh interface, SEIL-T1 does not
use normal /bin/sh or /bin/csh - it has home-brew command line user
interface (with cisco-ish ondemand help). It is critical to present
a consistent user interface to the admins.
An attendee suggested to use Hitachi-made commercial compiler,
which should be more stable than gcc.
http://www.seil-t1.com/
http://www.iij.ad.jp/
Jun Ebihara on Hitachi GR2k router
With hidden command he demonstrated that it runs BSD/OS 3.1 :)
Mr.Etoh on gcc mod for buffer overrun attack detection/protection
http://www.trl.ibm.com/projects/security/ssp
With his mods, binaries compiled with gcc -stack-protection becomse
safer against buffer overrun attacks. The techinique includes
reordering of auto variables, checks against signature variable after
function call, and some other items. The modification is made against
gcc intermediate code, so it should be easier to be arch independent.
His notebook PC runs FreeBSD compiled with the modified gcc. It
requires modification to gcc (of course), 6-line changes to the kernel,
and 16-line changes to shared library. The compilation was very
simple - just a matter of "make World".
He have tested his mod on i386, sparc and powerpc. He solicited
more testes. Also, he suggested to compile FreeBSD packages
(precompiled third-party application binary) by safer compiler like
this, to protect many users.
Mr.Shiroyama on MacOS X
He presented the internals of MacOS X, and demonstrated its GUI.
To quote Steve Jobs "MacOS X will be the most popular UNIX
distribution". From the market statistics it seems true.
MacOS X/Darwin seems to include KAME IPv6 stack (which is one of the
contributions from Japan to BSD community), but is not enabled yet.
Apple is taking a very aggressive approach in switching their
operating system from a legacy non-protected one to modern ones
(compare it with M$, which is having very hard time switching from
Win95/98 to Win2K/XP). This may be because this is very critical for
Apple to transition (if they fail to switch, the company may vanish).
The audience laughed so hard when Mr. Shiroyama demonstrated
"port scan" menu on the network management dialog:-)
Ms.Kurata from WindRiver
She clarified the goals/plans of WIndRiver on BSD,
after the BSDi merger.
Mr.Imai on XCAST
XCAST is short for "explicit multicast", an experimental multicast-ish
protocol discussed in IETF. It is designed for millions multicast
groups with small number of people/group (like a million mahjong net
game with 4 participants each). With normal internet multicast,
the multicast routing table management on routers would be cumbersome,
There are patches against NetBSD 1.5, FreeBSD (2.2.8+KAME, 3.5+KAME
and 4.3), and he called for more geeks to play with it.
Btw, he presented this over IPv6 video chat application (of course with
XCAST), from UC Irvine!
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~yimai/MDO6/kit/
Mr.Takeoka on "Shikigami" avator
Shikigami is an user interaction avator for the "shikigami" PDA user
interface suite (or, to literally describe, cute girl AI on X11 screen).
Backend AI/controller is implemented with scheme (a popular dialect
of Lisp), and the graphical frontend is implemented with Xlib.
Functionalities include (still growing): wink, clock/alarm, fork
external command, URL passing to netscape, biff (checks # of queued
email over pop3). ToDos include: real AI, scheduler, voice i/f.
He solicited more illustrators (to draw cute "skins") and voice
actressess.
Mr.Kakei of ASCII, on meeting room usage
ASCII is a major computer publisher in Japan, and is known to be an
advocator of BSDs and UNIXes. He announced that the company can let
people use ASCII meeting rooms, for free software activities
(like this BoF). ASCII is located in Shibuya-ku, near Shinjuku and
Hatsudai station (central tokyo). Detailed descriptions were given,
like no commercial activity (selling T-shirt for non profit purpuse
would be okay), network available, equipments in room, one ASCII
employee must attend, how guards would audit attendees, and such.
Contact kahei-s@ascii.co.jp.
Random announcements
jun9 - open source convention at Nagoya U
http://www.nu-net.or.jp/tosc/2001/
jun25-30 - usenix/freenix 2001
jun30 - Japan NetBSD users group meeting at ASCII meeting room
Announcements by BUGs (BSD User Groups).