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FreeBSD Diary: Removing dead mailing lists from Mailman

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:48:10 +0000

Mailing lists can outlive their usefulness

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Daemon to Penguin

jdarnold — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:17:34 +0000

I've been using and blogging about FreeBSD for about five years now, and I have been dabbling in Linux even long longer. My main server, which hosts about 5 web sites, currently runs FreeBSD 6 and I'm still very happy with it. However, my main operating system has been Microsoft...

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: NetBSD 4.x binary packages

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:12:00 +0000

John Klos and Havard Eidnes have made a bunch of precompiled binary packages available, See John's and Havard's arm and alpha email. John built packages from the pkgsrc 2008Q2 branch, for the following platforms:

mipsel - cobalt: 1506 packages
mipseb - sgimips: 344 packages (just recently started)
arm - shark: 939 packages
m68k - amiga: 1316 packages

The packages can be found on ftp.NetBSD.org. Havard has uploaded a set of preliminary results from a build of pkgsrc-2008Q1 on NetBSD 4.0/arm. He has a total of 3.5GB in a total of 4578 packages, which can also be found on ftp.NetBSD.org (different directory...).

Havard has also uploaded bulk build results from NetBSD 4.0/alpha and pkgsrc-2008Q2. A total of 6.7GB of packages were uploaded, for a total of 6270 packages. The packages can be found on ftp.NetBSD.org as well.

Happy pkg_add'ing!

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: *foot = bullet, with gzip

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:56:00 +0000

Found via pkgsrc/editors/gedit:

# touch /tmp/foo
# env GZIP=`which gzip` gzip /tmp/foo
# ls -la /tmp/foo*
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  24 Sep 19 22:47 /tmp/foo.gz
# ls -la /usr/bin/gzip
ls: /usr/bin/gzip: No such file or directory
# ls -la /usr/bin/gzip*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  15093 Sep 19 22:44 /usr/bin/gzip.gz

This exists in both GNU gzip V1.3.12 and NetBSD's gzip V20060927. Apparently neither program checks if the GZIP environment variable contains a valid gzip option, and blindly passes its value on to the command line.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: GNOME (and Firefox) fonts vs. X11R7 vs. pkgsrc

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:14:00 +0000

So I have upgraded my NetBSD 4.0 installation with a -current build with MKXORG=yes, and then built pkgsrc/meta-pkgs/gnome for the past few days. Starting up gnome-session just gave me little rectangles instead of fonts. GRMBL!!!1!

With some investigation, GNOME used pkgsrc's fontconfig goo, which doesn't include any fonts - which is about what it displays. To fix, /usr/pkg/etc/fontconfig/fonts.conf can be adjusted to also look in /usr/X11R6 (which I still have from my NetBSD 4.0 installation) and /usr/X11R7 (thanks to MKXORG=yes):

--- /usr/pkg/etc/fontconfig/fonts.conf.orig	2008-09-10 18:05:47.000000000 +0200
+++ /usr/pkg/etc/fontconfig/fonts.conf
@@ -23,6 +23,8 @@
 
 <!-- Font directory list -->
 
+	<dir>/usr/X11R7/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
+	<dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
 	<dir>/usr/pkg/lib/X11/fonts</dir>
 	<dir>/usr/pkg/share/ghostscript/fonts</dir>
 	<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

I hope this helps anyone encountering a similar situation (including future incarnations of myself ;). (And if you ask "WTF GNOME?" - I wanted to have another look, after my last attempt at using GNOME is now several years ago :-)

P.S.: This also fixes fonts on firefox. Yai!

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Dancing Around

jdarnold — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:57:49 +0000

A couple of changes here at Daemon World Headquarters. First up is the URL change. To reflect my general concentration on Linux rather than FreeBSD, I've gone to a URL of http://linux.amazingdev.com rather than freebsd.amazingdev.com. I've added a redirect to Apache (I think) which should make the change relatively unobtrusive,...

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: NetBSD ROTFLing - literally (video)

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:28:00 +0000

I've reported that there is a NetBSD-based robot out there before, but so far I haven't seen it beyond pictures. I've stumbled across some videos now, showing voice recognition and face detection with that robot. But best of it all is that the robot can also do a thing that's said that only humans can do it: Roll On The Floor Laughing! :-)

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Debugging NetBSD kernel with qemu

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Alexander Shishkin has written some posted instructions on how to debug a NetBSD kernel running in qemu with gdb. He reminds how to build NetBSD, provides a shell script for making a bootable disk, and explains the magic on how to run qemu and connect gdb to it. An example session shows how to load the kernel, set a breakpoint, and examine registers and variables when the breakpoint is reached.

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Fresh Linux Baking

jdarnold — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:10:50 +0000

A couple of new Linux apps coming over from the dark side that have me squealing like a little girl! Dropbox - a very simple service that offers 2gb of synchronized storage. You can even make share selected files publicly. There's already an openSUSE package for it as found here....

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Almost 2 months

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:48:18 +0000

I just realized that today makes two months since I left my home in Barcelona and headed first to Italy and then to NYC. This means I only have two more months and a week to stay at Google. Ew, time flies so fast...<div><br /></div><div>But so far, things are going great. They could certainly be a little bit better, but not by much!</div><div><br /></div><div>Today, two friends from Spain just left my apartment. They had been here for 10 days doing tourism around the city and visiting lots of stuff. I wish I could also take some vacations like that.</div><div><br /></div><div>And tomorrow it's time for another race: <a href="http://cms.komen.org/komen/NewsEvents/RacefortheCure/index.htm">Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure</a>. It is just 5Km in Central Park, so it will be pretty easy but, hopefully, fun enough. The only "problem" is that it is at 9am, and today is Saturday... so I need to hang go out (with some restrictions)!</div></content>

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: NYCBSDCon 2008, including a NetBSD developer's summit

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:21:00 +0000

From the website `` NYCBSDCon will take place over the weekend of October 11-12, 2008 at Columbia University in New York City.
The New York City *BSD User Group looks forward to hosting the conference again. Without doubt, it will once again be an exciting meeting place for *BSD users, sysadmins and developers from all the projects.
The Call for Papers closed August 1, and we received over 30 proposals for a mere dozen speaking slots. The conference schedule and speaker list will be posted shortly. [...]
Some notable planned happenings at NYCBSDCon 2008 include:

BSDTalk Will Backman will be live and at the conference interviewing speakers and attendees.
A BSD Certification exam will take place on Sunday. A number of quick Unix concept overview sessions are planned throughout the day for Saturday.
NetBSD will be hosting a developer's summit on Friday, October 10th, parts of which are open to all.
FreeBSD will also be hosting a get-together for developers.
We are in the process of setting up author book-signings.
Keep your eyes peeled for announcements. Registration will open in early September. ''

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Booting Xen without grub

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:41:00 +0000

So far, if you wanted to boot the Xen hypervisor, you had to use the GRUB bootloader. IIRC the reason for this was the different way of passing parameters to the kernel -- NetBSD's boot(8) doesn't use the "multiboot" protocol. This was added to the NetBSD kernel in order to boot NetBSD with grub, but that's not a help for Xen.

As installing a different bootloader is suboptimal, possibly dangerous, and has (had?) issues on 64bit platforms, grub was not such a nice option.

Now, Robert Swindells has finished making changes to NetBSD's native boot loader to allow it to load the Xen hypervisor by itself, without needing grub any more!

This makes installation of NetBSD/Xen even easier: Just drop in a Xen-enabled kernel, add an entry to the boot.cfg file, and reboot.

I can even envision that Xen could be installed in future versions of NetBSD/i386 and NetBSD/amd64 by default. Then all that's really needed would be to add the management tools after installing NetBSD. Any takers? :-)

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: !NetBSD: Comics for sale (mostly german, some english+japanese)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:21:00 +0000

Spam: I've got a bunch of (mostly german-language) comics that I'd like to get rid of. For more information, see this link.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: source-changes catchup mid-July to early September 2008 (Updated)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:58:00 +0000

Welcome to yet another catch-up of NetBSD source-changes mailing list, this time from mid-July to early September 2008. Besides FFS having journaling now (yai! first in BSD-land, ever! :-), here's what's new and/or exciting:

In order to re-initialize x86 machines' video/VGA state after suspend and resume, some BIOS functions can be used. This needs to be done in real mode(?), which is a bit hard to do from an operating system kernel that runs in protected mode. To help doing so, a x86 CPU emulator was added to NetBSD some time ago, to help run VGA bios for ACPI resume. Now Joerg has added a sysctl that does just this, assuming your kernel has the VGA_POST options -- set machdep.acpi_vbios_reset=2
Inside the kernel, data sent/received through the network stack is stored in chains of mbufs. So far, the mbufs were also used to store socket options, i.e. data describing further how the sending/receiving is done. This was split out into a separate struct sockopt by Ian 'plunky' Hibbert now. For more information, see sockopt(9).
Hans 'woodstock' Rosenfeld has added a new accalerated driver for SPX graphics boards found in some VAXstations, which replaces the old and broken lcspx driver. The work is based on work by Blaz Antonic.
The simonb-wapbl branch was merged: ``Add Wasabi System's WAPBL (Write Ahead Physical Block Logging) journaling code. Originally written by Darrin B. Jewell while at Wasabi and updated to -current by Antti Kantee, Andy Doran, Greg Oster and Simon Burge.'' This makes NetBSD the ~~first~~ second (see update below) BSD operating system that has a working file system with journaling (not counting LFS, which again and again has issues). Mmm, no more fsck! :-) See my other posts for more on journaling / wapbl.
Update: James Mansion wrote me to that NetBSD's not the first BSD to have journaling, and I think he's right: DragonflyBSD's HAMMER file system apparently offers similar functionality: ``HAMMER implement an instant-mount capability and will recover information on a cluster-by-cluster basis as it is being accessed.''
Accept filters were ported from FreeBSD by Coyote Point Systems, and integrated into NetBSD by Thor Lancelot Simon. What are accept filters? According to the accept_filter(9) manpage, they ``allow an application to request that the kernel pre-process incoming connections.'' Pre-defined filters are available with accf_data(9) and accf_http(9). The latter makes sure that the application's accept(2) call only sees the connection if there's a valid HTTP header, moving parts of the parsing from userland (httpd) to the kernel.
Work is underway for crossbuilds of modular X.org. This is done via src/external/mit/xorg, which needs xsrc/external/mit. The results will be installed in /usr/X11R7(!). (XXX Where can I find more about this?)
Gregory McGarry is working to get the tree compiled with PCC instead of GCC. This is still ongoing.
nvi was updated from version 1.79 to 1.81. The most important part of this update is that internationalization is now handled by default.
Following a bigger masterplan, new 3rd party software packages are now imported into src/external/${license}, which will replace src/dist, src/crypto/dist and src/gnu/dist in the long run. Packages will be moved on upgrades only, existing packages are not being moved just for the sake of moving them.
Adam Hamsik is working on getting Logical Volume Management (LVM) going in NetBSD. He has adapted Linux' "device mapper" kernel-interface as part of his Google Summer-of-Code project, and with the help of the (GPL'd) Linux tools, things are looking pretty good. More on this in a separate post. This work is currently happening on the haad-dm branch.
In the context of his work on UDF, Reinoud has added routines for speeding up directory handling by using hash gables. Lookup of files was O(n*n) and is now O(1) even for file creation. See my other blog posting for details and impressive numbers.
Perry Metzger is working to make binary builds identical. This is useful for binary diffs between releases/builds, e.g. when providing binary patches for updates and security fixes. Areas where this had an impact on are C++ programs and various bootloaders (which had a builder, build date, etc. in it so far).
EHCI (USB) can now do high speed isochronous support. This was developed by Jeremy Morse as part of his Google Summer-of-Code "dvb" project this year, it is useful for fast transfer of data that comes in steady streams, e.g. from video cards.
fsck_ffs(8) now has options -x and -X (just like dump) that create a file system snapshot via fss(4), and then operates on the snapshot. This allows "fsck_ffs -n" to work on a snapshot of a read/write mounted file system, and avoid errors related to file system activity. Can be made permanent for the nightly script by setting run_fsck_flags="-X" in /etc/daily.conf. This was brought to you by our Xen-hacker Manuel Bouyer. :-)

So much for this time. Many of the above projects are work-in-progress, and we can look forward for further news on them next time. Stay tuned!

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Speeding up operations with directory hashing

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:42:00 +0000

While working on UDF, Reinoud Zandijk has added routines to speed up directory operations. Remember that in FFS, directories are list of struct dirent entries that are stored one after another. This makes lookup sequential, deleting leaves holes, and inserting needs to check for possible holes. In other words: it's suboptimal. The proper solution would be to move some tree-based directory format, but that's not around the corner - file systems like SGI's XFS have that, and anyone's welcome to do the work on FFS.

Another option to mitigate the suboptimal on-disk format is to use in-memory caching and fast lookup, which is just what Reinoud did. His runs of the "postmark" benchmark show some impressive speedups:

What	Old	New
File create:	2/s	208/s
File create alone:	4/s	230/s
File create + transaction:	1/s	318/s
File read:	1/s	330/s
File append:	1/s	336/s
File delete:	2/s	208/s
File delete alone:	9/s	970/s
File delete + transaction:	1/s	348/s
Data read:	3 kb/s	283kb/s
Data written:	14kb/s	1150kb/s

See the commit log for more information.

P.S.: Someone please add wikipedia pages for FFS/UFS!

P.P.S.: Yes, this has been in UFS/FFS as "dirhash" for some time

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Moved, virtually

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:32:00 +0000

FWIW, I've moved my whole website, including this blog, to a new hosting site. I hope everything's still up and running, but if not, let me know.

FreeBSD Diary: gmirror - recovering from a failed HDD

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:48:09 +0000

an HDD failed. gmirror to the rescue.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Journaling performance (Updated)

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Mathias Scheler has an interesting blog posting about the difference of using journaling on file system performance. The test he did was extracting NetBSD 4.0 sources.

With plain FFS, the extract took 15:19 minutes
With journaling, it took 3:24 minutes.

A clear winner. (No numbers with soft dependencies, though, but they can be expected to be comparable to the journaling number).

Update: Matthias has posted updated numbers that include soft dependencies. The best bet so far is still WAPBL. It's a bit slower than async mounts, but as they are VERY unsafe, that's not recommended, at all. Use WAPBL!

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Jibbed LiveCD V0.15.72 released

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:25:00 +0000

Zafer Aydogan has released Version 0.15.72 of his Jibbed NetBSD LiveCD. News are that the it's a CD again, instead of a DVD. Kernel sources are from NetBSD-current with kernel version 4.99.72 (as or August 19th), the CD also has Firefox 3, Roy Marples' dhcpcd 4.0rc3, WAPBL (journaling for FFS), top 3.8beta1, OpenSSH with HPN-Patch, Postfix 2.5.2, Bind 9, and may more.

Right now the CD is a bit slow as compressed VND images are currently broken - anyone who can fix this is more than welcome to do so.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: PPPoE Security Advisory

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:16:00 +0000

NetBSD's NetBSD-SA2008-010 security advisory describes a vulnerability where a malicious PPPoE discovery packet can overrun a kernel buffer: ``A bug in range checking allows a malicious packet to make the kernel access memory outside of the allocated buffer and cause a kernel crash. It is currently unclear if this issue could be exploited any further than denial of service.''

See the Security Advisory for more technical details as well as how to fix your kernel.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Trying out journaling

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:01:00 +0000

After NetBSD got journaling integrated into FFS recently, I've built and installed -current, and had a look. In short: it works just as expected. In other words: Yai! :-) :-) :-)

The wapbl(4) manpage gives more details: To enable, a kernel with "options WAPBL" needs to run, which is available in NetBSD-current since end of July 2008. Userland from a similar date is useful, as the mount(8) command needs to know about the new "log" option. With the proper system, it's pretty much a no-brainer:

In /etc/fstab, enable logging for the file system(s) you need, in my case it's just /:
```
     /dev/wd0a       /       ffs     rw,log        1 1 
```
This is actually the only thing that needs to be done. All the rest writen here just explains things in a bit more details.
Note that journaling is not active on the file system(s) at this point, so pressing the reset button for testing will result in a file system check (fsck) - don't do it right now. :)

Reboot the system. Nothing special will show up in the boot messages:

     ...
     audio2 at pad0: half duplex
     boot device: wd0
     root on wd0a dumps on wd0b
     root file system type: ffs
     Fri Aug 22 20:45:55 CEST 2008
     swapctl: adding /dev/wd0b as swap device at priority 0
     Starting file system checks:
     /dev/rwd0a: file system is clean; not checking
     Setting tty flags.
     ...

Let's recall what happens here: after probing the hardware and initializing device drivers (audio, ...), the kernel looks at disk drives for a file system with a root partition (i.e. a disk with BSD disklabel, "a" partition, and a known file system in it). It will use the first root file system it finds, and mount it read-only.
As the above output is from a multi-user boot (not a single-user boot), the kernel continues to run init(8), which in turn runs /etc/rc (which then runs all of /etc/rc.d/* etc.). First things in the boot process can be determined by using the rcorder(8) tool just like /etc/rc does:
```
     $ cd /etc/rc.d/
     $ rcorder * | head
     wdogctl
     raidframe
     cgd
     ccd
     swap1
     fsck
     root
     ... 
```
Of the above scripts, raidframe, cgd and ccd configure additional disk devices, wdogctl and swap1 are of minor interest here. The two interesting scripts are "fsck" and "root": "fsck" runs fsck(8), which in turn goes through the list of known file systems in /etc/fstab, and checks for each file system if it was unmounted cleanly last time. If not, the file system will be checked, possibly repaired, and marked as clean. This is the much-hated, time consuming process preventing a fast reboot when the system crashed.
After ensuring all file systems are in a consistent state, the "root" script mounts the root (/) file system read-write.
Following that, all other scripts run, create temporary files, configure network devices, enable login and whatnot. Important parts here are the order of the kernel first mounting the root file system read-only, and after checking enable writing.
As we have marked the root file system for journaling, the log (journal) is created when mounting the file system read-write. For NetBSD, the log has only meta-data, i.e. information on what changes were made to the file system's management data structures like directories, link counts, etc. No data blocks are journaled. This may not be 100% optimal from a user point, but it ensures that the file system is in a consistent state with respect to meta-data.
When the file system is mounted with journaling enabled, bad things are welcome (well, sort of :-) to happen, and the system will handle them gracefully: kernel panics, power failures, someone pressing the reset button - everything that disrupts system operation and gets the file system into an inconsistent state will be caught by replaying the journal on the next boot.
Note that journaling will not help about user/admin errors like when you accidentally remove a file!

After the system went down in flames -- for research purpose and better predictability, let's assume we've pressed the reset button -- with the file system in an unclean state, this will be displayed on the next boot:

     ...
     audio2 at pad0: half duplex
     boot device: wd0
     root on wd0a dumps on wd0b
     /: replaying log to memory
     root file system type: ffs
     Fri Aug 22 20:49:55 CEST 2008
     swapctl: adding /dev/wd0b as swap device at priority 0
     Starting file system checks:
     /dev/rwd0a: file system is journaled; not checking
     /: replaying log to disk
     Setting tty flags.
     ...

After finding the root file system, the kernel first recognizes the journal, and assumes that the system crashed. The system doesn't know what's up with the disk so far, so won't go and alter the disk by writing the changes from the log onto the disk. Instead, those changes are replayed to memory only. This leaves the disk as-is, but the in-memory view of the file system will be consistent.
Running fsck then recognizes the file system as journaled, and won't touch it, assuming that the log caught all bads. Mounting the file system in the next step finally replays the changes in the journal onto the disk, and finally sets it into a consistent state permanently. After that, the regular boot process can proceed as usual.
Please note that the messages "/: replaying log to memory/disk" are printed by the kernel, as it's the kernel that runs all the file system code.
When the system is up and running, the mount(8) command can be used to determine if logging is enabled or not:
```
     # mount
     /dev/wd0a on / type ffs (log, local) 
```
The "log" here in the mount options indicates that journaling is enabled.

First impressions of journaling are pretty good, the facts that the journal needs no further maintenance. The fact that it's placed inside the file system per default and doesn't need extra space is very nice, too. People that want to keep the log after a partition for a reason can do so, plus also specify a maximum journal size.

The enduser impact of this is that lenghty file system checks are (hopefully :-) a thing of the past now!

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Blog copyright

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:35:00 +0000

If you take text from my blog verbatim and in full length, I'd very much appreciate if you'd attribute it!

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Month 1

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:48:04 +0000

Wow, I realized yesterday that I have already been in NYC for a full month! That means that I only have three left before leaving... time flies :-(<div><br /></div><div>I also apologize (to those who have noted!) for not writing for the past week, but I have lost "interest". All posts were starting to be similar to each other because there aren't that many new things to explain every day. Or, put it another way: I now usually have better things to do in the evenings rather than blogging :-P</div><div><br /></div><div>As regards work, I have spent the past two weeks trying to code something, but all my attempts were worthless. Yesterday, though, my manager and I found a trivial way to resolve the problem at hand. It is not the nicest solution, but does the trick for now. Ew, two weeks of "wasted" coding efforts! But, as he put it, these efforts have been a good way to introduce myself into big projects within Google.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I have been assigned another coding task and it seems pretty darn cool to me. This is not related to my real project, though, but it should be possible to finish it in one week and will be useful to give me more exposure to other Google technologies. In special, MapReduce. Yeah, I can say that; after all, what MapReduce is is disclosed ;-)</div><div><br /></div><div>Before finishing, let me point out something else that has caught my attention here in the city. There are lots of places to get your nails done, and all the people in these places is visible from the street. Curious, at the very least.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh! Be sure to listen to the "Gettysburg trilogy" (the three songs in the second disc) in The Glorious Burden album from Iced Earth. Have been quite addicted to it for the last days.</div></content>

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: NetBSD 5.0 preview: User visible changes in NetBSD-current

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:41:00 +0000

I've found a bit of spare time upgrade a NetBSD 4.0 system to NetBSD-current (4.99.69), and during the usual update procedure (boot new kernel; build.sh install=/; etcupdate) I found a number of user-visible changes over NetBSD 4.0 that I'd like to spotlight here:

audit-packages and download-vulnerability-list are now part of the NetBSD base system, there's no longer a need to install them via pkgsrc. I haven't found any hooks to run them automatically every night, but that can be done easily via cron(8). The commands in question are:
```
     # download-vulnerability-list
     # audit-packages 
```
Per-user-tmp: Currently, /tmp is shared by all users. In order to avoid name clashes (example: I use /tmp/foo for temporar data as both root and "normal" user), the /tmp directory can be made to be unique for each user now, much the same way as this is done e.g. on Mac Os X. To do so, set
```
	per_user_tmp=yes 
```
in /etc/rc.conf and reboot. In effect, /tmp is unique for each user then. The implementation is done via magic symlinks:
```
        # cd /tmp
        # pwd
        /private/tmp/0
        # ls -l /tmp
        lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  18 Jul 13 22:41 /tmp -> /private/tmp/@ruid 
```
httpd: NetBSD now ships with a web server in base. Seriously, I have no idea why this is, but it can be enabled by removing the comment signs of the 'httpd' service in /etc/inetd.conf, and by populating /var/www. After that access by both IPv4 and IPv6 is possible.
dhcpcd: NetBSD has shipped with ISC's DHCP client so far, which uses quite a bit or memory. As a supplement, Roy Marples' dhcpcd has been added to the base system. In order to use it for interface xx0, put
```
     ifconfig_xx0="dhcp" 
```
into your /etc/rc.conf file (replacing the old "dhclient=yes" setting).
On a test system, both dhclient and dhcpcd had ps(1) display a VSZ (virtual size in Kbyte) of ~770, but while dhclient had a RSS (real memory / resident set size, in Kbyte) of 1068, dhcpcd only had a RSS of 548, i.e. the new DHCP client daemon uses about half as much RAM as the ISC dhclient.
/boot.cfg: Last, NetBSD's second stage bootloader can now load a configuration file on the i386 and amd64 platforms. Assuming the bootloader was updated after the upgrade ("cp /usr/mdec/boot /boot"), the config file /boot.cfg is used to print the boot menu and offer appripriate actions:
```
     # cat /boot.cfg
     menu=Boot normally:boot netbsd
     menu=Boot single user:boot netbsd -s
     menu=Disable ACPI:boot netbsd -2
     menu=Disable ACPI and SMP:boot netbsd -12
     menu=Drop to boot prompt:prompt
     default=1
     timeout=5 
```

So much for a first adventure into NetBSD-current. Feel free to point out more goodies in NetBSD-current that will be new in NetBSD 5.0 over NetBSD 4.0.

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: (German language) guide on installing a CF-card and NetBSD on your EeePC

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:35:00 +0000

Issue 5/2008 of the German FreeX magazine has an article by Ulrich Habel titled "Festspeicher statt Festplatte" ("hard storage instead of hard disk"). It illustrates how to replace your EeePC's 1.8" harddisk with a CF-card adapter, and install NetBSD on it.

BTW, FreeX is always looking for (german language) authors, too!

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Bluetooth documentation update for Personal Area Networking

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:07:00 +0000

The daemon for handing bluetooth PAN that was proposed last week is imported in NetBSD-current now, and will be part of the upcoming NetBSD 5.0 release. Ian Hibbert has also updated the Bluetooth chapter in the NetBSD Guide with examples of a PANU (Personal Area Networking User) client. Ian will also continue to work on NAP (Network Access Protocol) and/or GN (Group ad-hoc Network), but that's some work todo. If anyone wants to help Ian out, feel free to contact him - see his posting for more details on the basic setup.

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Yet Another Backup Solution

jdarnold — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:30:38 +0000

In these days of US$150 1 terabyte hard drives, there is simply no reason not to have multiple hard drives and implementing a regular backup plan. Of course, I don't have one and feel like I'm walking the high wire without a net. I've installed a couple of GUI rsync...

Hubertf's NetBSD Blog: Catching up, once more

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:47:00 +0000

After a few days of offline-experience, here's a short summary of what happens that I haven't seen mentioned widely:

NetBSD achieves permanent charity status: ``The Foundation has been a 501(c)(3) charity since 2004, but previously the status was given under an advanced ruling period, i.e. it was of limited time. The permanent charity status is also known as 170(b)(1)(A)(vi).
Being a public charity is important to us, as it means that we are eligible to receive employer matching donations, as well as to enjoy the most beneficial tax treatment. ''
Metadata journaling support added to FFS: ``In case of a crash or unexpected power loss however, the journaled file system will not need a lengthy file system check at boot time, but instead the kernel will replay the log within seconds. This allows faster crash recovery, less overall downtime and higher availability.
Converting an existing system to use the log feature is as easy as updating (both kernel and userland), making sure the kernel option WAPBL is selected (this is the default for GENERIC kernels now), adding a ?log? option to /etc/fstab and rebooting. Note that WAPBL is not compatible with soft-dependencies, so please ensure that you first remove the ?softdep? option if present. See the wapbl(4) manual page for more information. ''
Kudos for this go to Wasabi Systems, Darrin B. Jewell, Simon Burge, Greg Oster, Antti Kantee, and Andrew Doran!
Uli 'rhaen' Habel wrote me that he wrote a blosxom plugin for gnats: ``During my work for pkgsrc I started to write articles for my blog and I referred to several PRs from the NetBSD gnats system. However I just wanted to type the PR in the form of e.g. NetBSD PR pkg/39230 and would like to have my blog software to link to the webpage automatically''.
Blosxom is the blogging software that Uli and I use, and you can learn more about his GNATS plugin, and download it, here. (Apparently I didn't get to install this plugin yet, that's why you don't see a link on the above quoted text :-).
Stefan Schumacher wrote me that the german magazine Die Zeit has an article on operating systems showing screenshots of several operating systems, starting with C64 Basic V2, going over MS-DOS and Windows to more esoteric ones like Mac OS X, Solaris, and *cough* BSD. Check the screenshot of the latter one! ;)
Another one from Uli Habel: His (NetBSD|pkgsrc) blog is now syndicated on www.onetbsd.org.
Wilhelm Buehler hints me at EuroBSDcon 2008: ``EuroBSDCon is the european technical conference for people working on and with 4.4BSD based operating systems and related projects. EuroBSDCon 2008 will take place in Strasbourg, France 18-19 October 2008 at University of Strasbourg.''
There's an article by Warren Webb titled "Free software encircles embedded design" at Electronic Design, Strategy, News (EDN). The article starts by illustriating open source software as a natural (and cheap, or course) alternative to commercial systems, describes benefits of the development model and the wealth of applications and how they can be used in an embedded environment. It continues talking about licenses, tools, and alternatives to Linux, including NetBSD.
Those into funky gadgets may like the MoPods may be for you: ``As if a little charm pet wasn't reason enough for being, the MoPods are actually practical. When your mobile phone rings or receives a text within a metre of your MoPod then the little blighter will get in a tizz, spin round and round and a little light will flash wildly in reaction. The perfect visual warning if your phone is on silent or you are in a noisy bar.
Whether hung on your bag, your clothes, your keys or your mobile, MoPods are a must-have, or as they say in Japan, a "hitsuyou".''
Back to our fine operating system: Ian Hibbert, who has written NetBSD's bluetooth stack, has worked on a PAN daemon for NetBSD. This allows to perform personal area networking in various ways:

NAP
Network Access Point is like an ethernet bridge
GN
Group ad-hoc Network is a NAP with no external network
PANU
Personal Area Networking User in both host (like GN but a single connection) and client (the device that connects to all the others) mode.
All this will come in an upcoming NetBSD release (well, and FreeBSD too, it seems, as they like it :-) near you pretty soon, see Iain's mail to tech-net.

May the source be with you!

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Days 21, 22 and 23

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:48:04 +0000

Day 21 (August 8th): Some work at Google and went out later with a friend from work and the friends that are visiting from Barcelona. We went to a bar called Spice Market: quite fancy but also expensive and not that fun.<div><br /></div><div>Day 22 (August 9th): Stayed at home for most of the day, which was pretty nice because I had not done this since I left Barcelona four weeks ago. In the morning, I went to a barber though. At night, went out with my roommate and some of her friends to a party. This was also an excuse to celebrate my birthday, which happened today (in day 23rd, I mean).</div><div><br /></div><div>Day 23 (August 10th): Turned 24. Went shopping for a fast external hard disk and ended up buying a Lacie D2 Quadra 500GB. Did some tests using the FW800 connection and the results are quite impressive. I spent part of the evening at Google doing some personal work, then went running and then drank cava at home to "celebrate" my birthday.</div><div><br /></div><div>OK, and now that I remember, here is another thing that has caught my attention in NYC. There are a lot of places to cut your nails... and what's "interesting" is that, from the street, you can see all the people sitting there while they are being served.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 20

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:48:08 +0000

<div>Another regular day at work, except that I have finally been assigned some coding work. Yay! Haven't coded for a rather long while, and I need to do something. Aside that, got some Google gear that I was supposed to get on the first day but didn't. This includes a water bottle, a towel, yet another t-shirt and a notebook.</div><div><br /></div><div>Somewhat related: I also ate way too much, which makes my stomach hurt and feel incredibly tired. Or maybe I am tired due to the run this evening, in which I pushed myself too hard. But I must run the Human Race (10Km) in less than 45 minutes! Yes, personal goal.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 17, 18 and 19

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:48:04 +0000

I should have posted this yesterday at most... but anyway, here it comes so that I do not forget about recent happenings. What I mean is that day 19th was yesterday (August 6th), not today!<div><br /></div><div>Day 17: Some more learning work at Google. The interesting thing of that day was that a friend from Barcelona arrived to the city at 10pm approximately, so we went to have a beer to a place in the lower East River. Very touristic but pretty nice. Also, he was riding a hired car, so I was able to see the city from another "perspective".</div><div><br /></div><div>Day 18: Again, some more learning. At midday, I registered for the Nike Human Race, a 10Km race that will take place on August 31st in 25 cities around the world. The nice thing is that for the low registration fee, I got a pair of shiny new sneakers and the Nike+ Sportsband. Now I have Nike shoes, the iPod+Nike kit at home (a present from another race)... so I am now only missing a real iPod! At night I went out with a Spanish colleague from work and two other Spanish guys, friends of him, that are also visiting the city.</div><div><br /></div><div>Day 19: Tried the new sneakers and the Sportsband. Both are pretty amazing! Comfortable shoes and the measures taken by the sensors seem to be quite accurate. Plus you can get a nice history of your runs on the website. At work, I finally did some coding. And, in the evening, we had a Google Boat Cruise for interns (<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jmmv84/GoogleBoatCruise">photos available</a>) followed by beers at a couple of bars.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bah, I should get back to posting once per day to avoid such telegraphic descriptions...</div></content>

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Back in the Saddle

jdarnold — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:18:06 +0000

As you may have noticed (for both of my readers), I am back to updating Daemon Dancing instead of helping out at Linux Brain Dump, as LBD seems to have slipped into a funk lately. So I figured I would just go back to working on Daemon and trying to...

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 16

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:48:22 +0000

Wow... two weeks have passed already. Time flies :-(<div><br /></div><div>Today I got up late after yesterday's hang out and then went to have lunch with my new roommate and his brother. After lunch, my roommate had to got back to work, and his brother and I walked downtown to take a look at the World Trade Center. After seeing that, we walked by the southern coast and saw the Statue of Liberty in the distance. I guess I'll have to take the ferry one day and see it from a closer distance, but better wait until there are not too many tourists and for colder weather. At last, we returned to visit Google going all along Broadway, while visiting some shops.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm really exhausted. Google Earth says that we walked for almost 11Km non-stop! Check out <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jmmv84/TripToTheWTC">the photos</a>!</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Edit (22:50)</span>: Just finished watching Season 1 of The Big Bang Theory. Hilarious! I'm eager to see more episodes, but that'll have to wait until Season 2 is aired.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Days 13, 14 and 15

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:48:10 +0000

Day 13: Not much to comment, other than I finally got my welcome Google t-shirt!<div><br /></div><div>Day 14: Moved to the new apartment. It was pretty annoying to have to move all my stuff using the subway, basically due to the incredible heat in the streets and inside the subway. But finally, I have a relatively decent place to stay for the four months. Shared with another person, cheaper than the older apartment and... just one block away from Google! Oh, and at night I went to one of these ultra-classy clubs (230 Fifth Avenue) with several other interns and later to a couple of bars. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Wasted</span> way too much money.</div><div><br /></div><div>Day 15: Properly installed in the apartment by emptying the bags and filling the closet and drawers. Finally! I had had all my stuff in the bag for three weeks already and it was pretty annoying to find stuff this way. Also walked around the neighborhood and checked several book shops. I saw many interesting books that I would like to buy one day (in special, one about Haskell!), but just before leaving the last shop I was visiting (Barnes &amp; Noble), I passed by a set of books that were discounted 50% of the price. And one of them immediately caught my eye: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Writers-Research-Dissertations-Seventh/dp/0226823377">A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers</a>. At the ridiculous price it was selling, I couldn't resist buying it! Let's hope it is useful :) Now... maybe it's time to go out again, but this time with my new roommate and his brother.</div></content>

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: AIRing it out

jdarnold — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:14:02 +0000

Very nice intro to AIR on Linux found at Linux Journal. AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is Adobes push for a crossplatform rich Internet app "operating system". I've been using it for Twhirl, a very nice Twitter client. For some reason, there are many Twitter clients using AIR. Adobe claims AIR...

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Vee Dee Eyes page

jdarnold — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:24:19 +0000

Cool page providing a bunch of VDIs, which are images you can use in VirtualBox, my current favorite OS emulator. These VDIs are pre-installed OS images that run in VirtualBox and let you quickly try out any OS (mostly Linux, of course). Sun xVM VirtualBox VDI Index | veeDee-EyesThe VirtualBox...

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 12

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:48:30 +0000

At last, my new apartment is... OMG confirmed! Will be moving on August 1st and will stay there for four months. The location is good because it is just one block away from Google and is also very close to lots and lots of pubs and restaurants.<div><br /></div><div>Haven't done much work today though. I spent all the morning applying for a SSN number, and then I spent part of the evening opening a bank account and getting used to its online services.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hope that tomorrow will be more productive.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): ATF talk at NYCBSDCon 2008

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:48:30 +0000

<a href="http://www.nycbsdcon.org/2008/">NYCBSDCon 2008</a> will take place in New York City on October 11th and 12th. Given that I am already in NYC and will still be by that time, I submitted a presentation proposal about <a href="http://www.NetBSD.org/~jmmv/atf/">ATF</a>. I have just been notified that my proposal has been accepted and, therefore, I will be giving a talk on ATF itself and how it relates to <a href="http://www.NetBSD.org/">NetBSD</a> on one of those two days. The conference program and schedule have not been published yet, though, so keep tuned. Hope to see you there! :)</content>

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Teaching OSS to Share

jdarnold — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:44:41 +0000

Say you're doing some programming, or trying out an older audio program, and you get some form of the following cryptic error: unable to open `/dev/dsp', Device or resource busy What does it mean and what can you do about it? As to what it means - basically, an application...

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 11

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:48:20 +0000

One more day and nothing special to say. Just that I tried to open a bank account and they require <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">two</span> different IDs, which I was not carrying. Any idea about why is that?<div><br /></div><div>Let's hope I can open the account tomorrow... but even then, the transfer of the money I have in Spain to this account will not happen on the same day, so I'm not sure about how I'll deal with the housing payment...</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Edit (23:10)</span>: Oh, and just finished watching Dexter Season 1. Highly recommended!<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 10

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:48:24 +0000

Not much to say today other than I was lazy to go running in the morning and that I have finally settled on an apartment. Will move in on Friday as long as I can figure out how to do the payment! (Probably need to deal with money orders, because I can't really get enough cash.)<div><br /></div><div>Also, I think the time when I'm assigned a project at Google is approaching. Hope it will be soon.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Photos

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:48:34 +0000

I've started uploading the photos of my stay in NYC to the Picasa Web Albums. Feel free to take a look in <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jmmv84/">my page</a>!</content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 9

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:48:32 +0000

Yet another exhausting day. After breakfast (which was pretty late today because I woke up late), I headed to the Apple Store in 5th Avenue. Instead of taking the subway, I walked all the way down through Central Park which accounts for 40 streets and a couple of avenues. Doing so was pretty nice, as the views in Central Park are amazing — and which is the reason why my camera had 93 photos when I got home. Lots of tourists along the way, though, and a rather funny sign along the way:<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xLbGV919cEE/SI0hvLHIXeI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/XbVtwcxatr0/s1600-h/IMG_1263.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xLbGV919cEE/SI0hvLHIXeI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/XbVtwcxatr0/s400/IMG_1263.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227871836767280610" /></a>Once in the Apple Store, I went downstairs. Wow. The place is big and really nice. But it was crowded. Stayed there for quite a while, trying their gadgets... and I think I want a real iPod. You know, the Shuffle I now have is OK for running... but not for other "styles" of listening to music (e.g. at work, on the plane...). Even though, I'm not sure which one I should get: the Nano is cool for running (no hard disk), but the Classic can perfectly hold all my music library. Even though, getting the Touch is stupid; I'd rather get an iPhone 3G for that price and size.<br /><br />Out of the store, I felt hungry so I tried one of these typical hot dogs shown in virtually all movies and/or TV series recorded in NYC. Rather disappointing, though, because they are way too small... so when I got home I had to have real lunch.<br /><br />After the hot dog, I walked to Rockefeller plaza to see what was it and then entered the NBC Experience Store. I saw a couple of nice t-shirts from Friends: one said "We were on a break!" and the other "How YOU doin'?". I think I'll eventually get one of those. But I should hold on the compulsive-buying feeling I'm experiencing...<br /><br />And then I went to Times Square again to take a some (many) photos. Unfortunately, my journey ended there because it started to rain. So I entered a shop, bought a NY t-shirt and returned home much earlier than I wanted. It was only 4pm. Should I have waited for half an hour or so, the rain would likely have stopped.<br /><br />As mentioned before, when I got home I had some more lunch, surfed the internet a bit and went running through Central Park taking a different route than the other days. Very, very nice. This is something I will miss a lot when moving to another apartment downtown :(</div><div><br /></div><div>After the running session, I had dinner and... I can't stay here! So... I went out for a walk to see if I could find any nice bar to have a drink. Nothing. What a crappy neighborhood! Well, in fact I saw a couple of bars that seemed promising, but they were rather empty. Will try again another day.<br /><br />And finally, time to relax. Will now watch some Dexter and sleep.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 8

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:48:09 +0000

Exhausting. Yes, that's the best word to describe today. I woke up early due to an unexpected phone call and went to have breakfast to some random place close to my current house. Then, and for the first time ever, I went to do the laundry. What a waste of time. Sure, I'd have returned home while the washing machine and the dryer were working but, taking 30 minutes each, it's difficult to do anything productive in these separate periods of time. I think that next time I'll just bring my clothes and let the people there do everything by themselves so that I can pick up the clean clothes in the evening... sure, you have to pay for that service, but it's worth the time savings!<div><br /></div><div>Then I paid for this week's rent and, after that, headed downtown to deal with housing. I had to see a room at 4pm, so I went a couple of hours in advance to walk by the neighborhood and have lunch somewhere. It took a while to settle the lunch place, and I ended up in a, I guess, mexican restaurant, where I ate a burrito. The place was very touristic (aka, not cheap) but the food was really, really good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Immediately after lunch, I went to see the room. This was in a 3-bedroom apartment located in Greenwich Village. Sincerely, the flat was quite disappointing (but most of them seem to be here in Manhattan), but the surroundings were, I think, excellent. Lots of bars and restaurants around which certainly warrants cool nightlife! If I take that place, I would shared it with a couple of guys in their mid-twenties too, so they'd have been good party-mates I guess.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later, I walked to Google to see how long it took from the apartment to get there. I didn't take the most optimal route, but it was a 20-minute walk only; with some experience, I'm sure it'd transform into a 15-minute walk only. Why did I go to Google, you say? Well, to check the email and keep browsing Craigslist. (Side note: people here has a problem with air conditioning... it was so damn cold inside the building!)</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, from there I called another person that was offering a room (I already exchanged some emails yesterday, so this was planned) and settled that I'd see it today but late in the evening. OK, so I went for a walk to make time and stopped by a supermarket to buy some food for breakfast. Then I walked back to Google because I had not heard from the girl (she was supposed to call me just an hour after I called her) and it was pretty late. From there I called again and, well, I had to wait until almost 10pm to be able to see the apartment because she got out of work late and still had to have dinner.</div><div><br /></div><div>Buuuut, the good thing is that I was able to see this other apartment, which is just one block away from Google and pretty close to 5th avenue. I met the girl, a 28-year old mexican, and I think I finally have a place to stay. Quite cheaper than the other option, cool roommate, and a lot closer to work! She will confirm tomorrow, but I guess (well, hope!) I'm done looking.</div><div><br /></div><div>And at last, headed back home and ate something for dinner. And here I am now, blogging and "enjoying" one of those alcohol-free beers.</div><div><br /></div><div>So why was the day exhausting? I tracked my walk path on Google Earth and it was almost 10km-long! All day walking and carrying my laptop on the back... so it's time for a good sleep. Finally, the jet lag is going away.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Days 6 and 7

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:48:09 +0000

Wow. I got some complaints today for not publishing day 6 on time! Sorry, was too tired to write something yesterday evening.<div><br /></div><div>So what did I do yesterday? It was a pretty regular day, with probably two things worth to note. First, I have not been able to find housing yet, so I asked my current tenant if I could stay one more week in the place where I am now; fortunately, it worked, so now I have one more week to look for something else. And, second, when I got home I went for a (very) short walk to find a decent bar in the neighborhood. Nothing! I really want to move to some other place with more nightlife to explore...</div><div><br /></div><div>And what about today, you say? Well, some more work and, in the evening, I went for dinner plus a couple of drinks with several other interns. Finally tried one of these drinks with fancy names, colors and glasses &mdash; a daiquiri with strawberry &mdash; but it was pretty good indeed! I think I was the oldest of the group, given that most of the interns around here are still in undergraduate college courses... and it is really annoying to have to show one's ID in every single bar to get a drink served.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tomorrow I have to go to see a couple of apartments and also to do the laundry in one of these ugly places... never done it so I will have to ask someone how the machines work and what the procedure is. I can't understand why most people don't have a washing machine at home! Lack of space?</div><div><br /></div><div>And one last thing: if I keep up with the current reading "speed", I'll probably have a project assigned by next Wednesday. Really looking forward to it, as I want to start doing something cool and useful but... I don't know what I'll be able to tell you...</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 5

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:48:19 +0000

Today was a pretty cool day. Everything was like usual, which means running by Central Park in the morning and then going to work... but then, in the evening, several interns met to go for some beers at some random bar in downtown. Had a pretty nice time there and met several people at Google!<div><br /></div><div>Not much else to say, other than it´s already late and I need to sleep quite a bit. Oh, yes, I´m noticing that the English keyboard that I have at work is now confusing me while writing with my Spanish one!</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah, and I can´t forget saying that living alone is <i>soooo</i> cool... nobody is watching around what I do. Can get at home at any time I want without giving any explanations at all. Sure, I have to do some work by myself, such as cleaning or the laundry, but those are a bearable enough compared to the feeling of complete freedom. Really.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 4

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:48:09 +0000

Got up early (I'm still jet lagged so this is not difficult at all) and went running to Central Park. What a nice jogging track around the lake! Also surprising was the amount of people running at that hour of the day (7.30). Then I headed to Google early enough to have breakfast there and started to do some work. I'm starting to understand stuff, and it looks like that my work will be exciting! Can't wait until tomorrow to get there again and continue learning. I really wanted to experience this feeling again.<div><br /></div><div>Then the typical stuff: had lunch, worked some more and even had dinner there. Having dinner early was good because then I went on foot up to Times Square. Just WOW. This place is small but amazing; it seems a completely different city on its own. Will need to go back again with my camera, which I wasn't carrying today. At last, done some shopping at CVS and went home. Now it's time for blogging and watching yet another episode of Dexter while enjoying a beer. (Well, how do I dare to call it a beer? It's alcohol-free. I picked it up incorrectly at the super market.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So, finally today, I think I'm starting to really understand the subway system. A colleague at work, Patrick, explained me the rationale behind the local and express trains, which in fact seems a pretty good idea. I'll try tomorrow to pick the 4th or 5th to get to Google to see how long it takes. Let's hope the extra train switch doesn't make the trip last for more than the 6th on its own, or otherwise I'll probably miss breakfast.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, at Google today, I was trying to figure out how the expresso coffee machine worked and asked a guy that was using it. While he was explaining to me the details of how to use it, I quickly noticed that special English accent that Spanish people have (I do too for sure). Guess I'll have someone to go partying this weekend!</div><div><br /></div><div>And at last I'm trying to figure out housing once again. I visited three different flats today. Let's hope I get an answer by tomorrow...</div><div><br /></div><div>Phew, this blog is starting to look like a diary... well, will be good to remember this nice experience in the future.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Day 3

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:48:09 +0000

Today I spent most part of the day at Google. I took a tour through the offices, dealt with paperwork and chatted with my boss. I don't know what things I can say about what I saw, so I will only mention one thing: the place is great. Looks like it'll be hard to leave when the internship finishes!<div><br /></div><div>Later this evening, I went shopping to Whole Foods per a suggestion from my boss. Everything in there seems pretty darn expensive but also of good quality. And the place was incredibly crowded.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah, and one more thing that surprised me about the city and that I forgot to mention yesterday: almost everyone who rides bikes wears a helmet. That's "hard" (not uncommon, just not typical) to see in Barcelona.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last random note: my annoying journey to look for housing continues...</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Live@NYC: Days 1 and 2

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:48:10 +0000

Finally, my adventure in NYC started yesterday. I had to pick up the flight at 14.50 but it got delayed by an hour. In the end, the plane landed at around 19.15 local time (which means a damn lot of hours inside the plane). Going through immigration and customs was boring but easy.<div><br /></div><div>Getting into Manhattan was quite a mess though. Instead of picking a taxi, I decided to try to make my way through the subway system. So I first picked up the AirTrain and, instead of getting to the E train, which is the one I needed, I ended up in the A train. OK, looking at the map it was clear that A could take much more time to get to the destination than E, but it could bring me there anyway; so I waited for that train instead of going back. Going through Brooklyn took quite a bit, and when the train got to Manhattan, something happened (it was spoken out loud, but I couldn't understand it) and the train changed its way through another line. So I couldn't get to the station I planned and decided to get down in another one to later take the 6 line. However, to pick the 6 line in the correct direction, I had to go out of the metro system and reenter again at some other place. At this point I was so bored (due to carrying all luggage) and stressed that I stopped a taxi.</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is that I had to be at the apartment between 9pm and 10pm so that the tenant could give me the keys. As I was certainly going to be late, I attempted to call her when the plane landed, but she didn't pick the phone. As a result, when I got to the apartment, nobody was there. Uhh... scam? No. Fortunately, I could check my email through the mobile phone and saw a mail that told me to go to another direction to pick up the keys. This mail also had her mobile number, and I noticed that I had written it down incorrectly... hence why nobody picked it up before. So taxi to downtown again, pick up the keys, and another taxi uptown. Expensive, yes, but I was not going to attempt the subway again carrying all my stuff.</div><div><br /></div><div>At around 11pm I got to the apartment, made the Internet connection work on my laptop and went to sleep. 30-hour long day finished. (Note to self: I had wished multiple times to have longer days. Don't say that again!)</div><div><br /></div><div>As regards today, I have read the New York Times (pretty darn expensive), explored the surroundings of the apartment (located at the Upper East Side), checked the way to get to Google using the Subway (not that difficult, now that I wasn't stressed), had lunch downtown, bought a local SIM card for my cell phone and went running in Central Park. Yay!</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, some things that have surprised me from the city so far.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is amazing how widespread and easy is the use of credit cards to pay for virtually anything and everywhere (even inside the taxis!). Of course, it's also frightening the fact that there is no ID check for the use of the credit card, so losing it is... uh... scary. Also frightening is the way you spend money... virtual money is much easier to give away than physical one!</div><div><br /></div><div>Tipping is annoying. Come on, just tell me how much I owe and don't make me figure out how much to add to make it <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">right</span>. You know, taxi drivers, waiters... everyone expects tips and there are some guidelines on how much you are supposed to leave. I guess some taxi drivers got angry yesterday...</div><div><br /></div><div>The subway system is quite... "interesting". Everything seems very old, and the way it works is not too clear. Some stations don't open all day as others do, in some you have to change the direction by going outside, some trains don't have any clear indication of what is the next station... so far I think Barcelona's system is much nicer. Maybe except for the MetroCard.</div><div><br /></div><div>Water is free. What do I mean with this, you say? This morning I sat down in a bar to get a coffee and, before I even ordered, the waiter served me a big glass with water and ice. Similarly, when having lunch, I also got water without having ordered it. And what's more, the waiter refilled the glass as it emptied.</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking of glasses... mixed drinks seem to be common here. The lunch menu included one mixed drink (some with champagne and some with vodka), and I saw several bars in which the happy hour started as early as 4pm. Oh, and the names for these drinks are quite "funny". Guess I'll have to learn them and what they are composed of.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know which language to use to talk to people. Many of them seem to understand both English and Spanish.</div><div><br /></div><div>The blocks in Manhattan are not as big as some people made me think. You can, in fact, do trips that span multiple blocks on foot.</div><div><br /></div><div>And, at last, the weather is unbearably hot and humid. Not good for sweat.</div></content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Recent news

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:48:25 +0000

Micro-blogging services are preventing me to write real posts in my blog... so here comes a summary of recent happenings.<div><br /></div><div>I finished my master's degree in Computer Architecture, Networks and Systems a week ago, when I presented the master's thesis titled <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Task scheduling on the Cell processor</span>. I'll try to post it somewhere online when I have good internet connection.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, I've spent this whole week at the <a href="http://www.hipeac.net/summerschool/">ACACES Summer School</a>, a meet-up of people from the <a href="http://www.hipeac.net/">HiPEAC</a> project to take courses on several computer architecture topics and get to know new people that works on similar areas as you. This meet-up happens in a campus at L'Aquila, a small town in Italy. I don't understand why some people at my university said that they did not want to come... because for me, it has been a great and fun week!</div><div><br /></div><div>And well, tomorrow I'm leaving ACACES and flying directly to New York City, to start my 4-month internship at the Google SRE group on Monday.</div></content>

FreeBSD Diary: ezjail - A jail administration framework

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:48:23 +0000

This makes jails easier

The Julipedia (Blog): Reinstalled Mac OS X in multiple partitions, again

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:48:16 +0000

Past weekend, for some strange reason, I decided to dump all the MBP's hard disk contents and start again from scratch. But this time I decided to split the disk into multiple partitions for Mac OS X, to avoid external fragmentation slowdowns as much as possible.<br /><br />I <a href="http://julipedia.blogspot.com/2007/01/install-mac-os-x-over-multiple-volumes.html">already did such a thing</a> back when the MBP was new. At that time, I created a partition for the system files and another for the user data. However, that setup was not too optimal and, when I got the 7200RPM hard disk drive six months later, I reinstalled again in a single partition. Just for convenience.<br /><br />But external fragmentation hurts performance a lot, specially in my case because I need to keep lots of small files (the NetBSD source tree, for example) and files that get fragmented very easily (sparse virtual machine disks). These end up spreading the files everywhere on the physical disk, and as a result the system slows down considerably. I even bought iDefrag and it does a good job at optimizing the disk layout... but the results were not as impressive as I expected.<br /><br />This time I reinstalled using the following layout:<br /><ul><li>System: Mounted on /, HFS+ case insensitive, 30GB.</li><li>Users: Mounted on /Users, HFS+ case insensitive, 50GB.</li><li>Windows: Not mounted, NTFS, 40GB.</li><li>Projects: Mounted on /Users/jmmv/Projects, HFS+ case sensitive, 30GB.</li></ul>Windows had to go before Projects so that the MBR partition table was constructed correctly; otherwise Windows failed to start after installation. The Projects partition holds those small files as well as the virtual machines. And Users keeps all the personal stuff such as photos, music and documents, which are mostly static.<br /><br />Using this layout, the machine really feels a lot faster. Applications start quickly, programs that deal with personal data such as iPhoto and iTunes load the library faster, and I don't have to deal with stupid disk images to keep things sequential on disk. However, the price to pay for such layout is convenience, because now the free disk space is spread in multiple partitions.</content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Blacklisting a device in HAL

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:48:15 +0000

I have an old Aiptek mini PenCam 1.3 MPixels, identified by USB vendor 1276 and product 20554. I want to use this webcam for videoconferencing in the machine I am setting up for this purpose. This machine carries a Fedora 9 x86_64 installation, as already mentioned in the previous post.<br /><br />Whenever I connect the camera to the machine, HAL detects the new device and then GNOME attempts to "mount" it using gphoto2. The result is that I get a new device on the desktop referring to the camera, which is pretty nice, but it does not work at all: accessing it raises an unexpected error and thus the photos stored in the webcam cannot be seen.<br /><br />Anyway, I do not care about the photo capabilities of this camera, just about its ability to stream video. Hence, I installed the <tt>gspca</tt> and <tt>kmod-gspca</tt> packages from the <a href="http://rpm.livna.org/">livna</a> repositories and, according to the <a href="http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html">gspca</a> driver, my camera is, supposedly, fully supported.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I was not able to get the <tt>/dev/video</tt> device: it didn't exist, even with the kernel modules loaded. After some manual investigation on the console (so that gphoto2 couldn't get in the way), I found that the video device really appears but vanishes as soon as gphoto2 attempts to access the camera. I suspect it is not possible to use the photo and video capabilities of the camera at once with the current drivers.<br /><br />So, how to avoid this problem? I had to tell HAL to omit this device, so that GNOME did not get any notification of its existance and therefore the interface did not attempt to mount the camera using gphoto2. However, there is few documentation on how to do this, so I had to resort to reading the files in <tt>/usr/share/hal/fdi/</tt> and guess what to do.<br /><br />I ended up creating a <tt>10-broken-cameras.fdi</tt> file in <tt>/etc/hal/fdi/preprobe/</tt> with the following contents:<pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;<br /><br />&lt;deviceinfo version="0.2"&gt;<br /> &lt;device&gt;<br /> &lt;match key="usb.vendor_id" int="1276"&gt;<br /> &lt;match key="usb.product_id" int="20554"&gt;<br /> &lt;merge key="info.ignore" type="bool"&gt;true&lt;/merge&gt;<br /> &lt;/match&gt;<br /> &lt;/match&gt;<br /> &lt;/device&gt;<br />&lt;/deviceinfo&gt;</pre>What this code snippet does is match the camera device using some of the properties that are attached to it and, once there is a match, appends the <tt>info.ignore</tt> property to the device description to tell HAL to not use this device any more. In order to set up the matching of a device, you can see the full list of properties of all device descriptors using the <tt>hal-device</tt> command.</content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Desktop effects with an nVidia card and Fedora 9

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:48:16 +0000

I'm setting up a machine at home to act as a videoconferencing station so that my family can easily talk to me during the summer, while I'm in NYC. This machine is equipped with an Athlon 64-bit processor and a nVidia GeForce 6200 PCI-Express video card. I decided to install Fedora 9 in this computer because this is the distribution I'm currently using everywhere (well, everywhere except on the Mac ;-). Plus it just works (TM), or mostly.<br /><br />The 3D desktop is not something that is really needed for daily work, but I wanted to try it. Unfortunately, I could not get the desktop effects to work the first time I tried. I enabled the livna repositories, installed the nVidia binary drivers and configured the X server to use them. However, telling the system to enable the Desktop Effects failed, and running glxinfo crashed with a "locking assertion failure" message.<br /><br />Googling a bit, I found a page mentioning that one has to run the livna-config-display command to properly configure the X server. I think I did not do this, so I just ran this manually and later restarted X. No luck.<br /><br />Fortunately, that same page also contained a snippet of the <tt>xorg.conf</tt> configuration file that was like this:<br /><pre>Section "Files"<br /> ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"<br /> ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"<br />EndSection</pre>Effectively, my configuration file was lacking the path to the nVidia extensions subdirectory. Adding that line fixed the problem: now the server loads the correct GLX plugin, instead of the "generic" one that lives in the modules directory. I guess <tt>livna-config-display</tt> should have set that up automatically for me, but it didn't...<br /><br />The desktop effects are now working :-) Now I figure out why compiz feels so slow... specially because I have the same problem at work with an Intel 965Q video card.</content>

FreeBSD Diary: Adding gmirror to an existing installation

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:48:34 +0000

Adding RAID-1 to an existing FreeBSD 7 installation

The Julipedia (Blog): lib64 problems

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:48:30 +0000

Linux distributions for the x86_64 platform have different approaches when it comes to the installation of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries. In a 64-bit platform, 64-bit libraries are required to run all the standard applications but 32-bit libraries need to be available to provide compatibility with 32-bit binaries. In this post, I consider 64-bit applications to be the native ones and the 32-bit to be foreign.<br /><br />The two major approaches I have seen are:<br /><ul><li>lib32 and lib64 directories, leaving lib to be just a symbolic link to the directory required by the native applications. This is the approach followed by Debian. The advantage of this layout is that the lib directory is the correct one for native applications. However, foreign applications that have built-in paths to lib, if these exist, will fail to work.</li><li>lib and lib64 directories. This is the approach followed by Fedora. In this layout, the foreign applications which have built-in paths to lib will work just fine, but the native applications have to be configured explicitly to load libraries and plugins from within lib64.</li></ul>I have found so far two instances where the Fedora approach fails because native 64-bit applications hardcode the lib name in some places, instead of using lib64. One of these were the NetworkManager configuration files, which had an incorrect setup for the OpenVPN plugin and it failed to work. This issue has already been fixed in Fedora 9. The other problem was in gnome-compiz-manager where the application tries to load plugins from the lib directory, but as it is a 64-bit binary, it failed due to a bitness mismatch. This has been <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=388511">reported</a> but is not yet fixed upstream. I'm sure several other similar problems remain to be discovered.<br /><br />I personally think that the Debian approach is more appropriate because it seems weird that all standard system directories, such as bin or libexec, contain 64-bit binaries but just one of them, lib, is 32-bit specific.<br /><br />As a side note, NetBSD follows an slightly different approach: lib contains 64-bit libraries and lib32, if installed at all, contains the 32-bit ones.</content>

The Julipedia (Blog): Twitter and other news

Julio M. Merino Vidal — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:48:16 +0000

Don't know why but I finally succumbed to Twitter today, as if I did not have enough things to waste time. You can follow me with the <a href="http://twitter.com/jmmv">jmmv</a> nick.<div><br /></div><div>I just noticed this post comes after more than a month since the last one; my apologies. I do not have any free time these days to think about writing decent posts nor doing anything else. My current work is basically attending class, writing reports, reading papers and going to the gym (this last thing only when possible).</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the things that drew a lot of my time recently was the writing of a paper for <a href="http://www.ideal.ece.ufl.edu/wiosca/">WIOSCA</a> 2008, and I was just noticed of its acceptance. Most likely you won't see me there though.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and it's definitive. I will be interning at Google NYC from late-July to late-October this year! Extremely impatient for July to arrive. Will be joining the Site Reliability Engineering team.</div></content>

FreeBSD Diary: ThinkPad x61s

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:48:32 +0000

Unpacking the box, installing PC-BSD

FreeBSD Diary: Using two monitors with X.org

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:48:31 +0000

The GeForce 8600 GT with two monitors

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Linux HowTo search

jdarnold — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:27:28 +0000

A page using a focused Google search to look for just the right HowTo to scratch that itch:HowtoFinder - The search engine for Howto's and Tutorials...

FreeBSD Diary: PC-BSD

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:48:06 +0000

PC-BSD has a lot going for it

FreeBSD Diary: IMAP - getting Dovecot running

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 01:48:06 +0000

POP implies one computer. IMAP allows many.

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: My Other Writings

jdarnold — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:15:03 +0000

Some of my posts from Linux Brain Dump readers here might find interesting: Software Discovery of the Day : qps - cool little system monitor for Linux Commenting on a Simple User - my comments on the conclusions found here openSUSE Weclome Easter Egg KDE Kwickies Konqueror Kwickies...

FreeBSD Diary: Creating multiple jails

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:48:05 +0000

When creating more than one jail, these shortcuts might help

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Beta Try

jdarnold — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:06:34 +0000

Very nice coverage of the 1 CD KDE 10.3 Beta2 of openSUSE by Linuxseekers.com. Plenty of screenshots and notes. I tried the Beta 1 and found it a really smooth experience, with barely a glitch (only a small one setting up the NTP daemon comes to mind).Linuxseekers - Preview of...

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Broken Update

jdarnold — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:04:51 +0000

So I had my first broken update yesterday. Given how many different things I'm always installing, and how many different "unofficial" repositories I'm using, I would say openSUSE has done a pretty good job of maintaining its sanity. But I was trying to figure out how to check what apps...

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Game Linux

jdarnold — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:52:22 +0000

Yes, you can game with Linux. While many people, including myself, dual boot into Windows in order to get the latest and greatest games, there are a few interesting games that play on Linux. This group of hackers got together and created a Live (ie., bootable) CD based on ArchLinux...

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Collaboration

jdarnold — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:50:46 +0000

I am going to be contributing to the Linux Brain Dump blog, tossing a few posts over for James to use. I added in a little bit o' bloggage on how to restore GRUB. The Linux Brain Dump blog posts little quizzes, gives short, concise HowTos, and otherwise comments generally...

Daemon Dancing in the Dark [FreeBSD Blog]: Forecast for Linux

jdarnold — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:43:04 +0000

Whither the Linux kernel? Well, here's a page with your answer:Linux Weather Forecast - The Linux Foundation Welcome to the Linux Weather Forecast. This page is an attempt to track ongoing developments in the Linux development community that have a good chance of appearing in a mainline kernel and/or major...

FreeBSD Diary: IBM ThinkPad T41: Upgrading RAM and HDD - pictures

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:48:06 +0000

Pictures now!