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diff --git a/en/news/status/report-2001-08.xml b/en/news/status/report-2001-08.xml deleted file mode 100644 index bd3b02e072..0000000000 --- a/en/news/status/report-2001-08.xml +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1519 +0,0 @@ -<!-- $FreeBSD: www/en/news/status/report-august-2001.xml,v 1.5 2003/04/13 16:31:52 hrs Exp $ --> - -<report> - <date> - <month>August</month> - - <year>2001</year> - </date> - - <cvs:keywords xmlns:cvs="http://www.FreeBSD.org/XML/CVS" version="1.0"> - <cvs:keyword name="freebsd"> - $FreeBSD: www/en/news/status/report-august-2001.xml,v 1.5 2003/04/13 16:31:52 hrs Exp $ - </cvs:keyword> - </cvs:keywords> - - <section> - <title>Introduction</title> - - <p>The FreeBSD Project made substantial progress in the month of - August, 2001, both on continuing the development of the RELENG_4 - line (4.x-STABLE and 4.x-RELEASE), and on 5.0-CURRENT, the main - development branch. During this month, the decision was made to - push the release of 5.0-CURRENT back so that KSE (support for - fine-grained user threads) could be completed in time for the - release, rather than postponing that support for 6.0. As such, the - lifespan of the RELENG_4 line will be extended, with new features - continuing to be backported to that branch. 4.4-RELEASE went into - final beta during this month, and will also be available - shortly.</p> - - <p>This month's edition of the status report has been written with - the assistance of Nik Clayton and Chris Costello.</p> - </section> - - <section> - <title>Future submissions</title> - - <p>For next month, the submission procedures remain the same: - reports should be between one and two paragraphs long, sent by - e-mail, and in a format approximately that of this month's - submissions (Project, Contact, URL, and text). Reminders will be - mailed to the hackers@FreeBSD.org and developers@FreeBSD.org - mailing lists at least a week before the deadline; complete - submission instructions may be found in those reminders.</p> - - <p>-- Robert Watson</p> - </section> - - <project> - <title>Fibre Channel Support</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Matthew</given> - - <common>Jacob</common> - </name> - - <email>mjacob@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.feral.com/isp.html" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>2 Gigabit support was integrated on 8/31/2001 (QLogic - 2300/2312 cards). Because of the author's shrinking time - commitment for FreeBSD, the previously planned "next step" which - would have been more complete new CAM Transport integration is - now probably just the addition of an FC-IP adjunct (as this can - benefit many platforms simultaneously).</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>SCSI Tape Support</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Matthew</given> - - <common>Jacob</common> - </name> - - <email>mjacob@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>A major update to error handling was done on 8/28/2001 which - should correct most of the EOM detection problems that have been - around for a while. There are several things to fix. The - principle thing to fix next is the establishment of a loader(8) - mediated device quirks method.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>CAM</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Matthew</given> - - <common>Jacob</common> - </name> - - <email>mjacob@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Justin</given> - - <common>Gibbs</common> - </name> - - <email>gibbs@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Kenneth</given> - - <common>Merry</common> - </name> - - <email>ken@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>No change since last status. Some discussion amongst all of us - occurred, but lack of time and commitment to FreeBSD has meant - little has actually been committed to the tree. SMPng work will - be left to those who seem to have a notion about what needs to be - done.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Intel Gigabit Ethernet</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Matthew</given> - - <common>Jacob</common> - </name> - - <email>mjacob@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>No new status to report. This driver will be worked on again - soon and cleaned up to work better.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>KSE</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Julian</given> - - <common>Elischer</common> - </name> - - <email>julian@elischer.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Peter</given> - - <common>Wemm</common> - </name> - - <email>peter@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Matt</given> - - <common>Dillon</common> - </name> - - <email>dillon@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Work in adding supporting infrastructure to the kernel for KSE - threading support has reached "milestone 2".</p> - - <p>Milestone 2 is where the kernel source consistently refers to - its resources in terms of per-thread and per-process resources, - in the way that it will need to when there are > 1 threads per - process, but the LOGICAL changes to such things as the scheduler, - and fork and exit, have not yet been made to allow more than one - thread to be created. (nor have new threading syscalls been added - yet). This is an important milestone as it represents the last - point where the kernel has only "mechanical" changes. To go - further we must start adding new algorithms and functions.</p> - - <p>The kernel for milestone 2 is reliable and has no noticeable - performance degradations when compared to a matching -current - kernel. (the differences are less than the margin of error, so - that sometimes the new kernel actually fractionally beats the - unaltered kernel).</p> - - <p>We hope that by the time this is published, the KSE patches - will have been committed. The Major effect for most developers - will be only that the device driver interface requires a 'thread' - pointer instead of a Proc pointer in the open, close and ioctl - entrypoints.</p> - - <p>I'm sure there will be small teething problems but we are not - expecting great problems at the commit.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>FreeBSD core-secretary</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Alan</given> - - <common>Clegg</common> - </name> - - <email>abc@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <email>core-secretary@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The position of Core Secretary was filled by Alan Clegg - <abc@FreeBSD.org> The first core-secretary report should be - available the second week in September and will cover the issues - discussed by core during August 2001.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>FreeBSD PAM</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Mark</given> - - <common>Murray</common> - </name> - - <email>markm@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Development is continuing; pam_unix has gained the ability to - change passwords, login(1) has had PAM made compulsory (and is - going to have more PAM-capable features handed over to PAM).</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Netgraph ATM</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Hartmut</given> - - <common>Brandt</common> - </name> - - <email>brandt@fokus.gmd.de</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The ATM stack has been tested with a number of FreeBSD - machines and a Marconi ATM switch and seems to be quite stable - running CLIP. Multi port support for the native ATM API has been - implemented but needs some testing.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>PRFW - hooks for the FreeBSD kernel</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Evan</given> - - <common>Sarmiento</common> - </name> - - <email>ems@open-root.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/jailuser" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>PRFW is a set of hooks for the FreeBSD kernel. It allows users - to insert code into system calls, for such purposes as creating - extended security features. Last week, PRFW reached 0.1.0, with - many bugfixes and cleaning. I urge anyone who is interested to - please visit the site, join the mailing list. Also take a peek at - lsm.immunix.org, the Linux hooks. It will be a good contrast.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Josef</given> - - <common>Karthauser</common> - </name> - - <email>joe@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Work is still progressing to make all of the perl scripts run - using perl's 'strict' mode, and to migrate all FreeBSD specific - options into the configuration file (CVSROOT/cfg.pm). I'll be - looking for help soon to write a guide on how to make use of - these scripts for use in your own repository. Anyone interested - in helping should contact me at the above email address.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>PPP IPv6 Support</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brian</given> - - <common>Somers</common> - </name> - - <email>brian@freebsd-services.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The software has been committed to -current and seems - functional. Outstanding issues include dealing with IPV6CP events - (linkup & linkdown scripts) and allocating site-local and - global addresses (currently, ``iface add'' is the only way to - actually use the link).</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Porting ppp to hurd & linux</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brian</given> - - <common>Somers</common> - </name> - - <email>brian@freebsd-services.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Status is unchanged since last month. Patches have been - submitted to get ppp working under HURD, and mostly under Linux. - There are GPL copyright problems that need to be addressed. Many - conflicts are expected after the commit of IPv6 support in - ppp.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>pppoed</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brian</given> - - <common>Somers</common> - </name> - - <email>brian@freebsd-services.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Making pppoed function in a production environment. All known - problems have been fixed and committed.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>pppoa</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brian</given> - - <common>Somers</common> - </name> - - <email>brian@freebsd-services.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>I looked at bringing PPPoA into the base system, but could not - because of an overly restrictive distribution license on the - Alcatel Speedtouch modem firmware. It has been committed as a - port instead and is running live at a FreeBSD Services client - site.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>OLDCARD improvements</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Warner</given> - - <common>Losh</common> - </name> - - <email>imp@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The OLDCARD improvements have been completed, except for a few - edge cases for older laptops with CL-PD6729/30 chips and some pci - bios issues. Some minor work will continue, but after 4.4R is - released, only a few remaining bugs will be fixed before the - author moves on to greener fields of NEWCARD development.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>jpman project</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Kazuo</given> - - <common>Horikawa</common> - </name> - - <email>horikawa@psinet.com</email> - </person> - - <person> - <email>man-jp@jp.FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/man-jp/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>Targeting 4.4-RELEASE, one team has been translating newly - MFC'ed section [125678] manpages. The other team has been - updating section 3 since May and one third (1/3) is finished. The - port ja-groff is updated to be groff-1.17.2 based, and now it has - the same functionality as base system does. The port ja-man is - updated to have the search capability under an architecture - subdirectory, as base system does. The doc/ja_JP.eucJP/man - hierarchy update (adding architecture subdirectories) is planned - after 4.4-RELEASE.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>ARM port</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Stephane</given> - - <common>Potvin</common> - </name> - - <email>sepotvin@videotron.ca</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://pages.infinit.net/sepotvin/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>Basic footbridge support is now functional and the kernel is - now able to probe the pci bus. Access primitives for the bus are - still missing so I can't attach any drivers yet.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>SYN cache implementation for FreeBSD</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Jonathan</given> - - <common>Lemon</common> - </name> - - <email>jlemon@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The syncache implementation is completed, and currently under - testing and review. The code should be committed to -current in - the near future, and a patchset for -stable made available.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Compressed TCP state</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Jonathan</given> - - <common>Lemon</common> - </name> - - <email>jlemon@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>State information for TCP connections is primarily kept in the - TCP/IP control blocks in the kernel. Not all of the TCP states - make use of the entire structure, and significant memory savings - can be had by using a cut-down version of the state in some - cases. The first phase of this project will address connections - that are in the TIME_WAIT state by moving them into a smaller - structure.</p> - - <p>This project has completed the initial research and rough - design phases, with actual code development starting - immediately.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Network SMP locking</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Jonathan</given> - - <common>Lemon</common> - </name> - - <email>jlemon@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>For 5.0, the goal is for the network stack to run without the - Giant lock. Initial development in this area may focus on - partitioning the code and data structures into distinct areas of - responsibilities. A first pass of locking may involve using a - several smaller mini-giant code locks in order to reduce the - problem to a manageable size.</p> - - <p>Progress for this month includes the creation of a perforce - repository to officially track the locking changes, and the - initial submission of locks for the &ifnet list. Some code - cleanup has also been done to the main tree in order to better - support future locking additions.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Network device nodes</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Jonathan</given> - - <common>Lemon</common> - </name> - - <email>jlemon@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Currently, all network devices (fxp0, lo0, etc) exist in their - own namespace, and are accessed through a socket interface. This - project creates device nodes in /dev for network devices, and - allows control and access in that fashion.</p> - - <p>This is experimental work, and suggestions for APIs and - functionality are strongly encouraged and welcomed. In is not - clear whether it will be possible (or desirable) to provide the - exact same set of operations that can be done through the socket - interface.</p> - - <p>Benefits of approach include the fact that a kqueue filter can - be attached to a network device for monitoring purposes. Initial - code exists to send a kq event whenever the network link status - changes. Other benefits may include better access control by - using filesystem ACLs to control access to the device.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>RELNOTESng</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Bruce</given> - - <common>Mah</common> - </name> - - <email>bmah@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://people.FreeBSD.org/~bmah/relnotes/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>RELNOTESng, the DocBook-ified set of release documentation - files, has been merged to the RELENG_4 branch. 4.4-RELEASE will - be the first release of FreeBSD with the new-style release notes, - hardware list, etc. Some of these documents are being translated - by the Japanese and Russian translation teams.</p> - - <p>Snapshots of RELNOTESng for CURRENT and 4-STABLE in HTML, - text, and PDF are available at the above URL and are updated - irregularly but frequently. Dima Dorfman <dd@FreeBSD.org> - and Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.org> have been working to have - automatically-generated snapshots on the main FreeBSD web - site.</p> - - <p>On my TODO list: 1) Resynchronize the FreeBSD installation - document with the installation chapter in the Handbook. 2) Update - the hardware lists (with particular emphasis on PCCARD and USB - devices). 3) Update the infrastructure to allow the - architecture-dependent parts of RELNOTESng to scale to more - hardware platforms.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>FreeBSD/sparc64 port</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Jake</given> - - <common>Burkholder</common> - </name> - - <email>jake@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Thomas</given> - - <common>Moestl</common> - </name> - - <email>tmm@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Robert</given> - - <common>Drehmel</common> - </name> - - <email>robert@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Sparc64 development is still continuing rapidly and we're - making some excellent progress. Of note, some problems with the - way the pmap module implements copy-on-write mappings have been - fixed and fork() now works as expected, support for signals has - been added, and the port has been updated for KSE in the perforce - repository. Thomas Moestl has begun work on pci bus support, and - a basic nexus bus for sparc64 has been written. The driver for - the Sun `Psycho' and `Sabre' UPA-to-PCI bridges and associated - code has been ported from NetBSD (the Sabre is the on-chip - version found in the UltraSparc IIi and IIe). PCI configuration, - I/O and memory space accesses do already work, as well as - interrupt assignment and delivery for devices attached directly - to the bridge, and the first PCI device drivers can attach and - seem to work mostly. Interrupt routing and busdma support still - need much work.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Documentation Project</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Nik</given> - - <common>Clayton</common> - </name> - - <email>nik@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <common>Documentation Project</common> - </name> - - <email>doc@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/docs.html" /> - - <url href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/index.html" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>The Handbook has been the main focus of activity this month. - Due to go to the printers on the 15th a vast amount of new - content has been submitted and committed. This includes a - complete rewrite of the "Installing FreeBSD", which massively - expands the amount of information available to people new to - FreeBSD. It even includes screenshots.</p> - - <p> - <a - href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html"> - http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html</a> - </p> - - <p>Comments, and contributions are, of course, welcome.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>IP Multicast Routing support</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Bill</given> - - <common>Fenner</common> - </name> - - <email>fenner@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>FreeBSD's IP Multicast Routing support was recently updated in - several ways. One big change is that it's now able to be loaded - as a KLD instead of statically compiled into the kernel; this is - especially useful for experimentation or updating of an existing - system. It also now coexists nicely with the kernel IP - encapsulation infrastructure, so that multicast tunnels can - better coexist with MobileIP, certain IPSec tunnels and generic - IPv4-in-IPv4 tunnels.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Mbuf SMPng allocator</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Bosko</given> - - <common>Milekic</common> - </name> - - <email>bmilekic@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://people.FreeBSD.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_slab/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>The allocator appears to be stable. Mbtypes statistics have - been re-activated thanks, in part, to Jiangyi Liu - <jyliu@163.net> although the diff has not yet been - committed (I'm just in the process of cleaning it up a little and - final testing). More work to come: cleanups, follow TODO from the - original commit, and perhaps an eventual generalization of the - allocator for various network-related allocations (in a more - distant future).</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>RAIDframe for FreeBSD</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Scott</given> - - <common>Long</common> - </name> - - <email>scottl@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://people.FreeBSD.org/~scottl/rf" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>After two months of little progress, RAIDframe work is gearing - up again. The port to -stable has some known bugs but is fairly - stable. The port to -current was recently completed and patches - will be released soon. RAIDframe is a multi-platform RAID - subsystem designed at CMU. This is a port of the NetBSD version - by Greg Oster.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>aac driver</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Scott</given> - - <common>Long</common> - </name> - - <email>scottl@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://people.FreeBSD.org/~scottl/aac" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>The aac driver has been given a lot of attention lately and is - now nearly feature complete. Changes include crashdump support, - correct handling of controller initiated commands, and more - complete management interface support. The Linux RAID management - tool available from Dell and HP now fully works; a FreeBSD native - version of the tool is also in the works. These changes have been - checked into -current, and will appear in -stable once 4.4 has - been released.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Problem Reports</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Poul-Henning</given> - - <common>Kamp</common> - </name> - - <email>phk@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://phk.freebsd.dk/Gnats/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>We are making some progress, we are now down to 2170 open PR's - down from an all time high of 3270 just 3 months ago. The aim is - still to get rid of all the dead-wood in the PR database so only - relevant PRs in the database. A big thanks from me to the people - who have made this happen!</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>network device cloning</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brooks</given> - - <common>Davis</common> - </name> - - <email>brooks@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Support for cloning vlan devices via ifconfig has been - committed to -current and will be MFC'd after further testing. - Additionally, Maksim Yevmenkin submitted code to allow cloning of - tap and vmnet devices on devfs systems. Code for faith and stf - should be committed shortly.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>ia64 Port</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Doug</given> - - <common>Rabson</common> - </name> - - <email>dfr@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Current status is that the ia64 kernel builds and runs in a - simulator environment up to single user mode and has been tested - lightly in that environment. My current focus is on completing - the ia64 loader so that I can start to get kernels working on the - real hardware. The loader is coming along well and I expect to be - able to load kernels (but not necessary execute them) soon.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>libh Project</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Alexander</given> - - <common>Langer</common> - </name> - - <email>alex@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Nathan</given> - - <common>Ahistrom</common> - </name> - - <email>nra@FreeBSd.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>I have access to the libh CVS repo again and am testing a new, - OBJDIR capable build structure at the moment. Done that, I'm - going to continue testing the package library and implement the - missing functionality. Currently, import of libh into the base - system is under discussion (arch mailinglist). Now that - 5.0-RELEASE has been shifted, I want 5.0 ship with a libh - installer and package system. We can really need people who are - good in C++, are able to understand what the current - implementation does and also feel that working on libh is fun and - thus are willing to help.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>GNOME Desktop for FreeBSD</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Maxim</given> - - <common>Sobolev</common> - </name> - - <email>sobomax@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <common>FreeBSD GNOME Team</common> - </name> - - <email>gnome@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Getting GNOME Fifth-Toe metaport ready for 4.4-RELEASE was the - main focus of activity this month. In the process many components - were updated, many bugs were tracked down and solved, which - allowed to make this 97-component meta-package building and - working properly.</p> - - <p>Next month the project will be focused on organizing work of - the FreeBSD GNOME Team as well as on attempts to increase amount - of people participating in the team (anybody who is willing to - participate is welcome to drop a note to gnome@FreeBSD with a - short explanation of how he/she could help).</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>fbsd-nvdriver</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Erik</given> - - <common>Greenwald</common> - </name> - - <email>erik@floatingmind.com</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Joel</given> - - <common>Willson</common> - </name> - - <email>siigorny@linuxsveeden.borkborkbork</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://fbsd-nvdriver.sourceforge.net" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>NVIDIA Corporation releases Linux drivers by using a - combination of binary object files and source (under a - constrictive license). The FreeBSD NVIDIA driver project aimed to - completely replace the source component of the driver using code - targeting FreeBSD 4.3 and released under the BSD license. The - binary module provided is supposedly the same module used on - Windows, BeOS, and OS/2, so it should be portable between - different i80x86 based OS's.</p> - - <p>The project is currently on indefinite hold. Our contact at - NVIDIA seemed enthusiastic about the project, and was fairly - quick about returning email, but when we discovered issues that - prevented porting without changes to the binary component or - error codes we needed deciphered, Nick (the contact) said he'd - look into it and never got back. The first major problem was the - ioctl interface, the NVIDIA driver passes a pointer and depends - on the kernel side to copyout the right amount, where FreeBSD - expect the parameters to be correct and the copyout is performed - by the subsystem. This was worked around using Dave Rufinos - "ioctl tunnel" idea. After that, we found that X refused to load - and traced it down to an ioctl defined in the binary component - erroring. We cannot tell what that ioctl is, were told that we - could not sign an NDA for source to that component, and have been - waiting a month for Nick to "look into it". Therefore progress is - impossible (without breaking the license) and we believe that the - flaws make the driver unportable to any *nix other than - Linux.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>FreeBSD Release Engineering</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <common>FreeBSD Release Engineer Team</common> - </name> - - <email>re@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The FreeBSD release engineering process for FreeBSD 4.4 - started to ramp up around August 1st when the "code slush" took - affect. During this time all commits to the RELENG_4 branch were - reviewed by re@FreeBSD.org (over 250 code snippets had to be - reviewed). After the first release candidate on August 15th, all - submissions were scrutinized under a more strict potential risk - vs benefit curve. The best way to help get involved with the - release engineering process is to simply follow the low volume - freebsd-qa mailing list, help out with the neverending supply of - PRs related to our installation tools (sysinstall), or to work on - a possible next-generation replacement for our installation - technology, such as the libh or OpenPackages projects.</p> - - <p>Many companies donated equipment, network access, or paychecks - to finance these activities. Including Compaq, Yahoo!, Wind River - Systems, and many more.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>Improved TCP Initial Sequence Numbers</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Mike</given> - - <common>Silbersack</common> - </name> - - <email>silby@silby.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>In mid March, 2001, Tim Newsham of Guardent identified an - attack possible against the initial sequence number generation - scheme of FreeBSD (and other OSes.) In order to guard against - this threat, a randomized sequence number generation scheme was - ported over from OpenBSD and included in 4.3-release. - Unfortunately, non-monotonic generation was found to cause major - problems with applications which initiate continuous, rapid - connections to a single host.</p> - - <p>In order to restore proper operation under such circumstances - while still providing strong resistance against sequence number - prediction, FreeBSD 4.4 uses the algorithm specified in RFC 1948. - This algorithm hashes together host and port information with a - piece of secret data to generate a unique sequence number space - for each connection. As a result, outgoing initial sequence - numbers are again monotonic, but also unguessable by an - attacker.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>LOMAC</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Brian</given> - - <common>Feldman</common> - </name> - - <email>green@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>The port of LOMAC to FreeBSD is progressing well, and already - has a very high level of stability (no known outstanding bugs!). - Aspects which have already been implemented include a stacking - filesystem overlay with fully-functional access controls (for - files and directories) based on path names, access controls for - sending signals, and file-backed-memory revocation for - processes.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>SMPng</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>John</given> - - <common>Baldwin</common> - </name> - - <email>jhb@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Peter</given> - - <common>Wemm</common> - </name> - - <email>wemm@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jasone/smp/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>Updates to things from last month: - <ul> - <li>The ast() fixes were committed last month.</li> - - <li>The work on the preemptive kernel is stalled for the time - being. It is still unstable on Alpha and SMP systems.</li> - </ul> - </p> - - <p>New stuff since last month: - <ul> - <li>sx locks now support upgrades and downgrades.</li> - - <li>Witness now supports lock upgrades and downgrades.</li> - - <li>Jason Evans has committed a semaphore implementation.</li> - - <li>Matt Dillon has pushed Giant down into all of the - syscalls.</li> - - <li>John Baldwin has been working on proc locking in a p4 - 'jhb_proc' branch.</li> - - <li>John is also currently working on making the ktrace code - use a work thread to asynchronously write trace data out to the - trace file. This will make ktrace safe almost completely MP - safe with the exception that a few ktrace events need Giant in - order to call malloc(9) and that ktrgenio() is still - synchronous. Specifically, however, ktrpsig(), ktrsysret(), and - ktrcsw() no longer need Giant.</li> - - <li>Jonathan Lemon has started work on locking the network - stack in a p4 'netlock' branch.</li> - </ul> - </p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>FreeBSD Java Project</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Greg</given> - - <common>Lewis</common> - </name> - - <email>glewis@eyesbeyond.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>Most of the work this month has focused on development of the - native JDK 1.3.1 patchset. The 3rd patchset is out and has been - accompanied with the creation of a FreeBSD "port". This has - allowed early adopters much easier access to the code and - naturally resulted in a number of bugs being found. Development - work has mostly focused on fixing these problems and the project - is now set to release fourth patchset over the weekend, which - should see the JDK in a reasonably usable state. One of the big - challenges left is producing a working HotSpot JVM, which looks - like it will require some heavy hacking.</p> - - <p>We also welcome OpenBSD's Heikki Korpela to the porting team - :)</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>floppy driver overhaul</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Joerg</given> - - <common>Wunsch</common> - </name> - - <email>j@uriah.heep.sax.de</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>As part of some ongoing development activity, the floppy - driver (fdc(4)) enjoyed some overhaul in the past which is part - of an ongoing process. Automatic density selection will come - next, something i meant to implement for years now. As part of - that, the entire density selection stuff has been rewritten. 2.88 - MB floppies are on the wishlist as well, but I need a working - 2.88 drive before attempting to implement that.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>sppp(4) merge</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Joerg</given> - - <common>Wunsch</common> - </name> - - <email>j@uriah.heep.sax.de</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>sppp(4) should be merged with the ISDN4BSD offspring variant. - This will merge some features and bugfixes from the i4b branch - (like VJ compression), and eventually end up in a single sppp(4) - in the tree. While being at that, incorporating many changes and - bugfixes from NetBSD is considered as well.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>KAME</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Munechika</given> - - <common>Sumikawa</common> - </name> - - <email>sumikawa@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.kame.net/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>The KAME project (http://www.kame.net/) has merged its IPv6 - and IPsec implementation as of July 2001 to FreeBSD CURRENT and - STABLE, in cooperation with some contributors of the project. The - latest code includes a number of bug fixes, has been fully tested - in FreeBSD STABLE, and will appear in FreeBSD 4.4 RELEASE. Thus, - the new RELEASE version will be quite stable in terms of IPv6 and - IPsec.</p> - - <p>The project has assigned a talented guy to be responsible for - merge from KAME to FreeBSD, so future merge efforts will be - smoother.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>TrustedBSD</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Robert</given> - - <common>Watson</common> - </name> - - <email>rwatson@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <email>trustedbsd-discuss@TrustedBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <links> - <url href="http://www.TrustedBSD.org/" /> - </links> - - <body> - <p>The TrustedBSD project continues to move ahead, with progress - made in the ACL, Capability, and MAC implementations. In - addition, support from DARPA is permitting new work to improve - the extended attribute code, improve security abstractions, and - work on security documentation. Due to the push-back of the - FreeBSD 5.0 release, it should now be possible to include a - complete MAC implementation in that release. Specific status - reports appear for components where substantial progress is being - made.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>TrustedBSD Capabilities</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Robert</given> - - <common>Watson</common> - </name> - - <email>rwatson@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <name> - <given>Thomas</given> - - <common>Moestl</common> - </name> - - <email>tmm@FreeBSD.org</email> - </person> - - <person> - <email>trustedbsd-discuss@TrustedBSD.org</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Capabilities support is currently being committed to the base - FreeBSD tree--userland libraries are now fully committed, and - kernel infrastructure is being integrated.</p> - </body> - </project> - - <project> - <title>BSDCon Europe</title> - - <contact> - <person> - <name> - <given>Paul</given> - - <common>Richards</common> - </name> - - <email>paul@freebsd-services.com</email> - </person> - </contact> - - <body> - <p>Planning for BSDCon Europe is going well. We're still - accepting proposals for talks but the schedule is starting to - fill up so we may not be for much longer.</p> - - <p>An update of the site that includes accommodation information, - a preliminary schedule, a list of speakers and an online payment - page will be launched on Wednesday 19 September.</p> - - <p>The fee will be £150 for individuals and £250 for - corporations. The individual pricing is valid only until the end - of September, the price will rise to £200 for October and - late registrations in November will be £250.</p> - - <p>The updated website will include a list of sponsorship - options, we're still looking for more sponsorship.</p> - </body> - </project> -</report> |