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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
+<!DOCTYPE report PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD FreeBSD XML Database for Status Report//EN"
+ "http://www.FreeBSD.org/XML/www/share/sgml/statusreport.dtd">
+
+<!-- $FreeBSD: www/en/news/status/report-2001-08.xml,v 1.7 2006/08/19 21:20:39 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-2001-08.xml,v 1.7 2006/08/19 21:20:39 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 &gt; 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
+ &lt;abc@FreeBSD.org&gt; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp;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 &lt;dd@FreeBSD.org&gt;
+ and Nik Clayton &lt;nik@FreeBSD.org&gt; 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
+ &lt;jyliu@163.net&gt; 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 &#163;150 for individuals and &#163;250 for
+ corporations. The individual pricing is valid only until the end
+ of September, the price will rise to &#163;200 for October and
+ late registrations in November will be &#163;250.</p>
+
+ <p>The updated website will include a list of sponsorship
+ options, we're still looking for more sponsorship.</p>
+ </body>
+ </project>
+</report>