From 238df44f76e3c073d59a3409fc366ccdb1155ec5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Costello Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 22:36:46 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Convert the monthly status reports into an XML schema and include an XSLT sheet for FreeBSD Web site output. No repo copies made because there was no history to preserve. --- en/news/status/Makefile | 16 +- en/news/status/includes.xsl | 10 + en/news/status/report-2001-06.xml | 793 +++++++++++++++++ en/news/status/report-2001-07.xml | 1195 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ en/news/status/report-july-2001.sgml | 808 ----------------- en/news/status/report-july-2001.xml | 1195 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ en/news/status/report-june-2001.sgml | 497 ----------- en/news/status/report-june-2001.xml | 793 +++++++++++++++++ en/news/status/report.xsl | 128 +++ 9 files changed, 4126 insertions(+), 1309 deletions(-) create mode 100644 en/news/status/includes.xsl create mode 100644 en/news/status/report-2001-06.xml create mode 100644 en/news/status/report-2001-07.xml delete mode 100644 en/news/status/report-july-2001.sgml create mode 100644 en/news/status/report-july-2001.xml delete mode 100644 en/news/status/report-june-2001.sgml create mode 100644 en/news/status/report-june-2001.xml create mode 100644 en/news/status/report.xsl diff --git a/en/news/status/Makefile b/en/news/status/Makefile index 823f7d9311..ff99a5eaee 100644 --- a/en/news/status/Makefile +++ b/en/news/status/Makefile @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -# $FreeBSD: www/en/news/status/Makefile,v 1.1 2001/08/02 04:26:30 chris Exp $ +# $FreeBSD: www/en/news/status/Makefile,v 1.2 2001/08/09 16:13:38 chris Exp $ .if exists(../Makefile.conf) .include "../Makefile.conf" @@ -7,11 +7,19 @@ .include "../Makefile.inc" .endif +.SUFFIXES: .xml .html + DOCS= status.sgml -DOCS+= report-july-2001.sgml -DOCS+= report-june-2001.sgml + +DATA= report-june-2001.html +DATA+= report-july-2001.html + +CLEANFILES+= ${DATA} + +.xml.html: + xsltproc -nonet -o ${.TARGET} report.xsl ${.IMPSRC} + -tidy -i -m -f /dev/null ${.TARGET} INDEXLINK= status.html .include "${WEB_PREFIX}/share/mk/web.site.mk" - diff --git a/en/news/status/includes.xsl b/en/news/status/includes.xsl new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..0fe1c33a3e --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/includes.xsl @@ -0,0 +1,10 @@ + + + + + + + + Status Reports Home + + diff --git a/en/news/status/report-2001-06.xml b/en/news/status/report-2001-06.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..dfa24582f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/report-2001-06.xml @@ -0,0 +1,793 @@ + +
+ Introduction + +

One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus + on centralized design and implementation, in which the operating + system is maintained in a central repository, and discussed on + centrally maintained lists. This allows for a high level of + coordination between authors of various components of the system, + and allows policies to be enforced over the entire system, covering + issues ranging from architecture to style. However, as the FreeBSD + developer community has grown, and the rate of both mailing list + traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it difficult + even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all the + work going on in the tree.

+ +

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report attempts to + address this problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers + to make the broader community aware of their on-going work on + FreeBSD, both in and out of the central source repository. This is + the first issue, and as such is an experiment. For each project and + sub-project, a one paragraph summary is included, indicating + progress since the last summary (in this case, simply recent + progress, as there have been no prior summaries).

+ +

This status report may be reproduced in whole or in part, as + long as the source is clearly identified and appropriate credit + given.

+
+ +
+ Future Editions + +

Assuming there is some positive feedback on this idea, and that + future submissions get made such that there is content for future + issues, the goal is to release a development status report once a + month. As such, the next deadline will be July 31, 2001, with a + scheduled publication date in the first week of August. This will + put the status report on a schedule in line with the calendar, as + well as providing a little over a month until the next deadline, + which will include a number of pertinent events, including the + Annual USENIX Technical Conference in Boston, MA. Submissions + should be e-mailed to:

+ +
+ + robert+freebsd.monthly@cyrus.watson.org +
+ +

Many submitters will want to wait until the last week of July so + as to provide the most up-to-date status report; however, + submissions will be accepted at any time prior to that date.

+ +

+ -- Robert Watson < + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + > +

+
+ + + Binary Updater Project + + + + + Eric + + Melville + + + eric@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Murray + + Stokely + + + murray@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The FreeBSD Binary Updater Project aims to provide a secure + mechanism for the distribution of binary updates for FreeBSD. + This project is complementary to the Open Packages and libh + efforts and there should be very little overlap with those + projects. The system uses a client / server mechanism that allows + clients to install any known "profile" or release of FreeBSD over + the network. Where a specific profile might contain a specific + set of FreeBSD software to install, additional packages, and + configuration actions that make it more ideal for a specific + environment (ie FreeBSD 4.3 Secure Web Server Profile)

+ +

The system can currently be used to install a FreeBSD system + or perform the most simple of upgrades but many features are + absent. In particular, the client is in its infancy and much work + remains to be done. We need additional developers so please get + in touch with us at + updater@osd.bsdi.com + + if you are interested in spending some cycles on this.

+ + + + + "Close a PR drive" + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

Poul-Henning Kamp kicked off a drive to get our GNATS PR + database cleaned up so the wheat can be sorted from the chaff. + Progress is good, but there is still a lot of work to do. Give a + hand if you can. Remember: every unhandled PR is a pissed off + contributor or user.

+ + + + + CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy + + + + + Josef + + Karthauser + + + joe@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

I'm in the process of rewriting the CVSROOT/scripts to make + them more clean and configurable. A lot of other projects also + use these and so it makes sense to make them as easy to use in + other environments as possible.

+ +

Status: work in progress. There is now a configuration file, + but not all the scripts use it yet.

+ + + + + DEVFS + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work is progressing on implementing true cloning devices in + DEVFS. Brian Somers and Poul-Henning Kamp are working to make + if_tun the first truly cloning driver in the system. Next will be + the pty driver and the bpf driver.

+ +

From July 1st DEVFS will be standard in -current.

+ + + + + digi driver + + + + + Brian + + Somers + + + brian@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Added the digi driver. Initial work was done by John Prince + <johnp@knight-trosoft.com>, but all the modular stuff was + done by me and initial work on supporting Xe and Xi cards (ala + dgb) was done by me. I'm now awaiting an Xe card being sent from + joerg@ (almost a donation) so that I can get that side of things + working properly.

+ + + + + Diskcheckd + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

Ben Smithurst has written a "diskcheckd" daemon which will + read all sectors on the disks over a configured period. With + recent increases in disksizes it is by no means a given that disk + read errors will be discovered before they are fatal. This daemon + will hopefully result in the drive firmware being able to + relocate bad sectors before they become unreadable. This code is + now committed to 5.0-CURRENT.

+ + + + + if_fxp driver + + + + + Jonathan + + Lemon + + + jlemon@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

In the last month (May-June), the new fxp driver was brought + into -stable. This new driver uses the common MII code, so + support for new PHYs is easy to add. Support for the new Intel + 82562 chips was added. The driver was updated to add VLAN support + and a workaround for a bug affecting Intel 815-based boards.

+ + + + + Java Project + + + + + Greg + + Lewis + + + glewis@eyesbeyond.com + + + + +

The FreeBSD Java Project has continued its "behind the scenes" + work over the last month. Progress was made both technically, + with the help of Bill Huey (of Wind River), on a port of JDK + 1.3.1 and legally, with Nate Williams continuing negotiations + with Sun on a mutually acceptable license to release a binary + Java 2 SDK under. The JDK 1.2.2 port has also seen some + development, with a new patchset likely to be released soon which + includes JPDA and NetBSD support (the latter courtesy of Scott + Bartram).

+ + + + + Kernel Graphics Interface port + + + + + Nicolas + + Souchu + + + nsouch@fr.alcove.com + + + + + + +

The Kernel Graphics Interface project has worked for several + years to provide a framework for graphic drivers under Linux + receiving input from other groups like the UDI project. Currently + the KGI core implementation is quite settled, as is the driver + coding model as a whole. Work is being done to newbussify KGI and + produce a kld, as part of a future redesign of the graphics + subsystem in FreeBSD. KGI will be an alternative for graphic card + producers that don't accept the XFree86 model of userland graphic + adapters and will also provide accelerated support for any other + graphic alternative.

+ + + + + libh Project + + + + + Alexander + + Langer + + + alex@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Nathan + + Ahlstrom + + + nra@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The libh project is a next generation sysinstall. It is + written in C++ using QT for its graphical frontend and tvision + for its console support. The menus are scriptable via an embedded + tcl interpreter. It has been growing functionality quite a bit + lately, including a new disklabel editor. Current work is on + installation scripts for CDROM, FTP, ... installs as well as a + fully functional standalone disk-partition and label editor. The + GUI API was extended a little and many bugs were fixed. There + seems to be some interest in i18n work.

+ + + + + Mount(2) API + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Maxime Henrion is working on implementing a new and more + extensible mount(2) systemcall, mainly to overcome the 32 bits + for mountoptions limit, secondary goal to make it possible to + mount filesystems from inside the kernel.

+ + + + + OLDCARD pccard implementation + + + + + Warner + + Losh + + + imp@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

In the last two months, the OLDCARD pccard implemenation was + rototilled to within an inch of its life. Many new pci cardbus + bridges were added. Power handling was improved. PCI Card cardbus + bridges are nearly supported and should be committed in early + June to the tree. This will likely be the last major work done on + OLDCARD. After pci cards are supported, work will shift to + improving NEWCARD.

+ + + + + PowerPC Port + + + + + Benno + + Rice + + + benno@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The PowerPC port is proceeding well. All seems to be working + in pmap.c after a number of problems encountered where FreeBSD + passes a vm_page_t to a NetBSD-derived function that expects a + vm_offset_t. Then after debugging the atomic operations code, I'm + now at the point where VM appears to be initialised and it's now + hanging while in sys/kern/kern_malloc.c:kmeminit(). Progress + continues. =)

+ + + + + PPP + + + + + Brian + + Somers + + + brian@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Developing full MPPE support for Andre Opperman @ Monzoon in + Switzerland. Work is now complete and will eventually be brought + into -current, but no dates are yet known.

+ + + + + pseudofs + + + + + Dag-Erling + + Smorgrav + + + des@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Pseudofs is a framework for pseudo-filesystems, like procfs + and linprocfs. The goal of pseudofs is twofold:

+ +
    +
  • eliminate code duplication between (and within) procfs and + linprocfs
    • + +
  • isolate procfs and linprocfs from the complexities of the + vfs system to simplify maintenance and further + development.
    • +
+ +

Pseudofs has reached the point where it is sufficiently + functional and stable that linprocfs has been almost fully + reimplemented on top of it; the only bit that's missing is the + proc/<pid>/mem file.

+ +

The primary to-do item for pseudofs right now is to add + support for writeable files (which are required for procfs, and + are quite a bit less trivial to handle than read-only files). In + addition, pseudofs needs either generic support for raw + (non-sbuf'ed, possibly mmap'able) files, or failing that, + special-case code to handle proc/<pid>/mem.

+ + + + + RELNOTESng + + + + + Bruce + + A. Mah + + + bmah@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

RELNOTESng is the name I've given to the rewrite of the *.TXT + files that typically accompany a FreeBSD release. The information + from these files (which include, among other things, the release + notes and the supported hardware list) have been reorganized and + converted to SGML. This helps us produce the documentation in + various formats, as well as facilitating the maintainence of + documentation for multiple architectures. This work was recently + committed to -CURRENT, and I intend to MFC it to 4-STABLE before + 4.4-RELEASE.

+ + + + + SMPng Project + + + + + John + + Baldwin + + + jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Jake + + Burkholder + + + jake@FreeBSD.org + + + + + SMP + + Mailing list + + + smp@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The SMPng project aims to provide multithreaded support for + the FreeBSD kernel. Currently the kernel still runs almost + exclusively under the Giant kernel lock. Recently, progress has + been made in locking the process group and session structures as + well as file descriptors by Seigo Tanimura-san. Alfred Perlstein + has also added in a giant lock around the entire virtual memory + (VM) subsystem which will eventually be split up into several + smaller locks. The locking of the VM subsystem has proved tricky, + and some of the current effort is focused on finding and fixing a + few remaining bugs in on the alpha architecture.

+ + + + + SMPng mbuf allocator + + + + + Bosko + + Milekic + + + bmilekic@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

mb_alloc is a new specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf + clusters. Presently, it offers various important advantages over + the old (status quo) mbuf allocator, particularily for MP + machines. Additionally, it is designed with the possibility of + future enchancements in mind.

+ +

Presently in initial review & testing stages, most of the + code is already written.

+ + + + + Sparc64 Port + + + + + Jake + + Burkholder + + + jake@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work has (re)started on a port of FreeBSD to the UltraSPARC + architecture, specifically targeting PCI based workstations. Jake + Burkholder will be porting the kernel, and Ade Lovett has + expressed an interest in working on userland. Recent work on the + project includes:

+ +
    +
  • built a gnu cross toolchain targeting sparc64
    • + +
  • obtained remote access to an ultra 5 development machine + (thanks to emmy)
    • + +
  • developed a minimal set of headers and source files to + allow the kernel to be compiled and linked
    • + +
  • implemented a mini-loader which relocates the kernel, maps + it into the tlbs and calls it
    • + +
  • nabbed Benno Rice's openfirmware console driver which + allows printf and panic to work
    • +
+ +

At this point the kernel can be net-booted and prints the + FreeBSD copyright before calling code that is not yet + implemented. I am currently working on a design for the pmap + module and plan to begin implementation in the next few days.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD + + + + + Robert + + Watson + + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The TrustedBSD Project seeks to improve the security of the + FreeBSD operating system by adding new security features, many + derived from common trusted operating system requirements. This + includes Access Control Lists (ACLs), Fine-grained Event Logging + (Audit), Fine-grained Privileges (Capabilities), Mandatory Access + Control (MAC), and other architecture features, including file + system extended attributes, and improved object labeling.

+ +

Individual feature status reports are documented seperately + below; in general, basic features (such as EAs, ACLs, and kernel + support for Capabilities) will be initially available in + 5.0-RELEASE, conditional on specific kernel options. A + performance-enhanced version of EAs is currently being targetted + at 6.0-RELEASE, along with an integrated capability-aware + userland, and MAC support.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD: ACLs + + + + + Chris + + D. Faulhaber + + + jedgar@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Patches are now available to add ACL support to cp(1) and + mv(1) along with preliminary support for install(1). Ilmar's i18n + patches for getfacl(1) and setfacl(1) need to be updated for the + last set of changes and committed. Some other functional + improvements are also in the pipeline.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD Capabilities + + + + + Thomas + + Moestl + + + tmm@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The kernel part of the capability implementation is mostly + finished; all uses of suser() and suser_xxx() and nearly all + comparisons of uid's with 0 have been converted to use the newly + introduced cap_check() call. Some details still need + clarification. More documentation for this needs to be done.

+ +

POSIX.2c-compatible getfcap and setfcap programs have been + written. Experimental capability support in su(1), login(1), + install(1) and bsd.prog.mk is being tested.

+ +

Support for capabilities, ACL's, capabilities and MAC labels + in tar(1) is being developed; only the capability part is tested + right now. Generic support for extended attributes is planned, + this will require extensions to the current EA interface, which + are written and will probably be committed to -CURRENT in a few + weeks. A port of these features to pax(1) is planned.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD MAC and Object Labeling + + + + + Robert + + Watson + + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

An initial prototype of a Mandatory Access Control + implementation was completed earlier this year, supporting + Multi-Level Security, Biba Integrity protection, and a more + general jail-based access control model. Based on that + implementation, I'm now in the process of improving the FreeBSD + security abstractions to simplify both the implementation and + integration of MAC support, as well as increase the number of + kernel objects protected by both discretionary and mandatory + protection schemes. Generic object labeling introduces a + structure not dissimilar in properties to the kernel ucred + structure, only it is intended to be associated with kernel + objects, rather than kernel subjects, permitting the creation of + generic security protection routines for objects. This would + allow the easy extension of procfs and devfs to support ACLs and + MAC, for example. A prototype is underway, with compiling and + running code and simple protections now associated with + sysctl's.

+ + + + diff --git a/en/news/status/report-2001-07.xml b/en/news/status/report-2001-07.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..42867960da --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/report-2001-07.xml @@ -0,0 +1,1195 @@ + + + + July + + 2001 + + +
+ Introduction + +

Last month's status report was apparently a great success: I + received countless e-mails with comments, questions, and + suggestions. I've tried to incorporate any suggestions and address + any problems from these e-mails in this month's report, which + captures a far more extensive snapshot of FreeBSD activity in the + last month. Unlike last month's report, it does a better job of + reflecting non-development activity, such as on-going conference + planning, documentation, and so on. This is a trend I hope to see + improve in future months as well.

+ +

On the topic of conferences, in the future I'd like to report + more on publication activities relating to FreeBSD, including + online journals with articles relating to FreeBSD, paper journals, + conference papers, and so on. Likewise, I would be interested in + including references to Call for Papers relating to FreeBSD. I'll + take this opportunity to plug both registration and paper + submission for BSDCon Europe in November, which has status included + in this report, and for the general BSD Conference being hosted by + USENIX in February. Your attendance and submissions make these + conferences "happen", and promote FreeBSD as a platform for new + research, feature development, and application products. Work of + extremely high calibre is performed on FreeBSD, and we need to get + the word out.

+
+ +
+ Submission for Future Editions + +

Next month, we're maintaining much the same submission + requirements: reports should be one or two paragraphs long, sent by + e-mail, and approximate the layout of the entries this month + (Project, Contact, URL, and text). I'll send out reminders again + over the week before the deadline, with more specific instructions. + An area where I'd like to explore improvement lies in the + coordination of related status reports for larger projects, such as + new architectural work or platform ports. This might even have the + effect of encouraging communication within these projects :-). I'd + like to continue to focus on pulling in a broader range of groups + and their activities, including the Security Officer, Release + Engineer, and Core Team.

+ +

+ -- Robert Watson < + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + > +

+
+ + + ACPI + + + + + Mike + + Smith + + + msmith@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is an + industry standard which obsoletes APM, Intel MPS, PnPBIOS, and + other Intel PC firmware interface standards. It is also used on + the IA64 platform. More information on ACPI is available at

+ + + http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi + +

The FreeBSD ACPI subsystem project is based heavily on the + Intel ACPI Component Architecture. This status report outlines + the current state of the project; future updates will focus on + changes as they occur.

+ +

The Intel ACPI interpreter is fully integrated, although bugs + are still coming out of the woodwork occasionally.

+ +
    +
  • PCI bus detection and interrupt routing are functional, but + power management interaction will require work on the core PCI + subsystem.
    • + +
  • Non-PCI motherboard peripheral probing is implemented, but + believed to have problems on some systems.
    • + +
  • A power policy manager has been implemented. The initial + policy manager has two modes, "performance" and "economy".
    • + +
  • CPU speed throttling is integrated with the platform power + policy.
    • + +
  • System thermal monitoring is implemented, but fan control + is believed to have problems.
    • + +
  • Pushbutton suspend and power-off is implemented.
    • + +
  • System timekeeping using the ACPI timer is supported.
    • + +
  • Battery status monitoring is implemented.
    • +
+ +

Work is ongoing in the following areas:

+ +
    +
  • System suspend and resume.
    • + +
  • Timekeeper accuracy/reliability.
    • + +
  • Power profiles.
    • + +
  • User-level management interfaces.
    • + +
  • PCI power manangement.
    • + +
  • Bug-hunting.
    • +
+ + + + + ARM Port + + + + + Stephane + + Potvin + + + septovin@videotron.ca + + + + +

The ARM port is currently going pretty well. The kernel is + compiling and is able to boot to the point where it panics trying + to initialize the network subsystem. The current reference + platform is the Netwinder but this may change as many people + expressed interest in a more broadly available platform. Things + that need to be done before it can get further includes adding + footbridge, timer and interrupt supports. The pmap module is not + completed yet either.

+ + + + + BIND 9 + + + + Doug Barton + + dougb@FreeBSD.org + + + + Jeroen Ruigrok + + mailto:asmodai@freebsd.org + + + + +

Now that BIND 8.2.4 is finally imported the time has come to + look at getting BIND 9 imported into CURRENT. The current idea is + to have it imported alongside BIND 8 so that people can play with + either one until all import problems have been taken care of and + people have tested it a bit.

+ + + + + binup + + + + Eric Melville + + mailto:eric@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Although gaining a new name, the project has been at a + standstill due to both resource availability during the move + between BSDi and Wind River, and other commitments of the + developers. The project should obtain an official mailing list, + as well as return to an active state after the dust settles.

+ + + + + BSDCon Europe + + + + + + + + Paul Richards + + paul@freebsd-services.co.uk + + + + Josef Karthauser + + mailto:joe@tao.org.uk + + + + +

The conference will take place at the Thistle Hotel, Brighton, + UK from 9-11 November 2001.

+ +

The aim of the conference is to provide a focal point for + European users and developers of all the BSD derived operating + systems. The format will be similar to other conferences, with 2 + days of technical sessions over the Saturday and Sunday.

+ +

We'll be finalising the schedule towards the end of the month + and anybody who is interested in doing a talk should contact us + asap. There are no restrictions on the use of talks, if it's been + done before we may still be interested in having it presented to + an European audience, and we make no claims to the talks so + speakers are free to present the talks again at other + conferences.

+ +

We're also still looking for sponsors.

+ +

We had 80 pre-registrations in the first week so we're + expecting a good turnout.

+ + + + + CAM + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@FreeBSD.org + + + + Justin Gibbs + + gibbs@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The new CAM transport code is starting to get supported in + more HBAs and to get refined so that it does the intended + per-protocol support. No progress on doing any SMPNG work for CAM + has been made yet. This is a fairly high priority.

+ + + + + "Close a PR drive" + + + + + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Thanks to various outstanding individual efforts, we are now + down to just below 2300 open bug-reports. This means that we have + fought our way back to the level we had around march 2000.

+ + + + + Documentation Project + + + + + + + + + + Documentation Project + + mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work continues (in large part sponsored by WRS) on updating + the Handbook ready for the second print edition. There has been a + flurry of activity in this area recently, and the ToDo list can + be seen at

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/handbook.html +

+ +

Dima and others are doing a stellar job of keeping up with the + steady flow of incoming PRs relating to the documentation + project.

+ +

The Developers' Handbook,

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/index.html +

+ +

is a year old; it contains a wealth of useful content for + developers developing on, or for, FreeBSD. As ever, more + contributions are always required, not only for the developers' + handbook, but for all of the FreeBSD documentation set.

+ + + + + Fibre Channel Support + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@feral.com + + + + +

The basic design hasn't changed and this project mainly is in + the phase of continued hardening and test case development. The + next major feature will be to fully integrate into the new CAM + TRAN code and to fully support on the fly device addition and + removal. The only HBA supported is QLogic at this time. Future + support for the QLogic line is planned to have 2300 (2Gb) and IP + support before October.

+ + + + + Hardware Watchpoints in the Kernel Debugger + + + + Brian Dean + + mailto:bsd@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Hardware watchpoints are now available for kernel debugging on + the IA32 (i386) architecture. One can now set hardware + watchpoints using the new ddb command 'hwatch', which is + analogous to the existing 'watch' command. Alternatively, if + greater flexibility is required, direct access to the debug + registers is available using the ddb 'set' command which allows + complete control over the processor hardware debug facilities. + Hardware watchpoints are very useful in tracking down those + elusive memory overwrite bugs in the kernel. Hardware watchpoints + can even be used to set a code breakpoint in ROM, which is + commonly found in embedded systems.

+ + + + + ifconfig support for IEEE 802.11 wireless devices + + + + Brooks Davis + + mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Support for configuring IEEE 802.11 wireless devices via + ifconfig has been committed to -current and -stable. It contains + most of the functionality needed to configure an wireless device. + Some missing features are being worked on including integrated + support for DHCP so a single entry in /etc/rc.conf can be used to + fully configure a wireless device on a DHCP lan and setting the + CTS/RTS threshold. Currently the an(4) and wi(4) drivers are + supported in -current and -stable with the awi(4) device + supported in -current. Further work is needed to support + Frequency Hopping devices such as ray(4).

+ + + + + jailNG + + + + Robert Watson + + mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

jailNG is a from-scratch rewrite of the popular jail(8) + service, focussing on improved management functions, as well as + more fine-grained configurability. An initial prototype has been + written, based on explicitly named and configured jails, and work + is proceeding on userland integration. Currently, it's not clear + if the timeline for this will be 5.0-RELEASE, or 5.1-RELEASE.

+ + + + + FreeBSD Java Project + + + + + + + + Greg Lewis + + glewis@eyesbeyond.com + + + + +

The main development in the FreeBSD Java Project over the last + month was the release of an initial "Developers Only" patchset + for the JDK 1.3.1. Since that release progress had been made + towards a much more useable alpha quality patchset which is + likely to be turned into a port, as per the current JDK 1.2.2 + patchset. This new patchset will feature a number of bugfixes, + which essentially get the JDK to a working state for early + adopters, and an initial implementation of "native threads" based + on FreeBSD's userland pthreads. Unfortunately this implementation + isn't fully functional, but is included in the hope of more + getting more eyesballs on the code (particularly experience + pthread programmers). We'd also like to welcome Fuyuhiko + Maruyama-san as a new committer, the usual punishment for too + many good patches.

+ + + + + jpman project + + + + + + + + Japanese Man Page Project + + man-jp@jp.FreeBSD.org + + + + +

We have been working to provide Japanese version of FreeBSD + online manuals, since 1996. Currently, RELENG_4 manuals are + based. Translated versions are placed on doc/ja_JP.eucJP/man and + provided to users using ports/japanese/man-doc. Also, we discuss + about related commands (e.g. ports/japanese/man and + ports/japanese/groff).

+ + + + + Kernel Summit - Usenix 2001 + + + + + + + + John Baldwin + + mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The first FreeBSD kernel summit meeting was held June 29-30, + 2001 in Boston, MA at the Usenix 2001 Annual Technical + Conference. Links to a variety of files are posted on the web + site.

+ +

Note: I (jhb) am still working on writing up a general summary + of the meeting. When that is completed it will be posted here and + mailed to the -hackers mailing list.

+ + + + + KSE threading the kernel + + + + + + + + Julian Elischer + + julian@elischer.org + + + + +

I'm working on multithreading the kernel. So far I have over + 400KB of diffs relative to todays -current (I'm keeping my tree + updated with changes as they occur rather than get hit with a big + updte at the end).

+ +

I have split the proc structure and am changing most of the + kernel to pass around a thread identifier instead of a proc + structure.

+ +

The following interfaces have been changed so far:

+ +
    +
  • device devsw entrys
    • + +
  • vfs calls
    • + +
  • mutexes
    • + +
  • events
    • + +
  • system calls
    • + +
  • sheduler
    • + +
  • + a lot of code in between.
    • +
+ +

I have still a lot of work to go with a lot of "dumb editing" + (s/struct proc \*p/struct thread \*td/) usually I change a few + items and then fix everything that breaks when I try compile it. + I'd like to check it in on a branch so others can help the + editing but haven't worked out the best way to do it yet.

+ +

I have implemented changes to the scheduler so that kse's are + scheduled instead of processes, and threads sleep, letting the + kse pick up a new thread. but it's not anywhere ready yet (heck + it doesn't compile yet :-)

+ +

Note that I have not yet updated the document listed above.. + everywhere it mentions "ksec" or "KSE-context", the code uses the + word "thread". I will update it soon as Jason has sent me the + source.

+ + + + + FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Reports + + + + + + + + Robert Watson + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org> + + + + Chris Costello + + mailto:chris@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report aims to keep + users and developers up-to-date on the latest goings-on in the + FreeBSD project by providing summaries of each project and its + status. At the time of this writing, the July 2001 status report + is being prepared and is very near release. The FreeBSD Web site + now has a Status Reports section, which, when the July 2001 + report is released, will be updated to include a link to an + HTML-ified version.

+ + + + + NetBSD rc.d port + + + + + + + + Doug Barton + + dougb@FreeBSD.org + + + + Sheldon Hearn + + mailto:sheldonh@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The NetBSD rc.d port aims to improve the FreeBSD startup + process by porting Luke Mewburn's rc.d work from NetBSD to + FreeBSD. This will score FreeBSD startup and shutdown + dependencies without losing the traditional and much loved + monolothic configuration file system.

+ +

Luke Mewburn's USENIX paper and slides on the system as + implemented in NetBSD are available here:

+ +

+ + http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeBSD-rc/message/3 +

+ +

Interested parties are urged to study this material before + joining the discussion list.

+ +

The intention at this stage is to decide on an approach that + will ensure that the differences between the NetBSD rc.d system + and the system as ported to FreeBSD will be kept to a minimum. + This will probably involve discussions with Luke around those + areas of the system that are identified as areas for potential + improvement.

+ + + + + Netgraph ATM + + + + Hartmut Brandt + + mailto:brandt@fokus.gmd.de + + + + +

The goal of this project is the implementation of ATM + signalling and other ATM protocols by means of the netgraph(4) + framework. This should provide an easily extendable architecture + for using ATM on FreeBSD. Currently the full UNI4.0 stack (except + for the LIJ capability) has been implemented, including ILMI and + a first version of the ATM Forum API for UNI. An implementation + of Classical IP over ATM is also available. Drivers have been + implemented for the Fore PCA200E and Fore HE-155 cards.

+ + + + + network device cloning + + + + Brooks Davis + + mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Network device cloning support has been imported from NetBSD. + This allows virtual devices to be allocated on demand rather then + being staticly allocated at compile time. Our implementation + differs slightly from that of NetBSD's in that we allow both the + creation of specific devices (i.e. gif0) and arbitrary devices + instead of just allowing specific devices. Currently, the only + device in the tree which has been converted is the gif(4) device + which has been converted in both -current and -stable. Work is + ongoing to convert all other virtual network devices with work in + progress on faith, stf, and vlan interfaces. In general this + conversion is accompanied by appropriate modifications to make + these devices fully modular.

+ + + + + Next Generation POSIX threads (NGPT) + + + + + + + + Arun Sharma + + arun@sharma.dhs.org + + + + +

Porting NGPT (next generation pthreads) to FreeBSD

+ +

NGPT is an effort led by IBM engineers to implement MxN + threads (also known as many user threads to one kernel thread + mapping) on Linux. I have ported it to FreeBSD to use + rfork(2).

+ +

The port is right here:

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=29239 +

+ + + + + OLDCARD upgrade to support PCI cards + + + + + + + + Warner Losh + + imp@village.org + + + + +

+ Funded by: Monzoon Networking, LLC +

+ +

This month has been a month of conventration and + consolidation. Much of the changes from current have been + migrating into stable. I've improved power support, + suspend/resume interactions, interrupt handling, and ability to + work after windows/NEWCARD has run. Interrupt routing continues + to be a locking issue for a complete MFC. Current patches are + available at the above website. I'm racing to get this done + before 4.4 is released.

+ + + + + Open Runtime Platform (ORP) + + + + + + + + Arun Sharma + + arun@sharmas.dhs.org + + + + eGroups: ORP + + mailto:orp@egroups.com + + + + +

Information on Intel ORP - a BSD licensed Java VM is right + here:

+ +

+ + http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/orp/ +

+ +

A FreeBSD patch has been tested to work with NGPT and + submitted to the ORP project. The patch is available here:

+ +

+ + http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/projects/orp/orp-freebsd-1.0.5.patch.txt.gz +

+ +

There are some issues to be ironed out to make it work with + FreeBSD's default (user level) pthread implementation.

+ + + + + OpenPackages + + + + + + +

OpenPackages intends to create a software packaging system + that will allow third-party programs to be installed, without + operating system dependent changes, on as many platforms as are + feasible. OpenPackages was originally based on code from the BSD + ports systems, and has been improved and extended by developers + of many heritages.

+ +

The OpenPackages Project is pleased to release the Milestone 2 + codebase. This release contains a working package building system + and a single test package. OP currently is known to build on + certain instances of the following operating systems: FreeBSD, + HP/UX, IRIX, Linux (Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, TurboLinux, + Caldera, etc.), NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris

+ + + + + PAM + + + + Mark R V Murray + + mailto:mark@grondar.za + + + + +

(First report)

+ +

Large cleanup and extension of FreeBSD PAM modules. All + modules are to be documented, consistant in style (style(9) used) + and as complete as possible WRT functionality. Mostly done.

+ + + + + PowerPC Port + + + + Benno Rice + + benno@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

We now have the rudiments of device support. We have a nexus + driver for OpenFirmware machines, along with support for the + Apple UniNorth PCI/AGP host bridge. I'm currently trying to get + the USB hardware working so that I can get closer to having a + console driver independant of OpenFirmware, then I'll be trying + to get the system to get to single-user mode using NFS.

+ + + + + PPP IPv6 Support + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@freebsd-services.com + + + + +

Work has begun, but nothing has yet been committed. The NCP + addresses used by ppp have been abstracted and initial support + has been added to the filter set for ipv6 addresses. NCP + negotiation hasn't yet been started.

+ + + + + Porting ppp to hurd & linux + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@Awfulhak.org + + + + +

Patches have been submitted to get ppp working under HURD, and + mostly under Linux. There are GPL copyright problems that need to + be addressed.

+ + + + + pppoed + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@freebsd-services.com + + + + +

Making pppoed function in a production environment. Most of + the work is complete and committed. Additional work includes + adding a -l option where ``-l label'' is shorthand for ``-e exec + ppp -direct label'' and discovering why rogue child processes are + being left around.

+ + + + + PRFW - Hooks within the FreeBSD kernel + + + + Evan Sarmiento + + mailto:ems@open-root.org + + + + +

PRFW is a set of hooks which I have integrated into the + FreeBSD kernel. This allows modules to easily intercept system + calls with less overhead. It also supports per-pid restrictions, + which means, one process may not be able to use X function in Y + manner, but another process may.

+ +

Progress: I was working on this in 4.3-RELEASE, but now I'm + merging it into current. I will be submitting a patch to the + mailing lists in about a week.

+ + + + + SCSI Tape Support + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@feral.com + + + + +

This driver is currently not working well under -current and + is undergoing some work at this time. No major design or feature + changes are planned. There was some notion of adding TapeAlert + support, but HP supports that as a binary product via a user + library and it was felt that it'd be more politically prudent to + leave it alone.

+ + + + + SMPng + + + + Peter Wemm + + peter@FreeBSD.org + + + + John Baldwin + + mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Development

+ +

In the 'smpng' p4 branch there is code to make the ast() + function loop to close the race when an AST is triggered while we + are handling previously triggered AST's.

+ +

In the 'jhb_preemption' p4 branch work is being done to make + the kernel fully preemptive. It is reportedly stable on UP x86, + but SMP x86 locks up, UP alpha has problems during shutdown and + can recurse indefinitely until it exhausts its stack.

+ +

Management

+ +

We are using a perforce repository for live development work, + which can track multiple seperate long-lived works-in-progress + and collaborate between multiple developers at the same time on + the same change set.

+ +

FreeBSD-current is being imported into p4 hourly, for easy + tracking of the moving -current tree.

+ +

I haven't written up a good primer yet, but we're able to open + this up to the general developer community. NEWCARD work looks + like it will be done here too. Perforce is ideal for tracking + this sort of long-lived project without having to resort to + passing patches around.

+ +

KSE work is now being checked into a kse p4 branch - thanks + Julian!

+ +

KSE work is focusing on getting the main API changes into the + base tree well before 5.0.

+ + + + + SMPng mbuf allocator + + + + + + + + Bosko Milekic + + mailto:bmilekic@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

mb_alloc is a specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf + clusters. It offers various important advantages over the old + mbuf allocator, particularily for MP machines. Additionally, it + is designed with the possibility of important future + enchancements in mind.

+ +

The mb_alloc code has been committed to -CURRENT a month ago + and appears to be holding up well. Prior to committing it, + preliminary performance measurements were done merely to ensure + that it is not significantly worse than the old allocator, even + with Giant still in place. Results were promising + + [http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_alloc/results.html] + + - also see jlemon's results (link at the bottom of accompanying + text). Since the commit, Matt Jacob has provided useful feedback + and bugfixes. Work is now being done to re-enable mbtypes + statistics and make appropriate changes to netstat(1) and + systat(1).

+ + + + + sparc64 port + + + + Jake Burkholder + + mailto:jake@freebsd.org + + + + +

The sparc64 port has been committed to the FreeBSD repository. + As such further development will occur in cvs, rather than as a + separately maintained patch set. Significant progress has been + made since the last status report, including; support for kernel + debugging with ddb, much more complete pmap support, support for + context switching and process creation, and filling out of + important machine dependent data structures. Thomas Moestl has + shown a strong interest in working on the port and is in the + process of implementing support for saving and restoring a + process's floating point context. I look forward to working with + him and any other developers that happen to fall out of the wood + works.

+ + + + + FreeBSD/sparc64 kernel loader + + + + Robert Drehmel + + mailto:robert@ferrari.de + + + + +

The sparc64 loader is functional enough to boot an ELF binary + from an UFS filesystem using the existent openfirmware library, + which has been revised to work flawlessly on 32-bit and 64-bit + architectures. Support for netbooting and modules will be + implemented next, followed by a better openfirmware mapping + strategy.

+ + + + + SYN cache implemetation for FreeBSD + + + + Jonathan Lemon + + mailto:jlemon@freebsd.org + + + + +

This project brings a SYN cache implementation to FreeBSD, in + order to make it more robust to DoS attacks. A SYN cookie + approach was considered, but ultimately rejected becuase it does + not conform to the TCP protocol. The SYN cache will work with + T/TCP, IPV6 and IPSEC, and the size of each cache element is + currently is less than 1/5th the size of a normal TCP control + block.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD Project + + + + + + + + Robert Watson + + mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

It's been a busy month, with a number of relevant news items. + Not least important is that NAI Labs was awarded a $1.2M contract + from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to + work on a variety of components relevant to the TrustedBSD + Project, including support for pluggable security models, and + supporting features such as improving the extended attributes + implementation, simple crypto support for swap and file systems, + documentation, and much more.

+ +

On the features side, progress continues on Mandatory Access + Control, object labeling, and improving the consistency of kernel + access control mechanisms--in particular, with regard to + inter-process authorization and credential management. Work has + begun on porting LOMAC, NAI Labs' Low-Watermark Mandatory Access + Control scheme, from Linux to FreeBSD, and it has been + re-licensed under a BSD license. We hope to have an initial port + complete in time for 5.0-RELEASE later this year.

+ + + + diff --git a/en/news/status/report-july-2001.sgml b/en/news/status/report-july-2001.sgml deleted file mode 100644 index 03a0d71dc9..0000000000 --- a/en/news/status/report-july-2001.sgml +++ /dev/null @@ -1,808 +0,0 @@ - - - - %includes; -]> - - - &header; - -

Introduction

- -

Last month's status report was apparently a great success: I received - countless e-mails with comments, questions, and suggestions. I've tried - to incorporate any suggestions and address any problems from these e-mails - in this month's report, which captures a far more extensive snapshot of - FreeBSD activity in the last month. Unlike last month's report, it does a - better job of reflecting non-development activity, such as on-going - conference planning, documentation, and so on. This is a trend I hope to - see improve in future months as well.

- -

On the topic of conferences, in the future I'd like to report more on - publication activities relating to FreeBSD, including online journals with - articles relating to FreeBSD, paper journals, conference papers, and so - on. Likewise, I would be interested in including references to Call for - Papers relating to FreeBSD. I'll take this opportunity to plug both - registration and paper submission for BSDCon Europe in November, which has - status included in this report, and for the general BSD Conference being - hosted by USENIX in February. Your attendance and submissions make these - conferences "happen", and promote FreeBSD as a platform for new research, - feature development, and application products. Work of extremely high - calibre is performed on FreeBSD, and we need to get the word out.

- -

Submission for Future Editions

- -

Next month, we're maintaining much the same submission requirements: reports - should be one or two paragraphs long, sent by e-mail, and approximate the - layout of the entries this month (Project, Contact, URL, and text). I'll - send out reminders again over the week before the deadline, with more - specific instructions. An area where I'd like to explore improvement lies - in the coordination of related status reports for larger projects, such as - new architectural work or platform ports. This might even have the effect - of encouraging communication within these projects :-). I'd like to - continue to focus on pulling in a broader range of groups and their - activities, including the Security Officer, Release Engineer, and Core - Team.

- -

-- Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Projects

- -

The following projects submitted summaries for the July 2001 report:

- - - -
- - -

ACPI

- -

Contact: Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.org>

- -

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is an industry - standard which obsoletes APM, Intel MPS, PnPBIOS, and other Intel PC - firmware interface standards. It is also used on the IA64 platform. - More information on ACPI is available at

- - - http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi - -

The FreeBSD ACPI subsystem project is based heavily on the Intel - ACPI Component Architecture. This status report outlines the current - state of the project; future updates will focus on changes as they - occur.

- -

The Intel ACPI interpreter is fully integrated, although bugs are still - coming out of the woodwork occasionally.

- - - -

Work is ongoing in the following areas:

- - - -
- - -

ARM Port

- -

Contact: Stephane E. Potvin <sepotvin@videotron.ca>

- -

The ARM port is currently going pretty well. The kernel is compiling - and is able to boot to the point where it panics trying to initialize - the network subsystem. The current reference platform is the Netwinder - but this may change as many people expressed interest in a more broadly - available platform. Things that need to be done before it can get - further includes adding footbridge, timer and interrupt supports. The - pmap module is not completed yet either.

- -
- - -

BIND 9

- -

Contact: Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org>, Jeroen Ruigrok <asmodai@freebsd.org>

- -

Now that BIND 8.2.4 is finally imported the time has come to look at - getting BIND 9 imported into CURRENT. The current idea is to have it - imported alongside BIND 8 so that people can play with either one until - all import problems have been taken care of and people have tested it a - bit.

- -
- - -

binup

- -

Contact: Eric Melville <eric@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Although gaining a new name, the project has been at a standstill due to - both resource availability during the move between BSDi and Wind River, - and other commitments of the developers. The project should obtain an - official mailing list, as well as return to an active state after the - dust settles.

- -
- - -

BSDCon Europe

- -

URL: http://www.bsdconeurope.org

-

Contact: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.co.uk>, Josef Karthauser <joe@tao.org.uk>

- -

The conference will take place at the Thistle Hotel, Brighton, UK from - 9-11 November 2001.

- -

The aim of the conference is to provide a focal point for European - users and developers of all the BSD derived operating systems. The - format will be similar to other conferences, with 2 days of technical - sessions over the Saturday and Sunday.

- -

We'll be finalising the schedule towards the end of the month and - anybody who is interested in doing a talk should contact us asap. There - are no restrictions on the use of talks, if it's been done before we - may still be interested in having it presented to an European audience, - and we make no claims to the talks so speakers are free to present the - talks again at other conferences.

- -

We're also still looking for sponsors.

- -

We had 80 pre-registrations in the first week so we're expecting a good - turnout.

- -
- - -

CAM

- -

Contact: <mjacob@freebsd.org>, <gibbs@freebsd.org>, <ken@freebsd.org>

- -

The new CAM transport code is starting to get supported in more HBAs - and to get refined so that it does the intended per-protocol support. - No progress on doing any SMPNG work for CAM has been made yet. This is - a fairly high priority.

- -
- - -

"Close a PR drive"

- -

URL: http://phk.freebsd.dk/Gnats/

-

Contact: <phk@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Thanks to various outstanding individual efforts, we are now - down to just below 2300 open bug-reports. This means that we - have fought our way back to the level we had around march 2000.

- -
- - -

Documentation Project

- -

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/docs.html

-

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/index.html

-

Contact: Documentation Project <doc@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Work continues (in large part sponsored by WRS) on updating the - Handbook ready for the second print edition. There has been a flurry - of activity in this area recently, and the ToDo list can be seen at

- -

- http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/handbook.html

- -

Dima and others are doing a stellar job of keeping up with the steady - flow of incoming PRs relating to the documentation project.

- -

The Developers' Handbook, - -

- http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/index.html

- -

is a year old; it contains a wealth of useful content for developers - developing on, or for, FreeBSD. As ever, more contributions are - always required, not only for the developers' handbook, but for all of - the FreeBSD documentation set.

- -
- - -

Fibre Channel Support

- -

Contact: <mjacob@feral.com>

- -

The basic design hasn't changed and this project mainly is in the - phase of continued hardening and test case development. The next - major feature will be to fully integrate into the new CAM TRAN - code and to fully support on the fly device addition and removal. - The only HBA supported is QLogic at this time. Future support for - the QLogic line is planned to have 2300 (2Gb) and IP support before - October.

- -
- - -

Hardware Watchpoints in the Kernel Debugger

- -

Contact: Brian Dean <bsd@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Hardware watchpoints are now available for kernel debugging on the - IA32 (i386) architecture. One can now set hardware watchpoints - using the new ddb command 'hwatch', which is analogous to the - existing 'watch' command. Alternatively, if greater flexibility is - required, direct access to the debug registers is available using - the ddb 'set' command which allows complete control over the - processor hardware debug facilities. Hardware watchpoints are very - useful in tracking down those elusive memory overwrite bugs in the - kernel. Hardware watchpoints can even be used to set a code - breakpoint in ROM, which is commonly found in embedded systems.

- -
- - -

ifconfig support for IEEE 802.11 wireless devices

- -

Contact: Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Support for configuring IEEE 802.11 wireless devices via ifconfig - has been committed to -current and -stable. It contains most of - the functionality needed to configure an wireless device. Some - missing features are being worked on including integrated support - for DHCP so a single entry in /etc/rc.conf can be used to fully - configure a wireless device on a DHCP lan and setting the CTS/RTS - threshold. Currently the an(4) and wi(4) drivers are supported - in -current and -stable with the awi(4) device supported in - -current. Further work is needed to support Frequency Hopping - devices such as ray(4).

- -
- - -

jailNG

- -

Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

- -

jailNG is a from-scratch rewrite of the popular jail(8) service, - focussing on improved management functions, as well as more fine-grained - configurability. An initial prototype has been written, based on - explicitly named and configured jails, and work is proceeding on - userland integration. Currently, it's not clear if the timeline for - this will be 5.0-RELEASE, or 5.1-RELEASE.

- -
- - -

FreeBSD Java Project

- -

URL: http://www.freebsd.org/java/

-

Contact: <glewis@eyesbeyond.com>

- -

The main development in the FreeBSD Java Project over the last month was - the release of an initial "Developers Only" patchset for the JDK 1.3.1. - Since that release progress had been made towards a much more useable - alpha quality patchset which is likely to be turned into a port, as per - the current JDK 1.2.2 patchset. This new patchset will feature a number - of bugfixes, which essentially get the JDK to a working state for early - adopters, and an initial implementation of "native threads" based on - FreeBSD's userland pthreads. Unfortunately this implementation isn't - fully functional, but is included in the hope of more getting more - eyesballs on the code (particularly experience pthread programmers). - We'd also like to welcome Fuyuhiko Maruyama-san as a new committer, the - usual punishment for too many good patches.

- -
- - -

jpman project

- -

URL: http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/man-jp/ (in Japanese)

-

Contact: <man-jp@jp.FreeBSD.org>

- -

We have been working to provide Japanese version of FreeBSD online - manuals, since 1996. Currently, RELENG_4 manuals are based. - Translated versions are placed on doc/ja_JP.eucJP/man and provided - to users using ports/japanese/man-doc. Also, we discuss about - related commands (e.g. ports/japanese/man and ports/japanese/groff).

- -
- - -

Kernel Summit - Usenix 2001

- -

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/summit/usenix01/

-

Contact: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>

- -

The first FreeBSD kernel summit meeting was held June 29-30, 2001 in - Boston, MA at the Usenix 2001 Annual Technical Conference. Links - to a variety of files are posted on the web site.

- -

Note: I (jhb) am still working on writing up a general summary of the - meeting. When that is completed it will be posted here and mailed to the - -hackers mailing list.

- -
- - -

KSE threading the kernel

- -

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/kse/

-

Contact: <julian@elischer.org>

- -

I'm working on multithreading the kernel. So far I have over 400KB of - diffs relative to todays -current (I'm keeping my tree updated with - changes as they occur rather than get hit with a big updte at the end).

- -

I have split the proc structure and am changing most of the kernel to - pass around a thread identifier instead of a proc structure.

- -

The following interfaces have been changed so far:

- - -

I have still a lot of work to go with a lot of "dumb editing" (s/struct - proc \*p/struct thread \*td/) usually I change a few items and then fix - everything that breaks when I try compile it. I'd like to check it in - on a branch so others can help the editing but haven't worked out the - best way to do it yet.

- -

I have implemented changes to the scheduler so that kse's are scheduled - instead of processes, and threads sleep, letting the kse pick up a new - thread. but it's not anywhere ready yet (heck it doesn't compile yet - :-)

- -

Note that I have not yet updated the document listed above.. everywhere - it mentions "ksec" or "KSE-context", the code uses the word "thread". I - will update it soon as Jason has sent me the source.

- -
- - -

FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Reports

- -

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/news/status/

-

Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>, Chris Costello <chris@FreeBSD.org>

- -

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report aims to keep users and - developers up-to-date on the latest goings-on in the FreeBSD project by - providing summaries of each project and its status. At the time of this - writing, the July 2001 status report is being prepared and is very near - release. The FreeBSD Web site now has a Status Reports section, which, - when the July 2001 report is released, will be updated to include a - link to an HTML-ified version.

- -
- - -

NetBSD rc.d port

- -

URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeBSD-rc

-

Contact: <dougb@FreeBSD.org>, <sheldonh@FreeBSD.org>

- -

The NetBSD rc.d port aims to improve the FreeBSD startup process by - porting Luke Mewburn's rc.d work from NetBSD to FreeBSD. This will - score FreeBSD startup and shutdown dependencies without losing the - traditional and much loved monolothic configuration file system.

- -

Luke Mewburn's USENIX paper and slides on the system as implemented in - NetBSD are available here:

- -

- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeBSD-rc/message/3

- -

Interested parties are urged to study this material before joining the - discussion list.

- -

The intention at this stage is to decide on an approach that will - ensure that the differences between the NetBSD rc.d system and the - system as ported to FreeBSD will be kept to a minimum. This will - probably involve discussions with Luke around those areas of the - system that are identified as areas for potential improvement.

- -
- - -

Netgraph ATM

- -

Contact: Hartmut Brandt <brandt@fokus.gmd.de>

- -

The goal of this project is the implementation of ATM signalling and - other ATM protocols by means of the netgraph(4) framework. This should - provide an easily extendable architecture for using ATM on FreeBSD. - Currently the full UNI4.0 stack (except for the LIJ capability) has - been implemented, including ILMI and a first version of the ATM Forum - API for UNI. An implementation of Classical IP over ATM is also - available. Drivers have been implemented for the Fore PCA200E and Fore - HE-155 cards.

- -
- - -

network device cloning

- -

Contact: Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Network device cloning support has been imported from NetBSD. - This allows virtual devices to be allocated on demand rather then - being staticly allocated at compile time. Our implementation - differs slightly from that of NetBSD's in that we allow both the - creation of specific devices (i.e. gif0) and arbitrary devices - instead of just allowing specific devices. Currently, the only - device in the tree which has been converted is the gif(4) device - which has been converted in both -current and -stable. Work is - ongoing to convert all other virtual network devices with work - in progress on faith, stf, and vlan interfaces. In general this - conversion is accompanied by appropriate modifications to make - these devices fully modular.

- -
- - -

Next Generation POSIX threads (NGPT)

- -

URL: http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/pthreads/

-

Contact: <arun@sharmas.dhs.org>

- -

Porting NGPT (next generation pthreads) to FreeBSD

- -

NGPT is an effort led by IBM engineers to implement MxN threads (also - known as many user threads to one kernel thread mapping) on Linux. I - have ported it to FreeBSD to use rfork(2).

- -

The port is right here:

- -

- http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=29239

- -
- - -

OLDCARD upgrade to support PCI cards

- -

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~imp/oldcard-status.html

-

Contact: <imp@village.org>

-

Funded by: Monzoon Networking, LLC

- -

This month has been a month of conventration and consolidation. Much of - the changes from current have been migrating into stable. I've improved - power support, suspend/resume interactions, interrupt handling, and - ability to work after windows/NEWCARD has run. Interrupt routing - continues to be a locking issue for a complete MFC. Current patches - are available at the above website. I'm racing to get this done before - 4.4 is released.

- -
- - -

Open Runtime Platform (ORP)

- -

URL: http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/orp/

-

Contact: <arun@sharmas.dhs.org>, <orp@egroups.com>

- -

Information on Intel ORP - a BSD licensed Java VM is right here:

- -

- http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/orp/

- -

A FreeBSD patch has been tested to work with NGPT and submitted to - the ORP project. The patch is available here:

- -

- http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/projects/orp/orp-freebsd-1.0.5.patch.txt.gz

- -

There are some issues to be ironed out to make it work with FreeBSD's - default (user level) pthread implementation.

- -
- - -

OpenPackages

- -

URL: http://openpackages.org/

- -

OpenPackages intends to create a software packaging system that will - allow third-party programs to be installed, without operating system - dependent changes, on as many platforms as are feasible. OpenPackages - was originally based on code from the BSD ports systems, and has been - improved and extended by developers of many heritages.

- -

The OpenPackages Project is pleased to release the Milestone 2 - codebase. This release contains a working package building system and a - single test package. OP currently is known to build on certain - instances of the following operating systems: FreeBSD, HP/UX, IRIX, - Linux (Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, TurboLinux, Caldera, etc.), - NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris

- -
- - -

PAM

- -

Contact: Mark R V Murray <mark@grondar.za>

- -

(First report)

-

Large cleanup and extension of FreeBSD PAM modules. All modules - are to be documented, consistant in style (style(9) used) and - as complete as possible WRT functionality. Mostly done.

- -
- - -

PowerPC Port

- -

Contact: <benno@FreeBSD.org>

- -

We now have the rudiments of device support. We have a nexus driver for - OpenFirmware machines, along with support for the Apple UniNorth PCI/AGP - host bridge. I'm currently trying to get the USB hardware working so that - I can get closer to having a console driver independant of OpenFirmware, - then I'll be trying to get the system to get to single-user mode using - NFS.

- -
- - -

PPP IPv6 Support

- -

Contact: <brian@freebsd-services.com>

- -

Work has begun, but nothing has yet been committed. The NCP - addresses used by ppp have been abstracted and initial support has - been added to the filter set for ipv6 addresses. NCP negotiation - hasn't yet been started.

- -
- - -

Porting ppp to hurd & linux

- -

Contact: <brian@Awfulhak.org>

- -

Patches have been submitted to get ppp working under HURD, and - mostly under Linux. There are GPL copyright problems that need to - be addressed.

- -
- - -

pppoed

- -

Contact: <brian@freebsd-services.com>

- -

Making pppoed function in a production environment. Most of the - work is complete and committed. Additional work includes adding a - -l option where ``-l label'' is shorthand for ``-e exec ppp -direct - label'' and discovering why rogue child processes are being left - around.

- -
- - -

PRFW - Hooks within the FreeBSD kernel

- -

Contact: Evan Sarmiento <ems@open-root.org>

- -

PRFW is a set of hooks which I have integrated into the FreeBSD kernel. - This allows modules to easily intercept system calls with less overhead. - It also supports per-pid restrictions, which means, one process may not - be able to use X function in Y manner, but another process may.

- -

Progress: I was working on this in 4.3-RELEASE, but now I'm merging it - into current. I will be submitting a patch to the mailing lists in about - a week.

- -
- - -

SCSI Tape Support

- -

Contact: <mjacob@feral.com>

- -

This driver is currently not working well under -current and is - undergoing some work at this time. No major design or feature - changes are planned. There was some notion of adding TapeAlert - support, but HP supports that as a binary product via a user - library and it was felt that it'd be more politically prudent - to leave it alone.

- -
- - -

SMPng

- -

Contact: Peter Wemm <peter@FreeBSD.org>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Development

- -

In the 'smpng' p4 branch there is code to make the ast() function loop to - close the race when an AST is triggered while we are handling previously - triggered AST's.

-

In the 'jhb_preemption' p4 branch work is being done to make the kernel - fully preemptive. It is reportedly stable on UP x86, but SMP x86 locks up, - UP alpha has problems during shutdown and can recurse indefinitely until it - exhausts its stack.

- -

Management

- -

We are using a perforce repository for live development work, which - can track multiple seperate long-lived works-in-progress and collaborate - between multiple developers at the same time on the same change set.

- -

FreeBSD-current is being imported into p4 hourly, for easy tracking - of the moving -current tree.

- -

I haven't written up a good primer yet, but we're able to open this - up to the general developer community. NEWCARD work looks like it will - be done here too. Perforce is ideal for tracking this sort of long-lived - project without having to resort to passing patches around.

- -

KSE work is now being checked into a kse p4 branch - thanks Julian!

- -

KSE work is focusing on getting the main API changes into the base - tree well before 5.0.

- -
- - -

SMPng mbuf allocator

- -

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_slab/

-

Contact: Bosko Milekic <bmilekic@FreeBSD.org>

- -

mb_alloc is a specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf clusters. It - offers various important advantages over the old mbuf allocator, - particularily for MP machines. Additionally, it is designed with the - possibility of important future enchancements in mind.

- -

The mb_alloc code has been committed to -CURRENT a month ago and - appears to be holding up well. Prior to committing it, preliminary - performance measurements were done merely to ensure that it is not - significantly worse than the old allocator, even with Giant still in - place. Results were promising - - [http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_alloc/results.html] - also - see jlemon's results (link at the bottom of accompanying text). Since - the commit, Matt Jacob has provided useful feedback and bugfixes. Work - is now being done to re-enable mbtypes statistics and make appropriate - changes to netstat(1) and systat(1).

- -
- - -

sparc64 port

- -

Contact: Jake Burkholder <jake@freebsd.org>

- -

The sparc64 port has been committed to the FreeBSD repository. As such - further development will occur in cvs, rather than as a separately - maintained patch set. Significant progress has been made since the - last status report, including; support for kernel debugging with ddb, - much more complete pmap support, support for context switching and - process creation, and filling out of important machine dependent data - structures. Thomas Moestl has shown a strong interest in working on - the port and is in the process of implementing support for saving and - restoring a process's floating point context. I look forward to - working with him and any other developers that happen to fall out of - the wood works.

- -
- - -

FreeBSD/sparc64 kernel loader

- -

Contact: Robert Drehmel <robert@ferrari.de>

- -

The sparc64 loader is functional enough to boot an ELF binary from an - UFS filesystem using the existent openfirmware library, which has been - revised to work flawlessly on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Support - for netbooting and modules will be implemented next, followed by a - better openfirmware mapping strategy.

- - -
- - -

SYN cache implemetation for FreeBSD

- -

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@freebsd.org>

- -

This project brings a SYN cache implementation to FreeBSD, in - order to make it more robust to DoS attacks. A SYN cookie approach - was considered, but ultimately rejected becuase it does not conform - to the TCP protocol. The SYN cache will work with T/TCP, IPV6 and - IPSEC, and the size of each cache element is currently is less than - 1/5th the size of a normal TCP control block.

- -
- - -

TrustedBSD Project

- -

URL: http://www.TrustedBSD.org/

-

Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

- -

It's been a busy month, with a number of relevant news items. Not - least important is that NAI Labs was awarded a $1.2M contract from - the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to work - on a variety of components relevant to the TrustedBSD Project, - including support for pluggable security models, and supporting - features such as improving the extended attributes implementation, - simple crypto support for swap and file systems, documentation, and - much more.

- -

On the features side, progress continues on Mandatory Access Control, - object labeling, and improving the consistency of kernel access - control mechanisms--in particular, with regard to inter-process - authorization and credential management. Work has begun on porting - LOMAC, NAI Labs' Low-Watermark Mandatory Access Control scheme, from - Linux to FreeBSD, and it has been re-licensed under a BSD license. - We hope to have an initial port complete in time for 5.0-RELEASE - later this year.

- - &footer; - - diff --git a/en/news/status/report-july-2001.xml b/en/news/status/report-july-2001.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..42867960da --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/report-july-2001.xml @@ -0,0 +1,1195 @@ + + + + July + + 2001 + + +
+ Introduction + +

Last month's status report was apparently a great success: I + received countless e-mails with comments, questions, and + suggestions. I've tried to incorporate any suggestions and address + any problems from these e-mails in this month's report, which + captures a far more extensive snapshot of FreeBSD activity in the + last month. Unlike last month's report, it does a better job of + reflecting non-development activity, such as on-going conference + planning, documentation, and so on. This is a trend I hope to see + improve in future months as well.

+ +

On the topic of conferences, in the future I'd like to report + more on publication activities relating to FreeBSD, including + online journals with articles relating to FreeBSD, paper journals, + conference papers, and so on. Likewise, I would be interested in + including references to Call for Papers relating to FreeBSD. I'll + take this opportunity to plug both registration and paper + submission for BSDCon Europe in November, which has status included + in this report, and for the general BSD Conference being hosted by + USENIX in February. Your attendance and submissions make these + conferences "happen", and promote FreeBSD as a platform for new + research, feature development, and application products. Work of + extremely high calibre is performed on FreeBSD, and we need to get + the word out.

+
+ +
+ Submission for Future Editions + +

Next month, we're maintaining much the same submission + requirements: reports should be one or two paragraphs long, sent by + e-mail, and approximate the layout of the entries this month + (Project, Contact, URL, and text). I'll send out reminders again + over the week before the deadline, with more specific instructions. + An area where I'd like to explore improvement lies in the + coordination of related status reports for larger projects, such as + new architectural work or platform ports. This might even have the + effect of encouraging communication within these projects :-). I'd + like to continue to focus on pulling in a broader range of groups + and their activities, including the Security Officer, Release + Engineer, and Core Team.

+ +

+ -- Robert Watson < + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + > +

+
+ + + ACPI + + + + + Mike + + Smith + + + msmith@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is an + industry standard which obsoletes APM, Intel MPS, PnPBIOS, and + other Intel PC firmware interface standards. It is also used on + the IA64 platform. More information on ACPI is available at

+ + + http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi + +

The FreeBSD ACPI subsystem project is based heavily on the + Intel ACPI Component Architecture. This status report outlines + the current state of the project; future updates will focus on + changes as they occur.

+ +

The Intel ACPI interpreter is fully integrated, although bugs + are still coming out of the woodwork occasionally.

+ +
    +
  • PCI bus detection and interrupt routing are functional, but + power management interaction will require work on the core PCI + subsystem.
    • + +
  • Non-PCI motherboard peripheral probing is implemented, but + believed to have problems on some systems.
    • + +
  • A power policy manager has been implemented. The initial + policy manager has two modes, "performance" and "economy".
    • + +
  • CPU speed throttling is integrated with the platform power + policy.
    • + +
  • System thermal monitoring is implemented, but fan control + is believed to have problems.
    • + +
  • Pushbutton suspend and power-off is implemented.
    • + +
  • System timekeeping using the ACPI timer is supported.
    • + +
  • Battery status monitoring is implemented.
    • +
+ +

Work is ongoing in the following areas:

+ +
    +
  • System suspend and resume.
    • + +
  • Timekeeper accuracy/reliability.
    • + +
  • Power profiles.
    • + +
  • User-level management interfaces.
    • + +
  • PCI power manangement.
    • + +
  • Bug-hunting.
    • +
+ + + + + ARM Port + + + + + Stephane + + Potvin + + + septovin@videotron.ca + + + + +

The ARM port is currently going pretty well. The kernel is + compiling and is able to boot to the point where it panics trying + to initialize the network subsystem. The current reference + platform is the Netwinder but this may change as many people + expressed interest in a more broadly available platform. Things + that need to be done before it can get further includes adding + footbridge, timer and interrupt supports. The pmap module is not + completed yet either.

+ + + + + BIND 9 + + + + Doug Barton + + dougb@FreeBSD.org + + + + Jeroen Ruigrok + + mailto:asmodai@freebsd.org + + + + +

Now that BIND 8.2.4 is finally imported the time has come to + look at getting BIND 9 imported into CURRENT. The current idea is + to have it imported alongside BIND 8 so that people can play with + either one until all import problems have been taken care of and + people have tested it a bit.

+ + + + + binup + + + + Eric Melville + + mailto:eric@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Although gaining a new name, the project has been at a + standstill due to both resource availability during the move + between BSDi and Wind River, and other commitments of the + developers. The project should obtain an official mailing list, + as well as return to an active state after the dust settles.

+ + + + + BSDCon Europe + + + + + + + + Paul Richards + + paul@freebsd-services.co.uk + + + + Josef Karthauser + + mailto:joe@tao.org.uk + + + + +

The conference will take place at the Thistle Hotel, Brighton, + UK from 9-11 November 2001.

+ +

The aim of the conference is to provide a focal point for + European users and developers of all the BSD derived operating + systems. The format will be similar to other conferences, with 2 + days of technical sessions over the Saturday and Sunday.

+ +

We'll be finalising the schedule towards the end of the month + and anybody who is interested in doing a talk should contact us + asap. There are no restrictions on the use of talks, if it's been + done before we may still be interested in having it presented to + an European audience, and we make no claims to the talks so + speakers are free to present the talks again at other + conferences.

+ +

We're also still looking for sponsors.

+ +

We had 80 pre-registrations in the first week so we're + expecting a good turnout.

+ + + + + CAM + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@FreeBSD.org + + + + Justin Gibbs + + gibbs@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The new CAM transport code is starting to get supported in + more HBAs and to get refined so that it does the intended + per-protocol support. No progress on doing any SMPNG work for CAM + has been made yet. This is a fairly high priority.

+ + + + + "Close a PR drive" + + + + + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Thanks to various outstanding individual efforts, we are now + down to just below 2300 open bug-reports. This means that we have + fought our way back to the level we had around march 2000.

+ + + + + Documentation Project + + + + + + + + + + Documentation Project + + mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work continues (in large part sponsored by WRS) on updating + the Handbook ready for the second print edition. There has been a + flurry of activity in this area recently, and the ToDo list can + be seen at

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/handbook.html +

+ +

Dima and others are doing a stellar job of keeping up with the + steady flow of incoming PRs relating to the documentation + project.

+ +

The Developers' Handbook,

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/index.html +

+ +

is a year old; it contains a wealth of useful content for + developers developing on, or for, FreeBSD. As ever, more + contributions are always required, not only for the developers' + handbook, but for all of the FreeBSD documentation set.

+ + + + + Fibre Channel Support + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@feral.com + + + + +

The basic design hasn't changed and this project mainly is in + the phase of continued hardening and test case development. The + next major feature will be to fully integrate into the new CAM + TRAN code and to fully support on the fly device addition and + removal. The only HBA supported is QLogic at this time. Future + support for the QLogic line is planned to have 2300 (2Gb) and IP + support before October.

+ + + + + Hardware Watchpoints in the Kernel Debugger + + + + Brian Dean + + mailto:bsd@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Hardware watchpoints are now available for kernel debugging on + the IA32 (i386) architecture. One can now set hardware + watchpoints using the new ddb command 'hwatch', which is + analogous to the existing 'watch' command. Alternatively, if + greater flexibility is required, direct access to the debug + registers is available using the ddb 'set' command which allows + complete control over the processor hardware debug facilities. + Hardware watchpoints are very useful in tracking down those + elusive memory overwrite bugs in the kernel. Hardware watchpoints + can even be used to set a code breakpoint in ROM, which is + commonly found in embedded systems.

+ + + + + ifconfig support for IEEE 802.11 wireless devices + + + + Brooks Davis + + mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Support for configuring IEEE 802.11 wireless devices via + ifconfig has been committed to -current and -stable. It contains + most of the functionality needed to configure an wireless device. + Some missing features are being worked on including integrated + support for DHCP so a single entry in /etc/rc.conf can be used to + fully configure a wireless device on a DHCP lan and setting the + CTS/RTS threshold. Currently the an(4) and wi(4) drivers are + supported in -current and -stable with the awi(4) device + supported in -current. Further work is needed to support + Frequency Hopping devices such as ray(4).

+ + + + + jailNG + + + + Robert Watson + + mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

jailNG is a from-scratch rewrite of the popular jail(8) + service, focussing on improved management functions, as well as + more fine-grained configurability. An initial prototype has been + written, based on explicitly named and configured jails, and work + is proceeding on userland integration. Currently, it's not clear + if the timeline for this will be 5.0-RELEASE, or 5.1-RELEASE.

+ + + + + FreeBSD Java Project + + + + + + + + Greg Lewis + + glewis@eyesbeyond.com + + + + +

The main development in the FreeBSD Java Project over the last + month was the release of an initial "Developers Only" patchset + for the JDK 1.3.1. Since that release progress had been made + towards a much more useable alpha quality patchset which is + likely to be turned into a port, as per the current JDK 1.2.2 + patchset. This new patchset will feature a number of bugfixes, + which essentially get the JDK to a working state for early + adopters, and an initial implementation of "native threads" based + on FreeBSD's userland pthreads. Unfortunately this implementation + isn't fully functional, but is included in the hope of more + getting more eyesballs on the code (particularly experience + pthread programmers). We'd also like to welcome Fuyuhiko + Maruyama-san as a new committer, the usual punishment for too + many good patches.

+ + + + + jpman project + + + + + + + + Japanese Man Page Project + + man-jp@jp.FreeBSD.org + + + + +

We have been working to provide Japanese version of FreeBSD + online manuals, since 1996. Currently, RELENG_4 manuals are + based. Translated versions are placed on doc/ja_JP.eucJP/man and + provided to users using ports/japanese/man-doc. Also, we discuss + about related commands (e.g. ports/japanese/man and + ports/japanese/groff).

+ + + + + Kernel Summit - Usenix 2001 + + + + + + + + John Baldwin + + mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The first FreeBSD kernel summit meeting was held June 29-30, + 2001 in Boston, MA at the Usenix 2001 Annual Technical + Conference. Links to a variety of files are posted on the web + site.

+ +

Note: I (jhb) am still working on writing up a general summary + of the meeting. When that is completed it will be posted here and + mailed to the -hackers mailing list.

+ + + + + KSE threading the kernel + + + + + + + + Julian Elischer + + julian@elischer.org + + + + +

I'm working on multithreading the kernel. So far I have over + 400KB of diffs relative to todays -current (I'm keeping my tree + updated with changes as they occur rather than get hit with a big + updte at the end).

+ +

I have split the proc structure and am changing most of the + kernel to pass around a thread identifier instead of a proc + structure.

+ +

The following interfaces have been changed so far:

+ +
    +
  • device devsw entrys
    • + +
  • vfs calls
    • + +
  • mutexes
    • + +
  • events
    • + +
  • system calls
    • + +
  • sheduler
    • + +
  • + a lot of code in between.
    • +
+ +

I have still a lot of work to go with a lot of "dumb editing" + (s/struct proc \*p/struct thread \*td/) usually I change a few + items and then fix everything that breaks when I try compile it. + I'd like to check it in on a branch so others can help the + editing but haven't worked out the best way to do it yet.

+ +

I have implemented changes to the scheduler so that kse's are + scheduled instead of processes, and threads sleep, letting the + kse pick up a new thread. but it's not anywhere ready yet (heck + it doesn't compile yet :-)

+ +

Note that I have not yet updated the document listed above.. + everywhere it mentions "ksec" or "KSE-context", the code uses the + word "thread". I will update it soon as Jason has sent me the + source.

+ + + + + FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Reports + + + + + + + + Robert Watson + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org> + + + + Chris Costello + + mailto:chris@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report aims to keep + users and developers up-to-date on the latest goings-on in the + FreeBSD project by providing summaries of each project and its + status. At the time of this writing, the July 2001 status report + is being prepared and is very near release. The FreeBSD Web site + now has a Status Reports section, which, when the July 2001 + report is released, will be updated to include a link to an + HTML-ified version.

+ + + + + NetBSD rc.d port + + + + + + + + Doug Barton + + dougb@FreeBSD.org + + + + Sheldon Hearn + + mailto:sheldonh@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The NetBSD rc.d port aims to improve the FreeBSD startup + process by porting Luke Mewburn's rc.d work from NetBSD to + FreeBSD. This will score FreeBSD startup and shutdown + dependencies without losing the traditional and much loved + monolothic configuration file system.

+ +

Luke Mewburn's USENIX paper and slides on the system as + implemented in NetBSD are available here:

+ +

+ + http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeBSD-rc/message/3 +

+ +

Interested parties are urged to study this material before + joining the discussion list.

+ +

The intention at this stage is to decide on an approach that + will ensure that the differences between the NetBSD rc.d system + and the system as ported to FreeBSD will be kept to a minimum. + This will probably involve discussions with Luke around those + areas of the system that are identified as areas for potential + improvement.

+ + + + + Netgraph ATM + + + + Hartmut Brandt + + mailto:brandt@fokus.gmd.de + + + + +

The goal of this project is the implementation of ATM + signalling and other ATM protocols by means of the netgraph(4) + framework. This should provide an easily extendable architecture + for using ATM on FreeBSD. Currently the full UNI4.0 stack (except + for the LIJ capability) has been implemented, including ILMI and + a first version of the ATM Forum API for UNI. An implementation + of Classical IP over ATM is also available. Drivers have been + implemented for the Fore PCA200E and Fore HE-155 cards.

+ + + + + network device cloning + + + + Brooks Davis + + mailto:brooks@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Network device cloning support has been imported from NetBSD. + This allows virtual devices to be allocated on demand rather then + being staticly allocated at compile time. Our implementation + differs slightly from that of NetBSD's in that we allow both the + creation of specific devices (i.e. gif0) and arbitrary devices + instead of just allowing specific devices. Currently, the only + device in the tree which has been converted is the gif(4) device + which has been converted in both -current and -stable. Work is + ongoing to convert all other virtual network devices with work in + progress on faith, stf, and vlan interfaces. In general this + conversion is accompanied by appropriate modifications to make + these devices fully modular.

+ + + + + Next Generation POSIX threads (NGPT) + + + + + + + + Arun Sharma + + arun@sharma.dhs.org + + + + +

Porting NGPT (next generation pthreads) to FreeBSD

+ +

NGPT is an effort led by IBM engineers to implement MxN + threads (also known as many user threads to one kernel thread + mapping) on Linux. I have ported it to FreeBSD to use + rfork(2).

+ +

The port is right here:

+ +

+ + http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=29239 +

+ + + + + OLDCARD upgrade to support PCI cards + + + + + + + + Warner Losh + + imp@village.org + + + + +

+ Funded by: Monzoon Networking, LLC +

+ +

This month has been a month of conventration and + consolidation. Much of the changes from current have been + migrating into stable. I've improved power support, + suspend/resume interactions, interrupt handling, and ability to + work after windows/NEWCARD has run. Interrupt routing continues + to be a locking issue for a complete MFC. Current patches are + available at the above website. I'm racing to get this done + before 4.4 is released.

+ + + + + Open Runtime Platform (ORP) + + + + + + + + Arun Sharma + + arun@sharmas.dhs.org + + + + eGroups: ORP + + mailto:orp@egroups.com + + + + +

Information on Intel ORP - a BSD licensed Java VM is right + here:

+ +

+ + http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/orp/ +

+ +

A FreeBSD patch has been tested to work with NGPT and + submitted to the ORP project. The patch is available here:

+ +

+ + http://www.sharma-home.net/~adsharma/projects/orp/orp-freebsd-1.0.5.patch.txt.gz +

+ +

There are some issues to be ironed out to make it work with + FreeBSD's default (user level) pthread implementation.

+ + + + + OpenPackages + + + + + + +

OpenPackages intends to create a software packaging system + that will allow third-party programs to be installed, without + operating system dependent changes, on as many platforms as are + feasible. OpenPackages was originally based on code from the BSD + ports systems, and has been improved and extended by developers + of many heritages.

+ +

The OpenPackages Project is pleased to release the Milestone 2 + codebase. This release contains a working package building system + and a single test package. OP currently is known to build on + certain instances of the following operating systems: FreeBSD, + HP/UX, IRIX, Linux (Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, TurboLinux, + Caldera, etc.), NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris

+ + + + + PAM + + + + Mark R V Murray + + mailto:mark@grondar.za + + + + +

(First report)

+ +

Large cleanup and extension of FreeBSD PAM modules. All + modules are to be documented, consistant in style (style(9) used) + and as complete as possible WRT functionality. Mostly done.

+ + + + + PowerPC Port + + + + Benno Rice + + benno@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

We now have the rudiments of device support. We have a nexus + driver for OpenFirmware machines, along with support for the + Apple UniNorth PCI/AGP host bridge. I'm currently trying to get + the USB hardware working so that I can get closer to having a + console driver independant of OpenFirmware, then I'll be trying + to get the system to get to single-user mode using NFS.

+ + + + + PPP IPv6 Support + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@freebsd-services.com + + + + +

Work has begun, but nothing has yet been committed. The NCP + addresses used by ppp have been abstracted and initial support + has been added to the filter set for ipv6 addresses. NCP + negotiation hasn't yet been started.

+ + + + + Porting ppp to hurd & linux + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@Awfulhak.org + + + + +

Patches have been submitted to get ppp working under HURD, and + mostly under Linux. There are GPL copyright problems that need to + be addressed.

+ + + + + pppoed + + + + Brian Somers + + brian@freebsd-services.com + + + + +

Making pppoed function in a production environment. Most of + the work is complete and committed. Additional work includes + adding a -l option where ``-l label'' is shorthand for ``-e exec + ppp -direct label'' and discovering why rogue child processes are + being left around.

+ + + + + PRFW - Hooks within the FreeBSD kernel + + + + Evan Sarmiento + + mailto:ems@open-root.org + + + + +

PRFW is a set of hooks which I have integrated into the + FreeBSD kernel. This allows modules to easily intercept system + calls with less overhead. It also supports per-pid restrictions, + which means, one process may not be able to use X function in Y + manner, but another process may.

+ +

Progress: I was working on this in 4.3-RELEASE, but now I'm + merging it into current. I will be submitting a patch to the + mailing lists in about a week.

+ + + + + SCSI Tape Support + + + + Matthew Jacob + + mjacob@feral.com + + + + +

This driver is currently not working well under -current and + is undergoing some work at this time. No major design or feature + changes are planned. There was some notion of adding TapeAlert + support, but HP supports that as a binary product via a user + library and it was felt that it'd be more politically prudent to + leave it alone.

+ + + + + SMPng + + + + Peter Wemm + + peter@FreeBSD.org + + + + John Baldwin + + mailto:jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Development

+ +

In the 'smpng' p4 branch there is code to make the ast() + function loop to close the race when an AST is triggered while we + are handling previously triggered AST's.

+ +

In the 'jhb_preemption' p4 branch work is being done to make + the kernel fully preemptive. It is reportedly stable on UP x86, + but SMP x86 locks up, UP alpha has problems during shutdown and + can recurse indefinitely until it exhausts its stack.

+ +

Management

+ +

We are using a perforce repository for live development work, + which can track multiple seperate long-lived works-in-progress + and collaborate between multiple developers at the same time on + the same change set.

+ +

FreeBSD-current is being imported into p4 hourly, for easy + tracking of the moving -current tree.

+ +

I haven't written up a good primer yet, but we're able to open + this up to the general developer community. NEWCARD work looks + like it will be done here too. Perforce is ideal for tracking + this sort of long-lived project without having to resort to + passing patches around.

+ +

KSE work is now being checked into a kse p4 branch - thanks + Julian!

+ +

KSE work is focusing on getting the main API changes into the + base tree well before 5.0.

+ + + + + SMPng mbuf allocator + + + + + + + + Bosko Milekic + + mailto:bmilekic@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

mb_alloc is a specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf + clusters. It offers various important advantages over the old + mbuf allocator, particularily for MP machines. Additionally, it + is designed with the possibility of important future + enchancements in mind.

+ +

The mb_alloc code has been committed to -CURRENT a month ago + and appears to be holding up well. Prior to committing it, + preliminary performance measurements were done merely to ensure + that it is not significantly worse than the old allocator, even + with Giant still in place. Results were promising + + [http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_alloc/results.html] + + - also see jlemon's results (link at the bottom of accompanying + text). Since the commit, Matt Jacob has provided useful feedback + and bugfixes. Work is now being done to re-enable mbtypes + statistics and make appropriate changes to netstat(1) and + systat(1).

+ + + + + sparc64 port + + + + Jake Burkholder + + mailto:jake@freebsd.org + + + + +

The sparc64 port has been committed to the FreeBSD repository. + As such further development will occur in cvs, rather than as a + separately maintained patch set. Significant progress has been + made since the last status report, including; support for kernel + debugging with ddb, much more complete pmap support, support for + context switching and process creation, and filling out of + important machine dependent data structures. Thomas Moestl has + shown a strong interest in working on the port and is in the + process of implementing support for saving and restoring a + process's floating point context. I look forward to working with + him and any other developers that happen to fall out of the wood + works.

+ + + + + FreeBSD/sparc64 kernel loader + + + + Robert Drehmel + + mailto:robert@ferrari.de + + + + +

The sparc64 loader is functional enough to boot an ELF binary + from an UFS filesystem using the existent openfirmware library, + which has been revised to work flawlessly on 32-bit and 64-bit + architectures. Support for netbooting and modules will be + implemented next, followed by a better openfirmware mapping + strategy.

+ + + + + SYN cache implemetation for FreeBSD + + + + Jonathan Lemon + + mailto:jlemon@freebsd.org + + + + +

This project brings a SYN cache implementation to FreeBSD, in + order to make it more robust to DoS attacks. A SYN cookie + approach was considered, but ultimately rejected becuase it does + not conform to the TCP protocol. The SYN cache will work with + T/TCP, IPV6 and IPSEC, and the size of each cache element is + currently is less than 1/5th the size of a normal TCP control + block.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD Project + + + + + + + + Robert Watson + + mailto:rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

It's been a busy month, with a number of relevant news items. + Not least important is that NAI Labs was awarded a $1.2M contract + from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to + work on a variety of components relevant to the TrustedBSD + Project, including support for pluggable security models, and + supporting features such as improving the extended attributes + implementation, simple crypto support for swap and file systems, + documentation, and much more.

+ +

On the features side, progress continues on Mandatory Access + Control, object labeling, and improving the consistency of kernel + access control mechanisms--in particular, with regard to + inter-process authorization and credential management. Work has + begun on porting LOMAC, NAI Labs' Low-Watermark Mandatory Access + Control scheme, from Linux to FreeBSD, and it has been + re-licensed under a BSD license. We hope to have an initial port + complete in time for 5.0-RELEASE later this year.

+ + + + diff --git a/en/news/status/report-june-2001.sgml b/en/news/status/report-june-2001.sgml deleted file mode 100644 index d243756231..0000000000 --- a/en/news/status/report-june-2001.sgml +++ /dev/null @@ -1,497 +0,0 @@ - - - - %includes; -]> - - - &header; - -

Introduction

- -

One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus on - centralized design and implementation, in which the operating system is - maintained in a central repository, and discussed on centrally maintained - lists. This allows for a high level of coordination between authors of - various components of the system, and allows policies to be enforced over - the entire system, covering issues ranging from architecture to style. - However, as the FreeBSD developer community has grown, and the rate of - both mailing list traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it - difficult even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all - the work going on in the tree.

- -

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report attempts to address this - problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers to make the broader - community aware of their on-going work on FreeBSD, both in and out of the - central source repository. This is the first issue, and as such is an - experiment. For each project and sub-project, a one paragraph summary is - included, indicating progress since the last summary (in this case, simply - recent progress, as there have been no prior summaries).

- -

This status report may be reproduced in whole or in part, as long as the - source is clearly identified and appropriate credit given.

- -

Future Editions

- -

Assuming there is some positive feedback on this idea, and that future - submissions get made such that there is content for future issues, the - goal is to release a development status report once a month. As such, the - next deadline will be July 31, 2001, with a scheduled publication date in - the first week of August. This will put the status report on a schedule - in line with the calendar, as well as providing a little over a month - until the next deadline, which will include a number of pertinent events, - including the Annual USENIX Technical Conference in Boston, MA. - Submissions should be e-mailed to:

- -
- robert+freebsd.monthly@cyrus.watson.org
- -

Many submitters will want to wait until the last week of July so as to - provide the most up-to-date status report; however, submissions will be - accepted at any time prior to that date.

- -

-- Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Projects

- -

The following projects submitted summaries for the June 2001 report:

- - - -

Status Reports

- - -

Binary Updater Project

- -

Contacts: Eric Melville <eric@FreeBSD.org>, Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/updater.html

- -

The FreeBSD Binary Updater Project aims to provide a secure mechanism - for the distribution of binary updates for FreeBSD. This project is - complementary to the Open Packages and libh efforts and there should - be very little overlap with those projects. The system uses a client - / server mechanism that allows clients to install any known "profile" - or release of FreeBSD over the network. Where a specific profile - might contain a specific set of FreeBSD software to install, - additional packages, and configuration actions that make it more - ideal for a specific environment (ie FreeBSD 4.3 Secure Web Server - Profile)

- -

The system can currently be used to install a FreeBSD system or - perform the most simple of upgrades but many features are absent. In - particular, the client is in its infancy and much work remains to be - done. We need additional developers so please get in touch with us - at updater@osd.bsdi.com - if you are interested in spending some cycles - on this.

- -
- - -

"Close a PR drive"

- -

Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://phk.freebsd.dk/Gnats/

- -

Poul-Henning Kamp kicked off a drive to get our GNATS PR database - cleaned up so the wheat can be sorted from the chaff. Progress is - good, but there is still a lot of work to do. Give a hand if you - can. Remember: every unhandled PR is a pissed off contributor or - user.

- -
- - -

CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy

- -

Contact: Josef Karthauser <joe@FreeBSD.org>

- -

I'm in the process of rewriting the CVSROOT/scripts to make them more - clean and configurable. A lot of other projects also use these and - so it makes sense to make them as easy to use in other environments as - possible.

- -

Status: work in progress. There is now a configuration file, but not - all the scripts use it yet.

- -
- - -

DEVFS

- -

Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Work is progressing on implementing true cloning devices in DEVFS. - Brian Somers and Poul-Henning Kamp are working to make if_tun the - first truly cloning driver in the system. Next will be the pty - driver and the bpf driver.

- -

From July 1st DEVFS will be standard in -current.

- -
- - -

digi driver

- -

Contact: Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Added the digi driver. Initial work was done by John Prince - <johnp@knight-trosoft.com>, but all the modular stuff was done by me - and initial work on supporting Xe and Xi cards (ala dgb) was done by - me. I'm now awaiting an Xe card being sent from joerg@ (almost a - donation) so that I can get that side of things working properly.

- -
- - -

Diskcheckd

- -

Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://phantom.cris.net/freebsd/projects/viewproj.php?p_id=15

- -

Ben Smithurst has written a "diskcheckd" daemon which will read all - sectors on the disks over a configured period. With recent increases - in disksizes it is by no means a given that disk read errors will be - discovered before they are fatal. This daemon will hopefully result - in the drive firmware being able to relocate bad sectors before they - become unreadable. This code is now committed to 5.0-CURRENT.

- -
- - -

if_fxp driver

- -

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@FreeBSD.org>

- -

In the last month (May-June), the new fxp driver was brought - into -stable. This new driver uses the common MII code, so - support for new PHYs is easy to add. Support for the new Intel - 82562 chips was added. The driver was updated to add VLAN - support and a workaround for a bug affecting Intel 815-based boards.

- -
- - -

Java Project

- -

Contact: Greg Lewis <glewis@eyesbeyond.com>

- -

The FreeBSD Java Project has continued its "behind the scenes" work - over the last month. Progress was made both technically, with the - help of Bill Huey (of Wind River), on a port of JDK 1.3.1 and - legally, with Nate Williams continuing negotiations with Sun on a - mutually acceptable license to release a binary Java 2 SDK under. - The JDK 1.2.2 port has also seen some development, with a new - patchset likely to be released soon which includes JPDA and NetBSD - support (the latter courtesy of Scott Bartram).

- -
- - -

Kernel Graphics Interface port

- -

Contact: Nicolas Souchu <nsouch@fr.alcove.com>

-

URL: http://kgi.sourceforge.net/

- -

The Kernel Graphics Interface project has worked for several years to - provide a framework for graphic drivers under Linux receiving input - from other groups like the UDI project. Currently the KGI core - implementation is quite settled, as is the driver coding model as a - whole. Work is being done to newbussify KGI and produce a kld, as - part of a future redesign of the graphics subsystem in FreeBSD. KGI - will be an alternative for graphic card producers that don't accept - the XFree86 model of userland graphic adapters and will also provide - accelerated support for any other graphic alternative.

- -
- - -

libh Project

- -

Contacts: Alexander Langer <alex@FreeBSD.org>, Nathan Ahlstrom <nra@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~alex/libh/

- -

The libh project is a next generation sysinstall. It is written - in C++ using QT for its graphical frontend and tvision for its console - support. The menus are scriptable via an embedded tcl interpreter. - It has been growing functionality quite a bit lately, including a new - disklabel editor. Current work is on installation scripts for CDROM, - FTP, ... installs as well as a fully functional standalone - disk-partition and label editor. The GUI API was extended a little - and many bugs were fixed. There seems to be some interest in i18n - work.

- -
- - -

Mount(2) API

- -

Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Maxime Henrion is working on implementing a new and more extensible - mount(2) systemcall, mainly to overcome the 32 bits for mountoptions - limit, secondary goal to make it possible to mount filesystems from - inside the kernel.

- -
- - -

OLDCARD pccard implementation

- -

Contact: Warner Losh <imp@FreeBSD.org>

- -

In the last two months, the OLDCARD pccard implemenation was - rototilled to within an inch of its life. Many new pci cardbus - bridges were added. Power handling was improved. PCI Card cardbus - bridges are nearly supported and should be committed in early June to - the tree. This will likely be the last major work done on OLDCARD. - After pci cards are supported, work will shift to improving NEWCARD.

- -
- - -

PowerPC Port

- -

Contact: Benno Rice <benno@FreeBSD.org>

- -

The PowerPC port is proceeding well. All seems to be working in - pmap.c after a number of problems encountered where FreeBSD passes a - vm_page_t to a NetBSD-derived function that expects a vm_offset_t. - Then after debugging the atomic operations code, I'm now at the point - where VM appears to be initialised and it's now hanging while in - sys/kern/kern_malloc.c:kmeminit(). Progress continues. =)

- -
- - -

PPP

- -

Contact: Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Developing full MPPE support for Andre Opperman @ Monzoon in - Switzerland. Work is now complete and will eventually be brought - into -current, but no dates are yet known.

- -
- - -

pseudofs

- -

Contact: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Pseudofs is a framework for pseudo-filesystems, like procfs and - linprocfs. The goal of pseudofs is twofold:

- - - -

Pseudofs has reached the point where it is sufficiently - functional and stable that linprocfs has been almost fully - reimplemented on top of it; the only bit that's missing is the - proc/<pid>/mem file.

- -

The primary to-do item for pseudofs right now is to add support - for writeable files (which are required for procfs, and are quite - a bit less trivial to handle than read-only files). In addition, - pseudofs needs either generic support for raw (non-sbuf'ed, - possibly mmap'able) files, or failing that, special-case code to - handle proc/<pid>/mem.

- -
- - -

RELNOTESng

- -

Contact: Bruce A. Mah <bmah@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/relnotes/

- -

RELNOTESng is the name I've given to the rewrite of the *.TXT files - that typically accompany a FreeBSD release. The information from - these files (which include, among other things, the release notes and - the supported hardware list) have been reorganized and converted to - SGML. This helps us produce the documentation in various formats, as - well as facilitating the maintainence of documentation for multiple - architectures. This work was recently committed to -CURRENT, and I - intend to MFC it to 4-STABLE before 4.4-RELEASE.

- -
- - -

SMPng Project

- -

Contacts: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, Jake Burkholder <jake@FreeBSD.org>, SMP Mailing list <smp@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://www.freebsd.org/~jasone/smp/

- -

The SMPng project aims to provide multithreaded support for the - FreeBSD kernel. Currently the kernel still runs almost exclusively - under the Giant kernel lock. Recently, progress has been made in - locking the process group and session structures as well as file - descriptors by Seigo Tanimura-san. Alfred Perlstein has also added - in a giant lock around the entire virtual memory (VM) subsystem which - will eventually be split up into several smaller locks. The locking - of the VM subsystem has proved tricky, and some of the current effort - is focused on finding and fixing a few remaining bugs in on the alpha - architecture.

- -
- - -

SMPng mbuf allocator

- -

Contact: Bosko Milekic <bmilekic@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_slab/

- -

mb_alloc is a new specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf clusters. - Presently, it offers various important advantages over the old - (status quo) mbuf allocator, particularily for MP machines. - Additionally, it is designed with the possibility of future - enchancements in mind.

- -

Presently in initial review & testing stages, most of the code is - already written.

- -
- - -

Sparc64 Port

- -

Contact: Jake Burkholder <jake@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Work has (re)started on a port of FreeBSD to the UltraSPARC - architecture, specifically targeting PCI based workstations. Jake - Burkholder will be porting the kernel, and Ade Lovett has expressed - an interest in working on userland. Recent work on the project - includes:

- - - -

At this point the kernel can be net-booted and prints the FreeBSD - copyright before calling code that is not yet implemented. I am - currently working on a design for the pmap module and plan to begin - implementation in the next few days.

- -
- - -

TrustedBSD

- -

Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://www.TrustedBSD.org/

- -

The TrustedBSD Project seeks to improve the security of the FreeBSD - operating system by adding new security features, many derived from - common trusted operating system requirements. This includes Access - Control Lists (ACLs), Fine-grained Event Logging (Audit), Fine-grained - Privileges (Capabilities), Mandatory Access Control (MAC), and other - architecture features, including file system extended attributes, - and improved object labeling.

- -

Individual feature status reports are documented seperately below; - in general, basic features (such as EAs, ACLs, and kernel support - for Capabilities) will be initially available in 5.0-RELEASE, - conditional on specific kernel options. A performance-enhanced - version of EAs is currently being targetted at 6.0-RELEASE, along - with an integrated capability-aware userland, and MAC support.

- -
- - -

TrustedBSD: ACLs

- -

Contact: Chris D. Faulhaber <jedgar@FreeBSD.org>

- -

Patches are now available to add ACL support to cp(1) and mv(1) along - with preliminary support for install(1). Ilmar's i18n patches for - getfacl(1) and setfacl(1) need to be updated for the last set of - changes and committed. Some other functional improvements are also - in the pipeline.

- -
- - -

TrustedBSD Capabilities

- -

Contact: Thomas Moestl <tmm@FreeBSD.org>

- -

The kernel part of the capability implementation is mostly finished; - all uses of suser() and suser_xxx() and nearly all comparisons of - uid's with 0 have been converted to use the newly introduced - cap_check() call. Some details still need clarification. More - documentation for this needs to be done.

- -

POSIX.2c-compatible getfcap and setfcap programs have been written. - Experimental capability support in su(1), login(1), install(1) and - bsd.prog.mk is being tested.

- -

Support for capabilities, ACL's, capabilities and MAC labels in - tar(1) is being developed; only the capability part is tested right - now. Generic support for extended attributes is planned, this will - require extensions to the current EA interface, which are written and - will probably be committed to -CURRENT in a few weeks. A port of - these features to pax(1) is planned.

- -
- - -

TrustedBSD MAC and Object Labeling

- -

Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

-

URL: http://www.TrustedBSD.org/

- -

An initial prototype of a Mandatory Access Control implementation - was completed earlier this year, supporting Multi-Level Security, - Biba Integrity protection, and a more general jail-based access - control model. Based on that implementation, I'm now in the process - of improving the FreeBSD security abstractions to simplify both the - implementation and integration of MAC support, as well as increase the - number of kernel objects protected by both discretionary and mandatory - protection schemes. Generic object labeling introduces a structure - not dissimilar in properties to the kernel ucred structure, only it is - intended to be associated with kernel objects, rather than kernel - subjects, permitting the creation of generic security protection - routines for objects. This would allow the easy extension of procfs - and devfs to support ACLs and MAC, for example. A prototype is - underway, with compiling and running code and simple protections - now associated with sysctl's.

- - &footer; - - diff --git a/en/news/status/report-june-2001.xml b/en/news/status/report-june-2001.xml new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..dfa24582f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/report-june-2001.xml @@ -0,0 +1,793 @@ + +
+ Introduction + +

One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus + on centralized design and implementation, in which the operating + system is maintained in a central repository, and discussed on + centrally maintained lists. This allows for a high level of + coordination between authors of various components of the system, + and allows policies to be enforced over the entire system, covering + issues ranging from architecture to style. However, as the FreeBSD + developer community has grown, and the rate of both mailing list + traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it difficult + even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all the + work going on in the tree.

+ +

The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report attempts to + address this problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers + to make the broader community aware of their on-going work on + FreeBSD, both in and out of the central source repository. This is + the first issue, and as such is an experiment. For each project and + sub-project, a one paragraph summary is included, indicating + progress since the last summary (in this case, simply recent + progress, as there have been no prior summaries).

+ +

This status report may be reproduced in whole or in part, as + long as the source is clearly identified and appropriate credit + given.

+
+ +
+ Future Editions + +

Assuming there is some positive feedback on this idea, and that + future submissions get made such that there is content for future + issues, the goal is to release a development status report once a + month. As such, the next deadline will be July 31, 2001, with a + scheduled publication date in the first week of August. This will + put the status report on a schedule in line with the calendar, as + well as providing a little over a month until the next deadline, + which will include a number of pertinent events, including the + Annual USENIX Technical Conference in Boston, MA. Submissions + should be e-mailed to:

+ +
+ + robert+freebsd.monthly@cyrus.watson.org +
+ +

Many submitters will want to wait until the last week of July so + as to provide the most up-to-date status report; however, + submissions will be accepted at any time prior to that date.

+ +

+ -- Robert Watson < + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + > +

+
+ + + Binary Updater Project + + + + + Eric + + Melville + + + eric@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Murray + + Stokely + + + murray@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The FreeBSD Binary Updater Project aims to provide a secure + mechanism for the distribution of binary updates for FreeBSD. + This project is complementary to the Open Packages and libh + efforts and there should be very little overlap with those + projects. The system uses a client / server mechanism that allows + clients to install any known "profile" or release of FreeBSD over + the network. Where a specific profile might contain a specific + set of FreeBSD software to install, additional packages, and + configuration actions that make it more ideal for a specific + environment (ie FreeBSD 4.3 Secure Web Server Profile)

+ +

The system can currently be used to install a FreeBSD system + or perform the most simple of upgrades but many features are + absent. In particular, the client is in its infancy and much work + remains to be done. We need additional developers so please get + in touch with us at + updater@osd.bsdi.com + + if you are interested in spending some cycles on this.

+ + + + + "Close a PR drive" + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

Poul-Henning Kamp kicked off a drive to get our GNATS PR + database cleaned up so the wheat can be sorted from the chaff. + Progress is good, but there is still a lot of work to do. Give a + hand if you can. Remember: every unhandled PR is a pissed off + contributor or user.

+ + + + + CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy + + + + + Josef + + Karthauser + + + joe@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

I'm in the process of rewriting the CVSROOT/scripts to make + them more clean and configurable. A lot of other projects also + use these and so it makes sense to make them as easy to use in + other environments as possible.

+ +

Status: work in progress. There is now a configuration file, + but not all the scripts use it yet.

+ + + + + DEVFS + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work is progressing on implementing true cloning devices in + DEVFS. Brian Somers and Poul-Henning Kamp are working to make + if_tun the first truly cloning driver in the system. Next will be + the pty driver and the bpf driver.

+ +

From July 1st DEVFS will be standard in -current.

+ + + + + digi driver + + + + + Brian + + Somers + + + brian@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Added the digi driver. Initial work was done by John Prince + <johnp@knight-trosoft.com>, but all the modular stuff was + done by me and initial work on supporting Xe and Xi cards (ala + dgb) was done by me. I'm now awaiting an Xe card being sent from + joerg@ (almost a donation) so that I can get that side of things + working properly.

+ + + + + Diskcheckd + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

Ben Smithurst has written a "diskcheckd" daemon which will + read all sectors on the disks over a configured period. With + recent increases in disksizes it is by no means a given that disk + read errors will be discovered before they are fatal. This daemon + will hopefully result in the drive firmware being able to + relocate bad sectors before they become unreadable. This code is + now committed to 5.0-CURRENT.

+ + + + + if_fxp driver + + + + + Jonathan + + Lemon + + + jlemon@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

In the last month (May-June), the new fxp driver was brought + into -stable. This new driver uses the common MII code, so + support for new PHYs is easy to add. Support for the new Intel + 82562 chips was added. The driver was updated to add VLAN support + and a workaround for a bug affecting Intel 815-based boards.

+ + + + + Java Project + + + + + Greg + + Lewis + + + glewis@eyesbeyond.com + + + + +

The FreeBSD Java Project has continued its "behind the scenes" + work over the last month. Progress was made both technically, + with the help of Bill Huey (of Wind River), on a port of JDK + 1.3.1 and legally, with Nate Williams continuing negotiations + with Sun on a mutually acceptable license to release a binary + Java 2 SDK under. The JDK 1.2.2 port has also seen some + development, with a new patchset likely to be released soon which + includes JPDA and NetBSD support (the latter courtesy of Scott + Bartram).

+ + + + + Kernel Graphics Interface port + + + + + Nicolas + + Souchu + + + nsouch@fr.alcove.com + + + + + + +

The Kernel Graphics Interface project has worked for several + years to provide a framework for graphic drivers under Linux + receiving input from other groups like the UDI project. Currently + the KGI core implementation is quite settled, as is the driver + coding model as a whole. Work is being done to newbussify KGI and + produce a kld, as part of a future redesign of the graphics + subsystem in FreeBSD. KGI will be an alternative for graphic card + producers that don't accept the XFree86 model of userland graphic + adapters and will also provide accelerated support for any other + graphic alternative.

+ + + + + libh Project + + + + + Alexander + + Langer + + + alex@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Nathan + + Ahlstrom + + + nra@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The libh project is a next generation sysinstall. It is + written in C++ using QT for its graphical frontend and tvision + for its console support. The menus are scriptable via an embedded + tcl interpreter. It has been growing functionality quite a bit + lately, including a new disklabel editor. Current work is on + installation scripts for CDROM, FTP, ... installs as well as a + fully functional standalone disk-partition and label editor. The + GUI API was extended a little and many bugs were fixed. There + seems to be some interest in i18n work.

+ + + + + Mount(2) API + + + + + Poul-Henning + + Kamp + + + phk@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Maxime Henrion is working on implementing a new and more + extensible mount(2) systemcall, mainly to overcome the 32 bits + for mountoptions limit, secondary goal to make it possible to + mount filesystems from inside the kernel.

+ + + + + OLDCARD pccard implementation + + + + + Warner + + Losh + + + imp@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

In the last two months, the OLDCARD pccard implemenation was + rototilled to within an inch of its life. Many new pci cardbus + bridges were added. Power handling was improved. PCI Card cardbus + bridges are nearly supported and should be committed in early + June to the tree. This will likely be the last major work done on + OLDCARD. After pci cards are supported, work will shift to + improving NEWCARD.

+ + + + + PowerPC Port + + + + + Benno + + Rice + + + benno@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The PowerPC port is proceeding well. All seems to be working + in pmap.c after a number of problems encountered where FreeBSD + passes a vm_page_t to a NetBSD-derived function that expects a + vm_offset_t. Then after debugging the atomic operations code, I'm + now at the point where VM appears to be initialised and it's now + hanging while in sys/kern/kern_malloc.c:kmeminit(). Progress + continues. =)

+ + + + + PPP + + + + + Brian + + Somers + + + brian@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Developing full MPPE support for Andre Opperman @ Monzoon in + Switzerland. Work is now complete and will eventually be brought + into -current, but no dates are yet known.

+ + + + + pseudofs + + + + + Dag-Erling + + Smorgrav + + + des@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Pseudofs is a framework for pseudo-filesystems, like procfs + and linprocfs. The goal of pseudofs is twofold:

+ +
    +
  • eliminate code duplication between (and within) procfs and + linprocfs
    • + +
  • isolate procfs and linprocfs from the complexities of the + vfs system to simplify maintenance and further + development.
    • +
+ +

Pseudofs has reached the point where it is sufficiently + functional and stable that linprocfs has been almost fully + reimplemented on top of it; the only bit that's missing is the + proc/<pid>/mem file.

+ +

The primary to-do item for pseudofs right now is to add + support for writeable files (which are required for procfs, and + are quite a bit less trivial to handle than read-only files). In + addition, pseudofs needs either generic support for raw + (non-sbuf'ed, possibly mmap'able) files, or failing that, + special-case code to handle proc/<pid>/mem.

+ + + + + RELNOTESng + + + + + Bruce + + A. Mah + + + bmah@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

RELNOTESng is the name I've given to the rewrite of the *.TXT + files that typically accompany a FreeBSD release. The information + from these files (which include, among other things, the release + notes and the supported hardware list) have been reorganized and + converted to SGML. This helps us produce the documentation in + various formats, as well as facilitating the maintainence of + documentation for multiple architectures. This work was recently + committed to -CURRENT, and I intend to MFC it to 4-STABLE before + 4.4-RELEASE.

+ + + + + SMPng Project + + + + + John + + Baldwin + + + jhb@FreeBSD.org + + + + + Jake + + Burkholder + + + jake@FreeBSD.org + + + + + SMP + + Mailing list + + + smp@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The SMPng project aims to provide multithreaded support for + the FreeBSD kernel. Currently the kernel still runs almost + exclusively under the Giant kernel lock. Recently, progress has + been made in locking the process group and session structures as + well as file descriptors by Seigo Tanimura-san. Alfred Perlstein + has also added in a giant lock around the entire virtual memory + (VM) subsystem which will eventually be split up into several + smaller locks. The locking of the VM subsystem has proved tricky, + and some of the current effort is focused on finding and fixing a + few remaining bugs in on the alpha architecture.

+ + + + + SMPng mbuf allocator + + + + + Bosko + + Milekic + + + bmilekic@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

mb_alloc is a new specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf + clusters. Presently, it offers various important advantages over + the old (status quo) mbuf allocator, particularily for MP + machines. Additionally, it is designed with the possibility of + future enchancements in mind.

+ +

Presently in initial review & testing stages, most of the + code is already written.

+ + + + + Sparc64 Port + + + + + Jake + + Burkholder + + + jake@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Work has (re)started on a port of FreeBSD to the UltraSPARC + architecture, specifically targeting PCI based workstations. Jake + Burkholder will be porting the kernel, and Ade Lovett has + expressed an interest in working on userland. Recent work on the + project includes:

+ +
    +
  • built a gnu cross toolchain targeting sparc64
    • + +
  • obtained remote access to an ultra 5 development machine + (thanks to emmy)
    • + +
  • developed a minimal set of headers and source files to + allow the kernel to be compiled and linked
    • + +
  • implemented a mini-loader which relocates the kernel, maps + it into the tlbs and calls it
    • + +
  • nabbed Benno Rice's openfirmware console driver which + allows printf and panic to work
    • +
+ +

At this point the kernel can be net-booted and prints the + FreeBSD copyright before calling code that is not yet + implemented. I am currently working on a design for the pmap + module and plan to begin implementation in the next few days.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD + + + + + Robert + + Watson + + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

The TrustedBSD Project seeks to improve the security of the + FreeBSD operating system by adding new security features, many + derived from common trusted operating system requirements. This + includes Access Control Lists (ACLs), Fine-grained Event Logging + (Audit), Fine-grained Privileges (Capabilities), Mandatory Access + Control (MAC), and other architecture features, including file + system extended attributes, and improved object labeling.

+ +

Individual feature status reports are documented seperately + below; in general, basic features (such as EAs, ACLs, and kernel + support for Capabilities) will be initially available in + 5.0-RELEASE, conditional on specific kernel options. A + performance-enhanced version of EAs is currently being targetted + at 6.0-RELEASE, along with an integrated capability-aware + userland, and MAC support.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD: ACLs + + + + + Chris + + D. Faulhaber + + + jedgar@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

Patches are now available to add ACL support to cp(1) and + mv(1) along with preliminary support for install(1). Ilmar's i18n + patches for getfacl(1) and setfacl(1) need to be updated for the + last set of changes and committed. Some other functional + improvements are also in the pipeline.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD Capabilities + + + + + Thomas + + Moestl + + + tmm@FreeBSD.org + + + + +

The kernel part of the capability implementation is mostly + finished; all uses of suser() and suser_xxx() and nearly all + comparisons of uid's with 0 have been converted to use the newly + introduced cap_check() call. Some details still need + clarification. More documentation for this needs to be done.

+ +

POSIX.2c-compatible getfcap and setfcap programs have been + written. Experimental capability support in su(1), login(1), + install(1) and bsd.prog.mk is being tested.

+ +

Support for capabilities, ACL's, capabilities and MAC labels + in tar(1) is being developed; only the capability part is tested + right now. Generic support for extended attributes is planned, + this will require extensions to the current EA interface, which + are written and will probably be committed to -CURRENT in a few + weeks. A port of these features to pax(1) is planned.

+ + + + + TrustedBSD MAC and Object Labeling + + + + + Robert + + Watson + + + rwatson@FreeBSD.org + + + + + + +

An initial prototype of a Mandatory Access Control + implementation was completed earlier this year, supporting + Multi-Level Security, Biba Integrity protection, and a more + general jail-based access control model. Based on that + implementation, I'm now in the process of improving the FreeBSD + security abstractions to simplify both the implementation and + integration of MAC support, as well as increase the number of + kernel objects protected by both discretionary and mandatory + protection schemes. Generic object labeling introduces a + structure not dissimilar in properties to the kernel ucred + structure, only it is intended to be associated with kernel + objects, rather than kernel subjects, permitting the creation of + generic security protection routines for objects. This would + allow the easy extension of procfs and devfs to support ACLs and + MAC, for example. A prototype is underway, with compiling and + running code and simple protections now associated with + sysctl's.

+ + + + diff --git a/en/news/status/report.xsl b/en/news/status/report.xsl new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..29fcef91a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/en/news/status/report.xsl @@ -0,0 +1,128 @@ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
    + + +
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    • +     +
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+ + + + + + +

+

+ + + + + + + +
+ + + + +

+ + Contact: < + mailto:> +
+ +

+ + + + +

+ + URL: + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ +

+ + + + + + +