This report covers FreeBSD related projects between January and + March 2007. This quarter ended with a big bang as a port of Sun's + critically acclaimed ZFS was added to the tree and thus will be + available in the upcoming FreeBSD 7.0 release. Earlier this year + exciting benchmark results showed the fruits of our SMP work. Read + more on the details in the "SMP Scalability" report.
+ +During the summer, FreeBSD will once again take part in Google's + Summer of Code initiative. Student selection is underway and we are + looking forward to a couple of exciting projects to come.
+ ++ BSDCan + + is approaching rapidly, and will be held May 16-19th in Ottawa.
+ +Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! We hope you + enjoy reading.
+The + Schedule + + and the + + Tutorials + + have been released. Once again, we have a very strong collection of + + + Speakers + + .
+ +BSDCan: Low Cost. High Value. Something for Everyone.
+ +Everyone is going to be there. Make your plans now.
+ +We have added Remko Lodder to the bugmeister team. Remko has + been doing a great deal of work to go through antique PRs, + especially in the i386 category, and it was time to recognize that + hard work. As a result of his work the i386 count is at a + multi-year low.
+ +Remko has also been instrumental in working with some new + volunteers who are interested in finding out how they can + contribute. Our current plans are to ask them to look through the + PR backlog and, firstly, ask for feedback from the submitters, and + secondly, identify PRs that need action by committers. We also have + some committers who have volunteered to review those PRs. If you + are interested in helping, please subscribe to + bugbusters@FreeBSD.org. Our thanks to our current helpers, + including Harrison Grundy.
+ +The overall PR count has dropped to around 5100, a significant + reduction.
+ +The sixth EuroBSDCon will take place at + Symbion + + in Copenhagen, Denmark on Friday the 14th and Saturday 15th of + September 2007.
+ +The + estimated + + price for the two day conference is 200EUR, excluding + Legoland + + trip and social event. The whole-day trip to Legoland is expected + to cost around 130EUR including transportation, some food on the + way, and entry fee. Arrangements have been made with a newly + renovated + + Hostel + + which offers beds for 23EUR per night and 10EUR breakfast. A lounge + with sponsored Internet connection will be available at the Hostel. + Staying at the hostel is of course entirely optional and several + Hotels exists in the area. Reservation for the conference and exact + prices are expected to be ready no later than 1st of May.
+ +As of this writing 10 presentations have been accepted and more + are in the process of being evaluated.
+ +For FreeBSD Developers, a by invitation Developers summit will + be held in connection with the conference. Exactly when this will + take place has not yet been decided.
+ +We are still looking for more sponsors.
+ +A public IRC channel + #eurobsdcon + + on EFnet has been created for discussion and questions about the + conference.
+ +More details will follow on the + EuroBSDCon 2007 web site + + as they become available.
+ +There are currently two p4 branches being used for this work: + gnn_fast_ipsec: a dual stack branch which contains both Kame and + FAST_IPSEC with v6 enabled. gnn_radical_ipsec: a single stack + branch, still in progress, where Kame IPsec has been removed and + only FAST remains.
+ + +The FreeBSD Foundation ended Q1 raising over $65,000. We're a + quarter of the way to our goal of raising $250,000 this year. We + continued our mission of supporting developer communication by + helping FreeBSD developers attend AsiaBSDCon. We are a sponsor of + BSDCan and are currently accepting travel grant applications for + this conference.
+ +The foundation provided support that helped the ZFS file system + development. We continued working to upgrade the project's network + testbed with 10Gigabit interconnects. We attended SCALE where we + received an offer from No Starch Press to include a foundation ad + in their BSD books. Our first ad will appear in the book "Designing + BSD Rootkits."
+ +For more information on what we've been up to, check out our + website at + + http://www.freebsdfoundation.org + + .
+ +A version of GCC 4.1 is being prepared for inclusion into + FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT. Work was started late in 2006 but progress on + certain technical points (e.g. correctly integrating and + bootstrapping a shared libgcc_s into the build) was slow due to + lack of developer time. The remaining outstanding issue is that + compiling with -O2 is shown to lead to runtime failures of certain + binaries (e.g. some port builds); it is not currently known whether + these are due to application errors or GCC miscompilations. It is + believed that the current snapshot is otherwise ready for + inclusion, and this will likely happen within a week or two.
+ +The above URL documents some work done around January to build + an emulation layer for the Linux kernel API that would allow Linux + device driver to be built on FreeBSD with as little as possible + modifications. Initially the project focused on USB webcams, a + category of devices for which there was basically no support so + far. The emulation layer, available as a port ( + devel/linux-kmod-compat + + ) simulates enough of the Linux USB stack to let us build, from + unmodified Linux sources, two webcam drivers, also available as + ports ( + multimedia/linux-gspca-kmod + + and + multimedia/linux-ov511-kmod + + ), with the former supporting over 200 different cameras.
+ +While some of the functions map one-to-one, for others it was + necessary to build a full emulation (e.g. collecting input from + various function calls, and then mapping sets of Linux data + structures into functionally equivalent sets of FreeBSD data + structures). But overall, this project shows that the software + interfaces are reasonably orthogonal to each other so one does not + need to implement the full Linux kernel API to get something + working. More work is necessary to cover other aspects of the Linux + kernel API, e.g. memory mapping, PCI bus access, and the network + stack API, so we can extend support to other families of + peripherals.
+ + +Since the last status report AMD64 was feature synced with i386. + Notably TLS and futexes are now available on AMD64. Many thanks to + Jung-Uk Kim for doing the TLS work.
+ +Currently the focus is to implement the *at() family of linux + syscalls and to find and fix the remaining futex problems.
+ +We need some more testers and bug reporters. So if you have a + little bit of time and a favorite linux application, please play + around with it on -CURRENT. If there is a problem, have a look at + the Wiki if we already know about it and report on emulation@. We + are specially interested in reports about the 2.6 compatibility + (sysctl compat.linux.osversion=2.6.16), but only with the most + recent -current and maybe with some patches we have in the perforce + repository (available from the wiki).
+ +We would like to thank all the people which tested the changes / + submitted patches and thus helped improve the linux compatibility + environment.
+ +malloc(3) has recently been enhanced to reduce memory overhead, + fragmentation, and mapped memory retention. As an added bonus, it + tends to be a bit faster. See the above URL for my email to the + -current mailing list for a more detailed description of the + enhancements.
+ +Stable release 4.1 of mpd4 branch was released in February + providing many new features and fixes. Mpd3 branch was declared + legacy.
+ +Since the release several new features have been implemented in + CVS:
+ +ng_car node has been updated, to support shaping and very fast + Cisco-like rate-limiting. ng_ppp node has been completely + re-factored to confirm to the protocol stack model.
+ + +The ports count is nearing 17,000. The PR count has been stable + at around 700. The 'new port' PR backlog is at a multi-year low. We + appreciate all the hard work of our ports committers.
+ +Since the long 6.2 release cycle ended, portmgr has once again + been able to do experimental ports runs. As a result of six + run/commit cycles, the portmgr PR count is now the lowest in quite + some time. Please see the CHANGES and UPDATING files for details. + Many thanks to Pav among others for keeping the build cluster + busy.
+ +We have received new hardware, resulting in a significant + speedup of our package building capability: the AMD64 package + builds now use 4 8-core machines (and one lonely UP system), which + means a full AMD64 build is about 5 times faster than it was. Also, + the i386 cluster gained an 8-core and roughly doubled its + performance too. Two of the sparc64 build machines have recently + brought back online, so package builds there have been restarted + there after a long period offline.
+ +linimon continues to work on improvements to portsmon to allow + graphing of the dependent ports of ignored/failed ports. This work + will be presented at BSDCan. In addition, pages that show the state + of port uploads on ftp*.FreeBSD.org have been added, as well as + ports that have NO_PACKAGE set. Also, the individual port overview + page now shows the latest package that has been uploaded to the ftp + servers for each buildenv.
+ +A number of absent maintainers have been replaced by some new + volunteers who had been sending PRs to update and/or fix their + ports. Welcome! This helps to spread the workload.
+ +Since the last report, support for FreeBSD 4.X has been dropped + from the Ports Collection. Anyone still using RELENG_4 should have + stayed with the ports infrastructure as of the RELENG_4_EOL tag, as + later commits remove that support. 4.X served us long and well but + the burden of trying to support 4 major branches finally became too + much to ask of our volunteers. Use of 4.X, even with the + RELENG_4_EOL tag, is no longer recommended; we recommend either + 6.2-RELEASE or RELENG_6, depending on your needs.
+ +There have been new releases of the ports tinderbox code, the + portmaster update utility, and portupgrade. A new utility, + pkgupgrade, has been introduced by Michel Talon, which appears + interesting.
+ +KDE was updated to 3.5.6.
+ +GNOME was updated to 2.18.
+ +XFree86 version 3 was removed as being years out of date.
+ +We have added 3 new committers since the last report.
+ + +During the past quarter, the Release Engineering team has begun + planning and preparing for FreeBSD 7.0, which is scheduled for + release later in 2007. The HEAD codeline has been placed in a + "slush" mode, meaning that large changes should be coordinated with + the Release Engineering team before being committed.
+ +The RE team also produced snapshots of FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE and + 7.0-CURRENT for February and March 2007, corresponding roughly to + the state of those development branches at the start of the + respective months. While they have not had the benefit of extensive + testing, and should not be used in production, they can be useful + for experimenting with or testing new features.
+ +In the time since the last status report, one security advisory + has been issued concerning a problem in the base system of FreeBSD; + this problem was in "contributed" code maintained outside of + FreeBSD. In addition, several Errata Notices have been issued in + collaboration with the release engineering team, including one + concerning FreeBSD Update. The Vulnerabilities and Exposures Markup + Language (VuXML) document has continued to be updated by the + Security Team and Ports Committers documenting new vulnerabilities + in the FreeBSD Ports Collection; since the last status report, 21 + new entries have been added, bringing the total up to 890.
+ +The following FreeBSD releases are supported by the FreeBSD + Security Team: FreeBSD 5.5, FreeBSD 6.1, and FreeBSD 6.2. Of + particular note, FreeBSD 4.11 and FreeBSD 6.0 are no longer + supported. The respective End of Life dates of supported releases + are listed on the web site.
+ +Over the past few months there has been a substantially + increased focus on improving scalability of FreeBSD on large SMP + hardware. This has been driven in part by the new availability of + 8-core hardware to the project, which allows easy profiling of + scalability bottlenecks and benchmarking of proposed changes. + Significant progress has been made on certain application workloads + such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, with the result that FreeBSD 7 now + has excellent scaling to at least 8-CPU systems with prospects for + further improvements. Progress with other application workloads has + been limited by the need to set up a suitable test case; please + contact me if you are interested in helping. As part of this + general effort, work is progressing steadily on removing the last + remaining Giant-locked code from the kernel. A complete list of + remaining Giant-locked code is found here: + + http://wiki.freebsd.org/SMPTODO + + Many of these sub-tasks have owners, but some do not. The major + remaining Giant-locked subsystem with no owner is the TTY + subsystem. In parallel, profiling of contention and bottlenecks in + other subsystems has lead to a number of experimental changes which + are being developed. Work is in progress by Jeff Roberson and + Attilio Rao to break up the global scheduler spinlock in favor of a + set of per-CPU scheduling locks, which is expected to improve + performance on systems with many CPUs. Experimental changes by + Robert Watson to allow for multiple netisr threads show good + promise for improving loopback IP performance on large SMP systems, + which can otherwise easily saturate a single netisr thread. A + variety of other changes are being profiled and evaluated to + improve SMP performance under various workloads. The majority of + these changes are collected in the //depot/user/kris/contention/ + Perforce branch.
+ +Work has completed to port over trunk(4) from OpenBSD and this + also includes merging 802.3ad LACP from agr(4) in NetBSD. This + driver allows aggregation of multiple network interfaces as one + virtual interface using a number of different + protocols/algorithms.
+ +This will be committed shortly, further testing is welcome.
+ +During the last three months not too much has changed. Here is a + quick list of changes:
+ +In my last status report I asked for access to Sparc64 boxes + with FreeBSD installed. Testing is ongoing and some problems remain + with EHCI PCI Cards. I am not exactly sure where the problem is, + but it appears that DMA-able memory does not get synced + properly.
+ +Markus Brueffer is still working on the USB HID parser and + support. Nothing has been committed yet.
+ +Several people have reported success with my new USB stack. Some + claim 2x improvements, others have seen more. But don't expect too + much.
+ +If you want to test the new USB stack, checkout the USB perforce + tree or download the SVN version of the USB driver from my USB + homepage. At the moment the tarballs are a little out of date.
+ +Ideas and comments with regard to the new USB API are welcome at + freebsd-usb@freebsd.org .
+ +Work is slowly continuing on this driver, focusing mainly on + dealing with the newly released firmware for the card. The old + firmware was not redistributable, the new firmware can be + redistributed but has a completely different API. With the new + firmware changes almost complete, the driver is approaching a state + ready for -CURRENT.
+ + +X.Org 7.2 is now on final approach for landing into the ports + tree. Work had proceeded at a slow pace for the first few months of + the year due to reduced availability of flz@, the single developer + working on integration. Recently lesi@ was recruited back into the + task and readiness of the ports collection was pushed to completion + (i.e. there are no major regressions apparent on package builds). + The remaining tasks which need to be completed are a review of the + diff to make sure no unintentional changes or regressions slip in + to the CVS tree in the big merge, and completion of an upgrade + script to manage the migration from X.Org 6.9 (X.Org 7.2 is so + fundamentally different that it cannot be upgraded "automatically" + using the existing tools like portupgrade). We hope to have these + finished within a week or two, at which stage the ports collection + will be frozen for the integration, and we will likely remain in a + ``mini-freeze'' for a week or two in order to focus committer + attention on resolving the inevitable undetected problems which + will emerge from this major change.
+ +The ZFS file system in now part of the FreeBSD operating system. + ZFS was ported from the OpenSolaris operating system and is under + CDDL license. As an experimental feature ZFS will be available in + FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE.
+ +This report covers FreeBSD related projects between January and + March 2007. This quarter ended with a big bang as a port of Sun's + critically acclaimed ZFS was added to the tree and thus will be + available in the upcoming FreeBSD 7.0 release. Earlier this year + exciting benchmark results showed the fruits of our SMP work. Read + more on the details in the "SMP Scalability" report.
+ +During the summer, FreeBSD will once again take part in Google's + Summer of Code initiative. Student selection is underway and we are + looking forward to a couple of exciting projects to come.
+ ++ BSDCan + + is approaching rapidly, and will be held May 16-19th in Ottawa.
+ +Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! We hope you + enjoy reading.
+The + Schedule + + and the + + Tutorials + + have been released. Once again, we have a very strong collection of + + + Speakers + + .
+ +BSDCan: Low Cost. High Value. Something for Everyone.
+ +Everyone is going to be there. Make your plans now.
+ +We have added Remko Lodder to the bugmeister team. Remko has + been doing a great deal of work to go through antique PRs, + especially in the i386 category, and it was time to recognize that + hard work. As a result of his work the i386 count is at a + multi-year low.
+ +Remko has also been instrumental in working with some new + volunteers who are interested in finding out how they can + contribute. Our current plans are to ask them to look through the + PR backlog and, firstly, ask for feedback from the submitters, and + secondly, identify PRs that need action by committers. We also have + some committers who have volunteered to review those PRs. If you + are interested in helping, please subscribe to + bugbusters@FreeBSD.org. Our thanks to our current helpers, + including Harrison Grundy.
+ +The overall PR count has dropped to around 5100, a significant + reduction.
+ +The sixth EuroBSDCon will take place at + Symbion + + in Copenhagen, Denmark on Friday the 14th and Saturday 15th of + September 2007.
+ +The + estimated + + price for the two day conference is 200EUR, excluding + Legoland + + trip and social event. The whole-day trip to Legoland is expected + to cost around 130EUR including transportation, some food on the + way, and entry fee. Arrangements have been made with a newly + renovated + + Hostel + + which offers beds for 23EUR per night and 10EUR breakfast. A lounge + with sponsored Internet connection will be available at the Hostel. + Staying at the hostel is of course entirely optional and several + Hotels exists in the area. Reservation for the conference and exact + prices are expected to be ready no later than 1st of May.
+ +As of this writing 10 presentations have been accepted and more + are in the process of being evaluated.
+ +For FreeBSD Developers, a by invitation Developers summit will + be held in connection with the conference. Exactly when this will + take place has not yet been decided.
+ +We are still looking for more sponsors.
+ +A public IRC channel + #eurobsdcon + + on EFnet has been created for discussion and questions about the + conference.
+ +More details will follow on the + EuroBSDCon 2007 web site + + as they become available.
+ +There are currently two p4 branches being used for this work: + gnn_fast_ipsec: a dual stack branch which contains both Kame and + FAST_IPSEC with v6 enabled. gnn_radical_ipsec: a single stack + branch, still in progress, where Kame IPsec has been removed and + only FAST remains.
+ + +The FreeBSD Foundation ended Q1 raising over $65,000. We're a + quarter of the way to our goal of raising $250,000 this year. We + continued our mission of supporting developer communication by + helping FreeBSD developers attend AsiaBSDCon. We are a sponsor of + BSDCan and are currently accepting travel grant applications for + this conference.
+ +The foundation provided support that helped the ZFS file system + development. We continued working to upgrade the project's network + testbed with 10Gigabit interconnects. We attended SCALE where we + received an offer from No Starch Press to include a foundation ad + in their BSD books. Our first ad will appear in the book "Designing + BSD Rootkits."
+ +For more information on what we've been up to, check out our + website at + + http://www.freebsdfoundation.org + + .
+ +A version of GCC 4.1 is being prepared for inclusion into + FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT. Work was started late in 2006 but progress on + certain technical points (e.g. correctly integrating and + bootstrapping a shared libgcc_s into the build) was slow due to + lack of developer time. The remaining outstanding issue is that + compiling with -O2 is shown to lead to runtime failures of certain + binaries (e.g. some port builds); it is not currently known whether + these are due to application errors or GCC miscompilations. It is + believed that the current snapshot is otherwise ready for + inclusion, and this will likely happen within a week or two.
+ +The above URL documents some work done around January to build + an emulation layer for the Linux kernel API that would allow Linux + device driver to be built on FreeBSD with as little as possible + modifications. Initially the project focused on USB webcams, a + category of devices for which there was basically no support so + far. The emulation layer, available as a port ( + devel/linux-kmod-compat + + ) simulates enough of the Linux USB stack to let us build, from + unmodified Linux sources, two webcam drivers, also available as + ports ( + multimedia/linux-gspca-kmod + + and + multimedia/linux-ov511-kmod + + ), with the former supporting over 200 different cameras.
+ +While some of the functions map one-to-one, for others it was + necessary to build a full emulation (e.g. collecting input from + various function calls, and then mapping sets of Linux data + structures into functionally equivalent sets of FreeBSD data + structures). But overall, this project shows that the software + interfaces are reasonably orthogonal to each other so one does not + need to implement the full Linux kernel API to get something + working. More work is necessary to cover other aspects of the Linux + kernel API, e.g. memory mapping, PCI bus access, and the network + stack API, so we can extend support to other families of + peripherals.
+ + +Since the last status report AMD64 was feature synced with i386. + Notably TLS and futexes are now available on AMD64. Many thanks to + Jung-Uk Kim for doing the TLS work.
+ +Currently the focus is to implement the *at() family of linux + syscalls and to find and fix the remaining futex problems.
+ +We need some more testers and bug reporters. So if you have a + little bit of time and a favorite linux application, please play + around with it on -CURRENT. If there is a problem, have a look at + the Wiki if we already know about it and report on emulation@. We + are specially interested in reports about the 2.6 compatibility + (sysctl compat.linux.osversion=2.6.16), but only with the most + recent -current and maybe with some patches we have in the perforce + repository (available from the wiki).
+ +We would like to thank all the people which tested the changes / + submitted patches and thus helped improve the linux compatibility + environment.
+ +malloc(3) has recently been enhanced to reduce memory overhead, + fragmentation, and mapped memory retention. As an added bonus, it + tends to be a bit faster. See the above URL for my email to the + -current mailing list for a more detailed description of the + enhancements.
+ +Stable release 4.1 of mpd4 branch was released in February + providing many new features and fixes. Mpd3 branch was declared + legacy.
+ +Since the release several new features have been implemented in + CVS:
+ +ng_car node has been updated, to support shaping and very fast + Cisco-like rate-limiting. ng_ppp node has been completely + re-factored to confirm to the protocol stack model.
+ + +The ports count is nearing 17,000. The PR count has been stable + at around 700. The 'new port' PR backlog is at a multi-year low. We + appreciate all the hard work of our ports committers.
+ +Since the long 6.2 release cycle ended, portmgr has once again + been able to do experimental ports runs. As a result of six + run/commit cycles, the portmgr PR count is now the lowest in quite + some time. Please see the CHANGES and UPDATING files for details. + Many thanks to Pav among others for keeping the build cluster + busy.
+ +We have received new hardware, resulting in a significant + speedup of our package building capability: the AMD64 package + builds now use 4 8-core machines (and one lonely UP system), which + means a full AMD64 build is about 5 times faster than it was. Also, + the i386 cluster gained an 8-core and roughly doubled its + performance too. Two of the sparc64 build machines have recently + brought back online, so package builds there have been restarted + there after a long period offline.
+ +linimon continues to work on improvements to portsmon to allow + graphing of the dependent ports of ignored/failed ports. This work + will be presented at BSDCan. In addition, pages that show the state + of port uploads on ftp*.FreeBSD.org have been added, as well as + ports that have NO_PACKAGE set. Also, the individual port overview + page now shows the latest package that has been uploaded to the ftp + servers for each buildenv.
+ +A number of absent maintainers have been replaced by some new + volunteers who had been sending PRs to update and/or fix their + ports. Welcome! This helps to spread the workload.
+ +Since the last report, support for FreeBSD 4.X has been dropped + from the Ports Collection. Anyone still using RELENG_4 should have + stayed with the ports infrastructure as of the RELENG_4_EOL tag, as + later commits remove that support. 4.X served us long and well but + the burden of trying to support 4 major branches finally became too + much to ask of our volunteers. Use of 4.X, even with the + RELENG_4_EOL tag, is no longer recommended; we recommend either + 6.2-RELEASE or RELENG_6, depending on your needs.
+ +There have been new releases of the ports tinderbox code, the + portmaster update utility, and portupgrade. A new utility, + pkgupgrade, has been introduced by Michel Talon, which appears + interesting.
+ +KDE was updated to 3.5.6.
+ +GNOME was updated to 2.18.
+ +XFree86 version 3 was removed as being years out of date.
+ +We have added 3 new committers since the last report.
+ + +During the past quarter, the Release Engineering team has begun + planning and preparing for FreeBSD 7.0, which is scheduled for + release later in 2007. The HEAD codeline has been placed in a + "slush" mode, meaning that large changes should be coordinated with + the Release Engineering team before being committed.
+ +The RE team also produced snapshots of FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE and + 7.0-CURRENT for February and March 2007, corresponding roughly to + the state of those development branches at the start of the + respective months. While they have not had the benefit of extensive + testing, and should not be used in production, they can be useful + for experimenting with or testing new features.
+ +In the time since the last status report, one security advisory + has been issued concerning a problem in the base system of FreeBSD; + this problem was in "contributed" code maintained outside of + FreeBSD. In addition, several Errata Notices have been issued in + collaboration with the release engineering team, including one + concerning FreeBSD Update. The Vulnerabilities and Exposures Markup + Language (VuXML) document has continued to be updated by the + Security Team and Ports Committers documenting new vulnerabilities + in the FreeBSD Ports Collection; since the last status report, 21 + new entries have been added, bringing the total up to 890.
+ +The following FreeBSD releases are supported by the FreeBSD + Security Team: FreeBSD 5.5, FreeBSD 6.1, and FreeBSD 6.2. Of + particular note, FreeBSD 4.11 and FreeBSD 6.0 are no longer + supported. The respective End of Life dates of supported releases + are listed on the web site.
+ +Over the past few months there has been a substantially + increased focus on improving scalability of FreeBSD on large SMP + hardware. This has been driven in part by the new availability of + 8-core hardware to the project, which allows easy profiling of + scalability bottlenecks and benchmarking of proposed changes. + Significant progress has been made on certain application workloads + such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, with the result that FreeBSD 7 now + has excellent scaling to at least 8-CPU systems with prospects for + further improvements. Progress with other application workloads has + been limited by the need to set up a suitable test case; please + contact me if you are interested in helping. As part of this + general effort, work is progressing steadily on removing the last + remaining Giant-locked code from the kernel. A complete list of + remaining Giant-locked code is found here: + + http://wiki.freebsd.org/SMPTODO + + Many of these sub-tasks have owners, but some do not. The major + remaining Giant-locked subsystem with no owner is the TTY + subsystem. In parallel, profiling of contention and bottlenecks in + other subsystems has lead to a number of experimental changes which + are being developed. Work is in progress by Jeff Roberson and + Attilio Rao to break up the global scheduler spinlock in favor of a + set of per-CPU scheduling locks, which is expected to improve + performance on systems with many CPUs. Experimental changes by + Robert Watson to allow for multiple netisr threads show good + promise for improving loopback IP performance on large SMP systems, + which can otherwise easily saturate a single netisr thread. A + variety of other changes are being profiled and evaluated to + improve SMP performance under various workloads. The majority of + these changes are collected in the //depot/user/kris/contention/ + Perforce branch.
+ +Work has completed to port over trunk(4) from OpenBSD and this + also includes merging 802.3ad LACP from agr(4) in NetBSD. This + driver allows aggregation of multiple network interfaces as one + virtual interface using a number of different + protocols/algorithms.
+ +This will be committed shortly, further testing is welcome.
+ +During the last three months not too much has changed. Here is a + quick list of changes:
+ +In my last status report I asked for access to Sparc64 boxes + with FreeBSD installed. Testing is ongoing and some problems remain + with EHCI PCI Cards. I am not exactly sure where the problem is, + but it appears that DMA-able memory does not get synced + properly.
+ +Markus Brueffer is still working on the USB HID parser and + support. Nothing has been committed yet.
+ +Several people have reported success with my new USB stack. Some + claim 2x improvements, others have seen more. But don't expect too + much.
+ +If you want to test the new USB stack, checkout the USB perforce + tree or download the SVN version of the USB driver from my USB + homepage. At the moment the tarballs are a little out of date.
+ +Ideas and comments with regard to the new USB API are welcome at + freebsd-usb@freebsd.org .
+ +Work is slowly continuing on this driver, focusing mainly on + dealing with the newly released firmware for the card. The old + firmware was not redistributable, the new firmware can be + redistributed but has a completely different API. With the new + firmware changes almost complete, the driver is approaching a state + ready for -CURRENT.
+ + +X.Org 7.2 is now on final approach for landing into the ports + tree. Work had proceeded at a slow pace for the first few months of + the year due to reduced availability of flz@, the single developer + working on integration. Recently lesi@ was recruited back into the + task and readiness of the ports collection was pushed to completion + (i.e. there are no major regressions apparent on package builds). + The remaining tasks which need to be completed are a review of the + diff to make sure no unintentional changes or regressions slip in + to the CVS tree in the big merge, and completion of an upgrade + script to manage the migration from X.Org 6.9 (X.Org 7.2 is so + fundamentally different that it cannot be upgraded "automatically" + using the existing tools like portupgrade). We hope to have these + finished within a week or two, at which stage the ports collection + will be frozen for the integration, and we will likely remain in a + ``mini-freeze'' for a week or two in order to focus committer + attention on resolving the inevitable undetected problems which + will emerge from this major change.
+ +The ZFS file system in now part of the FreeBSD operating system. + ZFS was ported from the OpenSolaris operating system and is under + CDDL license. As an experimental feature ZFS will be available in + FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE.
+ +Use the xml
generator or download and edit the
@@ -38,6 +38,13 @@
These status reports may be reproduced in whole or in part, as long as the
source is clearly identified and appropriate credit given. The January-March, 2007 Status Report is now
+ available with 19 entries.2007
+
+
+
2006
diff --git a/share/sgml/news.xml b/share/sgml/news.xml
index 8c5c3611ec..7f4ebae64a 100644
--- a/share/sgml/news.xml
+++ b/share/sgml/news.xml
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@