The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I've been experimenting with different frontends for Webkit.  Midori is a work in progress and found to be very limiting.  You can't download files yet.  Today, I started experimenting with Epiphany built on Webkit.  It is very promising.  It passes acid2 and most of acid3.  Newer versions supposedly pass acid3. 

However, it dies creating blog entries on just journal.  I'll have to try a newer version of Webkit. It's still fun to play with as most sites render better thant they do with Konquerer.

 I found a website that tracks users and topics of IRC chat rooms.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*--> <!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">  <service-group>     <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h filer</name>     <service>         <type>_smb._tcp</type>         <port>139</port>     </service> 

 find src -name CVS -prune -type d -print | xargs rm -r 

where src is the directory name.  

I was just reading the FabBSD website.  They seem to be forking OpenBSD for use with controllers and other machinery related projects.  That means there are at least two forks of OpenBSD now, one fork of NetBSD, two of FreeBSD (plus some commerical variants and distros), and zero for DragonFly, MirBSD and MidnightBSD.  it's getting crowded. :)

At least BSD is getting popular.

I've previously created a wiki document about the process to build a MidnightBSD release, but I haven't talked much about what goes on in version control.  

MidnightBSD uses CVS for our source repository.  Today, I created a new tag RELENG_0_3_BP.  This is the branch point, or start of the 0.3 branch that will become 0.3-RELEASE.  

One creates a tag like this:

/usr/src
# 
cvs update -P -d

The next step is to create a branch point  tag , so that diffs against the start of the branch are easier with CVS:

/usr/src
# 
cvs rtag RELENG_0_3_BP src

And then a new branch tag is created with:

/usr/src
# 
cvs rtag -b -rRELENG_0_3_BP RELENG_0_3 src

4K in Linux

 Anything before 2.6.33 doesn't support 4K very well.  Distros with tools dated after April, 2010 can handle alignment of 4K drives properly.

UFS & 4K

Performance issues exist with the defaults selected in FreeBSD.  Matt Dillon made some comments about what to do with UFS to get it to perform well. 

DES test program for FreeBSD

This program lets you test performance differences with different alignments (sectors) of the drives in FreeBSD and MidnightBSD.

GLabel patch for FreeBSD 9-CURRENT

This patch makes Glabel align properly when using a certain flag for 4k drives.

I found additional links that I used to work with the new hard drive after Thanksgiving.   I should explain what the problem is with these new drives.  For a very long time, the standard sector size was 512.  It's been that way so long that computer bioses, operating systems, and software programs assume this to always be the case.  Due to legacy issues with DOS and tricks used to increase drive capacity over the years, many hacks have been implemented that further limit options.  In order to pass the 2TB barrier, drive vendors have decided to make the drives use 4K sectors internally and then expose 512 sectors to the OS.  The drive has a firmware that converts between the two.  WD calls these advanced format drives.  Since the OS is lied to, it's hard for it to properly align partitions on the drive.  What does alignment matter?  If a partition is created on a boundary, it lines up with how the drive reads and writes data (in blocks).  This makes it run fast.  If it has to write to two blocks because of an alignment problem, it slows the drive down significantly.  Windows XP can't handle these new drives without some hacks.  Windows Vista and 7 can if the drive is formatted by them.  (not an upgrade from XP)  

Linux until 2.6.33 can't fully handle these drives.  FreeBSD can't handle these drives without manually partitioning to set the alignment.  It's a pain.  

More on the problem:

4K Sectors & Glabel patch info

WD EARS howto on FreeBSD forums

WD KB article on their drives

Microsoft performance & drive partitioning for SQL server