MidnightBSD Developer Journal

I've added several german mports this morning including additional aspell and ispell dictionaries, acrobat reader and staroffice.

Ubuntu published a security vulnerability on screen yesterday.  I've already patched the mport.

A new snapshot was released yesterday for i386.  It includes improved hardware support for ATI and Intel graphics cards as well as Intel ICH8 support.  mpt, vge, pci, usb, and a slew of other device s were synced with FreeBSD 6.1 Release or 6-Stable.  We've also updated base and it includes a recent mports tarball with around 450 ports! 

Installation Notes:
1. packages are still not bundled on the isos.  The holdup is python support.  We need to either rewrite the package split script or get python running correctly (preferred).  Python modules are not loading in our experimental port and its marked broken.  Do not try to install xorg or other packages in the installer as you will get annoying error messages.  This is by far the largest holdup to 0.1 Release.

2. If you have a recent motherboard such as the Intel DP965LT with a third party sata to pata interface on the motherboard, it may not detect your cdrom drives.  You can use a usb cdrom to install in this case.

3. If you'd like to update your mports, use anonymous cvs as posted on the website.  The tar.gz file on the ftp is older than the one included in this release. 

Hardware:

This release is solely for i386, but I'm attempting to cross compile an amd64 snapshot.  If all goes well, I will post it on the ftp today or tomorrow. 

Testing:
This release has been tested on three systems.  All three have Intel processors of various ages... PIII Xeon 550mhz on Generic,  Xeon P4 2.0Ghz SMP, D805 2.66 Dual Core.  Sadly I no longer have an AMD system to test with.

Feedback:
Please report any issues on our forum.

Download:
You can get this release on the MidnightBSD FTP server or the ISC mirror.

I've isolated the problem with OpenSSH. OpenSSH 4.4p1 requires strtonum. Archite commited it 2 months ago, but he forgot to add it to stdlib.h :)

As such, the function didn't have a correct prototype and caused the function which reads /etc/ssh/moduli to always hit its error handler.

The mport version now appears to work properly. I'll try base later.

Our first OpenGL game is working under MidnightBSD. Enemy Territory was running with the nvidia freebsd binary driver tonight at about 70fps @ 1024 x 768 on a GeForce 7300 pcie card while compiling gcc on a dual core 2.66 Pentium D.

For ET fans, there appears to be some kick issues on the server I tested tonight. It could be a cvar violation in relation to "linux" checks. I need to sleep so I won't be investigating it further tonight.

The system is running a kernel from late yesterday prior to the last few commits with SSE.

On a side note, I noticed the generic ide controller detection is picking up the single pci channel on my intel motherboard but not the drives connected to it. There is more information on this in the forum under general hardware support.

ata, fdc, kbdmux, usb, mpt, atkbd, vge, random, pci, and ahb.

Phil's been hard at work with mports lately. In the last few days he's imported postgresql, php5, aide, mhash, php5-mysql, mplayer, mplayer-skins, xvid, mail/spamd, www/neon, pwgen, bitlbee, postgresql-plruby, p5-DBD-pg, and postgresql-docs.

I'm also added linux-firefox and linux-firefox-devel updates.

I've spent a good part of the day updating support for various hardware devices. MidnightBSD now supports Intel ICH8 sata chipsets including the version found on the Intel DP965LT Motherboard. Fixes were imported for usb, atkbd, kbdmux, and kbd. The mpt driver used by several LSI SCSI and Fibre Channel controllers was udated, although it has not be extensively tested yet.

If you purchase a newer system with an unsupported PATA controller like that included with the above mentioned intel board, you can install MidnightBSD using a USB cd/dvd drive. There are some issues with some usb devices and midnightbsd. If you have difficulty, try booting a freebsd 6.2 beta cd. You can install freebsd and then build and install midnightbsd from source. Remember the kernel will not sync well with userland so you must do an installworld before rebooting. You can always install the kernel and boot off kernel.old to installworld if you wish to test first. I'm hoping the new USB driver updates might help with this problem. I've noticed it with a Pioneer DVD burner which is also known to be a bit odd in OS X and Windows.

Firefox 2.0 was added to mports on Tuesday.  The www/linux-firefox port is now firefox2.  linux-firefox-devel is now an october release of firefox 3.0a.

FreeBSD recently announced some of the SoC project results.  We've been reviewing a few of the projects for possible inclusion in MidnightBSD.  Two of the ports changes have been added to MidnightBSD's mports.  WITH_DEBUG allows you to add common debug flags (-g) or a specified flag to ports to allow them to compile with debuging turned on.  This could be useful for port maintainers.  Some mports already have a WITH_DEBUG option.  We've also fixed some of the erroneous uses of ECHO_CMD and replaced it with ECHO_MSG.  For details on the differences, please consult the  bsd.port.mk file in your mports/Mk directory. 

I realize many of you are waiting for unique features in MidnightBSD.  We are working on some new things, but we also want to track FreeBSD enhancements as long as possible.  All the BSD projects share from one another and someday we hope to contribute useful code back to the community. 

Our security officer has been working on some very interesting improvements.  I've been working on several projects at the same time including Python patches, fixing installation problems with the ISOs, and working on adding support for the intel ICH8 chipset used in my new desktop.  The IDE controller is not detected on bootup but all sata controllers are working in compatibility mode. 

I've commited some minor changes to rm (1) and ls (1) today along with some corrections to the amd (8) rc startup script. 

On the GNUstep front, installer changes must be made to add GNUstep and its environment.  This can not be completed until the installer allows ports to be installed, etc.

A list of apps to include in a default install have not been determined yet.  A word processor, text editor, email client, web browser and media player are obvious needs.  I'd like a good sampling of GNUstep applications with the system.  I'm going to look at the GNUstep live cd for ideas, but any additional thoughts could be left on our website forums in the GNUstep section.  In fact, any applications that you want in base, please post there.  We'd love to know what users or potential users actually want or need.  Please specify if you *need* it or just want it.  As a BSD project, we don't want to include too much where it feels big (4CD redhat install is bad for instance)  Our installer should be smaller than Windows Vista + Visual Studio or Mac OS X including developer tools. (hopefully smaller than that)

So far we have been unsuccessful getting Etoile to run on MidnightBSD.  Our current plan is to roll out GNUstep and some basic apps with our installer first and then revisit Etoile.  This will give their project more time to improve the system and will give us time to get essential components ready.  If etoile does not work out, we'll go down a different path. 

We've had increasing pressure to release a release lately.  I realize everyone is anxious, but I also know we will be heavily judged on this first release. 

A new snapshot including the fixed to em and updates to ata was posted on the FTP server.  There are also possible fixes for installing mports during install and setting time zones.

More updates to ata will be commited in due time. 

Also, we had talked about releasing a beta a few weeks ago.  We decided to hold off until the installer issues are fixed.  There is also a possible problem with the OpenSSH updates which we must test and correct if necessary.

I started working on ata tonight. src might be broken on and off during the weekend as i work on it.

Archite is working on mtree and security scripts.

Wintellect has been commiting some ports. Cherokee was added on the 11th. OpenBox and xli were commited earlier in the week.

Development has slowed down this week. Most commiters are quite busy right now. I'm personally still working on getting MidnightBSD to support my new computer.

Just an FYI, buildworld and buildkernel are working again. I'm running both on the servers. The OpenSSH update appears to have worked fine.

dmesg
Copyright (c) 2006 The MidnightBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1992-2006 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
MidnightBSD 0.1-PRERELEASE #0: Mon Oct 9 01:27:25 EDT 2006
laffer1@stargazer.midnightbsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP
ACPI APIC Table:
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.00GHz (1993.58-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0xf27 Stepping = 7
Features=0xbfebfbff
Features2=0x4400>
Hyperthreading: 2 logical CPUs
real memory = 1073172480 (1023 MB)
avail memory = 1041076224 (992 MB)
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 8
ioapic1: Changing APIC ID to 9
ioapic2: Changing APIC ID to 10
ioapic0 irqs 0-23 on motherboard
ioapic1 irqs 24-47 on motherboard
ioapic2 irqs 48-71 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
npx0: [FAST]
npx0: $on\; motherboard$
npx0: INT 16 interface
acpi0: on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x808-0x80b on acpi0
cpu0: on acpi0
acpi_button0: on acpi0
pcib0: port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0: on pcib0
pcib1: mem 0xc0000000-0xcfffffff at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: on pcib1
pci1: at device 0.0 (no driver attached)
pci1: at device 0.1 (no driver attached)
pcib2: at device 2.0 on pci0
pci2: on pcib2
pci2: at device 28.0 (no driver attached)
pcib3: at device 29.0 on pci2
pci3: on pcib3
em0: port 0xdcc0-0xdcff mem 0xff6e0000-0xff6fffff irq 24 at device 14.0 on pci3
em0: Ethernet address: 00:0d:56:f1:ab:2e
em0: [FAST]
pci2: at device 30.0 (no driver attached)
pcib4: at device 31.0 on pci2
pci4: on pcib4
mpt0: port 0xcc00-0xccff mem 0xff4e0000-0xff4fffff,0xff4c0000-0xff4dffff irq 50 at device 14.0 on pci4
mpt0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
mpt0: MPI Version=1.2.9.0
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0xa.
mpt0: mpt_wait_req timed out
mpt0: read_cfg_header timed out
uhci0: port 0xff80-0xff9f irq 16 at device 29.0 on pci0
uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb0: on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhci1: port 0xff60-0xff7f irq 19 at device 29.1 on pci0
uhci1: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb1: on uhci1
usb1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhci2: port 0xff40-0xff5f irq 18 at device 29.2 on pci0
uhci2: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb2: on uhci2
usb2: USB revision 1.0
uhub2: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub2: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
ehci0: mem 0xffa20000-0xffa203ff irq 23 at device 29.7 on pci0
ehci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb3: EHCI version 1.0
usb3: companion controllers, 2 ports each: usb0 usb1 usb2
usb3: on ehci0
usb3: USB revision 2.0
uhub3: Intel EHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub3: 6 ports with 6 removable, self powered
pcib5: at device 30.0 on pci0
pci5: on pcib5
fwohci0: mem 0xff0ff800-0xff0fffff,0xff0f8000-0xff0fbfff irq 20 at device 12.0 on pci5
fwohci0: OHCI version 1.10 (ROM=0)
fwohci0: No. of Isochronous channels is 4.
fwohci0: EUI64 86:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00
fwohci0: Phy 1394a available S400, 2 ports.
fwohci0: Link S400, max_rec 2048 bytes.
firewire0: on fwohci0
fwe0: on firewire0
if_fwe0: Fake Ethernet address: 86:ff:ff:ff:ff:00
fwe0: Ethernet address: 86:ff:ff:ff:ff:00
fwe0: if_start running deferred for Giant
sbp0: on firewire0
fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
fwohci0: node_id=0xc800ffc0, gen=1, CYCLEMASTER mode
firewire0: 1 nodes, maxhop <= 0, cable IRM = 0 (me)
firewire0: bus manager 0 (me)
isab0: at device 31.0 on pci0
isa0: on isab0
atapci0: port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xffa0-0xffaf at device 31.1 on pci0
ata0: on atapci0
ata1: on atapci0
pci0: at device 31.3 (no driver attached)
fdc0: port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on acpi0
fdc0: [FAST]
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: port 0x60,0x64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0: irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: model IntelliMouse Explorer, device ID 4
sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on acpi0
sio0: type 16550A, console
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: at iomem 0xc0000-0xcbfff,0xcc000-0xcffff,0xe0000-0xe17ff,0xe1800-0xe3fff on isa0
ppc0: parallel port not found.
sc0: at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
vga0: at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 1993577736 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
ad0: 76293MB at ata0-master UDMA100
acd0: CDRW at ata1-master UDMA33
Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
da0 at mpt0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da0: 80.000MB/s transfers (40.000MHz, offset 63, 16bit), Tagged Queueing Enabled
da0: 70007MB (143374738 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 8924C)
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a
em0: link state changed to UP

The kernel is compiling again in src. I'm testing it so i don't know how stable it is yet.

dmesg
Copyright (c) 2006 The MidnightBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1992-2006 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
MidnightBSD 0.1-PRERELEASE #2: Thu Oct 12 14:55:44 EDT 2006
laffer1@enterprise.midnightbsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron (546.33-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x673 Stepping = 3
Features=0x383fbff
real memory = 536862720 (511 MB)
avail memory = 515997696 (492 MB)
ACPI APIC Table:
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 1
ioapic0 irqs 0-23 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
npx0: [FAST]
npx0: $on\; motherboard$
npx0: INT 16 interface
acpi0: on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x808-0x80b on acpi0
cpu0: on acpi0
pcib0: port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0: on pcib0
agp0: mem 0xf0000000-0xf3ffffff at device 0.0 on pci0
pcib1: at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: on pcib1
pci1: at device 0.0 (no driver attached)
pcib2: at device 2.0 on pci0
pci2: on pcib2
ahc0: port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xf9fff000-0xf9ffffff irq 16 at device 6.0 on pci2
ahc0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
aic7860: Ultra Single Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 3/253 SCBs
isab0: at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: on isab0
atapci0: port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xffa0-0xffaf at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: on atapci0
ata1: on atapci0
uhci0: at device 7.2 on pci0
uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
usb0: on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
pci0: at device 7.3 (no driver attached)
ahc1: port 0xdc00-0xdcff mem 0xfe000000-0xfe000fff irq 20 at device 8.0 on pci0
ahc1: [GIANT-LOCKED]
aic7890/91: Ultra2 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
vge0: port 0xd800-0xd8ff mem 0xfe001000-0xfe0010ff irq 21 at device 10.0 on pci0
miibus0: on vge0
ciphy0: on miibus0
ciphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto
vge0: Ethernet address: 10:00:60:50:01:1a
fdc0: port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on acpi0
fdc0: [FAST]
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: port 0x60,0x64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0: irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: model IntelliMouse, device ID 3
sio0: configured irq 4 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio0: port may not be enabled
sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on acpi0
sio0: type 8250 or not responding
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff,0xc8000-0xcd7ff,0xcd800-0xcdfff on isa0
ppc0: parallel port not found.
sc0: at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
vga0: at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 546330083 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
ses0 at ahc1 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
ses0: Fixed Processor SCSI-2 device
ses0: 3.300MB/s transfers
ses0: SAF-TE Compliant Device
da0 at ahc1 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing Enabled
da0: 17366MB (35566499 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 2213C)
da1 at ahc1 bus 0 target 2 lun 0
da1: Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da1: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing Enabled
da1: 17366MB (35566499 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 2213C)
cd0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 5 lun 0
cd0: Removable CD-ROM SCSI-2 device
cd0: 20.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 15)
cd0: Attempt to query device size failed: NOT READY, Medium not present
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a
vge0: link state changed to UP

Today i've continued work on restoring the source tree. I just did some minor changes to the website including removing the bit torrent link and sending people to the ftp server. I'll fix the www and torrent links when we do a release. Its just easier for snaps to leave it like this for now. I also placed a link to the forum on the first page. Some people have had trouble finding it.

Not to sound like an MSDN newsletter, but its snowing here!

The 4.4p1 import is complete, however the tree is still not compiling.  Over the weekend, we switched server hardware and the old system was very flaky.  It appears a few files were damaged on the cvs server.  We are gradually fixing or replacing the files, but it appears a few makefiles were damaged and they are fun to hunt down. 

The website was down due to a hardware swap out.  I replaced the existing "server" with my workstation.  The old system was an amd sempron 2300+ with 768mb ram, 80gb ide, 2x 80gb sata raid 1.  The new setup is a Dell Precision 650 workstation with 2 intel xeon 2.0Ghz processors, the above mentioned IDE disk and a 76GB seagate U160 scsi disk.  The sata raid was very unstable on the msi board.  I suspect the nforce2 sata raid controller was a bit flaky.  Regardless, the precision has been used to build releases up to this point so its fairly stable. 

The upside is that my new system is a Pentium D 805 so I will be able to support AMD64/EMT64 releases in the future. 

I've made a few minor changes to the boot/loader code this morning. The changes should fix problems with some HP/Compaq computers and the general size of the boot2 code should be a bit smaller.

I also looked at the report about the boot menu specifying FreeBSD. I could easily change the code to simply print BSD as it does for all other BSD systems. I'll hold off on that change until the other boot changes are verified.

On the topic of OpenSSH, raven has been delayed finishing the work.

I've also researched the dri/drm reports a bit. Our dri code matches the code in FBSD 6.1 Release. There have been recent commits to fix a few things, notably the intel 945 chipset. I may look at importing those later. Until we get a newer xorg version in ports, it won't make much difference.

The timezone issue should be resolved with the installer and while running tzsetup.

TODO: remove some of the alpha code in boot, etc. Consider importing bzip2 changes for boot when they are finished. Look into upgrading xorg to 7.x.

The problem with the installer is related to an error reading /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab with the tzsetup command. The installer actually calls that program to setup timezones during install. It is the source of the reported problem.