MidnightBSD Developer Journal

Our security officer patched the gzip vulnerability. mports work continues. New ports are added all the time. gcc 3.2, 4.1, 4.2 were added today. WindowMaker and various other ports have been added.

Yesterday, several ports were added to our new mports. I added a number of shells. I started working on adding gcc ports with gcc 4.0 already building. Another commiter started working on firefox.

gcc is the first step toward GNUstep support.

We still have a problem with ld's behavior that needs sorting. We are also investigating problems with the em driver after the recent updates.

Also, please send any issues related to tput to luke@midnightbsd.org.

There are some programming errors with gzip. We hope to have a patch by the end of the day in src.

In order to use mports, you must do the following:

checkout the mports from cvs. The CVSROOT is anoncvs@stargazer.midnightbsd.org:/home/cvs
password is anoncvs. Updated checkout information is always available on the midnightbsd website.

Next, you must edit /usr/share/mk/bsd.port.mk and change the PORTSDIR variable to /usr/mports

Finally, go into the directory and build whichever ports you need.

Progress is not as fast as I'd like, but we've had more commits in the last 24 hours than the whole week prior.

zip, unzip and unrar added to new archivers category.

We made the decision to start over with ports a bit. mports are a fork off a newer set of freebsd ports. Aside from newer software, we will not be importing broken ports. Anything you see should compile and build unless we are working on it specifically. It drastically lowers the number of ports, but should make it easier to know what will and will not work.

There is still discussion if we will keep it as mports or replace the existing ports module in cvs.

For now, we've included some packages on our ftp server for people who need xorg or a few other ports.

em, the Intel gigabit ethernet driver, has been updated from 6.0.5 to 6.1.4. There were reports of problems with connections at 100baseTX on the Dell gx260. We hope this may resolve the problem.

The bce driver supports two Broadcom gigabit cards. It has been included in GENERIC for i386 and amd64. The module and manpage require further work. This driver has not been tested. We need feedback on this.

Serveral ports have been updated. gcc 3.3, 3.4, 4.0 and 4.1 should build in i386 now. dri was fixed to correct problems for some with the xorg port.

The Mozilla suite and Firefox still do not build. We are working on that problem. Several other browsers do work including links, lynx, dillo, etc.

There are still issues with the GNUstep port we are actively working on. Getting gcc ports to build was the first step.

There are a few cases where the plist files are not just right yet. We still need to resolve those problems so ports uninstall properly and packages can be made. A few test packages were placed on our ftp server and some distfiles were mirrored there as well.

The GNUstep and Etoile developers have been very helpful so far. Thanks!

The gcc 3.4.6 port now works. I'm attempting to get gcc 3.3.6 to work as well.

Archite is working on a few reported problems with perl 5.8. I just added a patch to the perl5 port which allows it to build as well.

Cat has a new feature. The -p flag allows you to specify a date format and prepends the date to the beginning of each line of output. This is an easy way to log information through scripts, etc.

I'm in the process of testing the recent kernel and userland changes. The system seems rather stable so far. It might be a good time to update your systems.

I just added a new port, wpop3d, to the cvs repository. The port is a pop3 daemon. (obviously)

I patched MidnightBSD for the recent OpenSSL and BIND security vulnerabilities. This should keep us in sync with FreeBSD on security for the year to date.

I commited a patch to the ATA driver which corrects a few possible deadlock cases. Its not quite as good as it could be, but it should at least prevent some problems. It needs further testing as my development machine only has IDE optical drives. This may correct some of the problems noticed when deleting a large directory (rm -rf) or other highly intensive disk operations. I'll test upgrade another system when I get more time. Archite will also be testing the patch tonight.

This is the first real src commit in awhile. I've been busy with ports lately. Once the patch is tested, its strongly recommened you build a new kernel from it.

I'm in the process of making changes to the perl port after feedback from users. I'll post when its clear.

I've also had reports the time zone is not set properly in the installer. I have a feeling I will be working on the installer quite a bit soon.

On a side note, I noticed a post about localhost performance recently. FreeBSD is working on the low performance and determined its related to preemption. If you compile a new kernel without it, performance will improve in some cases.

The xorg port joins the small list of ports that we've tested and patched to work with MidnightBSD.  It is an old version, but it works. (6.8.2) 

Working: (note i have libtool15 installed)
perl 5.8.8, imake6, xorg 6.8.2, aterm, windowmaker, zsh, libtool15,  bash2, atk, glib 2.6.x, gtk+-2.6.10, pango 1.8.2

Failing:
libtool13, firefox (configure script failure)

I posted a snapshot of the ports on the ftp server.  It will be mirrored by ISC eventually.  I also started putting distfiles up.  The ports tree doesn't use it yet, but you can manually fetch the source if needed.

mergemaster was patched over the weekend.  It now correctly handles /etc changes. 

Archite created a list of security areas where we can improve in the default install. 

Most of my weekend was spent researching ports.  I posted a perl port update that allows perl 5.8.8 to build with default options.  Threaded perl is not guaranteed to work, etc.  Quite a few things depend on perl building including the x11 port. 

Archite is working on adding sudo to the default install.

We've received a lot of attention from GNUstep fans.  I think my choice to include GNUstep is the right one. 

I think I must clarifiy my position on licensing.   Anything going into the kernel must be BSD licensed.  Userland consists of software falling under several licenses.  Creating a GUI environment on all BSD licensed software does not seem possible.  I feel it is ok to use BSD or GPL software in an os environment, but do prefer BSD licensed software.  I do not have a problem with binary blobs in drivers, but wish to avoid them when possible.  I think OpenBSD has done some amazing work with their OSS drivers for WIFI, but as a desktop BSD I can not be so strict.  I do hope code sharing between MidnightBSD and the other BSDs will remain possible in the future.

Here is an informal list of software I am considering for MidnightBSD:

GNUstep (almost in the bag)
Etoile (including their window manager)
Firefox
Thunderbird
aterm
The gimp
gaim
A selection of GNUstep basded software.

I have not decided on an office application.  OpenOffice isn't exactly my favorite and its rather large.  It also requires java for some functionality. 

I've also received a lot of questions about the installation of MidnightBSD.  The installer is hard to use and its a stumbling block.  It will be replaced, but most likely not for .1 release.  I'm 50/50 between a graphical installer using x11 and a command line installer like bsdinstaller.  (DF, etc)

Ports are another hot topic.  I'm at a crossroads with ports.  FreeBSD style ports are tough to maintain.  I would have to fork ports and improve them as I go.  I don't personally have much interest in the ports infrastructure beyond a graphical management utility for end users similar to Fink on OSX or Ubuntu's add/remove features.  pkgsrc from NetBSD is a possibility down the road.  Right now it does not build.  The GNU config project who maintains the config.sub and config.guess files has not patched for MidnightBSD yet.  Any software using configure fails.  The patch is simple enough.  If you need to do this yourself for now, I suggest you look at FreeBSD or DragonFly's (especially DF) if its a recent copy of the files.  You'll see the changes you need to make.  Hopefully that project will patch soon. I've sent a patch to perl maintainers to add a midnightbsd.sh hints file to solve problems with that.  FreeBSD's hints file will allow it to build provided you hack out the old entries and adjust version number checks.  We are .1 and yet similar to 6.1 FreeBSD. 

If someone wants to join the project and work on ports infrastructure I'll fork it.  If someone wants to manage package builds and work with pkgsrc, I'll go that way.  Frankly I don't want to work on ports.  I have many other issues like the kernel, userland, and the gui environment to worry about.  In the short term, I'll simply maintain a freebsd ports fork which will have dated and often non-building software. :(

You can check out our ports from cvs using "ports".   portsnap will continue to point to freebsd ports for now and pkg_add -r will fetch from thier stable tree for now. 

A new snapshot was posted on the ftp and http server today. It should be mirrored by isc soon. The torrent still links to the old one and will be fixed in a few days.

Again, I had a focus on the kernel. I fixed a bug with usb keyboards where they'd start repeating keys, especially arrow keys! It started after my kbdmux update. So far so good. It mostly only occured in x11.

Some of the network card code was updated including vge and mii which it depends on. I also added the ifmedia_baudrate function from freebsd and netbsd.

hwpmc was updated but I don't know how well its working yet. In the process, I patched the vm's zeroidle and it seems peppy. I should start doing formal benchmarks with these changes. I can say the interactivlty imporved greatly.

I have one more kernel patch i'd like to apply before .1 release. The remaining work is all in userland. Mostly we need to get some ports working and get x11 installed. x11 will be installed as port to ease in upgrading and dependancy checking. I may ship an old version just to get something working out of the box soon.

userland should be fairly safe from a security perspective now. We are current on patches that have been added to freebsd up to this point. Our ports tree is very dated and some of that software is not safe I would imagine.