MidnightBSD current now includes the netpgp application and library from NetBSD. The software was based on the openpgpsdk; we have had a port of that for a few months. However, this is a significantly enhanced version with several bug fixes and active development.
We will of course track changes as this is an evolving piece of software. Thanks to Alistair Crooks for this exciting addition to the BSD community.
| 148 | 0.2.1 | amd64 | active | 2009-05-25 21:19:46 |
MidnightBSD 0.3-CURRENT now includes GCC 4.2.1 as the system compiler. I4B (ISDN for BSD) has been removed from the userland; previously it was removed from the kernel.
Several changes have been made to sysinstall recently, and I'm working on switching over to libarchive. In 0.3, bsdcpio (backed by libarchive) is exec'd for each install phase. 0.2 used pax as cpio and 0.1 used GNU cpio which was removed for security (and GPLv3) reasons. The installer now tries to figure out keyboard mappings from the user's selection of a country at the beginning. Tape install features were removed as they were quite dusty.
One may ask why I'm even bothering working on sysinstall at all. While I have started work on a new installer, I realized that it won't be at the level I would expect for 0.3 necessarily. Having a tuned sysinstall is a good backup and possibly the only option for the sparc64 architecture at this time. Also, it makes sense to work more in the problem domain with an existing piece of software and then improve upon it.
I'm planning on releasing a new snapshot soon with GCC 4.2.1 and the sysinstall improvements. I'd also like to create a new live cd (or dvd?) soon. I'm considering using xfce 4.x and possibly gnustep (if i can get the port using the system compiler quickly) on it along with midori. We'll see what transpires.
Lastly, I'd like to mention my current thoughts on pcc. I was excited about it at first, but at this point I don't think it makes sense for a default system compiler. We've got C++ code in userland, and with our Objective-C ambitions, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I haven't decided if I"m going to remove it or not from src yet. It very well may be disconnected from the build for the release unless I get time to fix it/update it. Both Dragonfly and FreeBSD have been eyeballing llvm + clang. I've got reservations about that just as much as I do about newer versions of GCC with GPLv3 licensing. Some members of the BSD community are strongly against the license and certainly it hurts business interests with the various projects. FreeBSD has a lot of corporate users and developers. On the other hand, we want to move forward with several GPLv3 licensed pieces of software in the installation for the graphical user interface components. So, even if i make some grand point with the src tree, it's lost with the package as a whole anyway. I don't really care all that much about it beyond the limitations it imposes on use of my operating system. I've been contemplating this issue (and others) lately as I'm thinking of writing a very public roadmap. This project has been moving forward mostly from some mini roadmaps I've detailed in my blog and this blog in the past, ideas I've had for years and work done by new developers. The flexibility is great, but many people don't know where we're headed and that means we can't gain momentum with more conservative users. I have to admit that I like a bit of randomness to software I write in my own time. It does seem like a fresh contrast to work. However, this is an operating system project and should have a higher level of planning. (and yes we do discuss major changes amongst developers)
If you refer to the wiki planning document for 0.3, you can see that we're working on a feature release. The critical points for this release are the new installer, libmport / mport package tools, and the crazy src merge I've been working on. The good news is that libmport and mport tools are in "pre alpha" state and they are ready for selective testing now. You can find them in the src tree, but remember that the database and other aspects could dramatically change. A large part of the "merge" is complete. That leaves the installer.
Here's a big picture thought process as of right now:
1. 0.3 will contain the changes mentioned above and install either KDE 3.5.10 or xfce or windowmaker + gnustep. Many of our developers have fallen in love with xfce (not me), none of us are very happy with KDE 4 and we feel it's redundant to ship KDE as PC-BSD and DesktopBSD do that. Not to mention it doesn't integrate well with GNUstep. For this release it will be a choice.
2. Most likely we're doing a 0.4 release which will focus on syscons and refinements to the installer. I'm sure some hardware and userland software changes will be committed.
3. We're talking about going to 1.0 after 0.4 among the developers. Regardless which it is, we want to have a binary update system in place by then. Also, usb flash images suitable for installs and live cd/dvd functionality. The latter I'd like for 0.3 ideally. It depends on time.
Finally, I'd like to mention Etoile. They've made some progress with Etoile and we need to get the new software running on our system via mports. I'm not sure the timing will work out for 1.0 but we will still consider shipping Etoile with the system. At this point, I think a Redhat style dual desktop setup is in order (choice during install?) with xfce and some gnustepish environment.
At the end of the day, this project is no longer just about what I wanted when I started it. Users and developer input is important to consider with any open source project, particularly an operating system. At present, I've heard a lot of people push for either a very light weight desktop or a very mac os x like desktop.
We've been doing some spring cleaning on the website. Most of the pages validate as XHTML now. The footer and many links have been fixed. The documentation pages have been broken up and expanded a bit.
Committers: if you see any pages that need to validate or need some TLC, feel free to fix them.
MidnightBSD is now a group on facebook.
tags: facebook
Current is building again. The problems with the openssh 5.2 import have been fixed. mksh was updated the other day as well from CVS.
Yesterday, I added several new features to sysinstall and removed some old code. sysinstall nows prompts you to select a country on startup so that it can help you pick keyboard mappings, etc. I removed the option for tape drives that according to freebsd activity hasn't worked in years. I also got rid of the block size options since the newer installer uses bsdcpio aka libarchive backed. I also fixed some of the messages regarding the boot loader and a warning for vista users. The boot manager does not support vista yet. There are alternatives such as gag or using vista's own boot manager. Finally, i added a new option to enable powerd from the installer. It's now disabled by default (again) due to so many systems freezing on startup with it on. I suggest you use it if it works for you.
re(4) and the usb stack have been fixed in relation to my Asus motherboard. If you have an 8169 part from Realtek, you may need to turn of hardware checksums, but otherwise it's working. 0.3-CURRENT as of yesterday is required for the Asus M4A78 Plus.
Users of vge(4) can now turn of hardware checksumming.
There are a few other fixes like AMD GEODE USB/EHCI chip workaround, reporting of cpu features on newer AMD chips (phenoms)
New mports:
converters:
p5-Unicode-Map
p5-Unicode-Map8
p5-Unicode-MapUTF8
p5-Jcode (japanese)
devel:
p5-Package-Constants
security:
p5-Crypt-SmbHash
Updated mports:
mail/dovecot
editors/mg
The onboard USB controller causes a lockup on boot on the Asus M4A78 Plus. It's an AMD 770 chipset. The onboard NIC is also not supported. Disabling the usb controller completely and rebooting will allow you to get into the system with a ps/2 keyboard.
tags: motherboard asus amd hardware ati support
KDE 3.5.10 base is working in 0.2.1. kde-lite is failing on ghostscript. I'm looking into that problem.
You can use konquerer and some of the basics now (again).
location: Home
I just added an experimental version of ae(4) used by some of the eee pcs. We've now got versions of ae(4) and ale(4) which should cover all the models right now. I don't have the hardware to do serious testing though.
I'm working on updating X.org, and mports are a little unstable right now. There's also some issues with the openssh import (just config files) that need to be addressed.
mports/net/samba33 is a new Samba 3.3 port. It is under the GPLv3. The previous port will stay for some time. (samba3) We have no plans to port 3.2.
mports/net/smbldap-tools will aid users wishing to use ldap with the new samba 3.3.
We also updated cups to correct a security vulnerability today.
Today, I added a first pass at ale(4), the ethernet driver for eee pc and asus motherboards. Anyone with this type of hardware, please test on CURRENT (as of today) module. It's not included in the GENERIC kernel, you'll have to manually build the kernel module. This is also dependent on another change so your kernel will have to be built with today's sources first.
Unlike the freebsd implementation, we don't support wake on lan.
We had a great improvement with the latest magus run over the last run. Note the number is not the number of ports blocked, but rather a weighted value for it's importance in the run.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
x11-toolkits/gtk20: 986
devel/libIDL: 773
x11/xphelloworld: 85
sysutils/xfconf4: 31
devel/libsoup: 9
java/diablo-jdk15: 9
devel/subversion: 7
devel/libgtop: 6
graphics/graphviz: 5
lang/ghc: 3
graphics/ImageMagick: 3
lang/ezm3: 2
lang/ocaml: 2
textproc/libxml++26: 1
x11-themes/etoile-wildmenus: 1
x11/kdebase4-runtime: 1
devel/etoile-foundation: 1
audio/linux-libogg: 1
java/jakarta-commons-lang: 1
Stats:
updated ports:
mports/textproc/libxml++26/
mports/lang/p5-F77/
mports/lang/p5-Data-JavaScript/
mports/devel/pear (fixed)
mports/x11-drivers/xf86-input-fpit/ (fixed)
mports/Mk/extensions/perl5.mk: (fixed with system perl)
mports/misc/wmweather+
mports/misc/p5-Geography-Countries
mports/mbone/xspeakfree
mports/mbone/wb
mports/mbone/speak_freely
mports/mbone/udpcast
mports/mail/wmymail
mports/mail/razor-agents
For users interested in upgrading to current, there are two paths. You can install the 0.3 snapshot from january and then do a src upgrade or you can upgrade from 0.2.1-RELEASE-p7. In the latter case, you must delete the src/usr.bin/Makefile line for perl. It is safe to build system perl after the update to current. This will be fixed at a later time. Once you are on current you can optionally build the system perl (and reinstall your ports using perl files) or leave the ports perl for now. You can also uncomment the pcc line if you want to play with it.
We've recently completed a new magus run, while the results were not perfect they were much better than expected. 63 ports failed, but due to some ports that are highly used many others were not built. Here is a list of the top blocking ports from the run:
graphics/libGLU: 284 devel/gamin: 218 x11/xdpyinfo: 86 x11/xphelloworld: 85 x11-fonts/xfs: 85 x11/xkbutils: 85 devel/dbus-qt4: 59 devel/automoc4: 59 devel/qt4-assistant: 44 devel/qt4-uic3: 41 devel/qt4-makeqpf: 28 x11/qimageblitz: 16 devel/qt4-porting: 14 java/diablo-jdk15: 9 devel/subversion: 7 graphics/graphviz: 5 lang/ghc: 3 graphics/ImageMagick: 3 devel/qca: 3 graphics/qt4-pixeltool: 2 lang/ocaml: 2 lang/ezm3: 2 devel/llvm: 1 textproc/qt4-xmlpatterns-tool: 1 devel/etoile-foundation: 1 audio/libofa: 1 audio/linux-libogg: 1 graphics/ming: 1 x11-themes/etoile-wildmenus: 1 audio/vorbis-tools: 1 x11-clocks/wmbinclock: 1 java/jakarta-commons-lang: 1 textproc/raptor: 1
We've had two cvs servers for awhile, but let's get a third: kitty.midnightbsd.org is now a pserver cvs mirror with updates 4 times a day.