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FreeBSD News
New Record
Walnut Creek CDROM set the record of transferring 417 gigabytes of files
in one day, surpassing Microsoft Corporation's
record of transferring approximately 350 gigabytes of files per day
during the Windows95 release. Microsoft used more than 40 server
machines to achieve the previous record, while Walnut Creek CDROM used a
single 200MHz Intel Pentium Pro processor running FreeBSD.
Ports collection
The FreeBSD ports collection continues to
grow - there are now 1687 ports in the collection. There's been some restructuring
in the ports tree in an attempt to make things easier to find. In particular the
X11 category has been broken up into a number of separate categories:
- x11
- x11-clocks
- x11-fm (X11 file managers)
- x11-fonts
- x11-toolkits (Lesstif,gtk etc)
- x11-wm (X11 window managers
- deskutils (organizers, calendars etc)
Getting ready for 3.0-RELEASE
Preparatory work for the upcoming 3.0-RELEASE
is being done. One of the big challenges for this release is the conversion to ELF from
a.out. In particular, the conversion of the ports from a.out to ELF is being worked
on diligently. If you're interested in these issues you should be reading both the
freebsd-ports and freebsd-current mailing lists. The release date for 3.0-RELEASE is
scheduled for mid-October.
Brett Taylor
What's new in the world of NetBSD? Well, obviously it is difficult
to know how far back to go in the first article, but I'll start
with a few salient points, and conclude with a rant on USB.
New platforms
NetBSD continues to be ported to new platforms. At the leading
edge, salvation is at hand for those who have seen all those nice
UltraSPARC boxes going to waste, with Eduardo Horvath's
sparc64 port. It is still only running on the SBUS-based
Ultra1 and Ultra2 models, but progress is continuing.
Finally proving you can have one of the nicest looking Unix
machines around without having to run NeXTstep for the privilege,
Darrin Jewell's next68k port can now netboot and run via a
serial console well enough to compile itself. For a company that
was supposed to be open, it appears that NeXT out-shines even Apple
when it comes to keeping hardware documentation out of the hands of
those who could use it. One can understand their concern at the
possibility of a free operating system running on hardware they
haven't supported in a fair while seriously impacting their
sales... or maybe not.
Official NetBSD CD-ROMS
NetBSD finally has an official CD-ROM for the 1.3.2 release,
available from http://www.NetBSD.com/. It contains full source and binaries
for thirteen platforms, as well as package source. It is an
essential companion for those without fast Internet connections.
NetBSD gallery pages
NetBSD is starting to compile a list of sites running
NetBSD, and is in the process turning up a fair number of
interesting sites. Did you know that NetBSD is being used as a
cross-development platform for i960 and 68k router code and in
satellite-based bulk data delivery systems? While on the subject of
satellites, NASA will be measuring the microgravity environment on
the International Space Station using a distributed system
consisting of several PC104 ISA boxes running NetBSD 1.2.1 or
1.3.2. This is just one of the research
projects currently using NetBSD.
UVM - A new virtual memory system
For a long time now NetBSD has labored under the Mach VM (virtual
memory) system inherited from BSD 4.4 (labored being an apt
description, complete with much pain-filled grunting). The Mach VM
system was a very worthy research project, but it wasn't tuned to
provide the kind of services needed by Unix. The FreeBSD project
has spent a long time going through the code with a fine toothed
pickaxe, knocking it into something very respectable, but the
NetBSD version has lingered on like a strapped up broken table leg
- ugly, nothing you'd want to put any stress on, but
functional. This is finally changing with the introduction of Chuck
Cranor's new UVM
system, a complete reimplementation of the VM system based on
the 3.0 BSD VM system, and very much tuned for the requirements of
a Unix system. Many ports have already moved over to UVM, and the
remaining ports will follow.
NetBSD packages system
If any NetBSD users are not aware of the NetBSD
packages collection, they should at once descend from their
mountain refuges and rejoin the real world for long enough to
partake of it, either by downloading the large range of precompiled binaries, or in pure undiluted 'pkgsrc' form,
where it will automatically download an application's original
source, apply any necessary NetBSD patches, then compile and
install. The packages system was originally taken from the FreeBSD
'ports' system, but has been somewhat modified since then.
USB support
NetBSD now supports USB (Universal Serial Bus), but what is USB?
Intel announced a new standard which promises universal
compatibility, simpler peripheral design, and easy plug and play
for peripherals. Much to various people's surprise it actually
seems likely to live up to some of the claims. Microsoft released a
new operating system that supports it and suddenly everyone was
involved in an orgy of upgrading their PC hardware. Meanwhile
every other computer manufacturer who is more than marginally
interested in the mass market (that'll be Apple and Sun then)
announced their machines will also have this wonderful interface,
presumably so that in the future, owners of their hardware will
have something better than an American in Afganistan's chance of
finding peripherals.
Hands up, anyone who has even the slightest suspicion we'll
see truck loads of brain damaged hardware which works fine
under Windows, but does everything short of drilling holes in
the heads of non-Windows users on Intel and other hardware
alike (though there is probably a USB API for that). Of course
the hardware will be okay, since after all they'll comply with
the (Windows) standard, much like Plug and Play motherboards
that fail to initialize PCI chipsets (a direct violation of the
PCI spec), "because Windows works".
I actually think USB is a great idea (Apple had a somewhat
similar idea back at the dawn of time with ADB on Macs), and will
probably prove very successful, but I had to pick something
about which to rant.
David Brownlee
OpenBSD News
OpenBSD, a non-commercial UNIX-like operating system, takes on commercial
tactics in order to prove to the world that you do not need the backing of
a large company to provide a quality product.
Free software has become increasingly pervasive in today's society;
nevertheless, a primary concern of would-be consumers is the lack of
commercial support. CPIO Networks, an OpenBSD supportive company announced
plans to offer technical support and enterprise consulting services for OpenBSD.
Since August 10th, the San Jose based security consulting company
has been providing 24 hour on-call technical support for OpenBSD SPARC
and Intel platforms. Support levels range from novice user assistance
to custom kernel modifications, device driver development, and on site
support.
"This is something we've been planning for a long time. We think it
will be a wonderful boost for the OpenBSD project and free software in
general," said Jonathan Katz, CEO of CPIO Networks. "OpenBSD is
regarded as one of the most secure operating systems on the market
today-- commercial or freeware. With the assurance of world class,
around-the-clock technical assistance, your company can 'rest secure'
with OpenBSD and CPIO Networks." CPIO Networks plans to donate some of
their profits back to the OpenBSD project.
OpenBSD is a freely available operating system renowned for security
and a high quality code base. It runs on over ten platforms and
supports many commercial and free applications; the OS boasts binary
emulation, allowing users to run most SVR4, FreeBSD, Linux, BSDI,
SunOS, and HPUX programs on OpenBSD. Developers continually
review all OpenBSD code, ensuring that any potential security flaws
are corrected before they can develop into exploitable conditions.
OpenBSD ships with a firewall toolkit, including IP filtering and
network address translation. Unlike many other free operating systems,
OpenBSD boasts a centralized, coordinated development effort.
The operating system is governed by the BSD copyright, which allows
individuals and companies to incorporate OpenBSD code into their own products.
CPIO Networks is using OpenBSD as the basis for an all-in-one firewall
solution scheduled to debut in late 1998.
About the OpenBSD Project
Founded by Theo de Raadt in mid-1996, the OpenBSD project is the premier free
operating system project with a security-focused development effort. Having
evolved from 4.4BSD and the NetBSD code base, and boasting a multi-year
continuous security audit effort, OpenBSD has earned the trust of security
professionals the world over. For more information, visit the OpenBSD website
at http://www.openbsd.org.
Ejovi Nuwere
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