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BSD NewsCopyright © 1999 Louis Bertrand
FreeBSD Adds Power to The MatrixA cluster of 32 FreeBSD machines provided Manex Visual Effects with extra power for the special effects in the eye-candy movie The Matrix.--BT Peyerl Resigns from NetBSD Core, BoardApril 19 - Herb Peyerl announced his resignation from the NetBSD project core team and management board, citing personal reasons. He explained he had made a one year commitment to the project, and that the year was up. The major reason he gave was the amount of time and effort required of a volunteer in this capacity. He will continue with technical and marketing roles. The Daemon News interview with Peyerl will appear in the June issue.--LB Internet Caching "Bake-off" Uses FreeBSD as TestbedAs demand grows on the Internet for WWW access, caching is seen as an attractive alternative to costly bandwidth upgrades.The results of the IRcache bake-off were announced April 2 at the 4th Internet Caching Workshop in San Diego, California. The contenders were Novell's ICS, InfoLibria, the open source Squid software and the Peregrine system developed by Pei Cao and her team at the University of Wisconsin. The entire testbed used to test the vendor's boxes was running on FreeBSD 2.2.7. The University of Wisconsin Peregrine system was running on a modified FreeBSD 3.1-STABLE machine.Watch for the full story in an upcoming issue of Daemon News. --JL USENIX '99The 1999 Annual USENIX Technical Conference takes place June 6-11, in Monterey, California. Developers from all three *BSDs are well represented in the Freenix track, which runs concurrently with other tracks in the technical program Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The FREENIX track offers peer-refereed papers, expert talks, and evening sessions led by the likes of Linus Torvalds, Kirk McKusick, Theodore Ts'o, Theo de Raadt, and other leading developers.Other activities include the Extreme Linux workshop, focusing on "Beowulf" supercomputer systems built out of off-the-shelf hardware, high-speed networking and the Linux OS, a dessert reception at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and a terminal room featuring FreeBSD workstations. USENIX Sponsors Freenix Project CD-ROMsUSENIX is providing grants to four freenix development projects, to support each of them in issuing new releases. CD-ROMs of FreeBSD 3.2, NetBSD 1.4, OpenBSD 2.5 and Debian Linux will be given free of charge to all 1999 Annual Conference technical session registrants. Previously, OpenBSD lead developer Theo de Raadt and USENIX director Hal Pomeranz had convinced the USENIX board to sponsor freenix projects. As a result, USENIX announced in March that it was sponsoring the production costs for OpenBSD 2.5 and also invited other proposals. Grants were given based on specific project needs. They helped defray CD-ROM production costs and promote further development.BOF SessionsBirds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions offer forums for like-minded people to freely exchange ideas in a less formal setting. Don't miss the one for Daemon News, Thursday, with editor Chris Coleman if you'd like to find out more about what goes on behind the scenes in a webzine.
TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1999
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1999<< to be announced >>
THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1999
--CD PRESS RELEASES AND ANNOUNCEMENTSOpenBSD 2.5 Release DetailsThe OpenBSD 2.5 CD-ROM is to be released May 19. The release includes many new features, updated man pages, improved hardware support and bug fixes. Post-2.5 development work has already started, with even a few patches reported. The back cover of the CD-ROM case gives credit to the USENIX association for underwriting the production costs.OpenBSD 2.5 may be the first freenix OS to ship with built-in library support for Netscape's de facto standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Navigating around patent restrictions, the as-shipped configuration of libssl only includes the DSA public key algorithm, but users will be able to download a replacement version of libssl that supports RSA. After rebooting, the server will be ready for https. The ssl(8) man page explains how it's done. The CD-ROM features professional artwork which will be made available on T-shirts, and due to many requests, the wire frame daemon T-shirt is being re-issued. --TdR NetBSD 1.4 ReleaseThe NetBSD 1.4 beta testing period began in April in anticipation of a full release May 12. The new release covers all supported hardware architectures. The release coincides with updates to the project web site and on-line documentation for several of the ports.New portmasters have been named: Ignatios Souvatzis for NetBSD/amiga, taking over from Christian E. Hopps, and Minoura Makoto for NetBSD/x68k, replacing Oki Masaru, who originally started the port in 1993 Some far reaching changes were made to the NetBSD Packages collection, notably support for using pkgsrc on Solaris, better handling of deinstallation and cleaning behaviour for pre-requisite packages, and more judicious use of su(1) when the package user is not root. Matthias Scheler has been tracking the frequent Gnome releases. -- HP & AGC FreeBSD 3.2 ReleaseDetails are still sketchy but FreeBSD 3.2 is scheduled for release May 15. Watch the release information page for official announcements.FreeBSD Handbook Converted To DocBook FormatThe FreeBSD Handbook has now been converted from the LinuxDoc SGML DTD to the DocBook DTD. Instead of marking up information in the Handbook with codes like "tt" for file names like "/etc/rc" (as was required with LinuxDoc) we can now use the more descriptive DocBook markup keywords "filename", and so on.This switch from 'presentational' markup to 'semantic' actually allows finer tuning over the presentation of the Handbook in a number of different formats, and will allow users to specify more exact queries when searching the FreeBSD documentation. The Handbook is now available in HTML and in a variety of other formats (plain text, PDF, Postscript, RTF) via ftp. --NC BUGS Down UnderBUGS is the new user group for *BSD users in Sydney (and NSW). The first meeting of BUGS will be on 16 May, midday at Hornsby. To find out more, join the mailing list by sending "subscribe bugs" in the body of an email addressed to majordomo@welearn.com.au or send a blank message to bugs-info@welearn.com.au for the latest info. --SB ROSKU Distributed, Fault-tolerant System ReleasedSpecial Design Bureau IKAR announces the first release of the ROSKU system for distributed management of systems. The system is implemented in C++ and Java and was developed on FreeBSD 2.2.6. It is designed to be scalable and portable to a variety of OS platforms.--PVA Apple Joins Open Source MovementApple Computer released the OS component of their Mac OS X server to the open source community under its own licence agreement. The open source OS layer, dubbed Darwin, is based on the Mach 2.5 microkernel and 4.4BSD environment. In a related move, Apple also released its Darwin streaming server as open source. The server is able to deliver Quicktime content, among other capabilities.--AJ Covalent Technologies announces release of Raven SSL 1.4.0Lincoln, NE — March 31, 1999 — Covalent Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of e-commerce solutions using the Apache web server platform, announces a new version of its Raven SSL security add-on for the Apache web server.Enhancements include DSO module support for easier server maintenance and incorporation of other Apache modules, as well as easier integration into an Apache web server. Raven SSL 1.4.0 includes Apache 1.3.6 support, a new certificate management interface, and many new configuration options. Distributions include a complete binary Apache server distribution and pre-patched Microsoft FrontPage support. Numerous platforms are supported, including AIX, Linux, Solaris, SGI IRIX, QNX, FreeBSD, and Digital UNIX. Windows NT and Data General support will soon be released.
BSD IN THE PRESSNetBSD Certified Mom-ReadyColumnist Linda Seebach reports in the Denver Rocky Mountain News that she is very happy with her NetBSD laptop, guaranteed Windows-Free.--PS The Oldest Free OS"Yahoo and Walnut Creek CD-ROM, two of the Web's busiest sites, run on FreeBSD" writes Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in Sm@rt Reseller Online (ZDNET). The article is a survey of the freenix *BSDs and the commercial BSD/OS.--BN Rising Support for BSDIn the March 16 Sydney Morning Herald, Nathan Cochrane acknowledges his email from BSD advocates and attempts to redress the pro-Linux imbalance of previous columns. The article is posted in the Fairfax I.T. News.--PJ Stepping Out of Linux's ShadowA quirky article by Sam Williams. The intrepid reporter infiltrates a meeting of the Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group.--JKH Usenix Columnist Draws NetBSD FlamesIn the April edition of the Usenix newsletter ;login columnist Rik Farrow angered NetBSD advocates by remarking "While Linux already runs on more different processors than any other operating system..." (You need a member login to read the column).--LB Microsoft-Owned Email Service Runs on FreeBSD, ApacheThe Register notes what many BSD advocates already knew. What's noteworthy is the speculation that NT/IIS wasn't used because Microsoft couldn't make it scale to handle the demand. Note the article appears to indicate that they're using FreeBSD on a SPARC. FreeBSD is used to serve the web pages and Solaris is used for the mail servers.--NH Why to BSD in a Linux WorldJason Downs details similarities and relative merits of the BSD projects compared to Linux, for a Linux audience. Keep trying the URL; Computer Bits run their web server on Linux, and it is down a lot.--JD FreeBSD Offers a Sound Open Source AlternativeJames C. Luh interviews Jordan K. Hubbard in Internet World, with the inevitable comparisons to Linux.--JKH Microsoft Reconsidering the Value of BenchmarksIn his Wide Angle column on the PCWeek March 29 Editorial & Opinion page, John Taschek takes Microsoft to task for disallowing benchmarks in their new software licenses: "And now Microsoft is starting to chicken out at a time when performance measurements are gaining in importance... The Yahoo [sic] site is running almost entirely on FreeBSD because of its reliability and performance." For a one-line throw-off, I just can't see how we could have done better.--WP Ex-Novell CEO Chooses FreeBSDIn a long interview in Investor's Business Daily, ex-Novell CEO Bob Frankenberg discusses why his new venture Encanto Networks Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif picked FreeBSD for the electronic-commerce services and software he offers for small businesses. The startup company also bundles FreeBSD with the computers it provides. Frankenberg explains that FreeBSD benchmarked two to three times faster than Linux in transaction processing, while Linux was more responsive for desktop operation.The article also touches on the open source movement and what it means for the future of Microsoft. Frankenberg says that capturing even five percent of the market would be an incredible accomplishment for Linux and *BSD, but Microsoft views any market share loss as unacceptable. (The article was only posted for one day on the Investor's Business Daily site). --NMH CONTRIBUTORSAGC Alistair G. CrooksAJ Aaron Jackson BN Bob Nestor BT Brett Taylor CD Cynthia Deno HP Herb Peyerl JKH Jordan K. Hubbard JL Jonathan Lemon NC N. Clayton NH Nick Hibma NMH Nicole Harrington PJ Peter Jeremy PS Peter Seebach PVA Pavel V. Antipov SB Sue Blake TdR Theo de Raadt WP Wes Peters
Louis Bertrand, louis@signalpath.on.ca
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