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Domain: bsdforums.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bsdforums.org.
Stories · 188
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FreeBSD Project Launches New Website
UltimaGuy writes "The FreeBSD Project has launched a new website today. The new design was created by Emily Boyd, a student at Smith College that they had the pleasure of working with through Google's Summer of Code program. The old website is also still available." -
BSDForums Interviews Scott Long
Dan writes that BSDForums is featuring and interview with FreeBSD's Scott Long. Scott fills us in on some of the new things in FreeBSD 6.0 including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64, and wireless compatibility. In addition to specifics Scott also abstracts on the overall snapshot of BSD development with respect to OpenBSD, NetBSD and the ongoing debate between BSD vs. Linux. -
OpenSSH 4.2 released
BSDForums writes "OpenSSH 4.2 has been released. OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol version 1.3, 1.5 and 2.0 implementation and includes sftp client and server support. Changes since OpenSSH 4.1 include security bug fixes relating to GatewayPorts, and GSSAPI, which eliminates the risk of credentials being inadvertently exposed to an untrusted user/host. A new compression method, proactive changes for signed vs. unsigned integer bugs, and many additional bugfixes and improvements highlight this release." -
FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices
BSDForums writes "FreeBSD is hoping to move beyond the server and desktop market by providing expanded wireless support. FreeBSD developer Scott Long said that 'one of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.'" -
Open-source Licensing: BSD or GPL?
BSDForums.org writes "Mark Brewer of Covalent Technologies argues BSD is better for the enterprise. As open source licensing models, both the Berkeley Software Distribution license and the General Public License have advantages and disadvantages. But in the end, the BSD offers more benefits to enterprise customers. Matt Asay of Novell makes the case for GPL. He says, no one open source license is ideal in every circumstance. Different licenses serve different ends. Berkeley Software Distribution-style licenses have been used to govern the development of exceptional open source projects such as Apache. Clearly, BSD has its strengths. However, all things being equal, he prefers the General Public License (GPL ). The GPL is one of the most exciting, innovative capitalist tools ever created. The GPL breaks down walls between vendors and customers while enabling strong competitive differentiation. Which is a better licensing model for open-source applications: BSD or GPL? What do you think?" -
NetBSD Announces Four New Security Advisories
Dan writes "The NetBSD project has announced four new security advisories. NetBSD ships with the racoon(8) IKE (Internet Key Exchange) daemon, a vulnerability was found in the code for packet validation of "informational exchange" messages. Inconsistent IPv6 path MTU discovery handling vulnerability states that a malicious party can cause a remote kernel panic by using ICMPv6 "too big" messages. The OpenSSL 0.9.6 ASN.1 parser vulnerability could lead to a possible denial-of-service. Finally, shmat reference counting bug - programming error in the shmat(2) system call can result in a shared memory segment's reference count being erroneously incremented." -
NetBSD Announces Four New Security Advisories
Dan writes "The NetBSD project has announced four new security advisories. NetBSD ships with the racoon(8) IKE (Internet Key Exchange) daemon, a vulnerability was found in the code for packet validation of "informational exchange" messages. Inconsistent IPv6 path MTU discovery handling vulnerability states that a malicious party can cause a remote kernel panic by using ICMPv6 "too big" messages. The OpenSSL 0.9.6 ASN.1 parser vulnerability could lead to a possible denial-of-service. Finally, shmat reference counting bug - programming error in the shmat(2) system call can result in a shared memory segment's reference count being erroneously incremented." -
FreeBSD 5.2.1-RC2 Released
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engg. Team's Scott Long has announced the second release candidate of FreeBSD 5.2.1. The release is now available for downloading. Please test and provide feedback. Changes since the RC1 include more bug fixes for ATA, working kernel modules on the install floppies, and numerous security fixes to the src and XFree86 packages. Note that the sparc64 XFree86-4-Server package in this set does not have the latest updates, Scott says that this will be fixed in the final release." -
FreeBSD 5.2.1-RC2 Released
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engg. Team's Scott Long has announced the second release candidate of FreeBSD 5.2.1. The release is now available for downloading. Please test and provide feedback. Changes since the RC1 include more bug fixes for ATA, working kernel modules on the install floppies, and numerous security fixes to the src and XFree86 packages. Note that the sparc64 XFree86-4-Server package in this set does not have the latest updates, Scott says that this will be fixed in the final release." -
October-December 2003 FreeBSD Status Report
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has posted the 2003 FreeBSD year-end edition status report. He says many new projects are starting up and gaining momentum, including SGI XFS port, MIPS, PowerPC on PPCBug-based embedded boards, and networking locking and multithreading. The end of 2003 also saw the release of FreeBSD 4.9, the first stable release to have greater than 4GB support for the ia32 platform. Work on FreeBSD 5.2 also finished up and was released early in January of 2004." -
October-December 2003 FreeBSD Status Report
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has posted the 2003 FreeBSD year-end edition status report. He says many new projects are starting up and gaining momentum, including SGI XFS port, MIPS, PowerPC on PPCBug-based embedded boards, and networking locking and multithreading. The end of 2003 also saw the release of FreeBSD 4.9, the first stable release to have greater than 4GB support for the ia32 platform. Work on FreeBSD 5.2 also finished up and was released early in January of 2004." -
libkse to libpthread switch on FreeBSD
Dan writes "Daniel Eischen says that libkse has been renamed back to libpthread and is now the default threads library. The gcc-pthread option has also been changed to link to libpthread instead of libc_r. For alpha and sparc64 machines, libkse has not been renamed and links are installed so that libpthread points to libc_r. FreeBSD GNOME team's Joe Marcus Clarke confirmed that the ports system will switch to using libpthread as the default for PTHREAD_LIBS shortly. A patch set is currently being tested, once that completes, the necessary port hooks will be in place to easily build applications linked to libpthread." -
libkse to libpthread switch on FreeBSD
Dan writes "Daniel Eischen says that libkse has been renamed back to libpthread and is now the default threads library. The gcc-pthread option has also been changed to link to libpthread instead of libc_r. For alpha and sparc64 machines, libkse has not been renamed and links are installed so that libpthread points to libc_r. FreeBSD GNOME team's Joe Marcus Clarke confirmed that the ports system will switch to using libpthread as the default for PTHREAD_LIBS shortly. A patch set is currently being tested, once that completes, the necessary port hooks will be in place to easily build applications linked to libpthread." -
ULE Now The Default Scheduler On FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Jeff Roberson says that the ULE scheduler has entered into its probationary period as the default scheduler on FreeBSD. He says that if all goes well, it will remain the default through the rest of FreeBSD 5.* releases. He is requesting you to switch over and test it. The ULE scheduler was designed to address the growing needs of FreeBSD on SMP/SMT platforms and under heavy workloads. It supports CPU affinity and has constant execution time regardless of the number of threads." -
ULE Now The Default Scheduler On FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Jeff Roberson says that the ULE scheduler has entered into its probationary period as the default scheduler on FreeBSD. He says that if all goes well, it will remain the default through the rest of FreeBSD 5.* releases. He is requesting you to switch over and test it. The ULE scheduler was designed to address the growing needs of FreeBSD on SMP/SMT platforms and under heavy workloads. It supports CPU affinity and has constant execution time regardless of the number of threads." -
Enhanced WiFi Security Patch For FreeBSD
Dan writes "Roland van Laar has a new, significant wi-fi patch for FreeBSD 5.1 and higher. The patch, available for download and testing, blocks clients with an empty or 'ANY' ssid and disables ssid broadcasting using the underlying firmware feature. SSID (Service Set ID) is used to identify wireless clients to a wireless / wired gateway. Wireless devices from the same manufacturer generally ship with the same default SSID. A beacon is a type of packet/frame that contains the SSID of a network. It is used to sync clocks on client devices and to make it easy for new network clients to see what networks are available. Preventing others from using your ssid is a means (although not foolproof!) of securing your wireless network." -
Enhanced WiFi Security Patch For FreeBSD
Dan writes "Roland van Laar has a new, significant wi-fi patch for FreeBSD 5.1 and higher. The patch, available for download and testing, blocks clients with an empty or 'ANY' ssid and disables ssid broadcasting using the underlying firmware feature. SSID (Service Set ID) is used to identify wireless clients to a wireless / wired gateway. Wireless devices from the same manufacturer generally ship with the same default SSID. A beacon is a type of packet/frame that contains the SSID of a network. It is used to sync clocks on client devices and to make it easy for new network clients to see what networks are available. Preventing others from using your ssid is a means (although not foolproof!) of securing your wireless network." -
NetBSD Crossbuild Hosted On Mac OS X 10.3
Dan writes "A few weeks ago Xavier Humbert succesfully compiled NetBSD-current on a MacOSX 10.3 with an i386 target. He has provided a summary of his crossbuild execution as well as his build script. But why bother crossbuilding ? Erik Berls's article explains the process of cross compilation on NetBSD. He says that NetBSD's crossbuild framework allows a host to build a version of NetBSD 1.6 or later regardless of the version of the host. Crossbuilding has several major benefits, if you have production servers, you can build the OS without needing to load down the machine that is actively surviving as a production host." -
NetBSD Crossbuild Hosted On Mac OS X 10.3
Dan writes "A few weeks ago Xavier Humbert succesfully compiled NetBSD-current on a MacOSX 10.3 with an i386 target. He has provided a summary of his crossbuild execution as well as his build script. But why bother crossbuilding ? Erik Berls's article explains the process of cross compilation on NetBSD. He says that NetBSD's crossbuild framework allows a host to build a version of NetBSD 1.6 or later regardless of the version of the host. Crossbuilding has several major benefits, if you have production servers, you can build the OS without needing to load down the machine that is actively surviving as a production host." -
FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality." -
FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality." -
FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality." -
FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality." -
FreeBSD 5.2-RC1 Released
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded ISO images and FTP install bits for FreeBSD 5.2-RC1. i386, alpha, and pc98 are available now, amd64 will be available shortly, and sparc64 will be available shortly. Please test this as much as possible so that the FreeBSD Team can release a good 5.2-RELEASE next week. Testing focus for 5.2-RELEASE relates to PCM locking and performance issues, ATA driver improvements, GPT support for sysinstall, ATAng disk corruption issues, SMP and random_harvest panic, vinum data corruption, ACPI kernel module and reported NFS failures." -
FreeBSD 5.2-RC1 Released
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded ISO images and FTP install bits for FreeBSD 5.2-RC1. i386, alpha, and pc98 are available now, amd64 will be available shortly, and sparc64 will be available shortly. Please test this as much as possible so that the FreeBSD Team can release a good 5.2-RELEASE next week. Testing focus for 5.2-RELEASE relates to PCM locking and performance issues, ATA driver improvements, GPT support for sysinstall, ATAng disk corruption issues, SMP and random_harvest panic, vinum data corruption, ACPI kernel module and reported NFS failures." -
Hiding Secrets With Steganography On FreeBSD
BSD Forums writes "Bad guys in the movies all keep their wall safes hidden behind paintings. Is there a metaphor in there for your sensitive files? OnLamp's Dru Lavigne explores steganography, or hiding secret messages in images or sounds, with the outguess and steghide utilities on FreeBSD." -
ifconfig refactoring for FreeBSD
Dan writes "Based on Sam Leffer's suggestion, Bruce Simpson has been working on refactoring ifconfig(8). ifconfig is a FreeBSD unix utility used to assign an address to a network interface and/or configure network interface parameters. Bruce says that ifconfig has grown increasingly large and become unwieldy. Part of the effort has been to get a handle on all of the options that are currently supported so he has written a YACC grammar for it. He has uploaded some grammer, created a design document and also generated a PDF file you can view which shows you syntax diagrams for each part of the parse tree." -
ifconfig refactoring for FreeBSD
Dan writes "Based on Sam Leffer's suggestion, Bruce Simpson has been working on refactoring ifconfig(8). ifconfig is a FreeBSD unix utility used to assign an address to a network interface and/or configure network interface parameters. Bruce says that ifconfig has grown increasingly large and become unwieldy. Part of the effort has been to get a handle on all of the options that are currently supported so he has written a YACC grammar for it. He has uploaded some grammer, created a design document and also generated a PDF file you can view which shows you syntax diagrams for each part of the parse tree." -
GNOME 2.5.0 Available For FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Joe Marcus Clarke announces that GNOME 2.5.0 desktop, the "Obviously you're not a golfer" release, is now available for FreeBSD. You can check out this release from the MarcusCom CVS repository. Be sure to get the latest copy of the "marcusmerge" script while you're there to help with the upgrade. Thanks to FreeBSD GNOME users, there is also a man page to go with this script. NOTE: this is a developers release, and bugs will exist. If you're not into bug-hunting, you should probably steer clear until 2.6.0 is released." -
Darwin, Fink Updates
BSDForums writes "The Darwin team is pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD. This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers. The version of Darwin installed by this CD corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.3. Check out the release notes for more information." dmalloc writes "The Fink team has announced that their binary distribution versioned 0.6.2 is ready for use now. It is a bug-fix release to alleviate issues that came up in 0.6.1. Along with the bug fixes, it introduces an enhanced package manager which is now capable of using the finkmirrors.net-supplied rsync and distfiles mirrors." -
Darwin, Fink Updates
BSDForums writes "The Darwin team is pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 7.0.1 Installer CD. This is a single Installer CD that will boot and install Darwin on Macintosh computers supported by Mac OS X 10.3, as well as certain x86-based personal computers. The version of Darwin installed by this CD corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.3. Check out the release notes for more information." dmalloc writes "The Fink team has announced that their binary distribution versioned 0.6.2 is ready for use now. It is a bug-fix release to alleviate issues that came up in 0.6.1. Along with the bug fixes, it introduces an enhanced package manager which is now capable of using the finkmirrors.net-supplied rsync and distfiles mirrors." -
/bin And /sbin Now Dynamically Linked In FreeBSD
Dan writes "Gordon Tetlow just committed a patch in FreeBSD current to change /bin and /sbin from statically to dynamically linked. The reason to do this is two-fold. This feature brings support for loadable PAM and NSS modules to base system utilities located in those directories. It also reduces the storage requirements for the root filesystem due to the use of shared libraries. This feature can be disabled in a buildworld by defining the Makefile (make.conf) variable WITHOUT_DYNAMICROOT. Note that statically-linked, crunched executables are available in the /rescue directory for use during system repair and recovery operations." -
/bin And /sbin Now Dynamically Linked In FreeBSD
Dan writes "Gordon Tetlow just committed a patch in FreeBSD current to change /bin and /sbin from statically to dynamically linked. The reason to do this is two-fold. This feature brings support for loadable PAM and NSS modules to base system utilities located in those directories. It also reduces the storage requirements for the root filesystem due to the use of shared libraries. This feature can be disabled in a buildworld by defining the Makefile (make.conf) variable WITHOUT_DYNAMICROOT. Note that statically-linked, crunched executables are available in the /rescue directory for use during system repair and recovery operations." -
Printing for the Impatient using ApsFilter
BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration." -
Apache Axis C++ v1.0 (Alpha) Released
BSD Forums writes "The Apache Axis team is proud to announce the release of Apache Axis C++ v1.0 (Alpha). This implementation of a C++ SOAP engine provides a stable platform for developing Web services using C/C++ as well as a client side library for developing C/C++ client applications. New features include SOAP engine with both client and server support; partial support for both SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2; WSDD based deployment with dynamic deployment tools and more. Both binary and source are available at Apache mirror sites." -
NetBSD's COMPAT_DARWIN Adds XDarwin Support
Dan writes "NetBSD's Emmanual Dreyfus says that COMPAT_DARWIN is now able to run Mac OS X's XDarwin (this is, the X Window server for Darwin). The server is fully functional: display, keyboard and mouse work. He says that running Darwin has no interest in itself, but having it working ensures that NetBSD's IOKit (1) emulation is good enough to be used. Darwin is Apple's Mac OS X core. A fully functional Darwin binary compatibility on NetBSD/powerpc & NetBSD/i386 will imply getting MacOS X libraries to run any Mac OS X program, just like NetBSD is now able to run binaries from Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and many other OSes." -
Apache HTTP Server 1.3.29 Released
Dan writes "The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache HTTP Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.29 of the Apache HTTP Server ("Apache"). This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.29 as compared to 1.3.28. Release 1.3.29 addresses and fixes a potential security issue CAN-2003-0542 (cve.mitre.org): Fix buffer overflows in mod_alias and mod_rewrite which occurred if one configured a regular expression with more than 9 captures. You can download this release from one of your preferred mirror sites." -
Apache HTTP Server 1.3.29 Released
Dan writes "The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache HTTP Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.29 of the Apache HTTP Server ("Apache"). This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.29 as compared to 1.3.28. Release 1.3.29 addresses and fixes a potential security issue CAN-2003-0542 (cve.mitre.org): Fix buffer overflows in mod_alias and mod_rewrite which occurred if one configured a regular expression with more than 9 captures. You can download this release from one of your preferred mirror sites." -
FreeBSD to Celebrate 10 Year Anniversary in SF, CA
Dan writes "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...in the early part of 1993...the last 3 coordinators of the 'Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit' would go on to start the FreeBSD project that has grown to be used by millions of websites and installations around the world. Murray Stokely is talking about Jordan Hubbard, Nate Williams, and Rod Grimes. Looking for a catchy name, David Greenman suggested FreeBSD and it stuck. With the help of Walnut Creek CDROM, the first CDROM distribution, FreeBSD 1.0, was released in December of 1993." -
FreeBSD 4.9-RC4 (i386) Available For Pounding
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely has announced the availability of RC4 - the final Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.9. He says that RC4 includes SATA, DRM and other bugfixes; he is requesting everyone for help with testing. He says that if all goes well, they will be able to release Monday." -
New NetBSD Core Team Announced
Dan writes "NetBSD's Alistair Crooks, on behalf of the Board of Directors, The NetBSD Foundation, announces the appointment of a new NetBSD core team. He says that after a long period of discussion and debate, they have decided to keep the core team at the same size as the original (5 members), with what they believe is a good balance of knowledge, skill, inspiration and enthusiasm." -
New NetBSD Core Team Announced
Dan writes "NetBSD's Alistair Crooks, on behalf of the Board of Directors, The NetBSD Foundation, announces the appointment of a new NetBSD core team. He says that after a long period of discussion and debate, they have decided to keep the core team at the same size as the original (5 members), with what they believe is a good balance of knowledge, skill, inspiration and enthusiasm." -
Adding System Calls (an OpenBSD Example)
BSD Forums writes "Kernel programming sometimes feels like a dark art where application programmers should never venture, but sometimes it's the right way to solve a problem. (Oh, and it's also very interesting.) One of the easiest places to start is by adding a new system call to a kernel. Kevin Lo explains how and why, with the OpenBSD kernel in this OnLamp article." -
Four NetBSD Security Advisories, Fixes Released
Dan writes "The NetBSD security team has formally announced 4 security advisories and fixes for the following advisories: NetBSD-SA2003-014 Insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2); NetBSD-SA2003-015 Remote and local vulnerabilities in XFree86 font libraries; NetBSD-SA2003-016 Sendmail - another prescan() bug CAN-2003-0694; NetBSD-SA2003-017 OpenSSL multiple vulnerability. There is an integer overflow in the XFree86 font libraries, which could lead to potential privilege escalation and/or remote code execution. Sendmail advisory involves a prescan() bug in sendmail packages prior to 8.12.10. OpenSSL had multiple vulnerabilities, they were found by tests performed by NISCC. Finally, insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2) which could be exploited." -
Four NetBSD Security Advisories, Fixes Released
Dan writes "The NetBSD security team has formally announced 4 security advisories and fixes for the following advisories: NetBSD-SA2003-014 Insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2); NetBSD-SA2003-015 Remote and local vulnerabilities in XFree86 font libraries; NetBSD-SA2003-016 Sendmail - another prescan() bug CAN-2003-0694; NetBSD-SA2003-017 OpenSSL multiple vulnerability. There is an integer overflow in the XFree86 font libraries, which could lead to potential privilege escalation and/or remote code execution. Sendmail advisory involves a prescan() bug in sendmail packages prior to 8.12.10. OpenSSL had multiple vulnerabilities, they were found by tests performed by NISCC. Finally, insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2) which could be exploited." -
FreeBSD 4.9 RC2 Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Eng. Team's Murray Stokely says that the FreeBSD team has resolved many of the issues brought up with the first release candidate and made FreeBSD RC2 ISO available for testing. They are especially interested in hearing from people who can deploy this on heavily loaded systems." -
Diving Into GCC: OpenBSD and m88k
BSD Forums writes "This OnLamp article by Miod Vallat describes how the m88k-specific backend of the GNU C compiler, gcc, was fixed, from the discovery and analysis of the problems to the real fixing work. Since it started with almost zero gcc internals knowledge, it should be understandable by anyone able to read C code, and proves that diving into gcc is not as hard as one could imagine." -
nForce MCP Network Driver Working On FreeBSD 5.1
Dan writes "Quinton Dolan is in the final stages of porting the NVidia Linux nForce MCP network driver to FreeBSD-5.1. He is looking for users/developers with access to this hardware for testing help. The driver currently appears to be stable on his hardware (an MSI K7N420 Pro), although he hasn't done much stress testing, nor does he have access to an nForce2 based motherboard to test." -
HEADSUP: Change of Makedev() Semantics on FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Poul-Henning Kamp is in the process of adding ref-counting and locking to dev_t, and would very much prefer if this step is completed soon before 5-STABLE gets branched. He says that all this will be transparent to the majority of device drivers, as the refcounting will happen in the make_dev() and destroy_dev() family of calls and normal drivers need not know more about it." -
HEADSUP: Change of Makedev() Semantics on FreeBSD
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Poul-Henning Kamp is in the process of adding ref-counting and locking to dev_t, and would very much prefer if this step is completed soon before 5-STABLE gets branched. He says that all this will be transparent to the majority of device drivers, as the refcounting will happen in the make_dev() and destroy_dev() family of calls and normal drivers need not know more about it."