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First NetBSD Bugathon a Success

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the of-course-it-runs-over-bugs dept.

Daniel de Kok writes "Last weekend the first NetBSD Bugathon weekend was organized by Elad Efrat to handle as many open PRs (problem reports) as possible in a weekend, checking and fixing the bugs that were reported. Although the first Bugathon was not announced widely, it was a success: about 30 developers and 20 users closed around 270 PRs, bringing the number of open PRs down from 4200 to less than 4000. The next Bugathon will take place on 7-8 October, and NetBSD users and developers are invited to help fixing bugs and handling PRs."

32 comments

  1. Impressive by MetalliQaZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thats not bad for 30 devs and 8 hours. Not bad at all.

    --
    "Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
  2. Great...how about running it on another arch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm getting tired of the same people who say "fewer bugs" but only really mean "fewer bugs...but only on the x386 or PPC architectures"
    The last few versions of NETBSD has been seriously broken on the VAX architecture
    (and before you say, "well, YOU Have the source...do something about it!"... I have been trying, but some of the bugs are beyond my abilities)

    I would feel much better if NETBSD was just truthful and say "ok, we USED to run on a bunch of different architectures, but we don't anymore"
    We keep getting the high-and-mighty "NETBSD runs on 40 different platforms"...NO IT DOES NOT.

    It's like saying I speak English, French, Spanish, Russian, and German... my mother tounge is English...I took French in high school. I know a smattering of Spanish from watching TV. I took one year of Russian & German in University.
    Realisticly, I only speak English.
    Realisticly, NETBSD only runs properly on about ten platforms, not 40

    1. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Have you tried OpenBSD? I know it's had a lot of work done on the VAX port recently, including adding support for some VAXstation framebuffers (this is only in -CURRENT at the moment, but will be included with OpenBSD 4.0, due in a month or so).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      I'm still struggling to run Firefox on NetBSD 3.0.1 on x86. I'm new to NetBSD though, so I could be doing something wrong. I get "Segmentation fault (core dumped) firefox" after 30 seconds of high cpu usage whenever I try to run it. Mozilla gets a little further, displaying its main window, then crashes in the same fashion. I can't explain it. I installed it via pkgsrc, but as I've said I'm new to NetBSD.

    3. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by archen · · Score: 1

      Maybe NetBSD would be better off only trying to support the top 10 archetectures. I mean we have to look at reality here, and that is that the NetBSD project is not all that big (compaired to say Linux) and they can't be expected to support absolutely everything. Not only that, but given the obscurity of some hardware makes it rather hard to test in some cases.

      Sometimes I think that they might be better off clipping the back end of the support chain of the least supported archs, but I guess it's up to the developers how they want to spend their time. If only 100 people have your kind of machine, and only one guy works on it, then you're just going to have to wait for that one guy to get through all the problems. That's the price you pay for interesting hardware.

    4. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by thomasdz · · Score: 1

      Yeah, for the most part, I have given up on NETBSD on my collection of VAX systems and I've converted over to OpenBSD which seems to be running just fine.
      It's too bad...I really liked NetBSD, but then it seemed to fall off the "test all architectures" rails a couple of years ago

      --
      Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
    5. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by LizardKing · · Score: 4, Informative

      Every time there's a NetBSD article on Slashdot, up pops a message about it not working on the Vax. I'm beginning to suspect it's the same individual, as the message is always worded in a very similar way - as a none too subtle attack on NetBSD's cross platform capabilities. Just for the record my Vax, SGI Indy, SparcStation 5 and Dell laptop are all running NetBSD 3.0.1, the most recent release. The Vax previously ran 2.1, 2.0, 1.6.2, and 1.5.3 without problems. Around the time of 2.0 I was actually running it on three different Vax machines (3100 m76, 3100 m80 and 4000 VLC). Never had a single problem installing from CD or running NetBSD.

      Now, getting NetBSD running on the last generation of Apple's 12" Powerbook (model 6,8) is a different matter - but I've been unable to get OpenBSD or YellowDog Linux installed on it either ...

    6. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by LizardKing · · Score: 1

      Which version of Firefox did you install? I'm running a native build from pkgsrc, but I've encountered occasional problems in the past with some of the emulated Linux binaries.

    7. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by dtfinch · · Score: 1

      I think I did something simple like pkg_add firefox, after setting PKG_PATH to what I thought was current, and it installed 1.5.0.7. /usr/pkg/bin/firefox runs /usr/pkg/lib/firefox/firefox-bin, which is 91732 bytes.

      When I installed it, it gave me a warning that the repository was for 3.0 when I had 3.0.1, but since I could not find a 3.0.1 repository on the netbsd ftp site, I figured it was a bogus warning.

    8. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, but NetBSD is so clean and well engineered and portable compared to Linux.
      Linux is just garbage ugly hacked together code that is completely x86 specific
      and only barely portable due to brute force code duplication and bolt on hacks.

      You'd think NetBSD would be able to support several orders of magnitude more
      architectures than Linux with the same amount of effort.

    9. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by abs0 · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are two architectures which have compiler issues not present on other NetBSD platforms, vax and pc532. In both cases support is fading away in more recent gcc versions, and they continue to be built using gcc 2.9.5 rather than the gcc 4.1.2 used by the rest of the NetBSD platforms (there are a couple of platforms still finishing testing for the transition from 3.3.3 to 4.1.2).

      This means all constructs in MI areas of the kernel (and the entire userland) need to keep compatible with gcc 2.9.5 and cannot take full advantage of newer C syntax and features.

      So those working on the vax port tend to have to spend a reasonable amount of their time just making sure everything still builds, which reduces their time available for adding features and fixing PRs.

      Its unfortunate, but the alternative would be to have the vast majority of NetBSD platforms stuck on an older compiler, which would hardly be very progressive :)

      Having said that the VAX port is run and developed actively by some people, so its most likely the install tools and some models which have issues.

      So, yes, VAX (and pc532) are at a disadvantage to the other ports, but they are still far from dead, and I would suggest tuning into the next bugathon to push your pet PRs...

    10. Re:Great...how about running it on another arch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I know a smattering of Spanish from watching TV.
      It's funny... You can actually learn a language like that. I learned Spanish from talking to native speakers when I was younger, and watching a lot of Spanish film and TV in my teens. On a recent trip to Latin America people thought I was a native speaker.

      Language aquisition is like that. Theoretically, if you are young enough, all you have to do is surround yourself with a community of speakers, and your natural language-learning abilities will kick in the same way they did when you were learning English as a child. It's really quite fascinating, and an nice coincidence that when I was building my Spanish language competence, I had already studied a bit of linguistics, so I was aware that this was going on. Basically, it confirmed to me that Noam Chomsky was right about grammar aquisition.
  3. What kind of bugs? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I'm trying to think of funny jokes about the types of bugs you find on a corpse, but they just aren't coming. In seriousness, though, what kind of bugs do the remaining 4,000 comprise? Are these along the lines of translation errors in i18n man pages, or kernel dumps on SCSI RAID systems?

    P.S. FreeBSD for the win.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    1. Re:What kind of bugs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      f'lamer

    2. Re:What kind of bugs? by hawicz · · Score: 4, Informative

      A fair number of those are bugs for other OSes, due to having pkgsrc issues included in the same bug database. pkgsrc runs on a dozen different platforms so the bug database ends up with a lot of issues not directly relevant to NetBSD. Right now, there are 1233 open bugs relating to pkgsrc, many of which are non-NetBSD issues.

      As for the classification of other bugs, you can check out http://www.netbsd.org/Gnats/ for a table of how those are distributed. Quite a few are specific to just a single port.

  4. Now I use OpenBSD by bhima · · Score: 0, Troll

    I used to NetBSD on a cobalt qube 2 but honestly I got sick of not being able to do things that I should have been able to do easily.

    Now I do OpenBSD on a low power AMD chip and I don't run into those dead ends... "that doesn't work"

    --
    Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    1. Re:Now I use OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >I used to NetBSD on a cobalt qube 2 but honestly I got sick of not being able to do things that I should have been able to do easily.

      Concrete examples or GTFO

    2. Re:Now I use OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol, what is it with all the *channers on slashdot just recently? I keep seeing FTW / GTFO / etc.

      - Anonymous
      NoW tHiS iS s StOrY AlL aBoUt hOw My LiFe GoT TuRnEd FlIpPeD UpSiDe DoWn AnD i'D lIkE tO TaKe A mInUtE jUsT sIt RiGhT tHeRe I'lL tElL yOu HoW i BeCaMe ThE pRiNcE oF a ToWn CaLlEd BeL-aIr

    3. Re:Now I use OpenBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Concrete example:

      $ uname | sed s/^.//\;s/...$/is/

      On OpenBSD, this command can make 14-year-olds laugh. On NetBSD, no.

      I wrote the mailing list about this but alas...

  5. Of course it was a success by RLiegh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...bugs thrive on corpses! :p

    Seriously, though; glad to see they had a good turn out for it. Hopefully this will put to rest some of the "NetBSD is irrelevent" crap that's been floating around recently. Particularly since most of the hype appears to merely be sour grapes from people who were on the wrong side of a power struggle and are now trying to tear down the project (as opposed to anyone with a valid beef).

    30 developers isn't that bad, really. Not up to FreeBSD numbers, certainly; but it's a good start. Particularly given that this event wasn't really publicised in any real way (there was nothing here, or on the front page of netbsd.org about it in advance).

    Sidenote to the guy having problems with his VAX: problems with one archetetcture (sp?) don't indicate that NetBSD is becoming x86-centric; they just indicate that maybe -just maybe- -what with NetBSD being contributer oriented and all- that the bugs just might be beyond the -VAX team's abilities as well.

    1. Re:Of course it was a success by Greg+Lindahl · · Score: 1

      Particularly since most of the hype appears to merely be sour grapes from people who were on the wrong side of a power struggle and are now trying to tear down the project (as opposed to anyone with a valid beef).



      Attitudes like this are exactly what's needed to begin the healing process.

      -- greg

  6. Re:Why NetBSD? by Nimrangul · · Score: 1
    The Linux kernel is available on more platforms than NetBSD (it has been worked on by many more companies with more code being contributed back, the GPl has helped that), OpenBSD is more stably portable than NetBSD (the difference between cross-compliling everything and taking the time to actually check if it works makes a big differnce), FreeBSD and NetBSD's performance about three years ago were pretty close, you'd need to run some tests to determine if they are actually close anymore, so to my mind there is little that only NetBSD does right or better than others, there are things like it's Summer of Code stuff which is mildly interesting, like a BSD PGP and attempts at HFS and HFS+ support for NetBSD, but that stuff isn't really production ready.

    If nothing more, it is the most portable of the BSDs and a reasonable middle ground of performance and security, not really looking Bowie knife, but more Jack knife. It does leave it reasonable for companies that are looking to embed, but not wanting to contribute back.

    --
    I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
  7. Re:Why NetBSD? by LandruBek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've not looked at the codebase, but the hearsay is that NetBSD has cleaner, nicer code than the other BSDs, and because of that it is supposedly more portable than FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
    HTH.

    --
    $META_SIG_JOKE
  8. Re:Firefox crashing by abs0 · · Score: 1

    I've run firefox on 3.0 (and now 4_BETA) pretty much every day, and the last crash I had would have been a couple of months back (I had a dozen or so MB of XML files open and multiple media playing windows).

    One thing to definitely test would be your machine's memory. If you can write a CD or floppy image I would strongly suggest downloading memtest from http://www.memtest.org/ and leaving it running overnight.

  9. Prioritising architectures by abs0 · · Score: 1
    It would make a lot of sense to group the priority of support for different architectures. The obvious benefits include:
    • Users know what level of support to expect from a given port
    • It helps developers judge when adding a feature which ports should be updated first, and if some of the ports have not been updated whether it should necessarily hold up committing the feature
    • It indicates which ports are looking for a new champion to take up the cause

  10. Not at all. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    NetBSD's driver organization is cleaner, not the code. This allows it to be ported to other arches easier. But OpenBSD's setup is almost the same (it did come from NetBSD originally after all), and is quite easy to port to other arches too. Linux and FreeBSD both show their 386-only roots in the rather poor organization and structure of drivers and hardware layers. Which is why you tend not to be able to run alot of off the shelf PCI hardware on sparc64 or alpha with those kernels, even though you can with Net or Open. Linux even re-impliments the same stuff over and over again in different drivers, like parts of the SCSI layer or especially 802.11

  11. Re:Why NetBSD? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Alot of FreeBSD users such as myself switched to Linux or NetBSD after the 5.x fiasco. All the recent benchmarks put NetBSD higher performance wise than Freebsd. Perhaps 6.x changes this?

    Also NetBSD can handle really slow and old hardware well. Its used for embedded appliances like Sony's PSP. It scales well with little overhead.

    Science buffs like the BSD's better than Linux because its easier to profile apps as Linux does many more things under the hood. If I had to build an appliance to measure something for my PHD I would chose NetBSD.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  12. OpenBSD deserves some credit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can you mention a programming convention that ends in '-athon' for a project that ends in '-BSD' without giving homage to OpenBSD? Clearly the hackathon concept is a good one and it's great to see other projects implementing it. But let's not forget where this idea originated.

  13. GNAA suspected in death of Rob Levin by +Mr.+S.+Catman · · Score: 1
    GNAA suspected in death of Rob Levin
    GNAA suspected in death of Rob Levin

    Mad Virii (GNAP) Washington, DC - In a baffling move that sent shockwaves throughout the anuses of gay niggers everywhere, federal officials investigating the death of Freenode administrator and posterboy Rob Levin have recently announced clues that seem to assign blame towards the Gay Nigger Association of America.

    An announcement of his death was transmitted as a Global Notice across the Freenode network, on September 17 at 06:18 JST:
    06:18 -christel(i=christel@freenode/staff/gentoo.christe l)- [Global Notice] On the 12th September Rob Levin, known to many as Freenode's lilo, was hit by a car while riding his bike. He suffered head injuries and passed away in hospital on the 16th. For more information please visit #freenode-announce

    "It seems that the bike was impacted by a large pink bus in the shape of a hypodermic phallus," an inside source stated. "Levin's carcass was penetrated anally by the hood ornament, and it took a team of coroners to remove the several gallons of what could only be described as seminal fluid from the victim." EMTs on the scene say Levin's body was covered with open sores.

    The GNAA reaction was astonishing. "We have stuck alot of things up Rob Levin's ass in our time, but we maintain innocence," stated GNAA president timecop, fingers crossed."Even when driving a bus up some nigger's ass was fashionable, the GNAA never took part in it."

    Later on at the Rob Levin's Death after-party, GNAA member madvirii exclaimed "OH LAWD IZ DAT SUM DEAD FREENODE ADMIN?" and there was liberal lolling.

    About Freenode:

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