Evilcoder.org

Ed Schouten started working on a FreeBSD – clang project. He did this by importing clang into a project repository and making sure that a ‘make buildkernel’ succeeds. (If I followed correctly). I believe this is one of the steps that he will be taking to get the LLVM compiler suitable for FreeBSD, and perhaps eventually replacing the GNU licensed gcc compiler. That (like his TTY work) would be one hell of a job! Please poke ed@FreeBSD.org if you are interested in helping!

We are closely following the schedule for FreeBSD 7.2, and so far we are on the correct schedule. Some caveats had been resolved lately, especially it seems with if_bce. Please give RC2 a spin and report any regression etc to us so that we can try to fix this.

So i wrote some articles recently for 7.1 and the release-cycle around it to try and provide as much possible information without telling you all things that we as a project cannot make true etc. I see that my “how to upgrade to 7.1″ article is being read a lot, in fact it is one of the most popular items in my entire article-range. Which made me wonder about a few things, which I hope that you (my readers) can answer:

*) Is FreeBSD 7.1 long awaited and popular?
*) Aren’t there enough documents that provide this straight to the point information? (Do this and this and you have 7.1 running)
*) Should I proceed with these kind of articles for the future release-cycle’s?
*) How is 7.1 being received? Do you like it? Do you hate it?

Reasons I want to know this, is whether I should bring in my attention to this area now which I might be doing a ‘difference’ again, and whether it really helps the community or not. And last but not least ofcourse, we tried to work hard to bring you the best release possible, but I personally cannot entirely judge how the community received our work. I think we did great, but I cannot speak for you

If you read this, and are willing to help, please respond to this article

Thanks,
Remko

After writing my little blog on how to upgrade to 7.1 I got several people telling me that the freebsd-update servers were slow, irresponsive etc. From the information that Colin send to FreeBSD-stable it seems that a lot of people were really waiting for 7.1 to come out, and that they all wanted to upgrade. Colin had made improvements to the system so that it can better deal with the load.

The good thing from this is that a lot of people ARE interested in the latest version, as well as that they use the easy to use application “freebsd-update”. If you run a -RELEASE version, you should use this to easily and quickly upgrade to a later revision.

Keep those bits rolling!

So the announcement had been send, the FreeBSD version 7.1 had been released

Please report any bugs and things that you can find on www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html so that we can try our best to iron out the open items.

I need to MFC a few things here and there which is now possible again, so prepare for a lot of fun

So, recently I told you all that the 7.1-RELEASE is near, and you might have expected it already. You guys are too jumpy though . It will be there in the first week(s) of january. It will kick 2009’s ass to start with and your waiting will be pleased (hopefully). Just wait a tiny bit longer and you’ll see

With 7.1 around the corner it might be handy to tell what you need to do in order to upgrade.

First of all you need to understand that I am in no way responsible for the actions you are doing on your system. I can give an advise, but if there is one typo somewhere it could trash your system. That is the case now, and it will forever be as long as there are computers

That said: Do you know what kind of user you are?

Did you install via the CD and never heared about CVSup? SVN? and things like that?

Then FreeBSD-update (/usr/sbin/freebsd-update) is the thing for you!
It’s the most simple way to upgrade from a previous -RELEASE (or Security branch) to the current one. Do note that -STABLE or -RC’s are not taken into account and cannot be used to upgrade to 7.1-RELEASE.

In order for you to upgrade please use : /usr/sbin/freebsd-update -r 7.1-RELEASE upgrade && /usr/sbin/freebsd-update -r 7.1-RELEASE install

After this the system will tell you:

Kernel updates have been installed. Please reboot and run
“/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install” again to finish installing updates.

(Thanks richard for the information):

Voila, you will be running 7.1 now!

For people using CVSup: replace the RELENG_7_0 part with RELENG_7_1 (it’s ok if there are other things behind it, as long as you change the zero to a one (0 -> 1)).

Rebuild your kernel as you probably did many times before (cd /usr/src && make buildworld && make buildkernel && make installkernel [reboot in single user mode] mergemaster -p && make installworld && make delete-old && mergemaster [reboot] make delete-old-libs (be careful that ports and things do not depend on older versions. I have been bitten by an account that used the bash shell, with libreadline, which was deleted by make delete-old-libs.. no more bash shell for me!)

If you are doing CVS checkouts you should probably do something with -r RELENG_7_1 or RELENG_7_1_RELEASE to get things going, I would advise the first one since patches will be installed there as well, the _RELEASE branch is static. Then do the tricks like above as well.

If you are a subversion user you should checkout the 7.1 release (all subversion users know how to do this) and perform a bit of magic.

Just before Christmas I started realizing that the Dutch Documentation Project was finishing up the translation of the (hugeee) handbook. That realisation made me translate tiny pieces of the PPP and SLIP chapter while away in Belgium (where possible without doing harm to the “away week” ). After that I continued the final bits of the translation and made some improvements for the english version as well.

I finished up the translation just before new year, Wouter Reckman, a new volunteer that helps, was translating filesystems, which got imported yesterday. With those last two achievements, we managed to entirely translate the handbook to the Dutch language! Rene did some quick fixes for the documentation and now we are 100% up to date with it!

Thanks to all involved in the last nearly 5 years to make this happen. It had been a long ride but some of the backbones in the project kept up and now we are here!

Rene started translating some articles, and I am slowly progressing through the FAQ (another huge beast); We hope that volunteers keep popping up, and where possible stay for a longer time to help us translate the rest of the documentation base that comes in handy! This is a terrific way to start 2009!

After some waiting, the FreeBSD team will release the 7.1 version shortly. There were a few showstoppers here and there, a security advisory that popped up and needed attention, but we all overcame that and are ready to do the release. Ofcourse that isn’t being released as we speak, but it’s -very- soon now. 7.1 will kick 2009’s ass to begin with. Then followed by a stunning 8.0-release later that year. It promises to be a very good year for us at the FreeBSD development teams, but also for the users ofcourse!.

Please hold your breath and say “ooeeeee ahhhhh” when the release is there!

Enjoy!

Yesterday gave I a talk for FreeBSD, my first ever for FreeBSD. The aim and goal was to inform people how “easy” you can become an official member of the FreeBSD development team. Okay it costs time to invest, but you can help a very decent community

Just before the presentation, while preparing mentally for the presentation. I noticed by best friend coming in (Rik! thanks for being there) but even more surprises were around the corner. My father also found the way to Utrecht and he visited my presentation, which was very cool to see. The presentation for mine was a bit over his head, but he liked my presentation . Sadly he and Rik needed to go immediatly after the presentation, but it was good to see them both! Thanks Dad and Rik!

The presentation was in dutch and the feedback that I got was positive! I had some points for improval but overall it was nice. You can see the presentation below (warning, typo’s and dutch language is included);

You can find it here, or via the download section here

Together with Wim vd Putte, Cor Hilbrink and Paul Schenkeveld I filled the chairs for the next meetup in this style. We have a few ideas, and I will try my best with the guys to make it happen again. Thanks to the NLLGG Linux Community for letting us share the resources. Marcel / Fabrice thanks a lot!