FreeBSD Multimedia
FreeBSD Multimedia Resources List
Links on this page refer to multimedia resources (podcast, vodcast, audio recordings, video recordings, photos) related to FreeBSD or of interest for FreeBSD users.
This list is available as chronological overview, as a tag cloud and via the sources.
This list is also available as RSS feed 
If you know any resources not listed here, or notice any dead links, please send details to Edwin Groothuis so that it can be included or updated.
Tag: mp3
A Few FreeBSD Core Team Members
Interview with a few of the FreeBSD Core Team members at BSDCan 2009: Robert Watson, Brooks Davis, Hiroki Sato, Philip Paeps, and George V. Neville-Neil. We talk about the recent 7.2 release, and what is coming for 8.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 24 May 2009
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan, freebsd core team, robert watson, brooks davis, hiroki sato, philip paeps, george neville-neil
Ogg version (38 minutes), MP3 version (18 Mb, 38 minutes)
BSDCan 2009 with Dan Langille
Interview with Dan Langille. We talk about BSDCan 2009. More information at http://www.bsdcan.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 24 May 2009
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan, dan langille
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
Andrew Doran from the NetBSD Project
Interview with Andrew Doran from the NetBSD Project. We talk about the upcoming 5.0 release.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 March 2009
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, netbsd, andrew doran
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
Marshall Kirk McKusick at DCBSDCon
A recording of Marshall Kirk McKusick's talk "A Narrative History of BSD" at DCBSDCon this past weekend. You can get a much more complete history here: http://www.mckusick.com/history/index.html
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 February 2009
Tags: bsdtalk, presentation, bsd, history, kirk mckusick
Ogg version (55 minutes), MP3 version (26 Mb, 55 minutes)
Justin Sherrill of the DragonFlyBSD Digest
Interview with Justin Sherrill of the DragonFlyBSD Digest, which can be found at http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 January 2009
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dragonflybsd, justin sherril
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
Michael Lauth from iXsystems
Interview with Michael Lauth, CEO of iXsystems. We talk about his experiences with running a business using BSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 31 December 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ixsystems, michael lauth
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
DCBSDCon with Jason Dixon
I speak with Jason Dixon about DCBSDCon, which will take place in February 2009. For more info see www.dcbsdcon.org
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 10 December 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, jason dixon
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
Asterisk Open Source Community Director John Todd
An interview with Asterisk Open Source Community Director John Todd, who also happens to be a user of BSD. We talk about Asterisk on BSD, and his choice of OpenBSD for his systems.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, john todd, asterisk, openbsd
Ogg version (23 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 23 minutes)
Julian Elischer
An interview with Julian Elischer at MeetBSD in California. We talk about his early days with BSD and his work using BSD at various companies. He is currently with IronPort, which was bought by Cisco.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, julian elischer, ironport
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (16 Mb, 35 minutes)
At MeetBSD with some of the FreeBSD Core Team
A conversation with some of the FreeBSD Core Team at MeetBSD California 2008. I speak with Brooks Davis, Kris Kennaway, Robert Watson, Peter Wemm, and Philip Paeps about the recent core team election, FreeBSD 7.1 and 8, Developer Summits, and the move to Subversion.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 18 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd core team, meetbsd2008, meetbsd, robert watson, brooks davis, kris kennaway, peter wemm, philip paeps, freebsd, subversion
Ogg version (38 minutes), MP3 version (18 Mb, 38 minutes)
A Tour of iXsystems
A brief description of my visit to iXsystems in California prior to MeetBSD 2008.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ixsystems
Ogg version (8 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 8 minutes)
BSD on a eeePC 900A
I look forward to attending MeetBSD this weekend. A brief description of my first attempts to get BSD on a eeePC 900A. I try OpenBSD 4.4, DragonFlyBSD 2.0.1, PC-BSD 7.0.1, and FreeBSD 7.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 November 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, eeepc
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
Live from NYCBSDCon Sunday
A copy of Sunday's live stream from NYCBSDCon 2008.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 October 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, interview
Ogg version (25 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 25 minutes)
Live from NYCBSDCon Saturday
A copy of Saturday's live stream from NYCBSDCon 2008. I wander around during lunch talking to random people. Voices include Jason Dixon, Pawel Jakub Dawidek, Kris Moore, Matt Olander, George Neville-Neil, Phillip Coblentz, and Jason Wright.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 12 October 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, interview, jason dixon, pawel jakub dawidek, kris more, matt olander, george neville-neil, phillip coblentz, jason wright
Ogg version (40 minutes), MP3 version (18 Mb, 40 minutes)
Kris Moore
Interview with Kris Moore. We talk about the recent release of PC-BSD 7.0.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 06 October 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, kris more, pc-bsd
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
Interview with Chess Griffin
Interview with Chess Griffin, host of the LinuxReality podcast. We talk about his use of Linux and recent exploration into the BSDs.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 September 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, chess griffin
Ogg version (24 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 24 minutes)
Questions for you
Things have been very busy at the beginning of the school year, so I'm sorry that I haven't been producing as many shows as usual. Registration is open for NYCBSDCon and the list of speakers is available. Are you going? I plan on streaming live during the conference. Do you have any suggestions for live streaming software that is known to work well on the BSDs? Are there any live CDs like Dyne:bolic? I've come into possession of a Soekris 5501. What are your suggestions for soekris-friendly projects to test?
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 September 2008
Tags: bsdtalk
Ogg version (6 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 6 minutes)
NYCBSDCon Update with Isaac Levy and Steven Kreuzer
An update on NYCBSDCon 2008 with Isaac Levy and Steven Kreuzer. More information on the conference can be found at http://www.nycbsdcon.org/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 August 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, nycbug, nycbsdcon, nycbsdcon2008, isaac levy, steven kreuzer
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Martin Tournoij from DaemonForums.org
A brief interview with Martin Tournoij, one of the founders of DaemonForums.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 July 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, daemonforums, martin tournoij
Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)
Matthew Dillon
An interview with Matthew Dillon. He gives a fairly technical description of the HAMMER filesystem features that will make it in the DragonflyBSD 2.0 release.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 09 July 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, hammer, matthew dillon
Ogg version (30 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 30 minutes)
Michael W. Lucas
Interview with Michael W. Lucas at BSDCan 2008. We talk about some of his books and strategies for writing technical publications.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 15 June 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan2008, michael lucas
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
A Few FreeBSD Core Team Members
An interview with a few of the FreeBSD Core Team members: Warner Losh, George V. Neville-Neil, Murray Stokeley, Hiroki Sato, Robert Watson, Brooks Davis, and Philip Paeps. The interview was recorded at BSDCan2008 in Ottawa, Cananda.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 05 June 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan2008, freebsd core, warner losh, george neville-neil murray stokely, hiroki sato, robert watson, brooks davis, philip paeps
Ogg version (26 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 26 minutes)
Sean Cody from Frantic Films VFX
Interview with Sean Cody at BSDCan2008. We talk about his use of BSD at a visual effects studio.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 31 May 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan2008, frantic films, sean cody
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
Alex Feldman from Sangoma
Interview at BSDCan2008 with Alex Feldman from Sangoma.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 20 May 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, sangoma, alex feldman
Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 9 minutes)
Justin Gibbs from the FreeBSD Foundation
Interview with Justin Gibbs from the FreeBSD Foundation.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 18 May 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd foundation, justin gibbs
Ogg version (11 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 11 minutes)
Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers
Interview with Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers. We talk about the recent availability of an experimental build of Crossover Games for BSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 May 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, codeweavers, crossover, jeremy white
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 16 minutes)
FreeBSD Developer Alexander Motin
Interview with FreeBSD Developer Alexander Motin. We talk about mpd, the netgraph based Multi-link PPP Daemon. For more information, see http://mpd.sourceforge.net/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 18 April 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, mpd, alexander motin
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
James Cornell
Another interview with Sysadmin James Cornell. We talk about BSD, OpenSolaris, and Linux on the desktop.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 08 April 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, desktop, james cornell
Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 20 minutes)
Adam Wright from No Starch Press
Intro: Some musings on the consistency and simplicity of BSD. A brief interview with Adam Wright from No Starch Press, recorded by Micheal Dexter on behalf of BSDTalk. They talk about recent and future BSD books.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 02 April 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, books, no starch press, adam wright
Ogg version (8 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 8 minutes)
Dan Langille
Interview with Dan Langille. We talk about his new job with Afilias, and BSDCan 2008.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 22 March 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, afilias, bsdcan2008, dan langille
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
BSD Hobbiest Deborah Norling
Interview with Deborah Norling. We talk about her use of BSD on old hardware, accessibility on the BSDs, and Simh (http://simh.trailing-edge.com).
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 11 March 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, accessibility, deborah norling
Ogg version (23 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 23 minutes)
FreeBSD Lead Release Engineer Ken Smith
Interview with FreeBSD Lead Release Engineer Ken Smith.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 March 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, release engineer, ken smith
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 16 minutes)
PBI 4 with Kris Moore
Interview with PC-BSD founder Kris Moore about the new features in PBI 4.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 27 February 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pc-bsd, kris moore
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
The Mult Project with Kristaps Dzonsons
We talk about the Mult project, which is "an on-going research project to create a high-performance instance multiplicity system." You can find more information at http://mult.bsd.lv/. He also gives a quick update on Sysjail.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 06 February 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, multi project, kristaps dzonsons
Ogg version (30 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 30 minutes)
Dru Lavigne
Interview with Dru Lavigne. We talk about her new book "The Best of FreeBSD Basics" and also get an update on some other projects including BSD Certification. See the following links for more information: https://register.bsdcertification.org/register/get-a-bsdcg-id http://reedmedia.net/books/freebsd-basics http://www.osbr.ca
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 31 January 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dru lavigne, the best of freebsd basics
Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)
Central Syslog
Setting up a central syslog server. If you are concerned about the security of your logs, use a dedicated machine and lock it down. Keep clocks in sync. You may need to change log rotation schedule in /etc/newsyslog.conf. You can rotate based in size and/or time. This can be as much a policy decision as a hardware decision. On central log host, change syslogd flags to listen to network. Each BSD does this differently, so check the man pages. Also, check out the -n flag for busy environments. Make sure host firewall allows syslog traffic through. Be careful to limit syslog traffic to just the trusted network or hosts. FreeBSD man page refers to syslogd as a "remote disk filling service". For heavy logging environments, it is important to have a dedicated network. A down syslogd server can create a lot of "ARP who-has" broadcasts. Most network devices such as printers and commercial firewalls support sending to a central syslog server. Take a look at "Snare" for Windows hosts. To send messages from a Unix host, specify the host name prepended with @ instead of a file for logging in /etc/syslog.conf. For example, change /var/log/xferlog to @loghost.mydomain.biz. You can also copy and edit the line to have it log to both a local file and a remote host.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 25 January 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, syslog
Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)
Open Community Camp with Marten Vijn
Interview with Marten Vijn about www.OpenCommunityCamp.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 08 January 2008
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencommunitycamp, marten vijn
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
PF with Peter N. M. Hansteen
An interview with Peter N. M. Hansteen, recorded by Michael Dexter on behalf of BSDTalk. If you would like to learn more about the PF firewall, check out "The Book of PF" which is available at http://nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=pf
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 December 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pf, michael dexter, peter n m hansteen, book of pf
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 16 minutes)
Joerg Sonnenberger
Michael Dexter sent me an interview he recorded on behalf of BSDTalk with Joerg Sonnenberger at EuroBSDCon 2007.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 18 November 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, michael dexter, joerg sonnenberger
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
AsiaBSDCon Update with Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil
A quick update on AsiaBSDCon 2008 with Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil. More information at http://2008.asiabsdcon.org/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 October 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, asiabsdcon, hiroki sato, george neville-neil
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
OpenCon 2007 update from Marc Balmer
A short update on OpenCon 2007 with Marc Balmer. More information at http://www.opencon.org/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 20 October 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencon, marc balmer
Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)
PCC with Anders "Ragge" Magnusson
Interview with Anders "Ragge" Magnusson. We talk about his work on the Portable C Compiler. More information can be found at http://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 06 October 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pcc, ragge, anders magnusson
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Network Stack Virtualization with Marko Zec
Michael Dexter sent me an interview he recorded on behalf of BSDTalk with Marko Zec at EuroBSDCon 2007. More information on the project at http://imunes.tel.fer.hr/virtnet/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 October 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, stack virtualization, marko zec
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
BSDCertification Update with Dru Lavigne
Interview with Dru Lavigne. We talk about the progress of BSDCertification.org and also her new position with the Open Source Business Resource at http://www.osbr.ca/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 September 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcertification, dru lavigne
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 20 minutes)
Sysjail Revisited with Michael Dexter
Interview with Michael Dexter. We talk about the new sysjail and the recent system call wrapper issues.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 14 September 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, sysjail, michael dexter
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
Why I like the CLI
Why I like the CLI: Uses minimal resources. Less space, less memory, fewer dependencies. Transparency. GUI hides internals, limits options. Similar between Unix-like systems. GUI tools seem to change every week. Remote management. SSH rocks. Everything is text. Configs, devices, output. CLI is natural complement. Pipes and scripts. One time is hard, a thousand times is easy. Only need a few tools. Grep, sed, awk, vi, cron. Text config files. Easy to version, share, and comment. Requires reading skills instead of clicking skills. Much faster when you know what you are doing.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 September 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, cli, will backman
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
MidnightBSD founder Lucas Holt
Interview with MidnightBSD founder Lucas Holt.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 August 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, midnightbsd, lucas holt
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Matthew Dillon
Interview with DragonflyBSD's Matthew Dillon. We talk about the 1.10 release and the design of a new filesystem.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 August 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dragonflybsd, mattew dillon
Ogg version (20 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 20 minutes)
PC-BSD Founder Kris Moore
Interview with PC-BSD Founder Kris Moore. We talk about the upcoming 1.4 release.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 07 August 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pc-bsd, kris moore
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
William "whurley" Hurley, Chief Architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc.
Interview with William "whurley" Hurley, Chief Architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc. We talk about the BMC Developer Network.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 31 July 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bmc software, whurley, william hurley
Ogg version (28 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 28 minutes)
Embedding FreeBSD with M. Warner Losh
Interview with M. Warner Losh about embedding FreeBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 27 July 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, embedding freebsd, m warner losh
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
Fast IPSec with George Neville-Neil
Interview with George Neville-Neil about Fast IPSec.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 July 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ipsec, george neville-neil
Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)
BSD Hacker Isaac "Ike" Levy
Interview with BSD Hacker Isaac "Ike" Levy. To hear more of Ike and other NYCBUG audio, visit http://www.fetissov.org/public/nycbug/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 16 July 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, nycbug, isaac levy
Ogg version (26 minutes), MP3 version (13 Mb, 26 minutes)
Playing with IPv6
I ramble on about how I have been experimenting with IPv6. For more details, see http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/cis341/resources/ipv6-test-lab.html.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 06 July 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, ipv6
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 15 minutes)
Sidsel Jensen from EuroBSDCon
Interview with Sidsel Jensen from www.eurobsdcon.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 25 June 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, sidsel jensen
Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 9 minutes)
One Time Passwords
Important when you don't trust the computer you are using, such as a library computer or internet kiosk. Available by default in Free/Net/Open BSD. FreeBSD uses OPIE, Net/Open use S/Key. One time passwords are based on your pass phrase, a non-repeating sequence number, and a seed. Initial setup should be done directly on the server. "skeyinit" for Net/Open, "opiepasswd -c" for FreeBSD. Enter a pass phrase that is not your regular account password. Find your current sequence number and seed with "opieinfo" or "skeyinfo", for example: "497 pc5246". Generate a list of the next 10 passwords and write them down, using "opiekey -n 10 497 pc5246" or "skey -n 10 497 pc5246". When you log in from a remote machine that might have a keystroke logger, you can now use a one time password instead of your regular password. For OpenBSD, log in as account:skey, for example "bob:skey", which will cause the system to present the s/key challenge. For NetBSD, the system will always present you with the s/key challenge if it is configured for your account, although you can still use your regular password. FreeBSD by default will force you to use a one time password if it is configured for your account. If you want both OPIE and password authentication, FreeBSD allows you to list trusted networks or hosts in /etc/opieaccess. Instead of carrying a list of passwords around, you can use s/key generators on a portable device that you trust, such as a palm pilot. For more info, check the man pages.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 14 June 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, security, one time passwords
Ogg version (6 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 6 minutes)
Rick Macklem and NFSv4
Interview with Rick Macklem about his work with NFSv4. More information at http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/nfsv4/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 07 June 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, nfs, rick macklem
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
Jun-ichiro "itojun" Itoh Hagino
Interview with KAME project core researcher Jun-ichiro "itojun" Itoh Hagino.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 02 June 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, kame, itojun, jun-ichiro itoh hagino
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 10 minutes)
A Few FreeBSD Core Team Members
An interview with a few of the FreeBSD Core Team members: Brooks Davis, Warner Losh, George V. Neville-Neil, Hiroki Sato, and Robert Watson. The interview was recorded at BSDCan in Ottawa, Cananda.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 May 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd core, brooks davis, warner losh, george neville-neil, hiroki sato, robert watson
Ogg version (35 minutes), MP3 version (16 Mb, 35 minutes)
Designing BSD Rootkits Author Joseph Kong
Interview with Joseph Kong, Author of "Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking" from No Starch Press. The interview was recorded at BSDCan in Ottawa.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 24 May 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, kernel, rootkits, books, joseph kong
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 15 minutes)
Qing Li and Tatuya Jinmei
Interview at at BSDCan with Qing Li and Tatuya Jinmei. We talk about the books that they authored with Keiichi Shima: "IPv6 Core Protocols Implementation" and "IPv6 Advanced Protocols Implementation." The books are available at Amazon.com or on the publisher's web site, www.mkp.com.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 May 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ipv6, books, qing li, tatuya jimei
Ogg version (20 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 20 minutes)
FreeBSD Developer Diane Bruce
Interview with FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce. We talk about Ham Radio on BSD. Slides from one of her talks: http://www.oarc.net/presentations/hamradio_on_freebsd.pdf
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 10 May 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, diana bruce
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
Josh Berkus, Postgresql Lead at Sun Microsystems
Interview with Josh Berkus, Postgresql Lead at Sun Microsystems. We talk about the upcoming PGCon on 23-24 May 2007. More info at http://www.pgcon.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 May 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, postgresql, josh berkus
Ogg version (19 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 19 minutes)
George Neville-Neil and Using VMs for Development
George Neville-Neil and Using VMs for Development. See http://blogs.freebsdish.org/gnn for more information.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 April 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, virtual machines, george neville-neil
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
Matt Juszczak from bsdjobs.net
Interview with Matt Juszczak from bsdjobs.net.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 April 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdjobs, matt juszczak
Ogg version (4 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 8 minutes)
Contiki OS Developer Adam Dunkels
Interview with Contiki OS Developer Adam Dunkels. You can find more information at http://www.sics.se/contiki/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 12 April 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, contikios, adam dunkels
Ogg version (27 minutes), MP3 version (13 Mb, 27 minutes)
Interview with Matthieu Herrb about Xenocara
Interview with Matthieu Herrb about Xenocara.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 09 April 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, xenocara, matthieu herrb
Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)
Intro to PF with Jason Dixon
Introduction to PF with Jason Dixon.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 April 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pf, jason dixon
Ogg version (25 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 25 minutes)
Getting to know X
Getting to know the X Window System. Make sure you are in a text only mode. You might need to change how the system boots, or boot into single user mode. "startx" to make sure X is working right. "X" by itself gives the basic grey screen. "ctrl" and "alt" and "backspace" keys at the same time will zap X. "X & xterm -display :0" "xterm -geometry +300+300" "twm" or "metacity"
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 March 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, X
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
Robert Ricci from Emulab
Interview with Robert Ricci from www.Emulab.net.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 March 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, emulab, robert ricci
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
Cisco Distinguished Engineer Randall Stewart
Interview with Cisco Distinguished Engineer Randall Stewart. We talk about the Stream Control Transmission Protocol and his work bringing it to FreeBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 08 March 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, cisco, freebsd, stream control transmission protocol, randall stewart
Ogg version (35 minutes), MP3 version (17 Mb, 35 minutes)
FreeBSD Developer George Neville-Neil
Interview with FreeBSD developer George Neville-Neil. We talk about the packet construction set and the packet debugger.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 27 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, packet construction set, george neville-neil
Ogg version (19 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 19 minutes)
NetBSD Developer Lubomir Sedlacik
Interview with NetBSD Developer Lubomir Sedlacik. We talk about pkgsrcCon 2007.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 17 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, netbsd, pkgsrccon, lubomir sedlacik
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 13 minutes)
AsiaBSDCon PC Chair George Neville-Neil
Interview with AsiaBSDCon 2007 Program Committee Chair George Neville-Neil.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 09 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2007, george neville-neil
Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)
DragonFlyBSD Developer Matthew Dillon
Interview with DragonFlyBSD developer Matthew Dillon. We talk about the 1.8 release.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 08 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dragonflybsd, mathew dillon
Ogg version (24 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 24 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Pierre-Yves Ritschard
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Pierre-Yves Ritschard. We talk about hoststated.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 02 February 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, hoststated, pierre-yves ritschard
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
Artist and Musician Ty Semaka
Interview with Artist and Musician Ty Semaka. You can find his work at http://www.tysemaka.com/, and also on the OpenBSD CDs, posters, and shirts.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 29 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, artwork, ty semaka
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Claudio Jeker
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Claudio Jeker.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 24 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, claudio jeker
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
BSD Consultant Jeremy C. Reed
Interview with BSD Consultant Jeremy C. Reed from http://www.reedmedia.net/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, consultancy, jeremy c reed
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
EMC Lab Admin Glen R. J. Neff
Interview with EMC Lab Administrator Glen R. J. Neff.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, emc lab, glen r j neff
Ogg version (30 minutes), MP3 version (15 Mb, 30 minutes)
Run Your Own Server Podcast Host Adam Glen
Interview with Adam Glen, one of the hosts of the Run Your Own Server Podcast.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 12 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, run your own server, adam glen
Ogg version (12 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 12 minutes)
Phil Pereira from bsdnexus.com
Interview with Phil Pereira from bsdnexus.com.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 07 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdnexus, phil pereira
Ogg version (18 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 18 minutes)
Sys Admin Mike Erdely
Interview with Sys Admin Mike Erdely. You can find more information on his use of binpatch at http://erdelynet.com/binpatch.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 04 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, binpatch, mike erdely
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
NetBSD Release Engineer Jeff Rizzo
Interview with NetBSD Release Engineer Jeff Rizzo. We talk about the upcoming 4.0 release.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 January 2007
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, netbsd, jeff rizzo
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
A Year of BSDTalk
A short ramble about the first year of bsdtalk.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 December 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, anniversary
Ogg version (8 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 8 minutes)
FreeBSD Developer Joseph Koshy
Interview with FreeBSD developer Joseph Koshy about libELF. You can find more information about libELF at http://wiki.freebsd.org/LibElf.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 11 December 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, libelf, joseph koshy
Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 9 minutes)
FreeBSD Developer Kip Macy
Interview with FreeBSD developer Kip Macy. We talk about the Ultrasparc T1 port.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 07 December 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, ultrasparc t1, kip macy
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
FreeBSD Port Committer Thomas McLaughlin
Interview with FreeBSD Port Committer Thomas McLaughlin about the BSD# project.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 December 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, bsd#, thomas mclaughlin
Ogg version (18 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 18 minutes)
FreeBSD Release Engineer Bruce Mah
Interview with FreeBSD Release Engineer Bruce Mah.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 29 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, release engineer, bruce mah
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Pkgsrc Developer Johnny Lam
Interview with pkgsrc developer Johnny Lam.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 19 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pkgsrc, johnny lam
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Jason Wright
Interview with OpenBSD developer Jason Wright. We talk about his work on sparc and also amateur radio.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 10 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, sparc, radio, jason wright
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
Thorsten Glaser from MirOS
Interview with Thorsten Glaser from MirOS, which can be found at www.mirbsd.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 07 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, miros, thomas glaser
Ogg version (19 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 19 minutes)
EuroBSDCon Organizer Massimiliano Stucchi
Interview with EuroBSDCon organizer Massimiliano Stucchi.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2006, massimiliano stucchi
Ogg version (8 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 8 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer David Gwynne
Interview with OpenBSD developer David Gwynne. We talk about the upcoming 4.0 release of OpenBSD and current projects that he is working on.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 November 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, david gwynne
Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)
Kris Moore from PC-BSD
Interview with Kris Moore from PC-BSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 26 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, pc-bsd, kris moore
Ogg version (21 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 21 minutes)
Matt Olander from iXsystems
Interview with Matt Olander from www.iXsystems.com.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 18 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ixsystems, matt olander
Ogg version (19 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 19 minutes)
OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer. We talk about www.opencon.org and his work with OpenBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencon, openbsd, marc balmer
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Interview with Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil from AsiaBSDCon
Interview with Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil from AsiaBSDCon. More info at http://2006.asiabsdcon.org/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 06 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2006, hiroki sao, george neville-neil
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
Interview with Sevan Janiyan
Interview with Sevan Janiyan. We talk about the Brighton Chilli WiFi hotspot project, which can be found at http://brightonchilli.geeklan.co.uk/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 05 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, brighton chilli wifi, sevan janiyan
Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
Interview with Poul-Henning Kamp about Varnish
Interview with Poul-Henning Kamp about Varnish. More information at http://www.varnish-cache.org/.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 03 October 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, varnish, poul-henning kamp
Ogg version (36 minutes), MP3 version (17 Mb, 36 minutes)
Interview with Einar Th. Einarsson from f-prot.com
Interview with Einar Th. Einarsson from f-prot.com.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 29 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, f-prot, einar th einarsson
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
Interview with NetBSD Developer Tim Rightnour
Interview with NetBSD Developer Tim Rightnour. We talk about NetBSD/prep.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 28 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, netbsd, tim rightnour
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Interview with Christoph Egger about Xen on OpenBSD
Interview with Christoph Egger about Xen on OpenBSD.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, xen, christoph egger
Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 15 minutes)
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Bob Beck
Interview with OpenBSD Developer Bob Beck.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 23 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, openbsd, bob beck
Ogg version (26 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 26 minutes)
Interview with Dan Langille about backups
Interview with Dan Langille about backups. Check out http://www.bacula.org/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 22 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bacula, dan langille
Ogg version (22 minutes), MP3 version (10 Mb, 22 minutes)
Interview with Michael Dexter about sysjail
Interview with Michael Dexter about sysjail. http://sysjail.bsd.lv/
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 21 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, sysjail, michael dexter
Ogg version (35 minutes), MP3 version (16 Mb, 35 minutes)
Interview with Eirik verby.
Interview with Eirik verby. We talk about his use of BSD and Jails.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 15 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, jails, eirik Overby
Ogg version (18 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 18 minutes)
Interview with NetBSD Developer Jason Thorpe
Interview with NetBSD Developer Jason Thorpe
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 13 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, netbsd, jason thorpe
Ogg version (38 minutes), MP3 version (18 Mb, 38 minutes)
Interview with Mitchell Smith about BSD and Accessibility
Interview with Mitchell Smith about BSD and Accessibility.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 01 September 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, accessibility, mitchell smith
Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
Interview with YAWS developer Claes Klacke Wikstrom
Interview with YAWS developer Claes "Klacke" Wikstrom.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 22 August 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, yaws, claes wikstrom
Ogg version (18 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 18 minutes)
My BSD History
My BSD History, by Will Backman of BSDTalk, and a bit on accessibility.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 11 August 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, accessibility
Ogg version (10 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 10 minutes)
Interview with Matt Morley
Interview with Matt Morley, BSD user.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 08 August 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, matt morley
Ogg version (25 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 25 minutes)
Interview with Jason Thaxter from gomoos.org
Interview with Jason Thaxter from gomoos.org.
Source: bsdtalk
Added: 05 August 2006
Tags: bsdtalk, interview, gomoos, jason thaxter
Ogg version (23 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 23 minutes)
Max Laier - PF - Extended Introduction
The talk will introduce packet filter (pf) - a *BSD firewall system - and summarize its history and projected future. After providing a short overview of pf's general functionality and some firewall basics, it will concentrate on packet filter's advanced feature-set from the administrator's point of view. The talk will also cover the integration of ALTQ, a mature framework for traffic shaping and priorization. Finally it will provide a short overview of the "Common Address Redundancy Protocol" (CARP) and its integration in pf.
Source: Swiss Unix Users Group Conference 2004
Added: 14 January 2007
Tags: suug, presentation, pf, altq, max laier
Video/MPEG (94 Mb), Slides (1 Mb), Audio/MP3 (22 Mb)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Paeps Philip - How-to embed FreeBSD
This paper provides a how-to embed FreeBSD. A console server built form an AT91RM9200 based ARM system will be explored. This paper will talk about the selection of hardware. It will explore creating images for the target system, as well as concentrate on different alternatives for deploying the system. A number of different options exist today, and no comprehensive guide for navigating through the choices exists today. This paper will explore the different alternatives that exist today for producing images targeted at different size requirements. The differing choices for storage in an embedded environment are explored. The techniques used to access rich debugging environments are discussed.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, embed, freebsd, philip paeps
MP3 (1 byte, 43 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 43 minutes), PDF (1 byte, 17 pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - George Neville-Neil - Multicast Performance in FreeBSD
In the past ten years most of the research in network protocols has gone into TCP, leaving UDP to languish as a local configuration protocol. While the majority of Internet traffic is TCP, UDP remains the only IP protocol that works over multicast and as such has some specific, and interesting uses in some areas of computing. In 2008 we undertook a study of the performance of UDP multicast on both 1Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet networks in order to see if changing the physical layer of the network would give a linear decrease in packet latency. To measure the possible gains we developed a new network protocol test program, mctest, which is capable of recording packet round trip times from many hosts simultaneously and which we believe accurately represents how many environments use multicast. The mctest program has been integrated into FreeBSD and is now being used to verify the proper operation of multicast on various pieces of 10Gbps hardware.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, multicast, freebsd, george neville-neil
MP3 (1 byte, 39 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 39 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Pedro Giffuni - Working with Engineering Applications in FreeBSD
In recent years, traditional branches of engineering like Civil, Chemical, Mechanical, Electrical and Industrial Engineering are requiring extensive computing facilities for their needs. Several well known labs (Sandia, Lawrence Livermore) rely on huge clusters to do all types of complex analysis that were unthinkable a couple of decades ago. While the free BSD variants share the environment with traditional UNIX systems, frequently used for such computations, it was not common to find adequate free software packages to carry complex calculations. Eventually commercial versions of important math related packages started to appear for the Linux platform. Even when the big packages were distant, the BSDs learned and adapted in resourceful ways: Matlab and Mathematica, running under Linux emulation, demanded functionality from the BSDs and NetBSD implemented a signal trampoline to be able to run AutoCAD with IRIX binary compatibility. A notable project that was always available under a free license was Berkeley's Spice circuit analysis program, however it was an exception rather than the rule. Even when the scientific community pressed for a while to get other important tools like NASA's FEA package Nastran under a free license, the objective of being able to access and enhance open scientific tools was elusive. About a decade ago the situation started to improve: FreeBSD's ports system started growing exponentially, first with a high content in the math category, afterwards with a CAD section and after sustained growth in those categories a science section was created. This growth was mostly pushed by Universities and their research projects and in general are not well known with respect to the commercial counterparts. I started porting math/engineering code for FreeBSD around 1996. Back then it was absolutely unthinkable for a Mechanical Engineer to depend only on FreeBSD for it's daily work. The situation nowadays is different: there are some very high quality engineering analysis packages like EDF's Code Aster, with more than 12 years of professional development, that just can't be ignored. A Finite Element package, like Code Aster, can easily cost 5000 US$, is priced according to the maximum problem size it can solve, can require yearly licenses, and is rarely available with source code. In NASTRAN's case the source code is only available for US citizens under a yearly fee. Free software does have serious limitations though; just like in office applications there are proprietary CAD formats or sometimes the package simply doesn't have the required functionality. Having the sources, of course, always has the advantage of being able to implement (or pay for) some specific functionality you might need. Many commercial packages have been recently ported to Linux, but even when they gain some of the advantages of an open environment they still have yet another limitation: they have been very slow to make use of the multicored features of the new processors in the market, a huge limitation now that the speed war between processors has been limited by the overheating problem. The objective of the talk is to give an overview of several CAD/CAE packages that have been made available recently as part of FreeBSD's ports system and the decisions that were made to port them. BRLCAD and Varkon are two CAD utilities that made a transition from closed source to an open environment and in the process in the process of getting ported to BSD have gained greater portability and general "bug" fixes critical for their consolidation as usable and maintainable projects. There are also some tricks that have not been well documented: it is possible to enable threads and some extra optimizations on some packages, and it is also possible to replace the standard BLAS library with the faster GOTO BLAS without rebuilding the package. It is also possible to build the packages optimized for a clustered environment, but perhaps what is most interesting of all is how all the packages interrelate with each other and can turn FreeBSD into a complete enginering environment. No OS distribution so far is offering all the engineering specific utilities offered through FreeBSD's ports system: from design to visualization, passing through analysis FreeBSD is becoming an option that can't be ignored, and best of all, it is an effort that will benefit not only FreeBSD but the wider audience. Pedro F. Giffuni M. Sc. Industrial Engineering - University of Pittsburgh Mechanical Engineer - Universidad Nacional de Colombia I was born in Bogota, Colombia but I am an Italian citizen. My experience with computers started when I was about 12 years old With the TRS-80 Color Computer first using Basic and the OS-9. I studied electronics for 3 years but became tired of worrying about "whatever happened to electrons in there" and moved to Mechanical Engineering. For a while I rested from the computer world until the Internet came stepping along. I started using FreeBSD around 1995 and soon fell in love with the idea of being able to install a complete version of UNIX from the net with just one floppy. After submitting a the 999th port to the FreeBSD project Walnut Creek was kind enough to give me a subscription for several years to FreeBSD's CD-ROM. Since then I've been on and off porting software packages or fixing the bugs I have caused while porting them. Of course there has always been great respect for the other BSDs and their wonderful license and while I've given up on the idea of one day seeing a "UnifiedBSD" I am glad to see different approaches sharing ideas in a healthful environment. Keywords: BSD, engineering, CAE, CAD, math, mechanical, FreeBSD ports
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, engineering applications, pedro giffuni
MP3 (1 byte, 51 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 51 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Ion-Mihai Tetcu - Improving FreeBSD ports/packages quality
This talk is focused on ways to improve the quality of FreeBSD's ports and packages and it's partially based on the 5 months experience of writing and running the consecutive versions of "QA Tindy". Ion-Mihai "IOnut" Tetcu is a 28 years old FreeBSD ports committer and maintains about 40 ports scattered in the Ports Tree. He lives in Bucharest, Romania where he runs and co-owns an IT company and he's a member of Romanian FreeBSD and FreeUnix User Group (RoFUG). His non-IT interests include history, philosophy and mountain climbing.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, ports, packages, ion-mihai tetcu
MP3 (1 byte, 56 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 56 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Yvan Vanhullebus - IPSec tools: past, present and future
The first part will explain what have been major changes since Manu's presentation at Bale's EuroBSDCon, including more detailed informations on changes which have a significant impact on administrator's bad habits (why the common way of doing it is bad, why it was sometimes needed in the past, how to do it the good way now, why this is far better), on both the UserLand (ipsec-tools project) and maybe in [Free|Net]BSD kernels/ IPSec stacks. The second part will talk about the future of the project. News of the next major version (which may be out or about to be out when we'll be ate EuroBSDCon), news works which are planned or which are done but not yet public, but also news about the team: it's new members, new tools, what we would like to do in tue future, a Yvan VANHULLEBUS works as an R&D security engineer for NETASQ since 2000, where he works on FreeBSD OS. He started to work on KAME's IPSec stack in 2001, provided many patches for various parts of the stack, then became one of the maintainers of ipsec-tools project, a fork of KAME's userland daemon. He became a NetBSD developper when ipsec-tools was migrated to NetBSD's CVS.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, ipsec, yvan vanhullebus
MP3 (1 byte, 46 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 46 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 Keynote - George Neville-Neil - Thinking about thinking code
EuroBSDCon 2008 Keynote - George Neville-Neil - Thinking about thinking code
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, george neville-neil
MP3 (1 byte, 37 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 37 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Robert Watson - FreeBSD Network Stack Performance Optimizations for Modern Hardware
The arrival of high CPU core density, with commodity quad-core notebooks and 32-core servers, combined with 10gbps networking have transformed network design principles for operating systems. This talk will describe changes in the FreeBSD 6.x, 7.x, and forthcoming 8.x network stacks required to exploit multiple cores and serve 10gbps networks. The goal of the session will be to introduce the audience to general strategies used to improve performance, their rationales, and their impact on applications and users: Introduction to the SMPng Project and the follow-on Netperf Project Workloads and performance measurement Efficient primitives to support modern network stacks Multi-core and cache-aware network memory allocator Fine-grained network stack locking Load-balancing and contention-avoidance across multiple CPUs CPU affinity for network stack data structures TCP performance enhancements including TSO, LRO, and TOE Zero-copy Berkely Packet Filter (BPF) buffers Direct network stack dispatch from interrupt handlers Multiple input and output queues Robert Watson is a researcher at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory investinging operating system and network security. Prior to joining the Computer Laboratory to work on a PhD, he was Senior Principal Scientist at McAfee Research, now SPARTA ISSO, a leading security research and development organization, directing government and commercial research contracts for customers that include DARPA, the US Navy, and Apple Computer. His research interests include operating system security, network stack structure and performance, and windowing system structure. He is also a member of the FreeBSD Core Team and president of the FreeBSD Foundation.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, network stack, hardware, robert watson
MP3 (1 byte, 53 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 53 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Martin Schuette - Improved NetBSD Syslogd
Martin Schuette has three main goals, defined by three internet drafts to implement: TLS transport is the most obvious improvement: it provides a reliable network transport with data encryption and peer authentication. To make full use of this a buffering mechanism to bridge temporary network errors is implemented as well. Syslog-protocol extends the message format to use a complete timestamp, include a fully qualified domain name, and allow UTF-8 messages. It also offers a structured data field to unambiguously encode application dependent information. Syslog-sign will allow any syslog sender to digitally sign its messages, so their integrity can be verified later. This enable the detection of loss, deletion or other manipulation syslog data after network transfer or archiving on storage media. Martin Schuette is a student of computer science in Potsdam, Germany, and has been working as a part-time system administrator for BSD servers since 2004. In 2007 Martin Schuette already gave a talk on Syslog at the Chemnitze Linux-Tage (http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2007/vortraege/detail.html?idx=547 in german; for a newer english version see these slides for a seminar talk: http://fara.cs.uni-potsdam.de/~mschuett/uni/syslog-protocols-080522.pdf).
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, netbsd, syslogd, martin schuette
MP3 (1 byte, 42 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 42 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Aggelos Economopoulos - An MP-capable network stack for DragonFlyBSD with minimal use of locks
Given the modern trend towards multi-core shared memory multiprocessors, it is inconceivable for production OS kernels not to be reentrant. The typical approach for allowing multiple execution contexts to simultaneously execute in kernel mode has been to use fine-grained locking for synchronising access to shared resources. While this technique has been proven efficient, empirical evidence suggests that the resulting locking rules tend to be cumbersome even for the experienced kernel programmer, leading to bugs that are hard to diagnose. Moreover, scaling to more processors requires extensive use of locks, which may impose unnecessary locking overhead for small scale multiprocessor systems. This talk will describe the typical approach and then discuss the alternative approach taken in the DragonFlyBSD network stack. We will give an overview of the various protocol threads employed for network I/O processing and the common-case code paths for packet reception and transmission. Additionally, we'll need to make a passing reference to DragonFlyBSD's message passing model. This should establish a baseline, allowing us to focus on the recent work by the author to eliminate use of the Big Giant Lock in the performance-critical paths for the TCP and UDP protocols. The decision to constrain this work on the two by far most widely-used transport protocols was made in order to (a) limit the amount of work necessary and (b) explore the effectiveness of the approach on the cases that matter at this point in time.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, dragonflybsd, mp, network stack, aggelos economopoulos
MP3 (1 byte, 42 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 42 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Edd Barret - Modern Typesetting on BSD
Edd Barrett will speak about using the BSD Platform as a means of typesetting from a practical standpoint at EuroBSDcon 2008. Edd Barrett does not wish to go into the technicalities of each typesetter, but rather state which are good for certain types of document, and which tools (ports and packages), integrate well with the available typesetters. Edd Barrett os a student from the UK, currently on "placement year" as a systems administrator for Bournemouth University. Open Source *NIX has been his platform of choice for many years and he has been using OpenBSD for about 3 years now, simply because it is small, clean, correct and secure. Just recently he has started developing things I want or need for OpenBSD.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, typesetting, bsd, edd barrett
MP3 (1 byte, 33 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 33 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Michael Dexter - Zen and the Art of Multiplicity Maintenance: An applied survey of BSD-licensed multiplicity strategies from chroot to mult
Many BSD-licensed strategies of various levels of maturity exist to implement multiplicity, herein defined as the introduction of plurality to traditionally singular computing environments via isolation, virtualization, or other method. For example, the chroot utility introduces an additional isolated root execution environment within that of the host; or an emulator provides highly-isolated virtual systems that can run complete native or foreign operating systems. Motivations for multiplicity vary, but a demonstrable desire exists for users to obtain root or run a foreign binary or operating system. We propose a hands-on survey of portable and integrated BSD-licensed multiplicity strategies applicable to the FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD and NetBSD operating systems on the i386 architecture. We will also address three oft-coupled disciplines: software storage devices, the installation of operating system and userlands in multiplicity environments plus the management of select multiplicity environments. Finally we will comment on each strategies potential limits of isolation, compatibility, independence and potential overhead in comparison to traditional systems. Keywords: multiplicity, virtualization, chroot, jail, hypervisor, xen, compat. Michael Dexter has used Unix systems since 1991 and BSD-licensed multiplicity strategies for over five years. He is the Program Manager at the BSD Fund and Project Manager of the BSD.lv Project.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, bsd, michael dexter
MP3 (1 byte, 38 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 38 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Nick Barkas - Dynamic memory allocation for dirhash in UFS2
Hello My name is Nick Barkas. I'm a master's student studying scientific computing at Kungliga Tekniska hgskolan (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. I have just begun work on a Google Summer of Code project with FreeBSD: Dynamic memory allocation for dirhash in UFS2 . I would like to present my results from this project at EuroBSDCon this year. This project is very much a work in progress now so it is a bit difficult to summarize what I would ultimately present. I will try to describe an outline, though. First I will give background information on dirhash: an explanation of the directory data structure in UFS2, how directory lookups in this structure necessitate a linear search, and how dirhash speeds these lookups up without having to change anything about the directory data structure. Next I will explain the current limitation that dirhash's maximum memory use must be manually specified by administrators, or left at a small conservative default of 2MB. I will explain some different methods I will have explored to try and make this maximum memory limit dynamically increase and decrease as the system has more or less free memory, and which method I will have ultimately settled on and implemented. Then I'll present some test results of performance of operations on very large directories with and without dynamic memory allocation enabled for dirhash. Next I will talk about how speed gains from dirhash are limited by the fact that the hash tables exist only in memory and must be recreated after each system boot, as big directories are scanned for the first time, or even have to be recreated for a directory that has not been scanned in some time if its dirhash has been discarded to free memory. These problems can be eliminated by using an on-disk index for directory entries. I will talk about some of the challenges of implementing on-disk indexing, such as remaining backwards compatible with older versions of UFS2 and interoperating properly with softupdates. Then, if my SoC project has permitted me time to work on this aspect of it, I will explain some possible methods for adding directory indexing to UFS2 that meets these challenges, and which of those ideas I will have implemented. Finally I will present results of some benchmarks on this filesystem with indices, and compare to performance with dirhash, and with no indices or dirhashes. Keywords: dirhash, ufs2, filesystems, performance tuning
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, ufs2, nick barkas
MP3 (1 byte, 32 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 32 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Paul Richards - eXtreme Programming: FreeBSD a case study
Traditional project management methodologies are typically based on the waterfall model where there are distinct phases: requirements capture, design, implementation, testing, delivery. Once a project has moved on to the next phase there is no going back. The end result is often a late project that no-one wants anymore because the requirements have fundamentally changed by the time the project is delivered.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, extreme programming, paul richards
MP3 (1 byte, 54 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 54 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Hauke Fath - Managing BSD desktop clients - Fencing in the herd
The members of the BSD family have traditionally prospered off the desktop, as operating systems on servers and embedded systems. The advent of MacOS X has marked a change, and moved the desktop more into focus. Modern desktop systems create a richer software landscape, with more diverse requirements, than their server counterparts. User demands, software package interdependencies and frequent security issues result in a change rate that can put a considerable load on the admin staff. Without central management tools, previously identical installations diverge quickly. This paper looks at concepts and strategies for managing tens to hundreds of modern, Unix-like desktop clients. The available management tools range from simple, image-based software distribution, mainly used for setting up uniform clients, to "intelligent" rule-based engines capable of search-and-replace operations on configuration files. We will briefly compare their properties and limitations, then take a closer look at Radmind, a suite for file level administration of Unix clients. Radmind has been in use in the Institute of Telecommunication at Technische Universitt Darmstadt for over three years, managing NetBSD and Debian Linux clients in the labs as well as faculty members' machines. We will explore the Radmind suite's underlying concepts and functionality. In order to see how the concept holds up, we will discuss real-world scenarios from the system life-cycle of Installation, configuration changes, security updates, component updates, and system upgrades. Hauke Fath works as a systems administrator for the Institut fr Nachrichtentechnik (telecommunication) at Technische Universitt Darmstadt. He has been using NetBSD since 1994, when he first booted a NetBSD 1.0A kernel on a Macintosh SE/30. NetBSD helped shaping his career by causing a slow drift from application programmer's work towards systems and network administration. Hauke Fath holds a MS in Physics and became a NetBSD developer in late 2006. Keywords: Managing Unix desktop clients, software distribution, tripwire
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, bsd, desktop, hauke fath
MP3 (1 byte, 50 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 50 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Joerg Sonnenberger - Sleeping beauty - NetBSD on Modern Laptops
This paper discusses the NetBSD Power Management Framework (PMF) and related changes to the kernel. The outlined changes allow NetBSD to support essential functions like suspend-to-RAM on most post-Y2K X86 machines. They are also the fundation for intelligent handling of device activity by enabling devices on-demand. This work is still progressing. Many of the features will be available in the up-coming NetBSD 5.0 release The NetBSD kernel is widely regarded to be one of the cleanest and most portable Operating System kernels available. For various reasons it is also assumed that NetBSD only runs well on older hardware. In the summer of 2006 Charles Hannum, one of the founders of NetBSD, left with a long mail mentioning as important issues the lack of proper power management and suspendto- RAM support. One year later, Jared D. McNeill posted a plan for attacking this issue based on ideas derived from the Windows Driver Model. This plan would evolve into the new NetBSD Power Management Framework (PMF for short).
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, netbsd, laptops, joerg sonnenberger
MP3 (1 byte, 54 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 54 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Brooks Davis - Isolating cluster jobs for performance and predictability
The Aerospace Corporation operates a federally funded research and development center in support of national-security, civil and commercial space programs. Many of our 2400+ engineers use a variety of computing technologies to support their work. Applications range from small models which are easily handled by desktops to parameter studies involving thousands of cpu hours and traditional, large scale parallel codes such as computational fluid dynamics and molecular modeling applications. Our primary resources used to support these large applications are computing clusters. Our current primary cluster, the Fellowship cluster consists of 352 dual-processor nodes with a total of 14xx cores. Two additional clusters, beginning at 150 dual-processor nodes each are being constructed to augment Fellowship. As in In any multiuser computing environment with limited resources, user competition for resources is a significant burden. Users want everything they need to do their job, right now. Unfortunately, other users may need those resources at the same time. Thus, systems to arbitrate this resource contention are necessary. On Fellowship we have deployed the Sun Grid Engine scheduler which scheduled batch jobs across the nodes. In the next section we discuss the performance problems that can occur when sharing resources in a high performance computing cluster. We then discuss range of possibilities to address these problems. We then explain the solutions we are investigating and describe our experiments with them. We then conclude with a discussion of future work.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, cluster, brooks davis
MP3 (1 byte, 51 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 51 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Russel Sutherland - UTORvpn: A BSD based VPN service for the masses
The University of Toronto is a large educational institutional with over 70,000 students and 10,000 staff and faculty. For the past three years, we have developed and implemented a ubiquitous VPN service, based up on OpenVPN and FreeBSD. The service has over 3000 active customers, with up to 35 simultaneous users. The system supports, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/2000 clients. Tools have been developed to create a central CA which enables users to log in to a secure server and get their customized client, certificates and configuration. The NSIS installer is used to generate the customized windows installers. Similar packages are generated for the various Unix based clients. Additional WWW/PHP based tools, have been developed to monitor and log usage of the service, using standard graphs, alarms for excessive use and a certificate revocation mechanism. The system has been integrated into the local identity management system (Kerberos/LDAP) in order to authorize and authenticate users upon initiation and per session usage. All code is Open Source and freely available.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, freebsd, vpn, russel sutherland
MP3 (1 byte, 52 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 52 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - George Neville-Neil - Four years of summer of code
The Google Summer of Code is a program designed to provide students with real world experience contributing to open source projects during the summer break in university studies. Each year Google selects a number of open source projects to act as mentoring organizations. Students are invited to submit project proposals for the open source projects that are most interesting to them. FreeBSD was one of the projects selected to participate in the inaugural Summer of Code in 2005 and we have participated each year since then. Over the past 4 years a total of 79 students have participated in the program and it has become a very significant source of new committers to FreeBSD. This talk will examine in detail the selection criteria for projects, the impact that successful projects have had, and some suggestions for how we can better leverage this program in the future.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, google soc, george neville-neil
MP3 (1 byte, 27 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 27 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Anttii Kantee - Converting kernel file systems to services
ABSD/UNIX operating system is traditionally split into two pieces: the kernel and userspace. Historically the reasons for this were clear: the UNIX kernel was a simple entity. However, over time the kernel has grown more and more complex. Currently, most of the same functionality is available both in userspace and the kernel, but under different names. Examples include synchronization routines and threading support. For instance, to lock a mutex in the NetBSD kernel, the call is mutex_enter(), while in userspace the routine which does exactly the same thing is known as pthread_mutex_enter(). Taking another classic example, a BSD style OS has malloc()/free() available both in userspace and the kernel, but with different linkage (the kernel malloc interface is currently being widely deprecated, though). This imposes a completely arbitrary division between the kernel and userspace. Most functionality provided by an opearating system should be treated as a service instead of explicitly pinning it down as a userspace daemon or a kernel driver. Currently, due to the arbitrarily difference in programming interface names, functionality must be explicitly ported between the kernel and userspace if it is to run in one or the other environment. By unifying the environments where possible, the arbitrary division is weakened and porting between these environments becomes simpler. Antti Kantee has been a NetBSD developer for many many moons. He has managed to work on quite a few bits and pieces of a BSD system: userland utilities, the pkgsrc packaging system, networking, virtual memory, device drivers, hardware support and file systems. See also http://www.netbsd.org/docs/puffs/rump.htm
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, anttii kantee
MP3 (1 byte, 55 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 55 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
EuroBSDCon 2008 - Matthieu Herrb - Input handling in wscons and X.Org
This talk will present the different layers that handle input, from the key that gets pressed or the mouse motion to the applications, all the way through the kernel drivers, X drivers and libraries, in the case of the OpenBSD/NetBSD wscons driver and the current and future X.Org server. It will cover stuff like keyboard mappings, touch-screen calibration, multi-pointer X or input coordinates transformations. It will show some problems of current implementations and try to show how current evolutions can solve them. Matthieu Herrb is maintaing X on OpenBSD. I've been using X on various systems (SunOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS X,...) since 1989. He has been a member of the XFree86 Core Team for a short period in 2003 and is now a member of the X.Org Foundation BoD. Matthieu Herrb works at LAAS a research laborarory of the French National Research Agency (CNRS) both on robotics and network security.
Source: EuroBSDCon
Added: 22 October 2008
Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, wscons, x.org, matthieu herrb
MP3 (1 byte, 57 minutes), OGG (1 byte, 57 minutes), PDF (1 byte, n pages)
What's your biggest Time Management problem?
What's your biggest Time Management problem? Tom Limoncelli is a FreeBSD user and the author of the O'Reilly book,"Time Management for System Administrators". He'll be giving a brief presentation with highlights from his book then will take questions from the audience. Whether you are a system administrator, a developer (or even a Linux user) this presentation will help you with something more precious a quad-processor AMD box.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 13 March 2009
Tags: nycbug, presentation, time management, tom limoncelli
MP3 version (11 Mb)
Postfix Performance Tuning
Money can buy you bandwidth, but latency is forever! John Mashey, MIPS Victor will cover an array of issues connected to Postfix performance tuning, including: Latency, concurrency and throughput Postfix input processing Queue file format rationale Input processing bottlenecks Pre-queue filters, milters, content filters Tuning for fast (enough) input Postfix on-disk queues, requirements and architecture What is a "transport"? Postfix "nqmgr" scheduler algorithm Per-destination in memory queues Per-destination scheduler controls SMTP delivery Understanding delay logging Transport process limits, concurrency limits Scaling to thousands of output processes Connection caching, TLS session caching, feedback controls Speaker Bio Victor Duchovni trained in mathematics, switched tracks to CS in 1980s leaving Princeton with a master's degree in mathematics and newly acquired skills in Unix system administration and system programming. In 1990 moved to Lehman Brothers, worked on system management tooling, and network engineering. Ported "Moira" from MIT to Lehman, built efficient build systems that predated (and partly inspired) Jumpstart. In 1994 joined ESM to market "CMDB" tools to enterprise users, but this did not pan out, in the mean time learned Tcl, and contributed bunch of patches to the 7.x early 8.x TCL releases. In 1997 returned to New York, working in IT Security at Morgan Stanley since late 1999. At Morgan Stanley, developed a hobby in perimeter email security, becoming an active Postfix user and very soon contributor in May of 2001. In addition to many smaller feature improvements, contributed initial implementation of SMTP connection caching, overhauled and currently maintain LDAP and TLS support. Made significant design contributions to queue manager in collaboration with Wietse and Patrik Raq. In 2.6 contributing support for TLS EC ciphers and multi-instance management tooling, ideally also TLS SNI if time permits.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 21 February 2009
Tags: nycbug, presentation, postfix, john mashey
MP3 version (11 Mb)
Introduction to Puppet
What it is and how can it make system administration less painful About the speaker: Larry Ludwig - Principal Consultant/Founder of Empowering Media. Empowering Media is a consulting firm and managed hosting provider. Larry Ludwig has been in the industry for over 15 years as a system administration and system programmer. He's had previous experience working for many Fortune 500 corporations and holds a BS in CS from Clemson University. Larry, along with Eric E. Moore and Brian Gupta are founding members of the NYC Puppet usergroup.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 19 January 2009
Tags: nycbug, presentation, puppet, larry ludwig
MP3 version (11 Mb)
Hardware Performance Monitoring Counters
Many modern CPUs provide on chip counters for performance events such as retiring instructions and cache misses. The hwpmc driver and libraries in FreeBSD give systems administrators and programmers access to APIs which make it possible to measure performance without modifying source code and with minimal intrusion into application execution. This talk will be a brief introduction to HWPMC, and how to use it. Bio: George Neville-Neil is the co-author with Kirk McKusick of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System. He works on networking an operating systems for fun and profit.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 16 November 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, george neville-neil, counters
MP3 version (4 Mb)
New York City BSD Con 2008
Audio recordings of presentations given at New York City BSD Conference 2008. Courtesy of nikolai at fetissov.org. The main page also has links to the slides.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 13 October 2008
Tags: nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, presentation
Jeremy C. Reed: Introduction to DNSSEC. (15 Mb), Michael Lucas: Network Refactoring, or doing an oil change at 80 MPH. (10 Mb), Anders Magnusson: Design and Implementation of the Portable C Compiler. (15 Mb), Jason Dixon: BSD versus GPL. (4 Mb), Kurt Miller: OpenBSD's Position Independent Executables (PIE) Implementation. (10 Mb), Metthew Dillon: The HAMMER File System. (14 Mb), Pawel Jakub Dawidek: A closer look at the ZFS file system. (16 Mb), Jason L Wright: When Hardware Is Wrong, or "They can Fix It In Software". (9 Mb), Michael Shalayeff: Porting PCC. (11 Mb), Adrian Chadd: High-throughput concurrent disk IO in FreeBSD. (14 Mb), Mike Silbersack: Detecting TCP regressions with tcpdiff. (11 Mb), Julio M. Merino Vidal: An introduction to the Automated Testing Framework (ATF) for NetBSD. (10 Mb)
Public Key sudo
Two tools which have become the norm in Linux- and Unix-based environments are SSH for secure communications, and sudo for performing administrative tasks. These are independent programs with substantially different purposes, but they are often used in conjunction. In this talk, I describe a flaw in their interaction, and then present our solution called public-key sudo. Public-key sudo is an extension to the sudo authentication mechanism which allows for public key authentication using the SSH public key framework. I describe our implementation of a generic SSH authentication module and the sudo modifications required to use this module. Bio: Matthew Burnside is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at Columbia University, in New York. He works for Professor Angelos Keromytis in the Network Security Lab. He received his B.A and M.Eng from MIT in 2000, and 2002, respectively. His research interests are in network anonymity, trust management, and enterprise-scale policy enforcement.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 19 August 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, sudo, public key, matthew burnside
MP3 version (2 Mb)
Configuration Management with Cfengine
Configuration Management with Cfengine Cfengine is a policy-based configuration management system. Its primary function is to provide automated configuration and maintenance of computers, from a policy specification. The cfengine project was started in 1993 as a reaction to the complexity and non-portability of shell scripting for Unix configuration management, and continues today. The aim was to absorb frequently used coding paradigms into a declarative, domain-specific language that would offer self-documenting configuration. about the speaker: Steven Kreuzer has been working with Open Source technologies since as long as he can remember, starting out with a 486 salvaged from a dumpster behind his neighborhood computer store. In his spare time he enjoys doing things with technology that have absolutely no redeeming social value.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 03 July 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, configuration management, cfengine
MP3 version (6 Mb, 58 minutes)
Managing OpenBSD Environments
This talk is the result of an after-meeting discussion with a few folks, when it became apparent that there is some confusion as to how to deal with OpenBSD in small and large environments. The topic of installation and upgrading came up again. This talk is aimed to hopefully dispel many of the rumors, provide a thorough description and walk through of the various stages of running OpenBSD in any size environment, and some of the features and tools at the administrator's disposal. Okan Demirmen has been working with UNIX-like systems for as long as he can remember and has found OpenBSD to match some of the same philosophies in which he believes, namely simplicity and correctness, and reap the benefits of such.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 12 May 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, system management
MP3 version (11 Mb, 103 minutes)
Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD
Special NYC*BUG meeting with FreeBSD developer Brooks Davis Since late 2000 we have developed and maintained a general purpose technical and scientific computing cluster running the FreeBSD operating system. In that time we have grown from a cluster of 8 dual Intel Pentium III systems to our current mix of 64 dual, quad-core Intel Xeon and 289 dual AMD Opteron systems. In this talk we reflect on the system architecture as documented in our BSDCon 2003 paper "Building a High-performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD" and our changes since that time. After a brief overview of the current cluster we revisit the architectural decisions in that paper and reflect on their long term success. We then discuss lessons learned in the process. Finally, we conclude with thoughts on future cluster expansion and designs. Bio Brooks Davis is an Engineering Specialist in the High Performance Computing Section of the Computer Systems Research Department at The Aerospace Corporation. He has been a FreeBSD user since 1994, a FreeBSD committer since 2001, and a core team member since 2006. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College in 1998. His computing interests include high performance computing, networking, security, mobility, and, of course, finding ways to use FreeBSD in all these areas. When not computing, he enjoys reading, cooking, brewing and pounding on red-hot iron in his garage blacksmith shop.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 22 March 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, high performance computing, freebsd, brooks davis
MP3 version (9 Mb, 80 minutes)
User Interfaces and How People Think
"User Interfaces and How People Think" will introduce concepts of designing software for different users by observing how they think about and do what they do. While much of design today focuses on the front-end of computer systems, there is opportunity to innovate in every area where a human interacts with software. Bio: Jeffery Mau is a user experience designer with the leading business and technology consulting firm Sapient. He has helped clients create great customer experiences in the financial services, education, entertainment and telecommunications industries. With a passion for connecting people with technology, Jeff specializes in Information Architecture and Business Strategy. Jeff holds a Masters in Design from the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 10 March 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, user interfaces
MP3 version (9 Mb, 78 minutes)
Open Meeting on OpenSSH
Open Meeting on OpenSSH Febrary's NYCBUG meeting is a broad look at OpenSSH, the de facto method for remote administration and more. OpenSSH celebrated its 8th anniversary this past September, and we thought this would be a great opportunity to discuss OpenSSH, and for others to contribute their hacks and interesting applications.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 19 February 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, openssh
MP3 version (7 Mb, 63 minutes)
SSARES
SSARES: Secure Searchable Automated Remote Email Storage - A usable, secure email system on a remote untrusted server The increasing centralization of networked services places user data at considerable risk. For example, many users store email on remote servers rather than on their local disk. Doing so allows users to gain the benefit of regular backups and remote access, but it also places a great deal of unwarranted trust in the server. Since most email is stored in plaintext, a compromise of the server implies the loss of confidentiality and integrity of the email stored therein. Although users could employ an end-to-end encryption scheme (e.g., PGP), such measures are not widely adopted, require action on the sender side, only provide partial protection (the email headers remain in the clear), and prevent the users from performing some common operations, such as server-side search. To address this problem, we present Secure Searchable Automated Remote Email Storage (SSARES), a novel system that offers a practical approach to both securing remotely stored email and allowing privacy-preserving search of that email collection. Our solution encrypts email (the headers, body, and attachments) as it arrives on the server using public-key encryption. SSARES uses a combination of Identity Based Encryption and Bloom Filters to create a searchable index. This index reveals little information about search keywords and queries, even against adversaries that compromise the server. SSARES remains largely transparent to both the sender and recipient. However, the system also incurs significant costs, primarily in terms of expanded storage requirements. We view our work as a starting point toward creating privacy-friendly hosted services. Angelos Keromytis is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, and director of the Network Security Laboratory. He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Crete, Greece, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Computer and Information Science (CIS) Department, University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and co-author of more than 100 papers on refereed conferences and journals, and has served on over 40 conference program committees. He is an associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Information and Systems Security (TISSEC). He recently co-authored a book on using graphics cards for security, and is a co-founder of StackSafe Inc. His current research interests revolve around systems and network security, and cryptography.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 11 January 2008
Tags: nycbug, presentation, ipv6, gene cronk
Paper (443 Kb, 10 pages), MP3 version (7 Mb, 67 minutes)
Gene Cronk on Implementing IPv6
This talk will be on some of the basics of IPv6 including addressing, subnetting, and tools to test connectivity. There will be a lab (network permitting), and setups for an as of yet undisclosed flavor of BSD as well as some of the well known daemons (Apache 2, SSHD) will be demonstrated. Setting up a BSD OS as an IPv6 router and tunneling system will also be covered. Bio Gene Cronk, CISSP-ISSAP, NSA-IAM is a freelance network security consultant, specializing in *NIX solutions. He has been working with computers for well over 20 years, electronics for over 15, and IPv6 specifically for 4 years. He has given talks on IPv6 and a multitude of other topics at DefCon, ShmooCon and other "underground" venues. Gene is from Jacksonville, FL. When not involved in matters concerning IPv6, he can be found gaming (Anarchy Online), helping out with the Jacksonville Linux User's Group, being one of the benevolent dictators of the Hacker Pimps Security Think Tank, or fixing up his house.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 06 October 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, ipv6, gene cronk
MP3 version (14Mb, 60 minutes)
Using Cryptography to Improve Web Application Performance and Security
Cryptography has a reputation of slowing down applications. However if done correctly, it can actually be used to improve performance by storing high-value/high-cost results "in public." In addition the same techniques can solve common security problems such as authorization, parameter scanning, and parameter rewriting. All are welcome - no previous experience with cryptography is required, and the techniques will be presented in a programming-language neutral format. Nick Galbreath have been working on high performance servers and web security at various high profile startups since 1994 (most recently Right Media). He holds a Master degree of Mathematics from Boston University, and published a book on cryptography. He currently lives in the Lower East Side.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 12 September 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, cryptography, nick galbreath
MP3 version (18Mb)
Marc Spitzer on Nagios
Nagios is a platform for monitoring services and the hosts they reside on. It provides a reasonable tool for monitoring your network and you can not beat the price. We plan on covering the following topics: what it is how it works where to get it how to install it how to configure it how to customize it for your environment where the data is stored how to write a basic plug-in About the Speaker Marc Spitzer started as a VAX/VMS operator who taught himself some basic scripting in DCL to help me remember how to do procedures that did not come up enough to actually remember all the steps, this was in 1990. Since then he has worked with HPUX, Solaris, Windows, Linux, and the BSDs, FreeBSD being his favorite. He has held a variety of positions, admin and engineering, where he has been able to introduce BSD into his work place. He currently works for Columbia University as a Systems Administrator. He is a founding member of NYCBUG and LispNYC and on the board of UNIGroup. Most of his career has been building tools to solve operational problems, with extra effort going to the ones that irritated him personally. He takes a great deal of pride in not needing a budget to solve most problems.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 01 August 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, nagios, marc spitzer
MP3 version (19Mb)
Isaac 'Ike' Levy on the Real Unix Tradition
"The Real Unix Tradition" UNIX hackers, all standing on the shoulders of giants. "...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..." - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972 "Well, it was all Open Source, before anybody really called it that". - Brian Redman, 2003 UNIX is the oldest active and growing computing culture alive today. From it's humble roots in the back room at Bell Laboratories, to today's global internet infrastructure- UNIX has consistently been at the core of major advances in computing. Today, the BSD legacy is the most direct continuation of the most successful principles in UNIX, and continues to lead major advances in computing. Why? What's so great about UNIX? This lecture aims to prove that UNIX history is surprisingly useful (and fun)- for developers, sysadmins, and anyone working with BSD systems. About the speaker Isaac Levy, (ike) is a freelance BSD hadker based in NYC. He runs Diversaform Inc. as an engine to make his hacking feed itself, (and ike). Diversaform specializes in *BSD based solutions, providing 'IT special weapons and tatics' for various sized business clients, as well as running a small high-availability datacenter operation from lower Manhattan. With regard to FreeBSD jail(8), ike was a partner in the first jail (8)-based web hosting ISP in America, iMeme, and has been developing internet applications in and out of jails since 1999. Isaac is a proud member of NYC*BUG (the New York City *BSD Users Group), and a long time member of LESMUUG, (the Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group).
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 08 July 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, unix tradition, isaac levy
MP3 version (10Mb)
Steven Kreuzer on Denial of Service Mitigation Techniques
Protecting your servers, workstations and networks can only go so far. Attacks which consume your available Internet-facing bandwidth, or overpower your CPU, can still take you offline. His presentation will discuss techniques for mitigating the effects of such attacks on servers designed to provide network intensive services such as HTTP or routing. About the speaker Steven Kreuzer is currently employed by Right Media as a Systems Administrator focusing on building and managing high transaction infrastructures around the globe. He has been working with Open Source technologies since as long as he can remember, starting out with a 486 salvaged from a dumpster behind his neighborhood computer store. In his spare time he enjoys doing things with technology that have absolutely no redeeming social value.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 08 June 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, denialofservice, steven kreuzer
MP3 version (10Mb)
Amitai Schlair on pkgsrcCon.
The fourth annual pkgsrcCon is April 27-29 in Barcelona. As might be expected when brains congregate, pkgsrcCon traditionally results in a flurry of activity toward new directions and initiatives. Mere hours after returning to New York, Amitai will give us a recap of the proceedings, including his presentation, "Packaging djbware." Amitai Schlair is a pkgsrc developer who has worked in such diverse areas as Mac OS X platform support and packages of software by Dan Bernstein. His full-time undergraduate studies at Columbia are another contributing factor to his impending insanity. He consults in software and IT.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 04 May 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, pkgsrccon, netbsd, amitai schlair
MP3 version (21Mb)
Ray Lai: on OpenCVS
This presentation was inspired by the recent Subversion presentation. It will talk about the origins of OpenRCS and OpenCVS, its real-world usage in the OpenBSD project, and why OpenBSD will continue to use CVS. Ray is an OpenBSD developer who uses Subversion by day, CVS by night. Taking the phrase "complexity is the enemy of security" to heart, he believes that the beauty of UNIX's security is in its simplicity.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 06 April 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, cvs, openbsd, ray lai
MP3 version
Matthew Burnside: Integrated Enterprise Security Mgmt
Integrated Enterprise Security Management Security policies are a key component in protecting enterprise networks. But, while there are many diverse defensive options available, current models and mechanisms for mechanically-enforced security policies are limited to traditional admission-based access control. Defensive capabilities include among others logging, firewalls, honeypots, rollback/recovery, and intrusion detection systems, while policy enforcement is essentially limited to one-off access control. Furthermore, access-control mechanisms operate independently on each service, which can (and often does) lead to inconsistent or incorrect application of the intended system-wide policy. We propose a new scheme for global security policies. Every policy decision is made with near-global knowledge, and re-evaluated as global knowledge changes. Using a variety of actuators, we make the full array of defensive capabilities available to the global policy. Our goal is a coherent, enterprise-wide response to any network threat. Biography Matthew Burnside is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at Columbia University, in New York. He works for Professor Angelos Keromytis in the Network Security Lab. He received his B.A and M.Eng from MIT in 2000, and 2002, respectively. His main research interests are in computer security, trust management, and network anonymity.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 09 March 2007
Tags: mp3, presentation, enterprise security, matthew burnside
MP3 version
Okan Demirmen on PF
We have had lots of meetings that have peripherally discussed OpenBSD's wildly popular PF firewall... but finally we will have a meeting focused on it.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 07 January 2007
Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, pf, okan demirmen
MP3 version
New York City BSD Con 2006
Audio recordings of presentations given at New York City BSD Conference 2006. Courtesy of nikolai at fetissov.org. The main page also has links to the slides.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 01 November 2006
Tags: nycbug, nycbsdcon, nycbsdcon2006, presentation
Russell Sutherland: BSD on the Edge of the Enterprise. (12 Mb), Bob Beck: spamd - spam deferral daemon. (16 Mb), Bjorn Nelson: A Build System for FreeBSD (9 Mb), Jason Dixon: BSD Is Dying. (5 Mb), Kristaps Johnson: BSD Virtualisation with sysjail. (15 Mb), Bob Beck: PF, it is not just for firewalls anymore. (15 Mb), Jason Wright: OpenBSD on sparc64. (9 Mb), Brian A. Seklecki: A Framework for NetBSD Network Appliances. (10 Mb), Johnny C. Lam: The "hidden dependency" problem. (13 Mb), Corey Benninger: Security with Ruby on Rails in BSD (14 Mb), Wietse Venema: Postfix as a Secure Programming Example. (16 Mb), Marco Peereboom: Bio & Sensors in OpenBSD. (11 Mb)
Isaac 'Ike' Levy on m0n0wall and PFSense (9 Mb)
UNIX professionals are busy these days. Setting up routers and firewalls are fundamental to any network, but in environments where the focus is on various applications, (servers, workstations, and the software that runs on them), it's difficult for a business not to choose off-the-shelf SOHO routers and networking gear. The web management GUIs are understandable by everyone, (even techs without UNIX knowledge), and the gear is cheap - this saves time and money. In the meantime, the features of your average Linksys or Netgear router often leave MUCH to be desired, (https auth management, for one simple example). Enter m0n0wall and PFSense, 2 BSD based packaged router/firewall solutions that are as solid and full featured as you'd expect from any BSD system- PLUS THEY HAVE HTML WEB INTERFACES FOR MANAGEMENT! m0n0wall and PFSense become an easy sell in any small professional environment, any competent tech can manage the network within minutes... At home, in every hackers home network, they free the hacker to have trusted tools available, but are as time-saving as using any Linksys router. m0n0wall and PFSense are both light and clean, designed to run on embedded systems- (Soekris, WRAP), but are monsters when unleashed on even legacy PCs around the office. If you manage UNIX networks and systems all day, do you really want to manage the router for your DSL when you get home? But then doesn't it bug you to use a chincey Linksys box? Ike has been a member of NYC*BUG since we first launched in January 2004. He is a long-time member of the Lower East Side Mac Unix User Group. He has spoken frequently on a number of topics at various venues, particularly on the issue of FreeBSD's jail (8).
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 09 September 2006
Tags: nycbug, presentation, monowall, pfsense, isaac levy
Alfred Perlstein on Sendmail Hacks (11 Mb)
Alfred will discuss the hacks used to turn Sendmail into a high performance solution for delivering millions of messages to OKCupid's subscribers. Topics covered will be system tuning and sendmail hacks used in house to achieve massive throughput. Alfred Perlstein is the CTO of OKcupid.com, the largest free online dating site. He has been a FreeBSD hacker for five years, he's worked on NFS, VFS, pthreads, networking and general system maintenance during his tenure on both FreeBSD and OS X kernels.
Source: New York City *BSD User Group
Added: 07 August 2006
Tags: nycbug, presentation, sendmail, alfred perlstein
Episode 07 of "FreeBSD for all" uploaded
This week we talk about podcast clients, ipfw firewall etc.
Source: FreeBSD for All
Added: 27 July 2006
Tags: freebsd for all, talk, podcast clients, ipfw
64 kbps MP3 version (23 minutes), 128 kbps MP3 version (11 Mb, 23 minutes), Ogg version (23 minutes)
Episode 06 of "FreeBSD for all" uploaded
This week we talk about Macromedia plugin FreeBSD-Linux differences part 2 John Baldwin Introduction Podcast announcement - call for co-hosts!
Source: FreeBSD for All
Added: 05 June 2006
Tags: freebsd for all, talk, john baldwin, freebsd vs linux
Ogg version, MP3 version, 64 kbps MP3 version
Releaseparty, the Varnish HTTP accelerator
VG sponsored the creation of a web-accellerator called "Varnish" because Squid was too slow for them. Varnish is being developed by Poul-Henning Kamp and the Norwegian Linux consultancy Linpro. This is the releaseparty for version 1.0. The first half of the talk will introduce Varnish and present some of the novel features it brings to the business of web-serving. The second half of the talk, using Varnish as the example, will show ways to get the most performance out of modern hardware and operating systems. (The English text starts at about 5 minutes in the stream)
Source: Norwegian Unix Users Group
Added: 03 October 2006
Tags: nuug, presentation, varnish, poul-henning kamp
MP3 version (47.8 Mb), Video version (230 Mb)
OpenBSD 4.4 Release Song - "Source Wars - Episode IV - Trial of the BSD Knights"
Nearly 10 years ago Kirk McKusick wrote a history of the Berkeley Unix distributions for the O'Reilly book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". We recommend you read his story, entitled "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable" first, to see how Kirk remembers how we got here. Sadly, since it showed up in book form originally, this text has probably not been read by enough people. The USL(AT&T) vs BSDI/UCB court case settlement documents were not public until recently; their disclosure has made the facts more clear. But the story of how three people decided to free the BSD codebase of corporate pollution -- and release it freely -- is more interesting than the lawsuit which followed. Sure, a stupid lawsuit happened which hindered the acceptance of the BSD code during a critical period. But how did a bunch of guys go through the effort of replacing so much AT&T code in the first place? After all, companies had lots of really evil lawyers back then too -- were they not afraid? After a decade of development, most of the AT&T code had already been replaced by university researchers and their associates. So Keith Bostic, Mike Karels and Kirk McKusick (the main UCB CSRG group) started going through the 4.3BSD codebase to cleanse the rest. Keith, in particular, built a ragtag team (in those days, USENIX conferences were a gold mine for such team building) and led these rebels to rewrite and replace all the Imperial AT&T code, piece by piece, starting with the libraries and userland programs. Anyone who helped only got credit as a Contributor -- people like Chris Torek and a cast of .. hundreds more. Then Mike and Kirk purified the kernel. After a bit more careful checking, this led to the release of a clean tree called Net/2 which was given to the world in June 1991 -- the largest dump of free source code the world had ever received (for those days -- not modern monsters like OpenOffice). Some of these ragtags formed a company (BSDi) to sell a production system based on this free code base, and a year later Unix System Laboratories (basically AT&T) sued BSDi and UCB. Eventually AT&T lost and after a few trifling fixes (described in the lawsuit documents) the codebase was free. A few newer developments (and more free code) were added, and released in June 1994 as 4.4BSD-Lite. Just over 14 years later OpenBSD is releasing its own 4.4 release (and for a lot less than $1000 per copy). The OpenBSD 4.4 release is dedicated to Keith Bostic, Mike Karels, Kirk McKusick, and all of those who contributed to making Net/2 and 4.4BSD-Lite free.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 18 November 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (4.4 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds), MP3 version (5.6 Mb, 3 minutes 5 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.3 Release Song - "Home to Hypocrisy"
We are just plain tired of being lectured to by a man who is a lot like Naomi Campbell. In 1998 when a United Airlines plane was waiting in the queue at Washington Dulles International Airport for take-off to New Orleans (where a Usenix conference was taking place), one man stood up from his seat, demanded that they stop waiting in the queue and be permitted to deplane. Even after orders from the crew and a pilot from the cockpit he refused to sit down. The plane exited the queue and returned to the airport gangway. Security personnel ran onto the plane and removed this man, Richard Stallman, from the plane. After Richard was removed from the plane, everyone else stayed onboard and continued their journey to New Orleans. A few OpenBSD developers were on that same plane, seated very closeby, so we have an accurate story of the events. This is the man who presumes that he should preach to us about morality, freedom, and what is best for us. He believes it is his God-given role to tell us what is best for us, when he has shown that he takes actions which are not best for everyone. He prefers actions which he thinks are best for him -- and him alone -- and then lies to the public. Richard Stallman is no Spock. We release our software in ways that are maximally free. We remove all restrictions on use and distribution, but leave a requirement to be known as the authors. We follow a pattern of free source code distribution that started in the mid-1980's in Berkeley, from before Richard Stallman had any powerful influence which he could use so falsely. We have a development sub-tree called "ports". Our "ports" tree builds software that is 'found on the net' into packages that OpenBSD users can use more easily. A scaffold of Makefiles and scripts automatically fetch these pieces of software, apply patches as required by OpenBSD, and then build them into nice neat little tarballs. This is provided as a convenience for users. The ports tree is maintained by OpenBSD entirely separately from our main source tree. Some of the software which is fetched and compiled is not as free as we would like, but what can we do. All the other operating system projects make exactly the same decision, and provide these same conveniences to their users. Richard felt that this "ports tree" of ours made OpenBSD non-free. He came to our mailing lists and lectured to us specifically, yet he said nothing to the many other vendors who do the same; many of them donate to the FSF and perhaps that has something to do with it. Meanwhile, Richard has personally made sure that all the official GNU software -- including Emacs -- compiles and runs on Windows. That man is a false leader. He is a hypocrite. There may be some people who listen to him. But we don't listen to people who do not follow their own stupid rules.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 03 May 2008
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.5 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds), MP3 version (8.2 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.2 Release Song - "100001 1010101"
Those of us who work on OpenBSD are often asked why we do what we do. This song's lyrics express the core motivations and goals which have remained unchanged over the years - secure, free, reliable software, that can be shared with anyone. Many other projects purport to share these same goals, and love to wrap themselves in a banner of "Open Source" and "Free Software". Given how many projects there are one would think it might be easy to stick to those goals, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. A variety of desires drag many projects away from the ideals very quickly. Much of any operating system's usability depends on device support, and there are some very tempting alternative ways to support devices available to those who will surrender their moral code. A project could compromise by entering into NDA agreements with vendors, or including binary objects in the operating system for which no source code exists, or tying their users down with contract terms hidden inside copyright notices. All of these choices surrender some subset of the ideals, and we simply will not do this. Sure, we care about getting devices working, but not at the expense of our original goals. Of course since "free to share with anyone" is part of our goals, we've been at the forefront of many licensing and NDA issues, resulting in a good number of successes. This success had led to much recognition for the advancement of Free Software causes, but has also led to other issues. We fully admit that some BSD licensed software has been taken and used by many commercial entities, but contributions come back more often than people seem to know, and when they do, they're always still properly attributed to the original authors, and given back in the same spirit that they were given in the first place. That's the best we can expect from companies. After all, we make our stuff so free so that everyone can benefit -- it remains a core goal; we really have not strayed at all in 10 years. But we can expect more from projects who talk about sharing -- such as the various Linux projects. Now rather than seeing us as friends who can cooperatively improve all codebases, we are seen as foes who oppose the GPL. The participants of "the race" are being manipulated by the FSF and their legal arm, the SFLC, for the FSF's aims, rather than the goal of getting good source into Linux (and all other code bases). We don't want this to come off as some conspiracy theory, but we simply urge those developers caution -- they should ensure that the path they are being shown by those who have positioned themselves as leaders is still true. Run for yourself, not for their agenda. The Race is there to be run, for ourselves, not for others. We do what we do to run our own race, and finish it the best we can. We don't rush off at every distraction, or worry how this will affect our image. We are here to have fun doing right.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 November 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (6.4 Mb, 4 minutes 4- seconds), MP3 version (4.0 Mb, 4 minutes 40 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.1 Release Song - Puffy Baba and the 40 Vendors
As developers of a free operating system, one of our prime responsibilities is device support. No matter how nice an operating system is, it remains useless and unusable without solid support for a wide percentage of the hardware that is available on the market. It is therefore rather unsurprising that more than half of our efforts focus on various aspects relating to device support. Most parts of the operating system (from low kernel, through to libraries, all the way up to X, and then even to applications) use fairly obvious interface layers, where the "communication protocols" or "argument passing" mechanisms (ie. APIs) can be understood by any developer who takes the time to read the free code. Device drivers pose an additional and significant challenge though: because many vendors refuse to document the exact behavior of their devices. The devices are black boxes. And often they are surprisingly weird, or even buggy. When vendor documentation does not exist, the development process can become extremely hairy. Groups of developers have found themselves focused for months at a time, figuring out the most simple steps, simply because the hardware is a complete mystery. Access to documentation can ease these difficulties rapidly. However, getting access to the chip documentation from vendors is ... almost always a negotiation. If we had open access to documentation, anyone would be able to see how simple all these devices actually are, and device driver development would flourish (and not just in OpenBSD, either). When we proceed into negotiations with vendors, asking for documentation, our position is often weak. One would assume that the modern market is fair, and that selling chips would be the primary focus of these vendors. But unfortunately a number of behemoth software vendors have spent the last 10 or 20 years building political hurdles against the smaller players. A particularly nasty player in this regard has been the Linux vendors and some Linux developers, who have played along with an American corporate model of requiring NDAs for chip documentation. This has effectively put Linux into the club with Microsoft, but has left all the other operating system communities -- and their developers -- with much less available clout for requesting documentation. In a more fair world, the Linux vendors would work with us, and the device driver support in all free operating systems would be fantastic by now. We only ask that users help us in changing the political landscape.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 02 May 2007
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (8.3 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds), MP3 version (4.1 Mb, 4 minutes 19 seconds)
OpenBSD 4.0 Release Song - Humppa negala
The last 10 years, every 6 month period has (without fail) resulted in an official OpenBSD release making it to the FTP servers. But CDs are also manufactured, which the project sells to continue our development goals. While tests of the release binaries are done by developers around the world, Theo and some developers from Calgary or Edmonton (such as Peter Valchev or Bob Beck) test that the discs are full of (only) correct code. Ty Semaka works for approximately two months to design and draw artwork that will fit the designated theme, and coordinates with his music buddies to write and record a song that also matches the theme. Then the discs and all the artwork gets delivered to the plant, so that they can be pressed in time for an official release date. This release, instead of bemoaning vendors or organizations that try to make our task of writing free software more difficult, we instead celebrate the 10 years that we have been given (so far) to write free software, express our themes in art, and the 5 years that we have made music with a group of talented musicians. OpenBSD developers have been torturing each other for years now with Humppa-style music, so this release our users get a taste of this too. Sometimes at hackathons you will hear the same songs being played on multiple laptops, out of sync. It is under such duress that much of our code gets written. We feel like Pufferix and Bobilix delivering The Three Discs of Freedom to those who want them whenever the need arises, then returning to celebrate the (unlocked) source tree with all the other developers. For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.
Source: OpenBSD
Added: 10 October 2006
Tags: openbsd, artwork
Ogg version (3.6 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds), MP3 version (2.3 Mb, 2 minutes 40 seconds)
The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 179 (31 Mb, 120 minutes)
Special Guests Will Backman and Scott Ruecker. Will's talks about his podcast bsdtalk and about Linux and BSD in general. We are joined by Troels also. Dann on Devede and hopes for MythTV. Scott Ruecker talks about Scale and general linux and lxer stuff.
Source: The Linux Tink Tech Show
Added: 17 February 2007
Tags: linux link tech show, talk, will backman
Ham Radio on FreeBSD (23 pages)
Last month I attended a meeting of the Ottawa Amateur Radio Club (OARC) as a member of my local BUG was giving a presentation on Ham Radio on FreeBSD. Diane Bruce, call sign VA3DB, has had her operator license since 1969 and is well known in the BSD community and for the development of ircd-hybrid. In the past year she has assisted in the creation of the Hamradio category in the FreeBSD ports tree and has become the maintainer of over 20 of the hamradio ports. She also contributed to the FreeBSD entry at Hampedia, the Wikipedia for ham operators. Her presentation slides are a great introduction to the various ham utilities which are available, including both descriptions and screenshots of the utilities in action.
Source: Ottawa Amateur Radio Club
Added: 19 February 2007
Tags: oarc, presentation, radio, diane bruce