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Introduction

This report covers FreeBSD-related projects between January and March 2011. It is the first of the four reports planned for 2011. During this quarter, the work was focused on releasing the new minor versions of FreeBSD, 7.4 and 8.2, which were released in February 2011. Currently, the project is starting to work on the next major version, 9.0.

Thanks to all the reporters for the excellent work! This report contains 34 entries and we hope you enjoy reading it.

Please note that the deadline for submissions covering the period between April and June 2011 is July 15th, 2011.

Projects

FreeBSD Team Reports

Network Infrastructure

Kernel

Documentation

Architectures

Ports

Miscellaneous

Google Summer of Code

    Bringing up OMAP3

    Contact: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
    Contact: Mohammed Farrag <mfarrag@FreeBSD.org>

    OMAP3 Emulation:

    • Step #1: qemu-omap3 isn't ported to FreeBSD yet. So,
    • Step #2: Use qemu-omap3 on Gentoo Host ..
    • Step #3: Is the end reached ?! No, bcz qemu-omap3 is not full. So, go to step #4.
    • Step #4: Use Meego >> Download Ubuntu 10.10 >> Install it, and
    • Step #5: Compile FreeBSD kernel, Create root file system, mkimage, Emulate using Meego.

    Open tasks:

    1. Device Drivers for OMAP3 Processors.

    BSDCan

    URL: http://www.bsdcan.org/2011/

    Contact: Dan Langille <dvl@FreeBSD.org>

    Our list of talks has been settled, and the schedule is pretty much finalized. There is still time to get into the Works In Progress session.

    Best to book your on-campus accommodation now. Or stay at one of the nearby hotels.

    Open tasks:

    1. Show up. Enjoy. Profit.

    DIstributed Firewall and Flow-shaper Using Statistical Evidence (DIFFUSE)

    URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/diffuse/
    URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/diffuse/downloads.html

    Contact: Sebastian Zander <szander@swin.edu.au>
    Contact: Grenville Armitage <garmitage@swin.edu.au>

    DIFFUSE is a system enabling FreeBSD's IPFW firewall subsystem to classify IP traffic based on statistical traffic properties.

    With DIFFUSE, IPFW computes statistics (such as packet lengths or inter-packet time intervals) for observed flows, and uses ML (machine learning) to classify flows into classes. In addition to traditional packet inspection rules, IPFW rules may now also be expressed in terms of traffic statistics or classes identified by ML classification. This can be helpful when direct packet inspection is problematic (perhaps for administrative reasons, or because port numbers do not reliably identify applications).

    DIFFUSE also enables one instance of IPFW to send flow information and classes to other IPFW instances, which then can act on such traffic (e.g. prioritise, accept, deny, etc.) according to its class. This allows for distributed architectures, where classification at one location in your network is used to control fire-walling or rate-shaping actions at other locations.

    DIFFUSE is a set of patches for FreeBSD-CURRENT. It can be downloaded from the project's web site. The web site also contains a more comprehensive introduction, including application examples, links to related work and documentation.

    In February 2011 we released DIFFUSE v0.2.2. This release contains a number of bug fixes and new features. Most notably since version 0.2 there is a tool to build classifier models, and there is a feature module and classifier model to classify Skype traffic.

    We hope to release DIFFUSE v0.3 soon. Keep an eye on the freebsd-ipfw and freebsd-net mailing lists for project-related announcements.

    Extfs Status Report

    URL: http://p4web.FreeBSD.org/@md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2010/extfs/src/sys/fs/&c=rFV@//depot/projects/soc2010/extfs/src/sys/fs/ext2fs/?ac=83
    URL: http://p4web.FreeBSD.org/@md=d&cd=//depot/projects/soc2010/ext4fs/src/sys/fs/&c=cc4@//depot/projects/soc2010/ext4fs/src/sys/fs/ext4fs/?ac=83

    Contact: Zheng Liu <lz@FreeBSD.org>

    I have implemented a reallocblks in ext2fs, like in ffs, and submitted a patch file to mailing list. Next I will try to implement htree directory index in ext2fs.

    Five New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms for FreeBSD

    URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/freebsd/5cc/
    URL: http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/newtcp/
    URL: http://www.FreeBSDFoundation.org/projects.shtml
    URL: http://FreeBSDfoundation.blogspot.com/2011/03/summary-of-five-new-tcp-congestion.html
    URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~lstewart/patches/5cc/

    Contact: David Hayes <dahayes@swin.edu.au>
    Contact: Lawrence Stewart <lastewart@swin.edu.au>
    Contact: Grenville Armitage <garmitage@swin.edu.au>
    Contact: Rui Paulo <rpaulo@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Bjoern Zeeb <bz@FreeBSD.org>

    The project is now complete, with the following code available in the svn head branch:

    • Modular congestion control framework.
    • Khelp (Kernel Helper) and Hhook (Helper Hook) frameworks.
    • Basic Khelp/Hhook integration with the TCP stack.
    • Enhanced Round Trip Time (ERTT) Khelp module.
    • Modularised implementations of NewReno, CUBIC, H-TCP, Vegas, Hamilton-Delay and CAIA-Hamilton-Delay congestion control algorithms.

    In addition to the code, a large set of documentation was committed (see the following man pages: cc(4), cc_newreno(4), cc_cubic(4), cc_htcp(4), cc_vegas(4), cc_hd(4), cc_chd(4), h_ertt(4), cc(9), khelp(9), hhook(9)) and a technical report was released which evaluates the computational overhead associated with TCP before and after the project's changes.

    A candidate patch to MFC the modular congestion control framework to the 8-STABLE branch is ready for testing here. If you try the patch, please send a note detailing your experience (positive or negative) to Lawrence Stewart.

    Thanks go to the FreeBSD Foundation for funding this work, to the project's technical reviewers for providing detailed feedback, and to all FreeBSD users who have provided testing feedback thus far.

    Open tasks:

    1. Test 8-STABLE MFC candidate patch and do the merge in time for 8.3-RELEASE.

    FreeBSD as Home Theater PC

    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/HTPC

    Contact: Bernhard Froehlich <decke@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Juergen Lock <nox@FreeBSD.org>

    FreeBSD could be a much better platform for a Home Theater PC than it currently is. We are focusing on improving support for media center applications by extending the major ports (MythTV, VDR, XBMC) and creating some documentation to guide interested people.

    In the last months we continued to work on HTPC relevant ports, improved lirc and multimedia/webcamd remote control support. The last missing major HTPC application VDR (Video Disk Recorder) has finally been committed to the portstree as multimedia/vdr including 17 vdr plugin ports.

    Open tasks:

    1. Improve remote control support in webcamd and with lirc.
    2. Port more Media Center applications (Enna, me-tv, ...)
    3. Create a small guide on how to build a great FreeBSD Home Theater PC.

    FreeBSD Bugbusting Team

    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html#gnats
    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/BugBusting
    URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~linimon/studies/prs/

    Contact: Gavin Atkinson <gavin@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Mark Linimon <linimon@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Remko Lodder <remko@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Volker Werth <vwe@FreeBSD.org>

    The bugmeister team is happy to welcome Eitan Adler (eadler@) as the newest GNATS-only contributor. Eitan has been helping triage new bugs as they come in, as well as making good progress on many of the older bugs, closing duplicates and obsolete bugs and contacting submitters for extra information where necessary. For the first time in a long time we managed to get below 6000 open PRs, in no small part due to Eitan's efforts. Welcome aboard!

    PRs continue to be classified as they arrive, by adding 'tags' to the subject lines corresponding to the kernel subsystem involved, or man page references for userland PRs. Reports are generated from these nightly, grouping related PRs into one place, sorted by tag or man page. This allows an interested party working in one area or on one subsystem to easily find related bugs and issues in the same area, which has proven quite effective in getting some of the older bug reports closed. These reports can all be found by following the third link above.

    We continue to look for ideas for other reports that may help improve the PR closure rate. If you have any suggestions for reports which would contribute positively to the way you work, please email bugmeister@ and we shall try to produce such a report.

    Our clearance rate of PRs, especially in kern and bin, seems to be improving. The number of non-ports PRs has stayed almost constant since the last status report.

    As always, anybody interested in helping out with the PR queue is welcome to join us in #freebsd-bugbusters on EFnet. We are always looking for additional help, whether your interests lie in triaging incoming PRs, generating patches to resolve existing problems, or simply helping with the database housekeeping (identifying duplicate PRs, ones that have already been resolved, etc). This is a great way of getting more involved with FreeBSD!

    Open tasks:

    1. Try to find ways to get more committers helping us with closing PRs that the team has already analyzed.

    FreeBSD Chromium

    URL: http://trillian.chruetertee.ch/chromium
    URL: http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-chromium
    URL: http://www.chromium.org/Home

    Contact: FreeBSD Chromium Team <chromium@FreeBSD.org>

    Thanks to a great collaborative effort from the FreeBSD community, the OpenBSD community, and the Chromium developers, Chromium has been updated in the Ports tree.

    In the spirit of release early and release often, updates to Chromium happen frequently. The contributors of the FreeBSD Chromium team have demonstrated great agility in keeping pace with updates in the development repository hosted at http://trillian.chruetertee.ch/chromium.

    Open tasks:

    1. A task that lies ahead is working with the Chromium developers at integrating the FreeBSD patches into the codebase. Volunteers are welcome.

    FreeBSD Haskell Ports

    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/Haskell
    URL: https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell
    URL: http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-haskell/

    Contact: Gábor János PÁLI <pgj@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Ashish SHUKLA <ashish@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Giuseppe Pilichi <jacula@FreeBSD.org>

    We are proud to announce that the FreeBSD Haskell team has updated GHC to 7.0.3, and all other existing Haskell ports to the latest stable versions, as well as added new ports. The total number of Haskell ports in the FreeBSD repository is now more than 200. These ports are still waiting to be committed. At the moment, they are available from FreeBSD Haskell ports repository. Any users who would like to get early access to them, please refer to the FreeBSD Haskell ports Call For Testing.

    Open tasks:

    1. Create a metaport for Haskell Platform.
    2. Create a port for Happstack.
    3. Create a port for gitit.

    FreeBSD NYI Admins Status Report

    Contact: NYI Admins Team <nyi-admin@FreeBSD.org>

    The FreeBSD.org site at New York Internet is progressing, though more slowly than we had hoped. Due to problems with the old power controllers and serial console servers, new equipment has been bought by the FreeBSD Foundation. Installing the new equipment required re-racking all the existing servers which was done by the local FreeBSD team (Steven Kreuzer and John Baldwin).

    For basic infrastructure at the site (such as DHCP, DNS, console etc.) the FreeBSD Foundation bought some new servers which are in the process of being configured.

    The FreeBSD Ports team are currently using 9 of the NYI servers for package building.

    Open tasks:

    1. We are looking for a storage system (15TB+) for keeping replicas of all the main FreeBSD.org systems, a full ftp-archive mirror, site local files etc.

    FreeBSD/arm on Marvell Raid-on-Chip

    Contact: Grzegorz Bernacki <gjb@semihalf.com>
    Contact: Rafal Jaworowski <raj@semihalf.com>

    Marvell 88RC8180 is an integrated RAID-on-Chip controller, based on the Feroceon 88FR331 CPU core (ARMv5TE). The 88RC9580 is a next generation version, based on the Sheeva 88SV581 CPU core (ARMv6) of this system-on-chip devices family.

    Current FreeBSD suppport for 88RC8180 and 88RC9580 includes:

    • Booting via U-Boot bootloader
    • L1, L2 cache
    • Serial console support (UART)
    • Interrupt controller
    • Integrated timers
    • PCI Express (root complex and endpoint modes)
    • Doorbells and messages
    • Ethernet controller

    Open tasks:

    1. Complete, clean up, merge with HEAD.

    FreeBSD/EC2

    URL: http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/

    Contact: Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>

    FreeBSD is now able to run on t1.micro and cc1.4xlarge instances in the Amazon EC2 cloud. FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE is stable subject to the limitations of the instance type (e.g., running ZFS on a micro instance with only 600 MB of RAM doesn't work very well), but FreeBSD 9.0 has significant stability issues.

    A list of available FreeBSD AMIs (EC2 machine images) appears on the FreeBSD/EC2 status page.

    Open tasks:

    1. Bring FreeBSD to a wider range of EC2 instance types.
    2. Completely rework the locking in head/sys/i386/xen/pmap.c to eliminate races and make 9.0-CURRENT stable under paravirtualization.
    3. Track down several possibly-related problems with scheduling and timekeeping.
    4. Fix other issues shown on the FreeBSD/EC2 status page.

    FreeBSD/powerpc on Freescale QorIQ

    Contact: Michal Dubiel <md@semihalf.com>
    Contact: Rafal Jaworowski <raj@semihalf.com>

    QorIQ is a brand of Power Architecture-based communications microprocessors from Freescale. It is an evolutionary step from the PowerQUICC platform (MPC85xx) and is built around one or more Power Architecture e500/e500mc cores. This work is bringing up FreeBSD on these system-on-chip devices along with device drivers for integrated peripherials.

    Current FreeBSD QorIQ support includes:

    • QorIQ P2020 support
    • Booting via U-Boot bootloader
    • L1, L2 cache
    • Serial console (UART)
    • Interrupt controller
    • Ethernet (TSEC, SGMII mode)
    • I2C
    • EHCI controller (no Transaction Translation Unit)
    • Security Engine (SEC) 3.1
    • PCI Express controller (host mode)
    • Enhanced SDHC (no MMC support)
    • Dual-core (SMP) support

    GEOM-based ataraid(4) Replacement — geom_raid.

    Contact: Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: M. Warner Losh <imp@FreeBSD.org>

    A new RAID GEOM class (geom_raid) was added to FreeBSD 9-CURRENT, to replace ataraid(4) in supporting various BIOS-based software RAIDs. Unlike ataraid(4) this implementation does not depend on legacy ata(4) subsystem and can be used with any disk drivers, including new CAM-based ones (ahci(4), siis(4), mvs(4) and ata(4) with `options ATA_CAM`). To make code more readable and extensible, this implementation follows modular design, including a core part and two sets of modules, implementing support for different metadata formats and RAID levels.

    Support for such popular metadata formats is now implemented: Intel, JMicron, NVIDIA, Promise (also used by AMD/ATI) and SiliconImage.

    Such RAID levels are now supported: RAID0, RAID1, RAID1E, RAID10, SINGLE, CONCAT.

    For any all of these RAID levels and metadata formats this class supports full cycle of volume operations: reading, writing, creation, deletion, disk removal and insertion, rebuilding, dirty shutdown detection and resynchronization, bad sector recovery, faulty disks tracking, hot-spare disks. For Intel and Promise formats there is support for multiple volumes per disk set.

    See the graid(8) manual page for additional details.

    Sponsored by: Cisco Systems, Inc. and iXsystems, Inc.

    Open tasks:

    1. Implement metadata modules for other formats (DDF, Highpoint, VIA, ...).
    2. Implement transformation modules for other RAID levels (RAID5, ...).

    Google Summer of Code 2011

    URL: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2011/freebsd
    URL: http://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2011

    Contact: Brooks Davis <brooks@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>

    FreeBSD is proud to be participating in our seventh year of Google Summer of Code. On Monday, April 25th we accepted 17 proposals from an overall excellent field. A full list of accepted proposals can be found on the GSoC website. We look forward to working with these students over the summer.

    As we did last year we plan to ask students to submit weekly status reports to the soc-status mailing list. Those wishing to keep up with the work in progress and offer review may wish to subscribe.

    HAST (Highly Available Storage)

    Contact: Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>

    Contact: Mikolaj Golub <trociny@FreeBSD.org>

    HAST development is progressing nicely. Mikolaj Golub who contributes to HAST is now a FreeBSD src committer. Some changes worth noting since the last report:

    • Compression of the data being sent over the network. This can speed up especially synchronization process.
    • Optional checksuming for the data being send over the network.
    • Capsicum sandboxing for secondary node and hastctl.
    • Chroot+setuid+setgid sandboxing for primary node.
    • Allow administrators to specify source IP address for connections.
    • When changing role wait for a while for the other node to switch from primary to secondary to avoid split-brain.
    • Many bug fixes.

    Journaled Soft Updates

    Contact: Jeff Roberson <jeff@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Kirk McKusick <mckusick@mckusick.com>

    All known problems with journaled soft updates have been fixed in head. If you have any problems while running with journaled soft updates, please report them to us.

    We have addressed several performance issues that have been brought to our attention. If you have any performance problems while running with journaled soft updates, please report them to us.

    We have improved the recovery of resources when running with soft updates on small (root) filesystems. We anticipate being able to use soft updates for root filesystems in the 9.0 system.

    We expect to have journaled soft updates default to enabled in the 9.0 system. We encourage users of -CURRENT to enable journaled soft updates to help shake out any remaining performance problems and bugs.

    KDE-FreeBSD

    URL: http://FreeBSD.kde.org

    Contact: KDE FreeBSD <kde-freebsd@kde.org>

    The KDE on FreeBSD team have continued to improve the experience of KDE and Qt under FreeBSD. The latest round of improvements include:

    • Improved shared resources (i.e. pixmaps for KDE)
    • Improved file monitoring (using kevent)
    • Improved KSysGuard support (new and refined sensors)

    The team have also made many releases and upstreamed many fixes and patches. The latest round of releases include:

    • Qt: 4.7.2
    • KDE: 4.5.5; 4.6.1; 4.6.2
    • KOffice: 2.3.3
    • KDevelop: 4.2.0; 4.2.2 (KDevPlatform: 1.2.0; 1.2.2)
    • many smaller ports

    The team needs more testers and porters so please visit us at kde-freebsd@kde.org

    Open tasks:

    1. Continue improvements of KSysGuard.
    2. General maintenance.
    3. General testing.
    4. Porting.

    Linux Compatibility Layer - DVB and V4L2 Support

    URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~nox/dvb/

    Contact: Juergen Lock <nox@FreeBSD.org>

    Following (separate) discussions on the mailing lists I have made patches to add DVB and V4L2 ioctl translation support to the Linux compatibility layer, allowing Linux apps like SageTV, Skype, and Flash to use DVB/ATSC tuners and webcams that previously only worked for native FreeBSD apps. (Most of this hardware uses Linux drivers via the multimedia/webcamd port.)

    Open tasks:

    1. Handle the remaining ioctls that (I think) are not used by DVB tuners/cameras supported by webcamd (it only supports USB devices, the unhandled ioctls mostly have to do with video overlays and hardware MPEG2 decoding on analog or DVB tuners, features that AFAIK don't exist on USB hardware.)
    2. Make the DVB support a port because there were concerns putting it in base due to the LGPL in one of the header files even though I already separated out the code into an extra kld. (linux_dvbwrapper.ko)
    3. Get the patches polished and committed. :) (Until they are you can check my DVB page and the freebsd-emulation@ mailing list for updates.)

    Linux Emulation Ports

    URL: http://www.leidinger.net/blog/2011/02/25/howto-creating-your-own-updated-linux-rpm-for-the-freebsd-linuxulator/

    Contact: Alexander Leidinger <netchild@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Emulation Mailinglist <freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.org>

    Old linux_base ports (all which are not used by default in some release) where marked as deprecated with a short expiration period. The reason is that all those ports are long past their end of life and do not receive security updates anymore. Unfortunately this is also true for the linux_base ports which are still used by default in the releases, but no replacement is available ATM (see open tasks).

    The linux-f10-pango port was updated to a more recent version whoch does not have a security problem by generating a linux-RPM in a VM with "FreeBSD" as the vendor (see the links section for a HOWTO).

    Open tasks:

    1. Decide which RPM based linux distribution+version to track next for the linux_base ports, create ports for it and test for compatibility with our kernel code.

    MIPS/Octeon Support and bootinfo

    Contact: Andrew Duane <aduane@juniper.net>

    Working on improving support for Octeon processors and integrating with other MIPS processor families. Currently working on support for the standard MIPS bootinfo structure as a boot API (to supplement/replace the Caviums-specific structure). Other Octeon improvements including cleanups to CF and USB drivers to come.

    New FreeBSD Handbook Section Covering HAST

    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks-hast.html

    Contact: Daniel Gerzo <danger@FreeBSD.org>

    A new FreeBSD Handbook section covering the Highly Available STorage, or HAST developed by Pawel Jakub Dawidek has been recently added. In this section, you will learn what HAST is, how it works, which features it provides and how to set it up. It also includes a working example on how it can be used together with devd(8) and CARP. Enjoy your reading.

    New FreeBSD Installer

    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/BSDInstall
    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/PCBSDInstallMerge

    Contact: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org>

    On March 14th, sysinstall was replaced on the 9.0 snapshot media by a new, modular installer called BSDInstall. This adds support for a wide variety of new features while simplifying the installation process. Testing before the 9.0 release will be very much appreciated -- CD and memory stick images for a variety of platforms are linked from the BSDInstall wiki page.

    Interesting features:

    • Install CD media are always live CDs
    • Installations spanning multiple disks
    • Wireless setup
    • GPT disk formatting
    • Virtualization friendly: can install from a live system onto disk images
    • Easily hackable and more modular than sysinstall
    • Greater flexibility: shells available throughout the installation

    Work is presently ongoing to integrate this installer with the backend provided by pc-sysinstall (second wiki link).

    Open tasks:

    1. ZFS installation support.
    2. IA64 disk setup.

    OpenAFS Port

    URL: http://openafs.org
    URL: http://web.mit.edu/freebsd/openafs/openafs.shar

    Contact: Benjamin Kaduk <kaduk@mit.edu>
    Contact: Derrick Brashear <shadow@gmail.com>

    AFS is a distributed network filesystem that originated from the Andrew Project at Carnegie-Mellon University. The OpenAFS client implementation has not been particularly useful on FreeBSD since the FreeBSD 4.X releases. Work covered in previous reports brought the OpenAFS client to a useful form on 9.0-CURRENT, though with some rough edges. Since our last report, we have fixed several bugs that were impacting usability, and we expect the upcoming 1.6.0 release to be usable for regular client workloads (though not heavy load). Accordingly, we have submitted packaging for inclusion in the Ports Collection (PR ports/152467).

    There are several known outstanding issues that are being worked on, but detailed bug reports are welcome at port-freebsd@openafs.org.

    Open tasks:

    1. Update VFS locking to allow the use of disk-based client caches as well as memory-based caches.
    2. Track down races and deadlocks that may appear under load.
    3. Integrate with the bsd.kmod.mk kernel-module build infrastructure.
    4. Eliminate a moderate memory leak from the kernel module.
    5. PAG (Process Authentication Group) support is not functional.

    pfSense

    URL: http://www.pfsense.org

    Contact: Scott Ullrich <sullrich@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Chris Buechler <cmb@pfsense.org>
    Contact: Ermal Luci <eri@FreeBSD.org>

    Work on 2.0 is rapidly coming to an end. We released RC1 around Feb 25 2011 and so far it seems to be rather stable. 2.0 is our first major release in 2 years and almost all limitations of the previous version has been overcome.

    Open tasks:

    1. Finish testing RC1 and certify for release.

    Portmaster

    URL: http://dougbarton.us/portmaster-proposal.html

    Contact: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org>

    The latest version of portmaster contains numerous improvements aimed at large-scale enterprise users. Particularly, support for the --index-only/--packages-only code has been significantly improved. Some of the highlights include:

    • New --update-if-newer option which takes a list of ports and/or a glob pattern on the command line and only updates those that are out of date. This feature is very useful for ensuring that the packages needed for updating a system are all available and up to date on the package building system.
    • The portmaster.rc file can now be stored in the same directory as the script itself, which aids in shared access to the script (for example over an NFS mount)
    • More features now work (or work better) with --index-only, including --check-depends

    Open tasks:

    1. I have received some support for items E.2 and E.3 on the web page listed above so I will be putting some effort into those areas in the coming months. I also have in mind to split out the "fetch" code to be its own script, in part to support goal E.2, and to allow for more efficient parallelization when downloading multiple distfiles (especially for multiple ports that download the same distfile). This will also allow me to set a global limit for the number of parallel fetches which should aid users on slow links.

    Ports Collection

    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/
    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing-ports/
    URL: http://portsmon.FreeBSD.org/index.html
    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/portmgr/index.html
    URL: http://blogs.FreeBSDish.org/portmgr/
    URL: http://www.twitter.com/freebsd_portmgr/
    URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=135441496471197
    URL: http://tinderbox.marcuscom.com/

    Contact: Thomas Abthorpe <portmgr-secretary@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Port Management Team <portmgr@FreeBSD.org>

    The ports tree slowly moves up closer to 23,000. The PR count still remains at about 1000.

    In Q1 we added 2 new committers, and took in 4 commit bits for safe keeping.

    After a year of serving as the team secretary, Thomas Abthorpe's membership was upgraded to full voting status.

    The Ports Management team have been running -exp runs on an ongoing basis, verifying how base system updates may affect the ports tree, as well as providing QA runs for major ports updates. Of note, -exp runs were done for:

    • erwin did a clang -exp run, and sent results to interested parties
    • kde@ requested an -exp run for KDE 4.6.1 and Qt 4.7.2
    • linimon -exp for update of default zope version to 3.2
    • miwi performed the following -exp runs, make fetch-original, xorg, cmake, pear, kde4 / py-qt / sip, and python2.7
    • mm requested an -exp run to test the last GPLv2 version of gcc 4.2.2
    • pav completed open-motif and mono -exp runs for respective submitters
    • ports/127214, -exp run to make copy/paste of portaudit user friendly
    • ports/144482, -exp run to fix package depends
    • ports/152102, -exp run to make dirrmtry more friendly
    • ports/152268, -exp run to update binutils
    • ports/153539, -exp run to allow checking STRIP when WITH_DEBUG is defined
    • ports/153547, -exp run to remove NO_SIZE
    • ports/153625, -exp run to pass CPPFLAGS to MAKE/CONFIGURE_ENV
    • ports/153634, -exp run to remove redundant PKGNAMEPREFIX for localised ports
    • ports/154121, -exp run to use --title for new libdialog
    • ports/154122, -exp run to update libtool to 2.4
    • ports/154186, -exp to allow using linux 2.4 emulation on FreeBSD 8+
    • ports/154390, -exp run to make fetching output copy/paste friendly
    • ports/154653, -exp run to remove superfluous slash
    • ports/154799, -exp run to update glib + gtk
    • ports/154994, -exp run for MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN enhancements
    • ports/155502, -exp run to remove sanity check for X_WINDOW_SYSTEM
    • ports/155504, -exp run to remove USE_XPM from b.p.m.
    • ports/155505, -exp run to update GNU m4

    Open tasks:

    1. Looking for help fixing ports broken on CURRENT.
    2. Looking for help with Tier-2 architectures.
    3. Most ports PRs are assigned, we now need to focus on testing, committing and closing.

    RCTL, aka Resource Containers

    Contact: Edward Tomasz Napierala <trasz@FreeBSD.org>

    Most of the code has already been merged into CURRENT. There are two remaining problems I would like to solve before 9.0-RELEASE - see below - but otherwise, the code is stable; please test and report any problems. You will need to rebuild the kernel with "options RACCT" and "options RCTL". The rctl(8) manual page should be a good introduction on how to use it.

    This project was sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation.

    Open tasks:

    1. Reimplementing %CPU accounting and CPU throttling.
    2. Making jail rules persistent - right now, one cannot add jail rule before that jail is created, which makes it impossible to put them into /etc/rctl.conf; also, rules disappear when jail gets destroyed.

    The FreeBSD Foundation Status Report

    URL: http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org

    Contact: Deb Goodkin <deb@FreeBSDFoundation.org>

    We created our 2011 budget. Some of our plans for 2011 include spending $125,000 on project development and $75,000 on equipment to build up FreeBSD facilities in three locations.

    We were proud to be a sponsor for AsiaBSDCon 2011 in Tokyo. We also committed to sponsoring BSDCan 2011 in May, and EuroBSDCon 2011 in October. The Foundation was also represented at SCALE in Los Angeles, Indiana LinuxFest in Indianapolis, and Flourish in Chicago.

    Completed Foundation-funded projects: Five New TCP Congestion Control Algorithms project by Swinburne University and Resource Containers project by Edward Napierala.

    In February we visited companies in the Bay Area that use FreeBSD. Our goal was to promote FreeBSD, better understand their interests and needs, and help facilitate stronger relationships between these companies and the Project. The presentations we gave included the benefits of FreeBSD, Project road-map, potential areas of collaboration, case studies, and how the Foundation supports the project. By visiting in person we were able to show our commitment to the Project and respond directly to questions and concerns they may have had. We were pleased with the positive responses we received and plan on visiting more companies in the future.

    We are funding two new projects. The first project is Implementing Support of GEM, KMS, and DRI for Intel Drivers by Konstantin Belousov. The second is Improving the Maturity of IPv6 Support of FreeBSD and PC-BSD by Bjoern Zeeb.

    We continued our work on infrastructure projects to beef up hardware for package-building, network-testing, etc. This includes purchasing equipment as well as managing equipment donations.

    Stop by and visit with us at BSDCan (May 13-14) and SouthEast LinuxFest (June 10-12).

    The work above as well as many other tasks we do for the project, couldn't be done without donations. Please help us by making a donation or asking your company to make a donation. We would be happy to send marketing literature to you or your company. Find out how to make a donation at http://www.FreeBSDfoundation.org/donate/.

    The FreeBSD German Documentation Project Status Report

    URL: http://doc.bsdgroup.de

    Contact: Johann Kois <jkois@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Benedict Reuschling <bcr@FreeBSD.org>

    Benedict Reuschling contributed the translation of the new handbook section about HAST, while Benjamin Lukas was working on the first translation of the firewall chapter of the handbook. The committers to the German Documentation Project were busy with keeping the existing German documentation up-to-date. The website translations were also kept in sync with the ones on FreeBSD.org.

    We tried to re-activate committers who did not contribute for some time but most of them are currently unable to free up enough time. We hope to gain fresh contributor blood as we are getting occasional reports about bugs and grammar in the german translation.

    Open tasks:

    1. Submit grammar, spelling or other errors you find in the german documents and the website.
    2. Translate more articles and other open handbook sections.

    The FreeBSD Japanese Documentation Project

    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ja/
    URL: http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/doc-jp/

    Contact: Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Ryusuke Suzuki <ryusuke@FreeBSD.org>

    The www/ja and doc/ja_JP.eucJP/books/handbook have constantly been updated. During this period, translation of the handbook installation page was finished. The following chapters are now synchronized with the English version:

    • introduction
    • install
    • ports
    • x11
    • desktop
    • multimedia
    • mirrors
    • pgpkeys

    Merging translation results from the www tree on a separate repository for the translation work into the main tree was also finished. Since outdated and/or non-translated documents also remain in both doc/ja_JP.eucJP and www, further translation work is still needed. Some progress has been made in the Porter's Handbook as well in this period.

    Webcam and DVB Compatibility List

    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/WebcamCompat

    Contact: Matthias Apitz <guru@unixarea.de>

    Webcam and DVB Compatibility List

    This is the FreeBSD Webcam, DVB, and Remote Control Compatibility List. The main goal of this page is to give an exact answer about which application works with a given cam or DVB. Combinations of the hardware and software mentioned in this table are known to work.

    Please add more lines to the table or ask me to do so by just sending a mail with your Cam/DVB information. Please note: you should only add information you have seen working and not you may think of or imagine that they could work. The contact information (name and/or email addr) is optional.

    Open tasks:

    1. Move this to a real database in where FreeBSD enduser could self insert their gadgets, like the FreeBSD Laptop Compat List.

    www/apache22 Default

    URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~pgollucci/FreeBSD/prs/maintainers.html#apache
    URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/147009
    URL: http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/Apache
    URL: http://lists.FreeBSD.org/pipermail/freebsd-apache/2011-March/002174.html

    Contact: Philip Gollucci <pgollucci@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Olli Hauer <ohauer@FreeBSD.org>
    Contact: Apache Apache <apache@FreeBSD.org>

    95% done, pending final -exp run, and pulling the switch. HEADS-UP announcement already sent to relevant lists. This will be for 8.3/9.0.

    ZFSv28 available in FreeBSD 9-CURRENT

    Contact: Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>

    Contact: Martin Matuska <mm@FreeBSD.org>

    ZFS v28 is now in HEAD! Test, test, test and test. Pretty please. New features include:

    • Data deduplication.
    • Triple parity RAIDZ (RAIDZ3).
    • zfs diff.
    • zpool split.
    • Snapshot holds.
    • zpool import -F. Allows to rewind corrupted pool to earlier transaction group.
    • Possibility to import pool in read-only mode.
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