FreeBSD Development Status Report

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Newsgroups: fa.freebsd.hackers
Original-Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 14:06:46 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Watson <rwat...@freebsd.org>
To: develop...@freebsd.org, hack...@freebsd.org
Subject: September, 2001 FreeBSD Development Status Report
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This report was created with the assistance of Nik Clayton and Chris
Costello.



September 2001 Status Report

Introduction

In the month of September, the FreeBSD Project continued its investment in
long-term projects, including continuing work on a fine-grained SMP
implementation, support for Kernel Schedulable Entities (KSE) supporting
highly efficient threading, and broadening support for modern hardware
platforms, including Intel's new IA64 architecture, UltraSparc, and
PowerPC. Additional focus was placed on the release process, including work
on the release notes infrastructure, support for DVD releases, and work on
a binary updating tool.

Due to the delay in getting the September report out the door, the November
status report will also cover October. During the month of November, we
look forward to BSDCon Europe, the first such event outside the continental
United States. The USENIX conference paper submission deadlines are also in
November, and FreeBSD users and developers are encouraged to submit to the
general and FREENIX tracks. Please see www.usenix.org for more information.
   
  * binup
  * Compressed TCP state
  * Fibre Channel Support
  * FreeBSD C99/POSIX Conformance Project
  * FreeBSD DVD generation
  * FreeBSD Java Project
  * FreeBSD libh Project
  * FreeBSD/sparc64 port
  * Improving FreeBSD startup scripts
  * Intel Gigabit driver
  * Intel Gigabit Ethernet
  * jpman project
  * KSE
  * Multiple console support
  * Netgraph ATM
  * Network console
  * Network device nodes
  * Network SMP locking
  * New Mount(2) API
  * Porting ppp to hurd & linux
  * PowerPC Port
  * PPP IPv6 Support
  * PRFW
  * RELNOTESng
  * SMPng Status Report
  * SYN cache implementation for FreeBSD
  * TIRPC

binup

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/projects/updater.html

Contact: Eric Melville <e...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: Murray Stokely <mur...@FreeBSD.org>

The project has gained a mailing list, freebsd-bi...@FreeBSD.org - and the
source tree has been moved into the projects/ directory in the FreeBSD CVS
repository. Current work is focusing on extending the FreeBSD package
framework, and the client library should be rewritten and completed by the
end of the year.

TODO: make the projects/ hierarchy into a cvsup distribution and add it to
cvs-all. Then update distrib.self.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Compressed TCP state

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

Development on this project has been slowed, pending the commit of the
syncache code, as this builds on part of that work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fibre Channel Support

URL: http://www.feral.com/isp.html

Contact: Matthew Jacob <mja...@FreeBSD.org>

Bug fixing and move to -STABLE of 2Gb support.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FreeBSD C99/POSIX Conformance Project

URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~mike/c99/

Contact: Mike Barcroft <m...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: FreeBSD-Standards Mailing List <freebsd-standa...@bostonradio.org>

The FreeBSD C99/POSIX Conformance Project aims to implement all
requirements of the C99 Standard and the latest 1003.1-200x POSIX draft
(currently Draft 7). In cases where aspects of the standard cannot be
followed, those aspects will be documented in the c99(7) or posix(7)
manuals. It is also an aim of this project to implement regression tests to
ensure correctness whenever possible.

Patches that implement the <stdint.h> and <inttypes.h> headers, and
modifications to printf(3) have been developed and will be committed
shortly. They will allow us to use some of the new types C99 introduces,
such as intmax_t and the printf(3) conversion specifier "%j".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FreeBSD DVD generation

Contact: Brian Somers <br...@freebsd-services.com>

A two disc set has been mastered and sent for pressing. There are a few
surprises with this release - details will be given in the official
announcement (at BSDConEurope).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FreeBSD Java Project

URL: http://www.freebsd.org/java/

Contact: Greg Lewis <gle...@eyesbeyond.com>

The project has moved forward on JDK 1.3.1 development this month, with the
release of two more patchsets. The team is reasonably confident that the
latest patchset is a stable release of the core JDK 1.3.1 tools and
classes, when the default "green" threads subsystem is used. This is mostly
thanks to hard work by Fuyuhiko Maruyama to stabilise and fix the code.
Bill Huey has also been progressing with his work on the "native" threads
subsystem, although this hasn't yet reached the stability of "green"
threads. Another (arguably the) major highlight of the latest patchset was
the integration of NetBSD support by Scott Bartram and Alistair Crooks (the
latter of NetBSD packages fame). Hopefully OpenBSD support will follow,
making it truly a united BSD Java Project.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FreeBSD libh Project

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/projects/libh.html

Contact: Alexander Langer <a...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: Nathan Ahlstrom <n...@FreeBSD.org>

The build process is now creating four different versions of the libs,
which include support for TVision, Qt, both or none. I created some first
packages from existing ports and installed those libh packages on my system
only using libh's tools, including registering all the files in the package
database, recording their checksums etc. Patches to the disk editor have
been submitted, which include functionality to write the changes in the
fdisk part and initial support for a disk label editor. We'll soon have a
new committer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FreeBSD/sparc64 port

Contact: Jake Burkholder <j...@freebsd.org>
Contact: Thomas Moestl <t...@freebsd.org>

I am pleased to announce that as of 1 AM Friday October 19th, the sparc64
port boots to single user mode. A few binaries from the base system have
been built and verified to work properly. Much of this work is still in
review for commit, but will be integrated into the cvs tree as soon as
possible. EBus support has been ported from NetBSD, and ISA support has
been written. The PCI host bridge code has stabilized, and busdma seems to
work correctly now. The sio driver has had EBus support added, and the ATA
driver has been modified so that it works on big-endian systems and uses
the busdma API. With these changes, a root file system can now be
successfully mounted from ATA disks on sparc64, even in DMA mode. The gem
driver, which supports Sun GEM and ERI and Apple GMAC and GMAC2 ethernet
adaptor, has been ported from NetBSD but has not yet had sufficent testing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Improving FreeBSD startup scripts

URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeBSD-rc/
URL: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~lukem/bibliography.html
URL: http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/rc/

Contact: Doug Barton <Do...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: Gordon Tetlow <gord...@gnf.org>

This group is for discussion about the startup scripts in FreeBSD,
primarily the scripts in /etc/rc*. Primary focus will be on improvements
and importation of NetBSD's excellent work on this topic.

Alright folks, I finally got off my butt last night and put together a
roadmap for the migration to the new rc.d init scripts that were imported
from NetBSD a long time ago and just sat in the tree.

M1 (Patch included)
Setup infrastructure
Make rcorder compile
Hook rc.subr into the distribution (and mergemaster)
Hook rcorder into the world
Add toggle in rc.conf to switch between rc_ng and current boot scripts

M2
Get FreeBSD to boot with the new boot scripts
Rewrite the /etc/rc.d scripts to work with FreeBSD

M3
Add some FreeBSD specific support into rc.subr

M4
Add true dependency checking to the infrastructure so that starting nfsd
will start mountd and rpcbind
add support into rc.subr
Add dependencies into rc.d scripts

I'd like a couple of people to take a look at this and then I'll submit a
pr for it if there aren't too many objections. I'm expecting M2 to run into
quite a bikeshed, but hey, I got my nice shiny asbestos back from the
cleaners.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intel Gigabit driver

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

The gx driver has finally been committed to the tree. The driver provides
support for the Intel PRO/1000 cards, both fiber and copper variants. The
driver supports VLAN tagging and TCP/IP checksum offload.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intel Gigabit Ethernet

Contact: Matthew Jacob <mja...@FreeBSD.org>

Quite a lot of cleanup of this driver. Bug fixes and some performance
enhancements. However, this driver is likely to be removed shortly and
replaced by one from Intel itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

jpman project

URL: http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/man-jp/

Contact: <man...@jp.FreeBSD.org>

We have finished updating section [125678] manpages to 4.4-RELEASE based, 1
week after 4.4-RELEASE is announced. To finish this update, OKAZAKI
Tetsurou has imported Ex/Rv macro support on ja-groff-1.17.2_1. SUZUKI
Koichi did most Ex/Rv changes on Japanese manpages. He also find some
issues of these macro usage on some original manapges and filed a PR. For
post-4.4-RELEASE, now we target 4.5-RELEASE. Section 3 update is also in
progress.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

KSE

URL: http://www.freebsd.org/~jasone/kse/
URL: http://www.freebsd.org/~julian

Contact: <jul...@freebsd.org>

In the last month, not a lot has happenned other than settling in of the
big August commit. Largely due to me having a sudden increased workload at
work, and a need for increased time to be spent elsewhere. However some
design work has proceeded. The API has firmed up somewhat and several
people have been reading through what has been done already in order to be
able to help in the next phase.

Milestone 3 will be to have the ability to generate and remove multiple
threads/KSEs per process. Milestone 3 will NOT require that doing so will
be safe. (especially in SMP systems), i.e. locking issues will not be fully
addressed, so while some testign will be possible, it will not be possible
to actually run in this mode with any load.

This will require allocators and destructors for the new structures.
Creation of the syscalls. Generation of an acurate written API for the
userland crew. Writing of the upcall launch code. Production of a userland
test program (not a full thread scheduler). Resolution of some of the more
glaring incompatibilities (e.g. the scheduler) in a backwards compatible
manner. (i.e. if there are no multi threaded processes on a system it
should behave the same as now (and be as reliable)).

Criterea for knowing when we have reached Milestione 3 is the ability for a
simple process on an unloaded system to perform a series of blocking
syscalls reliably. e.g. open 2 sockets, and send data on one, after having
done a read on another,and then 'respond' in like manner..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Multiple console support

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

Currently, a single device may act as a console at any time, which requires
the user to choose the console device at boot time. With the upcoming
network console support, it is desirable to allow multiple console devices
which behave identically, and to alter consoles while the kernel is
running.

The code is completed, and needs some final polishing to clean up the rough
edges. Console output can be sent to both syscons and sio, (as well as the
network) and when in ddb, input can be taken from any input source. A small
control program allows adding and removing consoles on the fly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Netgraph ATM

Contact: Harti Brandt <bra...@fokus.gmd.de>

ATM-Forum LAN-emulation version 2.0 without support for QoS has been
implemented and tested. The ILMI daemon has been modularized into a general
mini-SNMP daemon, an ILMI module and a not yet finished IPOA (IP over ATM)
module.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network console

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

This project's goal is to add low level network functionality to FreeBSD.
The initial target is to make a network console available for remote
debugging with ddb or gdb. A secondary target is to utilize the code to
perform network crash dumps. The design assumes that the network card and
driver are working, but does not rely on other parts of the kernel.

Initial development has been fairly rapid, and a minimal TCP/IP stack has
been written. It is currently possible to telnet to a machine which is at
the ddb> prompt and interact with the debugger.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network device nodes

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

Network devices now support aliases in the form of /dev/netN, where N is
the interface index. Devices may be wired down to a specific index number
by entries in /boot/device.hints of either:

hint.net.<ifindex>.dev="devname" hint.net.<ifindex>.ether="ethernet
address"

Additionally, ifconfig has been updated so that it will accept the alias
name when configuring a device.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network SMP locking

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

Not much progress has been made this month, with other projects occupying
most of my time. However, reviewing all the code and data structures had a
side benefit; a hash table for inet addresses has been added. This will
significantly speed up interface address lookups in the case where there
are a larger number of interface aliases.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Mount(2) API

Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <p...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: Maxime Henrion <m...@qualys.com>

We've made some good progress now, and the new nmount(2) syscall is nearly
finished. There is still some work to do to have a working kernel_mount()
and to convert all filesystems to use this new API for their VFS_MOUNT()
functions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Porting ppp to hurd & linux

Contact: Brian Somers <br...@freebsd-services.com>

Status is unchanged since last month. Patches have been submitted to get
ppp working under HURD, and mostly under Linux. There are GPL copyright
problems that need to be addressed. Many conflicts are expected after the
commit of IPv6 support in ppp.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PowerPC Port

Contact: Benno Rice <be...@FreeBSD.org>

There have been a few major successes in the PowerPC port this month. Mark
Peek has succeeded in getting the FreeBSD/PowerPC kernel cross compiled on
FreeBSD and booting under the PSIM simulator (now in /usr/ports/emulators/
psim-freebsd). I have succeeded in getting the FreeBSD loader to load and
execute kernels using the OpenFirmware found on Apple Macintosh hardware.
Mark is now working on completing some of the startup and pmap code, while
I am taking advantage of the simulator to work on some interrupt and device
issues.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PPP IPv6 Support

Contact: Brian Somers <br...@freebsd-services.com>

The software has been committed to -current and seems functional.
Outstanding issues include dealing with IPV6CP events (linkup & linkdown
scripts) and allocating site-local and global addresses (currently, ``iface
add'' is the only way to actually use the link). A bug exists in -stable
(running the not-yet-MFC'd ppp code) whereby routing entries are
disappearing after a time (around 12 or 24 hours). No further details are
yet available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRFW

URL: http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/jailuser/

Contact: Evan Sarmiento <e...@csa.bu.edu>

PRFW provides hooks in the FreeBSD kernel, allowing users to insert their
own checks in system calls and various kernel functions. PRFW is nearing
0.5, which will incorporate numerous structural changes such as, much
faster per-process hooks, kernel function hooks, plus, a new way of adding
hooks which would enable users to reference hooks by a string.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

RELNOTESng

URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/relnotes/

Contact: Bruce A. Mah <b...@FreeBSD.org>

FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE was the first release of FreeBSD with its new-style
release documentation. Both English and Japanese versions of these
documents were created. Regularly-built snapshots of -CURRENT and 4-STABLE
release documentation are now available on the Web site, but they require a
little HTML infrastructure to make them viewer-friendly. I intend to
continue updating my snapshot site at the URL above, at least for a little
while.

Call for help: The hardware compatability lists need to be updated in the
areas of the Alpha architecture, USB devices, and PCCARD devices. I'm
looking for volunteers to help; interested parties should contact me at the
email address above. DocBook experience is not required; familiarity with
the hardware above would be very helpful.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

SMPng Status Report

URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jasone/smp/

Contact: John Baldwin <j...@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: <s...@FreeBSD.org>

Some progress has been made on the proc locking this month. Also, a new
LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined to allow some locking infrastructure to be
more efficient. Kernels now only include the filenames of files calling
mutex, sx, or semaphore lock operations if the filenames are needed. Also,
mutex operations are no longer inlined if any debugging options are turned
on. The ucred API was also overhauled to be more locking friendly. A group
has also started investigating the tty subsystem to design and possibly
implement a locking strategy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

SYN cache implementation for FreeBSD

Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jle...@freebsd.org>

No new status to report, the code is still waiting to be committed. It is
likely that this code will be expanded to include syn cookies as a further
fallback mechanism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

TIRPC

URL: http://www.attic.ch/tirpc.html

Contact: Martin Blapp <m...@imp.ch>

As you know, in march 2001 the version 2.3 of TIRPC has been comitted
together with many userland changes. Alfred Perlstein and Ian Dowse have
helped me a lot with the porting effort and if I had problems with
understanding the code.

Most bugs are now fixed, some remaining areas to fix are secure RPC
(keyserv) and unix domain support. I've patches for these area available.
Ian Dowse fixed a lot of outstanding bugs in the rpcbind binary itself.
Thank you Ian !

The plan is now to migrate slowly towards TIRPC 2.8, which is threadsafe
for the server- and clientside. One first patch I've made available on my
URL. TIRPC 2.8 is licensed under the "Sun Standards License Version 1.0"
and we have to add some license lines and the license itself to all
modified files.

A example is timed_clnt_create.diff which can be found on the homepage.


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