FreeBSD Bi-Monthly Status Report

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Newsgroups: fa.freebsd.current
Original-Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 01:54:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott Long <sco...@freebsd.org>
Original-Message-Id: <200303150954.h2F9su2c062552@freefall.freebsd.org>
To: curr...@freebsd.org
Subject: January-February 2003 FreeBSD Bi-Monthly Status Report
Sender: owner-freebsd-curr...@freebsd.org
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Organization: Internet mailing list
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 09:55:53 GMT
Message-ID: <fa.jahjodq.qi0qqc@ifi.uio.no>
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January-February 2003 Status Report

                                 Introduction:

   Another busy two months have passed in the FreeBSD project. With 5.0
   released, attention is focusing on making it faster via more
   fine-grained locking, adding more high-end features like large memory
   (PAE) support for i386, and further progress on many other projects.
   FreeBSD 5.1 is expected to ship in late May or early June, with 5.2
   following at the end of summer. A roadmap for the push to 5-STABLE is
   available at [2]http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/5-roadmap.
   Although the 5.x series isn't expected to fully stabilize until the
   5.2 release, 5.1 promises to be an exciting release and a significant
   improvement over 5.0 in terms of speed and stability.

   Not to be forgotten, FreeBSD 4.8, the latest in the 4-STABLE series,
   is nearing release. Lots of last minute work is going into to it to
   deliver features like XFree86 4.3.0, Intel HyperThreading(tm) support,
   and of course many more bug fixes. Don't forget to support the FreeBSD
   vendors and developers by buying a copy of the CD set when it comes
   out!.

   Thanks,

   Scott Long, Robert Watson

Bluetooth stack for FreeBSD (Netgraph implementation)

   URL: http://www.geocities.com/m_evmenkin/
   URL: http://bluez.sf.net
   URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openobex/

   Contact: Maksim Yevmenkin <m_evmen...@yahoo.com>

   I'm very pleased to announce that another release is available for
   download at
   http://www.geocities.com/m_evmenkin/ngbt-fbsd-20030305.tar.gz

   This release features new in-kernel RFCOMM implementation that
   provides SOCK_STREAM sockets interface. This makes old user-space
   RFCOMM daemon obsolete. People should not use old user-space RFCOMM
   daemon any longer. The release features new RFCOMM PPP daemon that
   supports DUN and LAN profiles. Note: PPP patch (support for chat
   scripts in -direct mode) is required for DUN support. Look for it in
   the mailing list archive or contact me directly. People with Bluetooth
   enabled cell phones can now use them to access Internet.

   The Bluetooth sockets layer has been cleaned up. People should not see
   any WITNESS complains with new code. Locking issues have been
   revisited and code in much better shape now, although it probably is
   not 100% SMP ready just yet. The code should work on SMP system anyway
   because sockets layer is still under Giant.

   The simple OBEX server and client (based on OpenOBEX library) is
   complete. OBEX File Push and OBEX File Transfer profiles work and have
   been tested with Sony Ericsson T68i cell phone and Bluetooth 3COM
   stack on Windows2K. It is now possible to send pictures, address book
   and calendar entries from the cell phone via Bluetooth. Minor bug in
   OpenOBEX library has been fixed and OPEX Put-Empty command now works.

   Due to changes in API userland tools must be in sync with the kernel.
   People should install new include files, recompile and reinstall all
   userland tools as part of upgrade. I'm sorry about that.
     _________________________________________________________________

BSDCon 2003

   URL: http://www.usenix.org/events/bsdcon03/cfp/

   Contact: Gregory Shapiro <gshap...@FreeBSD.org>

   The BSDCon 2003 Program Committee invites you to contribute original
   and innovative papers on topics related to BSD-derived systems and the
   Open Source world. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
     * Embedded BSD application development and deployment
     * Real world experiences using BSD systems
     * Using BSD in a mixed OS environment
     * Comparison with non-BSD operating systems; technical, practical,
       licensing (GPL vs. BSD)
     * Tracking open source development on non-BSD systems
     * BSD on the desktop
     * I/O subsystem and device driver development
     * SMP and kernel threads
     * Kernel enhancements
     * Internet and networking services
     * Security
     * Performance analysis and tuning
     * System administration
     * Future of BSD

   Submissions in the form of extended abstracts are due by April 1,
   2003. Be sure to review the extended abstract expectations before
   submitting. Selection will be based on the quality of the written
   submission and whether the work is of interest to the community.

   We look forward to receiving your submissions!
     _________________________________________________________________

Buffer Cache lockdown

   Contact: Jeff Roberson <j...@FreeBSD.org>

   Most of the file system buffer cache has been reviewed and protected.
   The vnode interlock was extended to cover some buffer flag fields so
   that a seperate interlock was not required. The global buffer queue
   data structures were locked and counters were converted to atomic ops.
   The BUF_*LOCK functions grew an interlock argument so that buffers
   could be safely removed from the vnode clean and dirty lists. The
   lockmgr lock is now required for all access to buf fields. This was
   not strictly followed before because splbio provided the needed
   protection.

   There are a few areas of code that need to be protected and cleaned up
   before giant can be pushed down. Most notably the back-ground write
   code is currently unsafe without giant. Also, many of the VM bits that
   the buffer cache relies on are not safe. This work has been done with
   the expectation that the VM and VFS subsystems will be giant free
   soon.
     _________________________________________________________________

Disk I/O improvements

   Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <p...@FreeBSD.org>

   We have the first disk device driver (aac) out from under Giant now,
   and in certain scenarios it gives improvements up to 20%. The device
   drive API was pruned to reflect that NO_GEOM compatibility is
   unnecessary, this resulted in approx 1000 lines less source code, the
   majority of which were removed from the device drivers. The new API
   for cdevsw is a lot simpler and hopefully less likely to confuse
   people. A ability to automatically allocate a device major number has
   been introduced and is already used by a handful of drivers. Checks
   introduced with this facility has shown that the uniqueness of
   manually allocated major numbers had already broken down.

   Work continues on the statistics collection API and on a unified API
   for manual configuration of GEOM nodes.
     _________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD 4.8 Release Engineering

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.8R/schedule.html

   Contact: Murray Stokely <r...@FreeBSD.org>

   The FreeBSD 4.8 Release Process is well underway. The RELENG_4 branch
   has been under code freeze since February 15, and the first release
   candidates were made available in early March. A testing guide has
   been put together and is available from
   http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.8R/qa.html.

   Developers should coordinate with r...@FreeBSD.org about any changes
   they would like to include in this release, and users are encouraged
   to try out the release candidates and help find as many bugs as
   possible now, before the final release is made.

   FreeBSD 4.8 represents the newest production release from the stable
   '4.X' branch. It does not include all of the features that were made
   available in the "new technology" 5.0 release in January.
     _________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD C99 & POSIX Conformance Project

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/projects/c99/
   URL: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~schweikh/posix-utilities.html

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

   January and February were quiet months that saw with them the addition
   of some C99 math functions and macros, which include: fpclassify(),
   isfinite(), isgreater(), isgreaterequal(), isinf(), isless(),
   islessequal(), islessgreater(), isnan(), isnormal(), and signbit().
   Additional C99 math library support is in the works.
     _________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD GNOME Project

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

   Contact: Joe Marcus <mar...@FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Maxim Sobolev <sobo...@FreeBSD.org>
   Contact: Adam Weinberger <ad...@FreeBSD.org>

   FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE will continue in the tradition of 5.0-RELEASE, and
   include GNOME 2 as the default GNOME desktop. This means that 4.8 will
   ship with GNOME 2.2.

   Following on the heels of the recent GNOME 2.2 release, GNOME 2.3
   snapshots are gearing up. The development schedule is available from
   http://www.gnome.org/start/2.3/. Ports will be made available the
   same way they were for the 2.1 development releases. Stay tuned to
   freebsd-gnome@ for more details.

   We are currently in another ports freeze in preparation for
   4.8-RELEASE. Following the freeze, a new bsd.gnome.mk will be
   committed that effectively removes the USE_GNOMENG macro. This new
   version will add support for GNOME 2 as well as setup backward
   compatibility for ports that have not yet been converted to the new
   GNOME infrastructure. People interested in testing this new Mk file,
   can check out the ``ports'' module following the instructions at
   http://www.marcuscom.com:8080/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi.
     _________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD Security Officer Team

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

   Contact: Jacques Vidrine <nec...@FreeBSD.org>

   In the period from September 2002 through February 2003, the FreeBSD
   Security Team email aliases saw 1297 messages, a much smaller volume
   than over the summer (remember the Apache and OpenSSL worms? 4.6.1
   oops I mean 4.6.2-RELEASE?).

   Also during this period: 95 items were added to the SO issue-tracking
   database; 39 of these involved the FreeBSD base system while the rest
   involved ports. 9 new Security Advisories were published, 2 of which
   covered issues unique to FreeBSD.

   In January, the SO published a new PGP key (ID 0xCA6CDFB2, found on
   the FTP site and in the Handbook). This aligned the set of those who
   possess the corresponding private key with the membership of the
   security-officer alias published on the FreeBSD Security web site. It
   also worked around an issue with the deprecated PGP key being found
   corrupted on some public key servers.

   In February, Mike Tancsa of Sentex donated two machines to the
   Security Officer. These have been a great help already in testing the
   security branches, preparing patches, and generating updated binaries.
   Thank you very much, Mike!
     _________________________________________________________________

FreeBSD/MIPS Status Report

   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/projects/mips/
   URL: http://www.FreeBSD.org/platforms/mips.html

   Contact: Juli Mallett <jmall...@FreeBSD.org>

   Large portions of headers have been filled in, all have been stubbed
   out. Minimal functions and data elements have been stubbed out or
   filled in. Machinery added to support some requisite tunables for
   building real kernels. GCC fixed to generate correct local label
   prefixes making it possible to link real kernels. Work begun on
   providing enough to create and boot real kernels, on real hardware.
   Decision to only support MIPS-III and above made.
     _________________________________________________________________

jpman project

   URL: http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/man-jp/
   URL:
   ftp://daemon.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD-jp/man-jp/packages-5.0.0/j
   a-man-doc-5.0.tbz

   Contact: Kazuo Horikawa <horik...@FreeBSD.org>

   We have released Japanese translation of 5.0-RELEASE online manual
   pages on February 2nd. Most of entries which did not exist on RELENG_4
   were not yet translated. I hope we can finish such entries soon.
     _________________________________________________________________

KGI/FreeBSD Status Report

   URL: http://www.freebsd.org/~nsouch/ggiport.html
   URL: http://kgi-wip.sf.org

   Contact: Nicholas Souchu <nso...@FreeBSD.org>

   The later months have been very busy on KGI. Most of the framework has
   been debugged for typical usage (fb, no accel). I got KII (the input
   interface) connected to syscons through atkbd. Opening /dev/graphic
   works and framebuffer resource access is permitted. Finally, the KGIM
   (KGI module) framework has a better building tree for board / monitor
   drivers and board drivers are now loading with resource allocation.

   Most important on the TODO list: 5.0-RELEASE move (I currently work
   with a May-2002 5.0-current). Most of debug is now done. Let's
   validate!

   Note that KGI project homepage has changed since the last report.
     _________________________________________________________________

New Doceng Body Formed

   URL: http://www.freebsd.org/internal/doceng.html

   Contact: Murray Stokely <doc...@FreeBSD.org>

   The doceng@ team is a new body to handle some of the meta-project
   issues associated with the FreeBSD Documentation Project. The main
   responsibilities of this team are to grant approval of new doc
   committers, to manage the doc release process, to ensure the
   documentation toolchains are functional, to maintain the doc project
   primer, and to maintain the sanctity of the doc/ and www/ trees. The
   current members of this team are Nik Clayton, Ruslan Ermilov, Jun
   Kuriyama, Bruce A. Mah, and Murray Stokely.
     _________________________________________________________________

PowerPC Port

   Contact: Peter Grehan <gre...@FreeBSD.org>

   Work on PowerPC is progressing steadily. The system can now boot
   multi-user from the net and disk. ATA-DMA is being integrated with the
   ATAng code, and support for older G3 machines is being added.
     _________________________________________________________________

Read-ahead performance

   Contact: Jeff Roberson <j...@FreeBSD.org>

   Some improvements have been made to the clustered read ahead code.
   They allow for many more outstanding IO requests when an application
   does sequential access. This has a larger impact on RAID systems than
   on single disk systems. The maximum number of file system blocks that
   we will read ahead is tunable via the 'vfs.read_max' sysctl. This
   optimization has shown a 20% improvement in simple tests.
     _________________________________________________________________

SMP locking for network stack

   Contact: Jeffrey Hsu <h...@FreeBSD.org>

   The list of subsystems locked up include IP, UDP, TCP, ifaddr
   reference counting, syncache, the ifnet list, routing radix trees, and
   ARP. These have already been committed into the tree. In addition, SMP
   locking for raw IP, divert socket processing, and Unix domain sockets
   have also recently been completed and tested. Work is currently being
   done in some of the subsystems required to make parallel networking
   processing SMP-safe.
     _________________________________________________________________

Status Report for Newbus lockdown

   Contact: Warner Losh <i...@FreeBSD.org>

   Locking of the non-obj parts of newbus is nearing completion. A single
   lock is used for the device tree. Minimal changes to subr_bus have so
   far been necessary to make this work, however some lock order issues
   remain. After this work, it will no longer be necessary to hold Giant
   to call device_* routines safely. kobj work is being done by others
   and will likely require more extensive design work to make smp
   friendly.
     _________________________________________________________________

Support for PAE and >4G ram on x86

   Contact: Jake Burkholder <j...@FreeBSD.org>

   Support for PAE is mostly complete, and has been checked into the
   jake_pae branch. The approach that is being taken to add support for
   PAE is to allow the pmap module to view the page table directory as 4
   pages instead of 1, and to avoid using the 3rd level structure, the
   page directory pointer table, as much as possible. Due to its small
   size, 32 bytes, the PDPT cannot be uniformly recursively mapped, and
   as such does not provide a regular multi level structure like the page
   tables used by the alpha or x86-64 architectures. What remains to be
   done for PAE support is to develop an API for manipulating page table
   entries which will allow idempotent 64 bit loads and stores to be used
   where necessary.

   Experimental support for >4G ram using PAE has been developed and
   checked into the jake_pae_test branch in Perforce. This involved
   adding a physical address type separate from virtual addresses, for
   use by the vm system and bus code which needs to use physical
   addresses directly. Initial testing has shown good results with device
   drivers that can dma to 64 bit physical addresses.

   Funding for this project is being provided by DARPA and Network
   Associate Laboratories, and hardware support by FreeBSD Systems.
     _________________________________________________________________

TCP congestion control

   Contact: Jeffrey Hsu <h...@FreeBSD.org>

   The objective of this effort is to improve the performance, stability,
   and correctness of the BSD networking stack by adding support for new
   standards and standards track proposals while maintaining compliance
   with existing specifications. The upcoming 4.8 and 5.1 releases will
   be the first ones using the new NewReno logic. Recently, we
   implemented the Limited Transmit algorithm (RFC 3042) which benefits
   connections with small congestions windows, as happens, for example,
   on many short web connections. We also recently added support for
   larger sized starting congestion windows as described in RFC 3390.
   This helps short TCP connections as well as those with large
   round-trip delays, such as those over satellte links.
     _________________________________________________________________

ULE Scheduler

   Contact: Jeff Roberson <j...@FreeBSD.org>

   The ULE scheduler has been commited to the 5.0-CURRENT branch. Early
   adopters and experimenters are welcome to try it and submit bug
   reports. It has shown noticable performance improvements over the old
   scheduler under some workloads. There are currently problems with nice
   fairness but otherwise the interactive performance is very good. More
   work to improve the load balancing algorithm is required as well. This
   should be ready for use by the general FreeBSD user base in the next
   month or so.

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