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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 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.

Newest resources

May 2009

  • Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich - pfSense: 2.0 and beyond
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, pfsense, chris buechler, scott ullrich
    Slides (3.2 Mb, 36 pages)

    pfSense: 2.0 and beyond
    From firewall distribution to appliance building platform

    pfSense is a BSD licensed customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution.

    This session will start with an introduction to the project and its common uses, which have expanded considerably beyond firewalling. We will cover much of the new functionality coming in the 2.0 release, which contains significant enhancements to nearly every portion of the system as well as numerous new features.

    While the primary function of the project is a firewalling and routing platform, with changes coming in pfSense 2.0, it has also become an appliance building framework enabling the creation of customized special purpose appliances. The m0n0wall code where pfSense originated has proved popular for this purpose, with AskoziaPBX and FreeNAS also based upon it, in addition to a number of commercial solutions. The goal of this appliance building framework is to enable creation of projects such as these without having to fork and maintain another code base. The existing appliances, including a DNS server using TinyDNS, VoIP with FreeSWITCH, and others will be discussed. For those interested in creating appliances, an overview of the process will be provided along with references for additional information.

  • Philip Paeps - Crypto Acceleration on FreeBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, crypto acceleration, freebsd, philip paeps
    Slides (361 Kb, 28 pages)

    Crypto Acceleration on FreeBSD

    As more and more services on the internet become cryptographically secured, the load of cryptography on systems becomes heavier and heavier. Crypto acceleration hardware is available in different forms for different workloads. Embedded communications processors from VIA and AMD have limited acceleration facilities in silicon and various manufacturers build hardware for accelerating secure web traffic and IPSEC VPN tunnels.

    This talk gives an overview of FreeBSD's crypto framework in the kernel and how it can be used together with OpenSSL to leverage acceleration hardware. Some numbers will be presented to demonstrate how acceleration can improve performance - and how it can curiously bring a system to a grinding halt.

    Philip originally started playing with crypto acceleration when he saw the "crypto block" in one of his Soekris boards. As usual, addiction was instant and by the grace of the "you touch it, you own it" principle, he has been fiddling the crypto framework more than is good for him.

  • George Neville-Neil - Networking from the Bottom Up: Device Drivers
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, tutorial, device drivers, george neville-neil
    PDF file (480 Kb, 68 pages)

    Networking from the Bottom Up: Device Drivers.

    In this tutorial I will describe how to write and maintain network drivers in FreeBSD and use the example of the Intel Gigabit Ethernet driver (igb) throughout the course.

    Students will learn the basic data structures and APIs necessary to implement a network driver in FreeBSD. The tutorial is general enough that it can be applied to other BSDs, and likely to other embedded and UNIX like systems while being specific enough that given a device and a manual the student should be able to develop a working driver on their own. This is the first of a series of lectures on network that I am developing over the next year or so.

  • Lawrence Stewart - Improving the FreeBSD TCP Implementation
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, tcp, lawrence stewart
    Slides (2.1 Mb, 38 pages)

    Improving the FreeBSD TCP Implementation.
    An update on all things TCP in FreeBSD and how they affect you.

    My involvement in improving the FreeBSD TCP stack has continued this past year, with much of the work targeted at FreeBSD 8. This talk will cover what these changes entail, why they are of interest to the FreeBSD community and how they help to improve our TCP implementation.

    It has been a busy year since attending my inaugural BSDCan in 2008, where I talked about some of my work with TCP in FreeBSD.

    I have continued the work on TCP analysis/debugging tools and integrating modular congestion control into FreeBSD as part of the NewTCP research project. I will provide a progress update on this work.

    Additionally, a grant win from the FreeBSD Foundation to undertake a project titled "Improving the FreeBSD TCP Implementation" at Swinburne University's Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures has been progressing well. The project focuses on bringing TCP Appropriate Byte Counting (RFC 3465), reassembly queue auto-tuning and integration of low-level analysis/debugging tools to the base system, all of which I will also discuss.

  • Colin Percival - scrypt: A new key derivation function
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, scrypt, colin percival
    Slides (556 Kb, 21 pages), Paper (201 Kb, 16 pages)

    scrypt: A new key derivation function
    Doing our best to thwart TLAs armed with ASICs

    Password-based key derivation functions are used for two primary purposes: First, to hash passwords so that an attacker who gains access to a password file does not immediately possess the passwords contained therewithin; and second, to generate cryptographic keys to be used for encrypting or authenticating data.

    In both cases, if passwords do not have sufficient entropy, an attacker with the relevant data can perform a brute force attack, hashing potential passwords repeatedly until the correct key is found. While commonly used key derivation functions, such as Kamp's iterated MD5, Provos and Mazieres' bcrypt, and RSA Laboratories' PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 make an attempt to increase the difficulty of brute-force attacks, they all require very little memory, making them ideally suited to attack by custom hardware.

    In this talk, I will introduce the concepts of memory-hard and sequential memory-hard functions, and argue that key derivation functions should be sequential memory-hard. I will present a key derivation function which, subject to common assumptions about cryptographic hash functions, is provably sequential memory-hard, and a variation which appears to be stronger (but not provably so). Finally, I will provide some estimates of the cost of performing brute force attacks on a variety of password strengths and key derivation functions.

  • Fernando Gont - Results of a Security Assessment of the TCP and IP protocols and Common implementation Strategies
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, bsd, security assessment, fernado gont
    Security Assessment of the Internet Protocol (660 Kb, 63 pages), Slides (473 Kb, 64 pages), Proposal (93 Kb, 3 pages), Security Assessment of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) (1.4 Mb, 130 pages)

    Results of a Security Assessment of the TCP and IP protocols and Common implementation Strategies

    Fernando Gont will present the results of security assessment of the TCP and IP protocols carried out on behalf of the United Kingdom's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure). His presentation will provide an overview of the aforementioned project, and will describe some of the new insights that were gained as a result of this project. Additionally, it will provide an overview of the state of affairs of the different TCP/IP implementations found in BSD operating systems with respect to the aforementioned issues.

    During the last twenty years, many vulnerabilities have been identified in the TCP/IP stacks of a number of systems. The discovery of these vulnerabilities led in most cases to reports being published by a number of CSIRTs and vendors, which helped to raise awareness about the threats and the best possible mitigations known at the time the reports were published. For some reason, much of the effort of the security community on the Internet protocols did not result in official documents (RFCs) being issued by the organization in charge of the standardization of the communication protocols in use by the Internet: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This basically led to a situation in which "known" security problems have not always been addressed by all vendors. In addition, in many cases vendors have implemented quick "fixes" to the identified vulnerabilities without a careful analysis of their effectiveness and their impact on interoperability. As a result, producing a secure TCP/IP implementation nowadays is a very difficult task, in large part because of the hard task of identifying relevant documentation and differentiating between that which provides correct advisory, and that which provides misleading advisory based on inaccurate or wrong assumptions. During 2006, the United Kingdom's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure embarked itself in an ambitious and arduous project: performing a security assessment of the TCP and IP protocols. The project did not limit itself to an analysis of the relevant IETF specifications, but also included an analysis of common implementation strategies found in the most popular TCP and IP implementations. The result of the project was a set of documents which identifies possible threats for the TCP and IP protocols and, where possible, proposes counter-measures to mitigate the identified threats. This presentation will will describe some of the new insights that were gained as a result of this project. Additionally, it will provide an overview of the state of affairs of the different TCP/IP implementations found in BSD operating systems.

  • Sean Bruno - Firewire BoF Plugfest
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, firewire, plugfest, sean bruno
    Slides (37 Kb, 1 page)

    Firewire BoF Plugfest
    Debugging and testing of Firewire products with FreeBSD

    Come one come all to a Firewire plugfest. Let's debug and test together and see if we can't knock out some features and bugs.

    A hands-on testing and debugging session of the Firewire stack in FreeBSD.

    Everyone who wishes to attend should bring their Firewire devices, ext Drives and Cameras, and their Laptops. I will be debugging and capturing data points to enhance and improve features in the Firewire stack.

    We should be able to knock out quite a bunch of bugs if folks can bring their various Firewire devices along with their various PCs.

    Even if your Firewire device works perfectly, bring it by so it can be documented as supported by the Firewire team!

  • Cat Allman and Leslie Hawthorn - Getting Started in Free and Open Source
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, getting started, cat allman, leslie hawthorn
    Slides (893 Kb, 25 pages)

    Getting Started in Free and Open Source
    Interested in getting involved? But don't really know where or how to start?

    The talk is called "Getting Started in Free and Open Source". It's a talk for beginners who are interested to getting involved but don't really know where or how to start.

    We cover the basics of: -why you might want to get involved -what you can get out of participating -more than coding is needed -how to chose a project -how to get started -etiquette of lists and other communication -dos and don't of joining a community

  • Ivan Voras - Remote and mass management of systems with finstall
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, finstall, management, freebsd, ivan voras
    Slides (377 Kb, 24 pages)

    Remote and mass management of systems with finstall
    Automated management on a largish scale

    An important part of the "finstall" project, created as a graphical installer for FreeBSD, is a configuration server that can be used to remotely administer and configure arbitrary systems. It allows for remote scripting of administration tasks and is flexible enough to support complete reconfiguration of running systems.

    The finstall project has two major parts - the front-end and the back-end. The front-end is just a GUI allowing the users to install the system in a convenient way. The back-end is a network-enabled XML-RPC server that is used by the front-end to perform its tasks. It can be used as a stand-alone configuration daemon. This talk will describe a way to make use of this property of finstall to remotely manage large groups of systems.

  • George Neville-Neil - Thinking about thinking in code
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, keynote, bsd, george neville-neil
    Slides (4.0 Mb, 137 pages)

    Thinking about thinking in code
    Proposed keynote talk

    This is not a talk that's specific to any BSD but is a more general talk about how we think about coding and how our thinking changes the way we code.

    I compare how we built systems to how other industries build their products and talk about what we can learn from how we work and from how others work as well.

  • Sean Bruno - Implementation of TARGET_MODE applications
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, firewire, sean bruno
    Slides (72 Kb, 22 pages)

    Implementation of TARGET_MODE applications
    How we used TARGET_MODE in the kernel to create and interesting product

    This presentation will cover a real world implementation of the TARGET_MODE infrastructure in the kernel (stable/6). Topics to include: drivers used (isp, aic7xxx, firewire). scsi_target userland code vs kernel drivers missing drivers (4/8G isp support, iSCSI target)

    Target Mode describes a feature within certain drivers that allows a FreeBSD system to emulate a Target in the SCSI sense of the word. By recompiling your kernel with this feature enabled, it permits one to turn a FreeBSD system into an external hard disk. This feature of the FreeBSD kernel provides many interesting implementations and is highly desirable to many organizations whom run FreeBSD as their platform.

    I have been tasked with the maintenance of a proprietary target driver that interfaces with the FreeBSD kernel to do offsite data mirroring at the block level. This talk will discuss the implementation of that kernel mode driver and the process my employer went through to implement a robust and flexible appliance.

    Since I took over the implementation, we have implemented U160 SCSI(via aic7xxx), 2G Fibre Channel(via isp) and Firewire 400 (via sbp_targ). Each driver has it's own subtleties and requirements. I personally enhanced the existing Firewire target driver and was able to get some interesting results.

    I hope to demonstrate a functional Firewire 400/800 target and show how useful this application can be for the embedded space. Also, I wish to demonstrate the need for iSCSI. USB and 4/8G Fibre Channel target implementations that use the TARGET_MODE infrastructure that is currently in place to allow others to expand their various interface types.

    The presentation should consist of a high level overview, followed by detailed implementation instructions with regards to the Firewire implementation and finish up with a hands-on demonstration with a FreeBSD PC flipped into TARGET_MODE and a Mac.

  • Joerg Sonnenberger - Journaling FFS with WAPBL
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, netbsd, wapbl, ffs, joerg sonnenberger
    Slides (10 Kb, 24 pages)

    Journaling FFS with WAPBL

    NetBSD 5 is the first NetBSD release with a journaling filesystem. This lecture introduces the structure of the Fast File System, the modifications for WAPBL and specific constraints of the implementation.

    The Fast File System (FFS) has been used in the BSD land for more than two decades. The original implementation offered two operational modes:

    • safe and slow (sync)
    • unsafe and fast (async) One decade ago, Kirk McKusick introduced the soft dependency mechanism to offset the performance impact without risk of mortal peril on the first crash. With the advent of Terabyte hard disks, the need for a file system check (fsck) after a crash becomes finally unacceptable. Even a background fsck like supported on FreeBSD consumes lots of CPU time and IO bandwidth.

    Based on a donation from Wasabi Systems, Write Ahead Physical Block Logging (WAPBL) provides journaling for FFS with similar or better performance than soft dependencies during normal operation. Recovery time after crashes depends on the amount of outstanding IO operations and normally takes a few seconds.

    This lecture gives a short overview of FFS and the consistency constraints for meta data updates. It introduces the WAPBL changes, both in terms of the on-disk format and the implementation in NetBSD. Finally the implementation is compared to the design of comparable file systems and specific issues of and plans for the current implementation are discussed.

  • Stephen Borrill - Building products with NetBSD - thin-clients
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, netbsd, thin client, stephen borrill
    Slides (499 Kb, 60 pages)

    Building products with NetBSD - thin-clients
    NetBSD: delivering the goods

    This talk will discuss what thin-clients are, why they are useful and why NetBSD is good choice to build such a device.

    This talk will provide information on some alternatives and the strengths and weaknesses of NetBSD when used in such a device.

    It will discuss problems that needed to be addressed such as how to get a device with rich functionality running from a small amount of flash storage, as well as recent developments in NetBSD that have helped improve the product.

  • Randi Harper - Automating FreeBSD Installations
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, pxe, sysinstall, randi harper
    Slides (33 Kb, 14 pages)

    Automating FreeBSD Installations
    PXE Booting and install.cfg Demystified

    This paper will provide an explanation of the tools involved in performing an automated FreeBSD install and a live demonstration of the process.

    FreeBSD's sysinstall provides a powerful and flexible mechanism for automated installs but doesn't get used very often because of a lack of documentation.

  • John Baldwin - Multiple Passes of the FreeBSD Device Tree
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, device tree, john baldwin
    Slides (60 Kb, 15 pages), Paper (103 Kb, 8 pages)

    Multiple Passes of the FreeBSD Device Tree

    The existing device driver framework in FreeBSD works fairly well for many tasks. However, there are a few problems that are not easily solved with the current design. These problems include having "real" device drivers for low-level hardware such as clocks and interrupt controllers, proper resource discovery and management, and allowing most drivers to always probe and attach in an environment where interrupts are enabled. I propose extending the device driver framework to support multiple passes over the device tree during boot. This would allow certain classes of drivers to be attached earlier and perform boot-time setup before other drivers are probed and attached. This in turn can be used to develop solutions to the earlier list of problems.

  • Peter Hansteen - Building the Network You Need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, tutorial, pf, openbsd, peter hansteen
    Slides (2.5 Mb, 68 pages)

    Building the Network You Need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter.

    Building the network you need is the central theme for any network admin. This tutorial is for aspiring or seasoned network professionals with at least a basic knowledge of networking in general and TCP/IP particular. The session aims at teaching tools and techniques to make sure you build your network to work the way it's supposed to, keeping you in charge. Central to the toolbox is the OpenBSD PF packet filter, supplemented with tools that interact with it. Whether you are a greybeard looking for ways to optimize your setups or a greenhorn just starting out, this session will give you valuable insight into the inner life of your network and provide pointers to how to use that knowledge to build the network you need. The session will also offer some fresh information on changes introduced in OpenBSD 4.5, the most recent version of PF and OpenBSD. The tutorial is loosely based on Hansteen's recent book, /The Book of PF/ (No Starch Press), with updates and adaptations based on developments since the book's publication date.

  • Constantine A. Murenin - Quiet Computing with BSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, openbsd, hardware sensors, constantine murenin
    Slides (264 Kb, 16 pages)

    Quiet Computing with BSD
    Programming system hardware monitors for quiet computing

    In this talk, we will present a detailed overview of the features and common problems of microprocessor system hardware monitors as they relate to the topic of silent computing. In a nutshell, the topic of programmable fan control will be explored.

    Silent computing is an important subject as its practice reduces the amount of unnecessary stress and improves the motivation of the workforce, at home and in the office.

    Attendees will gain knowledge on how to effectively programme the chips to minimise fan noise and avoid system failure or shutdown during temperature fluctuations, as well as some basic principles regarding quiet computing.

    Shortly before the talk, a patch for programming the most popular chips (like those from Winbond) will be released for the OpenBSD operating system, although the talk itself will be more specific to the microprocessor system hardware monitors themselves, as opposed to the interfacing with thereof in modern operating systems like OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD and FreeBSD.

  • Brooks Davis - Isolating Cluster Jobs for Performance and Predictability
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, cluster, brooks davis
    Slides (1.4 Mb, 27 pages)

    Isolating Cluster Jobs for Performance and Predictability

    At The Aerospace Corporation, we run a large FreeBSD based computing cluster to support engineering applications. These applications come in all shapes, sizes, and qualities of implementation. To support them and our diverse userbase we have been searching for ways to isolate jobs from one another in ways that are more effective than Unix time sharing and more fine grained than allocating whole nodes to jobs.

    In this talk we discuss the problem space and our efforts so far. These efforts include implementation of partial file systems virtualization and CPU isolation using CPU sets.

  • Kris Moore - PC-BSD - Making FreeBSD on the desktop a reality
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, pc-bsd, freebsd, kris moore
    Paper (351 Kb, 9 pages), Slides (512 Kb, 35 pages)

    PC-BSD - Making FreeBSD on the desktop a reality
    FreeBSD on the Desktop

    While FreeBSD is a all-around great operating system, it is greatly lagging behind in desktop appeal. Why is this? In this talk, we will take a look at some of the desktop drawbacks of FreeBSD, and how are are attempting to fix them through PC-BSD.

    FreeBSD has a reputation for its rock-solid reliability, and top-notch performance in the server world, but is noticeably absent when it comes to the vast market of desktop computing. Why is this? FreeBSD offers many, if not almost all of the same open-source packages and software that can be found in the more popular Linux desktop distributions, yet even with the speed and reliability FreeBSD offers, a relative few number of users are deploying it on their desktops.

    In this presentation we will take a look at some of the reasons why FreeBSD has not been as widely adopted in the desktop market as it has on the server side. Several of the desktop weaknesses of FreeBSD will be shown, along with how we are trying to fix these short-comings through a desktop-centric version of FreeBSD, known as PC-BSD. We will also take a look at the package management system employed by all open-source operating systems alike, and some of the pitfalls it brings, which may hinder widespread desktop adoption.

  • Luigi Rizzo - GEOM based disk schedulers for FreeBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, geom, disk schedulers, luigi rzzo
    Slides (430 Kb, 40 pages)

    GEOM based disk schedulers for FreeBSD

    The high cost of seek operations makes the throughput of disk devices very sensitive to the offered workload. A disk scheduler can then help reorder requests to improve the overall throughput of the device, or improve the service guarantees for individual users, or both.

    Research results in recent years have introduced, and proven the effectiveness of, a technique called "anticipatory scheduling". The basic idea behind this technique is that, in some cases, requests that cause a seek should not be served immediately; instead, the scheduler should wait for a short period of time in case other requests arrive that do not require a seek to be served. With many common workloads, dominated by sequential synchronous requests, the potential loss of throughput caused by the disk idling times is more than balanced by the overall reduction of seeks.

    While a fair amount of research on disk scheduling has been conducted on FreeBSD, the results were never integrated in the OS, perhaps because the various prototype implementations were very device-specific and operated within the device drivers. Ironically, anticipatory schedulers are instead a standard part of Linux kernels.

    This talk has two major contributions:

    First, we will show how, thanks to the flexibility of the GEOM architecture, an anticipatory disk scheduling framework has been implemented in FreeBSD with little or no modification to a GENERIC kernel. While these schedulers operate slightly above the layer where one would naturally put a scheduler, they can still achieve substantial performance improvements over the standard disk scheduler; in particular, even the simplest anticipatory schedulers can prevent the complete trashing of the disk performance that often occurs in presence of multiple processes accessing the disk.

    Secondly, we will discuss how the basic anticipatory scheduling technique can be used not only to improve the overall throughput of the disk, but also to give service guarantees to individual disk clients, a feature that is extremely important in practice e.g., when serving applications with pseudo-real-time constraints such as audio or video streaming ones.

    A prototype implementation of the scheduler that will be covered in the presentation is available at http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/FreeBSD/

  • George Neville-Neil - Understanding and Tuning SCHED_ULE
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, sched_ule, george neville-neil
    Slides (228 Kb, 29 pages)

    Understanding and Tuning SCHED_ULE

    With the advent of widespread SMP and multicore CPU architectures it was necessary to implement a new scheduler in the FreeBSD operating system. The SCHEDULE scheduler was added for the 5 series of FreeBSD releases and has now matured to the point where it is the default scheduler in the 7.1 release. While scheduling processes was a difficult enough task in the uniprocessor world, moving to multiple processors, and multiple cores, has significantly increased the number of problems that await engineers who wish to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of their system. This talk will cover the basic design of SCHEDULE and focus a great deal of attention on how to tune the scheduler for different workloads, using the sysctl interfaces that have been provided for that purpose.

    Understanding and tuning a scheduler used to be done only by operating systems designers and perhaps a small minority of engineers focusing on esoteric high performance systems. With the advent of widespread multi-processor and multi-core architectures it has become necessary for more users and administrators to decide how to tune their systems for the best performance. The SCHEDULE scheduler in FreeBSD provides a set of sysctl interfaces for tuning the scheduler at run time, but in order to use these interfaces effectively the scheduling process must first be understood. This presentation will give an overview of how SCHEDULE works and then will show several examples of tuning the system with the interfaces provided.

    The goal of modifying the scheduler's parameters is to change the overall performance of programs on the system. One of the first problems presented to the person who wants to tune the scheduler is how to measure the effects of their changes. Simply tweaking the parameters and hoping that that will help is not going to lead to good results. In our recent experiments we have used the top(1) program to measure our results.

  • Mike Silbersack - Detecting TCP regressions with tcpdiff
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, tcpdiff, freebsd, mike silbersack
    Slides (89 Kb, 33 pages)

    Detecting TCP regressions with tcpdiff

    Determining if a TCP stack is working correctly is hard. The tcpdiff project aims for a simpler goal: To automatically detect differences in TCP behavior between different versions of an operating system and display those differences in an easy to understand format. The value judgement of whether a certain change between version X and Y of a TCP stack is good or bad will be left to human eyes.

    Determining if a TCP stack is working correctly is hard. The tcpdiff project aims for a simpler goal: To automatically detect differences in TCP behavior between different versions of an operating system and display those differences in an easy to understand format. The value judgement of whether a certain change between version X and Y of a TCP stack is good or bad will be left to human eyes.

    The initial version of tcpdiff presented at NYCBSDCon 2008 demonstrated that it could be used to detect at least two major TCP bugs that were introduced into FreeBSD in the past few years. The work from that presentation can be viewed at http://www.silby.com/nycbsdcon08/.

    For BSDCan 2009, I hope to fix a number of bugs in tcpdiff, make it easier to use, set up nightly tests of FreeBSD, and improve it so that additional known bugs can be detected. Additionally, I plan to run it on OSes other than FreeBSD.

  • Warner Losh - Tracking FreeBSD in a commercial Environment
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 25 May 2009
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2009, presentation, freebsd, commercial environment, waner losh
    Paper (624 Kb, 45 pages), Slides (104 Kb, 10 pages)

    Tracking FreeBSD in a commercial Environment
    How to stay current while staying sane

    The FreeBSD project publishes two lines of source code: current and stable. All changes must first be committed to current and then are merged into stable. Commercial organizations wishing to use FreeBSD in their products must be aware of this policy. Four different strategies have developed for tracking FreeBSD over time. A company can choose to run only unmodified release versions of FreeBSD. A company may choose to import FreeBSD's sources once and then never merge newer versions. A company can choose to import each new stable branch as it is created, adding its own changes to that branch, as well as integrating new versions from FreeBSD from time to time. A company can track FreeBSD's current branch, adding to it their changes as well as newer FreeBSD changes. Which method a company chooses depends on the needs of the company. These methods are explored in detail, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Tracking FreeBSD's ports and packages is not discussed.

    Companies building products based upon FreeBSD have many choices in how to use the projects sources and binaries. The choices range from using unmodified binaries from FreeBSD's releases, to tracking modify FreeBSD heavily and tracking FreeBSD's evolution in a merged tree. Some companies may only need to maintain a stable version of FreeBSD with more bug fixes or customizations than the FreeBSD project wishes to place in that branch. Some companies also wish to contribute some subset of their changes back to the FreeBSD project.

    FreeBSD provides an excellent base technology with which to base products. It is a proven leader in performance, reliability and scalability. The technology also offers a very business friendly license that allows companies to pick and choose which changes they wish to contribute to the community rather than forcing all changes to be contributed back, or attaching other undesirable license conditions to the code.

    However, the FreeBSD project does not focus on integration of its technology into customized commercial products. Instead, the project focuses on producing a good, reliable, fast and scalable operating system and associated packages. The project maintains two lines of development. A current branch, where the main development of the project takes place, and a stable branch which is managed for stability and reliability. While the project maintains documentation on the system, including its development model, relatively little guidance has been given to companies in how to integrate FreeBSD into their products with a minimum of trouble.

    Developing a sensible strategy to deal with both these portions of FreeBSD requires careful planning and analysis. FreeBSD's lack of guidelines to companies leaves it up to them to develop a strategy. FreeBSD's development model differs from some of the other Free and Open Source projects. People familiar with those systems often discover that methods that were well suited to them may not work as well with FreeBSD's development model. These two issues cause many companies to make poor decisions without understanding the problems that lie in their future.

    Very little formal guidance exists for companies wishing to integrate FreeBSD into their products. Some email threads can be located via a Google search that could help companies, but many of them are full of contradictory information, and it is very disorganized. While the information about the FreeBSD development process is in the FreeBSD handbook, the implications of that process for companies integrating FreeBSD into their products are not discussed.

  • 25 years with BSD
    Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: youtube, keynote, asiabsdcon2008, asiabsdcon, bsd, hideki sunahara
    Flash (44:43)

    Thinking RealSpace: Life with BSD - ~25 years with BSD
    AsiaBSDCon 2008, Hideki Sunahara
    clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brYdkQ120Do

  • PmcTools talk at the Bangalore chapter of the ACM
    Source: Joseph Koshy
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: freebsd, presentation, freebsd, pmctools, joseph koshy
    PDF version (550 Kb, 48 pages)

    In April 2009 I was invited to speak on FreeBSD/PmcTools by the Bangalore chapter of the ACM.

    This was an overview talk. The talk briefly touched upon: the motivations and goals of the project, the programming APIs, some aspects of the implementation and on possible future work.

  • Kristaps Dzonsons - Process isolation for NetBSD and OpenBSD
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, netbsd, process isolation, kristaps dzonsons
    PDF (687 Kb, 27 pages)

    In NetBSD and OpenBSD, user-land process and process-context isolation is limited to credential cross-checks, file-system chroot and explicit systrace/kauth applications. I'll demonstrate a working mechanism of isolated process trees in branched OpenBSD-4.4 and NetBSD-5.0-beta kernels where an isolated process is started by a system call similar to fork; following that, the child process and its descendants execute in a context isolated from the caller. This system is the continued work of "mult" -- first prototyped in a branched NetBSD-3.1 kernel and isolating all system resources -- pared down to a lightweight, auditable patch of process-only separation for both OpenBSD and NetBSD. I specifically address solutions to performance issues and mechanism design with an eye toward more resources being isolated in the future.

  • Kurt Miller - Implementing PIE on OpenBSD
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, pie, kurt miller
    PDF (4.1 Mb, 24 pages)

    In this session, Kurt will discuss OpenBSD's PIE implementation, its impact on existing security mechanisms such as W^X on i386, and the various enhancements needed to the runtime linker, kernel and other system libs.

  • A Few FreeBSD Core Team Members
    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)

    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.

  • DCBSDCon 2009 - Photos
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, photos

    Photos of the 2009 DCBSDCon

  • Chris Buechler - Network perimeter redundancy with pfsense
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, pfsense, chris buechler
    PDF (6.2 Kb, 30 pages)

    This session will first provide an introduction and overview of pfSense and its common uses. It will then go on to cover means of providing redundancy for the critical portions of your network perimeter using pfSense, including redundancy for your Internet connections, firewalls and DNS. Live configuration examples will be shown for as many of these topics as the session's length permits. This session will cover pfSense 1.2.1, but will also offer an overview of some of the enhanced capabilities in this area that pfSense 2.0 will provide in the future.

  • P6A: A Portable iSCSI Initiator
    Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: youtube, presentation, asiabsdcon2008, asiabsdcon, iscsi, alistair crooks
    Flash (40:57)

    P3B: A Portable iSCSI Initiator
    AsiaBSDCon 2008, Alistair Crooks
    clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiZY7PMu7Ic

  • Henning Brauer - Faster packets: Performance tuning in the OpenBSD network stack and PF
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, performance, henning brauer
    PDF (27 Mb, 69 pages)

    n/a

  • Using BSD in SchmooCon Labs
    Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: youtube, presentation, dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, bsd, schmoocon, ken caruso
    Flash (35:08)

    Using BSD in SchmooCon Labs
    DCBSDCon 2009, Ken Caruso
    clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZhfuP4jghY

  • BSDCan 2009 with Dan Langille
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan, dan langille
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)

    Interview with Dan Langille. We talk about BSDCan 2009. More information at http://www.bsdcan.org.

  • Sleeping Beauty - NetBSD on Modern laptops
    Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: youtube, presentation, asiabsdcon2008, asiabsdcon, netbsd, laptops, jorg sonnenberger
    Flash (1:20:56)

    P9A: Sleeping Beauty - NetBSD on Modern Laptops
    AsiaBSDCon 2008, Jorg Sonnenberger
    clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9ygBFjGR50

  • Ted Unangst - OpenBSD vs SMP, threading, and concurrency
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, smp, threading, concurrency, ted unangst
    PDF (675 Kb, 32 pages)

    I will discuss the current status of kernel SMP support, the rthreads thread library, and relevant future developments. Over the years, we have accumulated several concurrency primitives in the kernel, causing some confusion amongst developers, so I will lay out the origin and correct usage for each. The talk is primarily targeted at the budding OpenBSD kernel developer, but I will also describe the end-user effects of each topic.

  • Richard Bejtlich - Network security monitoring using FreeBSD
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, network security, monitoring, richard bejtlich
    PDF (972 Kb, 23 pages)

    I've been using FreeBSD as my preferred platform for Network Security Monitoring (NSM) since 2000. In this presentation I'll discuss my latest thinking on using FreeBSD to identify normal, suspicious, and malicious traffic in enterprise networks. FreeBSD is a powerful platform for network traffic inspection and log analysis, and I'll share a few ways I use it in production environments.

  • AsiaBSDCon 2009 Paper List
    Source: AsiaBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2009
    FreeBSD and SOI-Asia Project Mohamad by Dikshie Fauzie (753 Kb, 4 pages), Deprecating groff for BSD manual display by Kristaps Dzonsons (114 Kb, 8 pages), FreeBSD on high performance multi-core embedded PowerPC systems - Rafal Jaworowski (359 Kb, 12 pages), An Overview of FreeBSD/mips by M. Warner Losh (67 Kb, 8 pages), Active-Active Firewall Cluster Support in OpenBSD by David Gwynne (154 Kb, 20 pages), Mail system for distributed network by Andrey Zakharchenko (150 Kb, 3 pages), OpenBGPD - Bringing full views to OpenBSD since 2004 by Claudio Jeker (401 Kb, 6 pages), Environmental Independence: BSD Kernel TCP/IP in Userspace by Antti Kantee (213 Kb, 10 pages), Crypto Acceleration on FreeBSD by Philip Paeps (58 Kb, 3 pages), Isolating Cluster Users (and Their Jobs) for Performance and Predictability by Brooks Davis (662 Kb, 7 pages), PC-BSD - Making FreeBSD on the Desktop a reality by Kris Moore (351 Kb, 9 pages), The Locking Infrastructure in the FreeBSD kernel by Attilio Rao (55 Kb, 7 pages), OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework by Constantine A. Murenin (245 Kb, 14 pages)

    Papers of the AsiaBSDCon 2009

  • Ken Caruso - Using BSD in Shmoocon labs
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, scmoocon, ken caruso
    PDF (447 Kb, 13 pages)

    n/a

  • OpenBSD Network Stack Internals
    Source: YouTube bsdconferences channel
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: youtube, presentation, asiabsdcon2008, asiabsdcon, openbsd, claudio jeker
    Flash (53:41)

    P8A: OpenBSD Network Stack Internals
    AsiaBSDCon 2008, Claudio Jeker
    clive URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V85It0dGUF4

  • George Neville-Neil - Performance analysis with (hwpmc)
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, hwpmc, george neville-neil
    PDF (469 Kb, 71 pages)

    FreeBSD has included support for Hardware Performance Monitoring Counters (hwpmc) for several years now. The hwpmc system provides access to counters that are present in all modern Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as other chipsets, and which give the programmer the ability to understand the low level performance issues that may effect their code. This talk will cover the motivation behind and basic usage of HWPMC.

  • Marco Peereboom - Epitome
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, epitome, backup, marco peereboom
    PDF (197 Kb, 34 pages)

    Tired of tape and their weaknesses? So am I!

    Epitome is the next generation backup mechanism. It is based on the idea of providing instant available backup data while removing duplicate files & blocks from backups (yes really!). It is a disk based WORM backup system.

    This talk will go into the Epitome protocol and its application. The code is generic enough that it can address all 3 major (buzzword compliant) technologies known as: CAS, DEDUP & SIS.

  • Brooks Davis - Isolating cluster jobs for performance and predictability
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, clusters, brooks davis
    PDF (952 Kb, 24 pages)

    At The Aerospace Corporation, we run a large FreeBSD based computing cluster to support engineering applications. These applications come in all shapes, sizes, and qualities of implementation. To support them and our diverse userbase we have been searching for ways to isolate jobs from one another in ways that are more effective than Unix time sharing and more fine grained than allocating whole nodes to jobs. In this paper we discuss the problem space and our efforts so far. These efforts include implementation of partial file systems vitalization and CPU isolation using CPU sets.

  • Robert Luciani - M:N threading in DragonflyBSD
    Source: DCBSDCon
    Added: 24 May 2009
    Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, dragonflybsd, concurrency, robert luciani
    PDF (1.5 Mb, 23 pages)

    Ineffective concurrency mechanisms in an operating system can lead to low performance in both single and multiprocessor environments. Practical setbacks involved with attempting overly invasive kernel changes have made it difficult in the past to implement new and innovative concurrency systems. This paper describes the rationale behind interfaces in the DragonFly BSD operating system intended to provide high performance and scalability on multiprocessor architectures. Using a lock-free processor centric approach, DragonFly BSD has developed a unique thread system with the potential for excellent scalability.

March 2009

February 2009

January 2009

December 2008

November 2008

October 2008

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Ion-Mihai Tetcu - Improving FreeBSD ports/packages quality
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Paul Richards - eXtreme Programming: FreeBSD a case study
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Robert Watson - FreeBSD Network Stack Performance Optimizations for Modern Hardware
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Edd Barret - Modern Typesetting on BSD
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Aggelos Economopoulos - An MP-capable network stack for DragonFlyBSD with minimal use of locks
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - George Neville-Neil - Four years of summer of code
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Constantine Murenin - OpenBSD Hardware Sensors Framework
    Source: EuroBSDCon
    Added: 22 October 2008
    Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2008, presentation, openbsd, hardware sensors, constantine murenin
    PDF (539395 bytes, 38 pages)

    In this talk, we will discuss the past and present history and the design principles of the OpenBSD hardware sensors framework. Sensors framework provides a unified interface for storing, registering and accessing information about hardware monitoring sensors. Sensor types include, but are not limited to, temperature, voltage, fan RPM, time offset and logical drive status. The framework spans sensor_attach(9), sysctl(3), sysctl(8), sensorsd(8), ntpd(8), snmpd(8) and more than 67 drivers, ranging from I2C temperature sensors and Super I/O hardware monitors to IPMI, RAID and SCSI enclosures. Several third-party tools are also available, for example, a plug-in for Nagios and ports/sysutils/symon. Originally based on some ideas from NetBSD, the framework has sustained many improvements in OpenBSD, and was ported and committed to FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD.
    Constantine A. Murenin is an MMath graduate student at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (CA). Prior to his graduate appointment, Constantine attended and subsequently graduated from East Carolina University (US) and De Montfort University (UK), receiving two bachelor degrees in computer science, with honors and honours respectively. A FreeBSD Google Summer of Code 2007 Student, OpenBSD Committer and Mozilla Contributor, Constantine's interests range from standards compliance and usability at all levels, to quiet computing and hardware monitoring.
    http://Constantine.SU/

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Russel Sutherland - UTORvpn: A BSD based VPN service for the masses
    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)

    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.

  • 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 Keynote - George Neville-Neil - Thinking about thinking code

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Nick Barkas - Dynamic memory allocation for dirhash in UFS2
    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)

    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

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Paeps Philip - How-to embed FreeBSD
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Anttii Kantee - Converting kernel file systems to services
    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)

    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

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Joerg Sonnenberger - Sleeping beauty - NetBSD on Modern Laptops
    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)

    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).

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - George Neville-Neil - Multicast Performance in FreeBSD
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Matthieu Herrb - Input handling in wscons and X.Org
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Brooks Davis - Isolating cluster jobs for performance and predictability
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Yvan Vanhullebus - IPSec tools: past, present and future
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Martin Schuette - Improved NetBSD Syslogd
    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)

    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).

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Michael Dexter - Zen and the Art of Multiplicity Maintenance: An applied survey of BSD-licensed multiplicity strategies from chroot to mult
    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)

    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.

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Pedro Giffuni - Working with Engineering Applications in FreeBSD
    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)

    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

  • EuroBSDCon 2008 - Hauke Fath - Managing BSD desktop clients - Fencing in the herd
    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)

    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

  • New York City BSD Con 2008: BSD v. GPL - a.k.a. not the sequel to "BSD is Dying"
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 14 October 2008
    Tags: nycbsdcon, nycbsdcon2008, presentation, humor, bsd versus gpl, jason dixon
    MP4 (15 Mb)

    BSD vs GPL is a sweeping epic, focused on the dichotomy between good and evil. It peers inside the hearts and minds of the creators of these movements and dissects their battle for world domination. No common documentary will dare to follow the path that BSD vs GPL blazes.

  • Live from NYCBSDCon Sunday
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 13 October 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, nycbsdcon2008, nycbsdcon, interview
    Ogg version (25 minutes), MP3 version (12 Mb, 25 minutes)

    A copy of Sunday's live stream from NYCBSDCon 2008.

  • New York City BSD Con 2008
    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)

    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.

  • Live from NYCBSDCon Saturday
    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)

    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.

  • Kris Moore
    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 Kris Moore. We talk about the recent release of PC-BSD 7.0.

September 2008

  • Interview with Chess Griffin
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 26 September 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, chess griffin, linuxreality
    Ogg version (24 minutes), MP3 version (11 Mb, 24 minutes)

    Interview with Chess Griffin, host of the LinuxReality podcast. We talk about his use of Linux and recent exploration into the BSDs.

  • Questions for you
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 16 September 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk
    Ogg version (6 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 6 minutes)

    • 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?

August 2008

July 2008

  • Martin Tournoij from DaemonForums.org
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 23 July 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, daemonforums, martin tournoij
    Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)

    A brief interview with Martin Tournoij, one of the founders of DaemonForums.org.

  • Matthew Dillon
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 09 July 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, hammer, matthew dillon
    Ogg version (30 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 30 minutes)

    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.

  • Configuration Management with Cfengine
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 03 July 2008
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, configuration management, cfengine
    MP3 version (6 Mb, 58 minutes)

    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.

June 2008

May 2008

  • Sean Cody from Frantic Films VFX
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 31 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan2008, frantic films, sean cody
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)

    Interview with Sean Cody at BSDCan2008. We talk about his use of BSD at a visual effects studio.

  • Scott Ullrich, Chris Buechler - pfSense Tutorial
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, tutorial, freebsd, pfsense, scott ullrich, chris buechler
    PDF file (4.1 Kb, 91 pages)

    pfSense Tutorial

    From Zero to Hero with pfSense

    pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.

    This tutorial is being presented by the founders of the pfSense project, Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich.

    The session will start with an introduction to the project, hardware sizing and selection, installation, firewalling concepts and basic configuration, and continue to cover all the most popular features of the system. Common usage scenarios, deployment considerations, step by step configuration guidance, and best practices will be covered for each feature. Most configurations will be demonstrated in a live lab environment.

    Attendees are assumed to have basic knowledge of TCP/IP and firewalling concepts, however no in-depth knowledge in these areas or prior knowledge of pfSense or FreeBSD is necessary.

  • MeetBSD 2007 - Presentations and recordings
    Source: MeetBSD
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: meetbsd, meetbsd2007
    Slawomir Zak - DTrace - Monitoring i strojenie systemu w XXI wieku (546 Mb), Brooks Davis - Reflections on Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD (401 Mb), Christian Brüffer - Protecting your Privacy with FreeBSD and Tor (416 Kb, 34 Pages), Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD do zabudowy, czyli nie tylko pecety (600 Kb, 21 pages), Dominik Hamera, Jakub Klausa - Nowoczesne rozwiazania bezprzewodowe w systemie FreeBSD (165 Mb), Christian Brüffer - Protecting your Privacy with FreeBSD and Tor (409 Kb), Matt Olander - PC-BSD: FreeBSD on the Desktop (272 Mb), Adam Bartman, Rafal Grzebyk - Nowoczesna infrastruktura telefoniczna w oparciu o systemy z rodziny BSD (105 Mb), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (6.0 Mb), Brooks Davis - Reflections on Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD (1.7 Mb, 25 Pages), Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD do zabudowy, czyli nie tylko pecety (638 Mb), Philip Paeps - Detangling and debugging: friends in unexpected places (162 Mb), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (3.7 Mb, 71 Pages), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (308 Mb), Adam Bartman, Rafal Grzebyk - Nowoczesna infrastruktura telefoniczna w oparciu o systemy z rodziny BSD (3.9 Mb, 71 Pages), Philip Paeps - Detangling and debugging: friends in unexpected places (495 Kb, 53 Pages), Kris Kennaway - New features and improvements in FreeBSD 7 (336 Kb, 37 pages), Slawomir Zak - DTrace - Monitoring i strojenie systemu w XXI wieku (1.1 Mb, 35 Pages), Kris Kennaway - New features and improvements in FreeBSD 7 (564 Mb)

    MeetBSD 2007 at the Conference Centre-PWSBiA Congress in Warsaw

  • Daniel Braniss
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, presentation, iscsi, daniel braniss
    PDF file (1.4 Mb, 30 pages)

    iSCSI

    not an Apple appliance.

    iSCSI is not an Apple appliance.

    The i in iSCSI stands for internet, some say for insecure, personally I like to think interesting. I'll try to share the road followed from RFC-3720 to the actual working driver, the challenges, the frustrations.

  • Bjoern A. Zeeb - BSDCan08 devsummit summary
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, writeup, bjoern a zeeb

    200805DevSummit - BSDCan 2008 FreeBSD Developer summit summary

  • Jesús Rodriguez - SIP y VozIP con FreeBSD (527 Kb, 40 pages)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, asterisk, openser, freebsd, sip, voip, jesus rodriguez

    Repaso a las diferentes aplicaciones y servicios relacionados con SIP y VozIP que pueden usarse en FreeBSD. Entre estas apliaciones destacan OpenSER y Asterisk, ya que usados de forma conjunta pueden ofrecer una larga lista de servicios de forma rápida, segura y escalable.

  • Manuel Trujillo - FreeBSD para usuarios de GNU/Linux (32 Kb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, freebsd, linux, manuel trujillo

    Charla sobre las diferencias que puede encontrar un usuario de un sistema operativo GNU/Linux cuando accede a un sistema operativo FreeBSD, y sugerencias superar la posible desorientación.

  • Julio M. Merino Vidal - ATF: Sistema de pruebas automatizado para NetBSD (234 Kb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, atf, netbsd, julio m merino vidal

    La presentación empezará describiendo la necesidad de poder probar automáticamente la validez del código del sistema operativo NetBSD para así saber que se comporta correctamente en cualquiera de las plataformas soportadas. Luego se explicará cómo se estructura ATF, cómo se integra con NetBSD y se daran ejemplos prácticos de su uso tanto como programador o usuario.

    ATF es un proyecto autocontenido que funciona en multitud de plataformas (y no sólo BSD). Aún así, está centrado en NetBSD y las pruebas automatizadas para este sistema son específicas de él, no del proyecto ATF en sí.

  • Robert Watson - How a large scale opensource project works (81 Mb, 45 minutes)
    Source: Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: fosdem, fosdem2008, presentation, freebsd project, robert watson

    The FreeBSD Project is one of the oldest and most successful open source operating system projects, seeing wide deployment across the IT industry. From the root name servers, to top tier ISPs, to core router operating systems, to firewalls, to embedded appliances, you can't use a networked computer for ten minutes without using FreeBSD dozens of times.

    Part of FreeBSD's reputation for quality and reliability comes from the nature of its development organization -- driven by a hundreds of highly skilled volunteers, from high school students to university professors. And unlike most open source projects, the FreeBSD Project has developers who have been working on the same source base for over twenty years.

    But how does this organization work? Who pays the bandwidth bills, runs the web servers, writes the documentation, writes the code, and calls the shots? And how can developers in a dozen time zones reach agreement on the time of day, let alone a kernel architecture?

    This presentation will attempt to provide, in 45 minutes, a brief if entertaining snapshot into what makes FreeBSD run.

  • Jordi Espasa Clofent - Sistema de cortafuegos redundantes con OpenBSD y Packet Filter en modo bridge (1 Mb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, openbsd, firewall, pf, jordi espasa clofent

    Se trataran los siguientes apartados: Porqué OpenBSD y porqué PF. Eligiendo un buen hardware para el cortafuegos. Redundancia en modo bridge: RSTP. Implementación en si.

  • Jordi Prats - Uso de OpenBSD en dispositivos empotrados (1.8 Mb, 44 pages)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, openbsd, embedded, jordi prats

    Los sistemas empotrados gracias a un menor consumo energético y unas dimensiones reducidas, a costa de ciertas limitaciones del hardware, permiten su uso en multitud de entornos. En esta presentación veremos como usarlos con OpenBSD y sus posibles aplicaciones.

  • Ivan Voras - "finstall" - the new FreeBSD installer
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, installer, ivan voras
    PDF file (1.1 Mb, 39 pages)

    "finstall" - the new FreeBSD installer

    A graphical installer for FreeBSD

    The "finstall" project, sponsored by Google as a Summer of Code 2007 project, is an attempt to create a user-friendly graphical installer for FreeBSD, with enough strong technical features to appeal to the more professional users. A long term goal for it is to be a replacement for sysinstall, and as such should support almost all of the features present in sysinstall, as well as add support for new FreeBSD features such as GEOM, ZFS, etc. This talk will describe the architecture of "finstall" and focus on its lesser known features such as remote installation.

    "finstall" is funded by Google SoC as a possible long-term replacement for sysinstall, as a "LiveCD" with the whole FreeBSD base system on the CD, with X11 and XFCE4 GUI. In the talk I intend to describe what I did so far, and what are the future plans for it. This includes the installer GUI, the backend (which has the potential to become a generic FreeBSD configuration backend) and the assorted tools developed for finstall ("LiveCD" creation scripts). More information on finstall can be found here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/finstall.

  • Poul-Henning Kamp - Measured (almost) does Air Traffic Control
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, air traffic control, scada, poul-henning kamp
    PDF file (7.7 Mb, 46 pages)

    Measured (almost) does Air Traffic Control

    Monitoring weird hardware reliably

    The new Danish Air Traffic Control system, CASIMO, prompted the development on a modular and general software platform for data collection, control and monitoring of "weird hardware" of all sorts.

    The talk will present the "measured" daemon, and detail some of the uses it has been put to, as an, admittedly peripheral, component of the ATC system.

    Many "SCADA" systems suffer from lack of usable interfaces for external access to the data. Measured takes the opposite point of view and makes real-time situation available, and accepts control instructions as ASCII text stream over TCP connections. Several examples of how this can be used will be demonstrated.

    Measured will run on any FreeBSD system, but has not been ported to other UNIX variants yet, and it is perfect for that "intelligent house" project of yours.

    I believe I gave a WIP presentation of this about two years ago.

  • John Pertalion - An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, openbsd, openvpn, john pertalion
    PDF file (127 Kb, 26 pages)

    An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD

    Solving the problem

    At Appalachian State University, we utilize an open source VPN to allow faculty, staff and vendors secure access to Appalachian State University's internal network from any location that has an Internet connection. To implement our virtual private network project, we needed a secure VPN that is flexible enough to work with our existing network registration and LDAP authentication systems, has simple client installation, is redundant, allows multiple VPN server instances for special site-to-site tunnels and unique configurations, and can run on multiple platforms. Using OpenVPN running on OpenBSD, we met those requirements and added a distributed administration system that allows select users to allow VPN access to specific computers for external users and vendors without requiring intervention from our network or security personnel. Our presentation will start with a quick overview of OpenVPN and OpenBSD and then detail the specifics of our VPN implementation.

    Dissatisfied with IPSec for road warrior VPN usage we went looking for a better solution. We had hopped that we could find a solution that would run on multiple platforms, was flexible and worked well. We found OpenVPN and have been pleased. Initially we ran it on RHEL. We migrated to OpenBSD for pf functionality and general security concerns. ...and because we like OpenBSD.

    Our presentation will focus on the specifics of our VPN implementation. We will quickly cover the basics of OpenVPN and the most used features of OpenBSD. Moving along we will cover multiple authentication methods, redundancy, running multiple instances, integration with our netreg system, how pf has extended functionality, embedding in appliances, and client configuration. The system has proven helpful with providing vendor access where needed and we'll cover this aspect as well. Time permitting we will cover current enhancement efforts and future plans.

    OpenVPN has been called the "Swiss army knife" of VPN solutions. We hope our presentation leaves participants with that feeling.

  • Kern Sibbald - Bacula
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, bacula, kern sibbald
    PDF file (505 Kb, 30 pages)

    Bacula

    The Open Source Enterprise Backup Solution

    The Bacula project started in January 2000 with several goals, one of which was the ability to backup any client from a Palm to a mainframe computer. Bacula is available under a GPL license.

    Bacula uses several distinct components, each communicating via TCP/IP, to achieve a very scalable and robust solution to backups.

    Kern is one of the original project founders and still one of the most productive Bacula developers.

  • Kris Moore - Building self-contained PBIs from Ports (Automagically)
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, pc-bsd, ports, pbi, kris moore
    PDF file (120 Kb, 26 pages)

    Building self-contained PBIs from Ports (Automagically)

    Creating a self-contained application from the ports tree

    PC-BSD provides a user-friendly desktop experience, for experts and casual users alike. PC-BSD is 100% FreeBSD under the hood, while providing desktop essentials, such as a graphical installation system, point-n-click package-management using the PBI system, and easy to use system management tools; All integrated into an easy to use K Desktop Environment (KDE).

    The PBI (Push Button Installer) format is the cornerstone of the PC-BSD desktop, which allows users to install applications in a self-contained format, free from dependency problems, and compile issues that stop most casual users from desktop adoption. The PBI format also provides power and flexibility in user interaction, and scripting support, which allows applications to be fine-tuned to the best possible user experience.

    This talk would go over in some detail our new PBI building system, which converts a FreeBSD port, such as FireFox, into a standalone self-contained PBI installer for PC-BSD desktops.

    The presentation will be divided into two main sections:
    > The Push Button Installer (PBI) Format

    • The basics of the PBI format
    • The PBI format construction
    • Add & Remove scripting support within PBI

    Building PBIs from Ports "Auto-magically"

    • The PBI build server & standalone software
    • Module creation & configuration
    • Converting messy ports into PBIs

  • Robert Watson - TCP SMP Scalability
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, smp, robert watson
    PDF file (70 Kb, 8 pages)

    TCP SMP Scalability

  • Warner Losh - FreeBSD/mips
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, mips, embedded, warner losh
    PDF file (1.3 Mb, 19 pages)

    FreeBSD/mips

    Embedding FreeBSD

    FreeBSD now runs on the MIPS platform. FreeBSD/mips supports MIPS-32 and MIPS-64 targets, including SMP for multicore support.

    FreeBSD/mips is targeted at the embedded MIPS marketplace. FreeBSD has run on the MIPS platform for many years. Juniper ported FreeBSD to the Mips platform in the late 1990's. However, concern about intellectual property issues kept Juniper from contributing the port back to FreeBSD until recently. The contributed port was a 64-bit mips port.

    In the mean time, many efforts were made to bring FreeBSD to the mips platform. The first substantial effort to bring FreeBSD to the Mips platform was done by Juli Mallet. This effort made it to single user, but never further than that. This effort was abandoned due to a change in Juli's life. The port languished.

    Two years ago at BSDcan, as my involvement with FreeBSD/arm was growing, I tried to rally the troops into doing a FreeBSD/mips port. My efforts resulted in what has been commonly called the "mips2" effort. The name comes from the choice of //depot/projects/mips2 to host the work in perforce. A number of people worked on the earliest versions of the port, but it too languished and seemed destined to suffer the same fate as earlier efforts. Then, two individuals stood up and started working on the port. Wojciech A. Koszek and Oleksandr Tymoshenko pulled in code from the prior efforts. Through their efforts of stabilizing this code, the port to the single user stage and ported it to three different platforms. Others ported it to a few more. Snapshots of this work were released from time to time.

    Cavium Networks picked up one of these snapshots and ported it to their multicore mips64 network processor. Cavium has kindly donated much of their work to the comminuty.

    In December, I started at Cisco systems. My first job was to merge all the divergent variants of FreeBSD/mips and get it into shape to push into the tree. With luck, this should be in the tree before I give my talk.

    In parallel to this, other advances in the embedded support for FreeBSD have been happening as well. I'll talk about new device drivers, new subsystems, and new build tools that help to support the embedded developer.

  • Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD Embedded Report
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, embedded, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (58 Kb, 6 pages)

    FreeBSD Embedded Report

  • OpenBSD 4.5 Release Songs - Games
    Source: OpenBSD
    Added: 25 May 2008
    Tags: openbsd, artwork
    Ogg version (4.5 Mb, 3:29 minutes), MP3 version (6.4 Mb, 3:29 minutes)

    [Commentary still being written]

    For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.

  • Erwin Lansing - What's happening in the world of ports and portmgr
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 24 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, portmgr, erwin lansing
    PDF file (146 Kb, 14 pages)

    What's happening in the world of ports and portmgr

  • Rafal Jaworowski - Interfacing embedded FreeBSD with U-Boot
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, embedded, freebsd, u-boot, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (300 Kb, 26 pages)

    Interfacing embedded FreeBSD with U-Boot

    Working with the de facto standard for an initial level boot loader

    In the embedded world U-Boot is a de facto standard for an initial level boot loader (firmware). It runs on a great number of platforms and architectures, and is open source.

    This talk covers the development work on integrating FreeBSD with U-Boot-based systems. Starting with an overview of differences between booting an all-purpose desktop computer vs. embedded system, FreeBSD booting concepts are explained along with requirements for the underlying firmware.

    Historical attempts to interface FreeBSD with this firmware are mentioned and explanation given on why they failed or proved incomplete. Finally, the recently developed approach to integrate FreeBSD and U-Boot is presented, with implementation details and particular attention on how it's been made architecture and platform independent, and how loader(8) has been bound to it.

  • Randall Stewart - SCTP what it is and how to use it
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, abstract, freebsd, sctp, randall stewart
    PDF file (130 Kb, 10 pages)

    SCTP - SCTP what it is and how to use it

    This talk will introduce the attendee into the interesting world of SCTP.

    We will first discuss the new and different features that SCTP (a new transport in FreeBSD 7.0) provide to the user. Then we will shift gears and discuss the extended socket API that is available to SCTP users and will cover such items as:

    • The two socket programming models
    • Extended system calls that support the SCTP feature set.
    • What model may fit you best

  • Chris Lattner - BSD licensed C++ compiler
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, bsdl, llvm, chris lattner
    PDF file (5.8 Mb, 33 pages)

    BSD licensed C++ compiler

    LLVM is a suite of carefully designed open source libraries that implement compiler components (like language front-ends, code generators, aggressive optimizers, Just-In-Time compiler support, debug support, link-time optimization, etc.). The goal of the LLVM project is to build these components in a way that allows them to be combined together to create familiar tools (like a C compiler), interesting new tools (like an OpenGL JIT compiler), and many other things we haven't thought of yet. Because LLVM is under continuous development, clients of these components naturally benefit from improvements in the libraries.

    This talk gives an overview of LLVM's design and approach to compiler construction, and gives several example applications. It describes applications of LLVM technology to llvm-gcc (a C/C++/Objective C compiler based on the GNU GCC front-end), the OpenGL stack in Mac OS/X Leopard, and Clang. Among other things, the Clang+LLVM Compiler provides a fully BSD-Licensed C and Objective-C compiler (with C++ in development) which compiles code several times faster than GCC, produces code that is faster than GCC in many cases, produces better warnings and error messages, and supports many other applications (e.g. static analysis and refactoring).

  • Adrian Chad - What Not To Do When Writing Network Applications
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, network applications, adrian chad
    PDF file (190 Kb, 73 pages)

    What Not To Do When Writing Network Applications

    The lessons learnt working with not-so-high-performance network applications

    This talk will look at issues which face the modern network application developer, from the point of view of poorly-designed examples. This will cover internal code structure and dataflow, interaction with the TCP stack, IO scheduling in high and low latency environments and high-availability considerations. In essence, this presentation should be seen as a checklist of what not to do when writing network applications.

    Plenty of examples of well designed network applications exist in the open and closed source world today. Unfortunately there are just as many examples of fast network applications as there are "fast but workload specific"; sometimes failing miserably in handling the general case. This may be due to explicit design (eg Varnish) but many are simply due to the designer not fully appreciating the wide variance in "networks" - and their network application degrades ungracefully when under duress. My aim in this presentation is to touch on a wide number of issues which face network application programmers - most of which seem not "application related" to the newcomer - such as including pipelining into network communication, managing a balance between accepting new requests and servicing existing requests, or providing back-pressure to a L4 loadbalancer in case of traffic bursts. Various schemes for working with these issues will be presented, and hopefully participants will walk away with more of an understanding about how the network, application and operating systems interact.

  • Matthieu Herrb - X.org
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, x.org, matthieu herrb
    PDF file (1.6 Mb, 30 pages)

    X.org

    upcoming plans

    The X.Org project provides an open source implementation of the X Window System. The development work is being done in conjunction with the freedesktop.org community. The X.Org Foundation is the educational non-profit corporation whose Board serves this effort, and whose Members lead this work.

    The X window system has been changing a lot in the recent years, and still changing. This talk will present this evolution, summarizing what has already been done and showing the current roadmap for future evolutions, with some focus on how *BSD kernels can be affected by the developments done with Linux as the primary target.

  • Rafal Jaworowski - Porting FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion System-On-Chip
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, arm, marvell orion, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (193 Kb, 25 pages)

    Porting FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion System-On-Chip

    This talk covers the development work on porting the FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion family of highly integrated chips.

    ARM architecture is widely adopted in the embedded devices, and since the architecture can be licensed, many implementation variations exist: Orion is a derivative compliant with the ARMv5TE definition, it provides a rich set of on-chip peripherals.

    Present state of the FreeBSD support for ARM is explained, areas for improvement highlighted and its overall shape and condition presented.

    The main discussion covers scope of the Orion port (what integrated peripherals required new development, what was adapted from existing code base); design decisions are explained for the most critical items, and implementation details revealed.

    Summary notes are given on general porting methodology, debugging techniques and difficulties encountered during such undertaking.

  • Robert Watson - BSDCan 2008 - Closing
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, robert watson
    PDF file (428 Kb, 55 pages)

    Closing

    Beer, prizes, secrets, Works In Progress

    The traditional closing...
    > with some new and interesting twists. Sleep in if you must, but don't miss this session.

  • Leslie Hawthorn - Google SoC
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, google, summer of code, leslie hawthorn
    PDF file (2.2 Mb, 44 pages)

    Google SoC

    Summer of Code

    In this talk, I will briefly discuss some general ways Google's Open Source Team contributes to the wider community. The rest of the talk will explore some highlights of the Google Summer of Code program, our initiative to get university students involved in Open Source development.

    I will cover the program's inception, lessons learned over time and tips for success in the program for both mentors and students. In particular, the talk will detail some experiences of the *BSD mentoring organizations involved in the program as a case study in successfully managing the program from the Open Source project's perspective. Any Google Summer of Code participants in the audience are welcome and encouraged to chime in with their own insights.

  • John Birrell - DTrace for FreeBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, dtrace, freebsd, john birrell
    PDF file (148 Kb, 49 pages)

    DTrace for FreeBSD

    What on earth is that system doing?!

    DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing facility originally developed for Solaris that can be used by administrators and developers on live production systems to examine the behavior of both user programs and of the operating system itself. DTrace enables users to explore their system to understand how it works, track down performance problems across many layers of software, or locate the cause of aberrant behavior. DTrace lets users create their own custom programs to dynamically instrument the system and provide immediate, concise answers to arbitrary questions you can formulate using the DTrace D programming language.

    This talk discusses the port of the DTrace facility to FreeBSD and demonstrates examples on a live FreeBSD system.

    • Introduction to the D language - probes, predicates and actions.
    • dtrace(8) and libdtrace - the userland side of the DTrace story.
    • The DTrace kernel module, it's ioctl interface to userland and the provider infrastructure in the kernel.
    • DTrace kernel hooks and the problem of code licensed under Sun's CDDL.
    • What does a DTrace probe actually do?
    • DTrace safety and how it is implemented.
    • Build system changes to add CTF (Compact C Type Format) data to objects, shared libraries and executables.
    • The DTrace test suite.
    • A brief list of things to do to port the DTrace facility to other BSD-derived operating systems.

  • Dan Langille - BSDCan 2008 - Opening session
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, dan langille
    PDF file (500 Kb, 17 pages)

    Opening session

    Welcome to BSDCan 2008
    > Traditional greetings

  • Brooks Davis - Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, abstract, software development, brooks davis
    PDF file (1 Mb, 33 pages), PDF file (72 Kb, 2 pages)

    Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods

    In this talk we present Aerosource, an initiative to bring Open Source Software development methods to internal software developers at The Aerospace Corporation.

    Within Aerosource, FreeBSD is used in several key roles. First, we run most of our tools on top of FreeBSD. Second, the ports collection (both official ports and custom internal ones) eases our administrative burden. Third, the FreeBSD project serves as an example and role model for the results that can be achieved by an Open Source Software projects. We discuss the development infrastructure we have built for Aerosource based largely on BSD licensed software including FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, Apache, and Trac. We will also discuss our custom management tools including our system for managing our custom internal ports. Finally, we will cover our development successes and how we use projects like FreeBSD as exemplars of OSS development.

  • Pawel Jakub Dawidek - A closer look at the ZFS file system
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, zfs, freebsd, pawel jakub dawidek
    PDF file (150 Kb, 33 pages)

    A closer look at the ZFS file system

    simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity

    SUN's ZFS file system became part of FreeBSD on 6th April 2007. ZFS is a new kind of file system that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use.

    ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded storage. Thousands of file systems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times.

    All operations are copy-on-write transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. There is no need to fsck(1M) a ZFS file system, ever. Every block is checksummed to prevent silent data corruption, and the data is self-healing in replicated (mirrored or RAID) configurations. If one copy is damaged, ZFS detects it and uses another copy to repair it.

  • John Baldwin - Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, paper, debugging, freebsd, john baldwin
    paper, PDF file (121 Kb, 15 pages), slides, PDF file (113 Kb, 26 pages)

    Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel

    Just like every other piece of software, the FreeBSD kernel has bugs. Debugging a kernel is a bit different from debugging a userland program as there is nothing underneath the kernel to provide debugging facilities such as ptrace() or procfs. This paper will give a brief overview of some of the tools available for investigating bugs in the FreeBSD kernel. It will cover the in-kernel debugger DDB and the external debugger kgdb which is used to perform post-mortem analysis on kernel crash dumps.

    Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel

    • Basic crash messages, what a crash looks like
      • typical panic() invocation
      • page fault example
    • "live" debugging with DDB
      • stack traces
      • ps
      • deadlock examples
      • show lockchain
      • show sleepchain
      • Adding new DDB commands
    • KGDB
      • inspecting processes and threads
      • working with kernel modules
      • using scripts to extend
    • examining crashdumps using utilities
      • ps, netstat, etc.
    • debugging strategies
      • kernel crashes
      • system hangs

  • 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)

    Interview at BSDCan2008 with Alex Feldman from Sangoma.

  • 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)

    Interview with Justin Gibbs from the FreeBSD Foundation.

  • A Tale of Four Kernels
    Source: Diomidis Spinellis
    Added: 17 May 2008
    Tags: freebsd, linux, solaris, windows, article, kernel, diomidis spinellis
    Diomidis Spinellis. A tale of four kernels. In Wilhem Schfer, Matthew B. Dwyer, and Volker Gruhn, editors, ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 381-390, New York, May 2008. Association for Computing Machinery. , Diomidis Spinellis. A tale of four kernels. In Wilhem Schfer, Matthew B. Dwyer, and Volker Gruhn, editors, ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 381-390, New York, May 2008. Association for Computing Machinery.

    The FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, and Windows operating systems have kernels that provide comparable facilities. Interestingly, their code bases share almost no common parts, while their development processes vary dramatically. We analyze the source code of the four systems by collecting metrics in the areas of file organization, code structure, code style, the use of the C preprocessor, and data organization. The aggregate results indicate that across various areas and many different metrics, four systems developed using wildly different processes score comparably. This allows us to posit that the structure and internal quality attributes of a working, non-trivial software artifact will represent first and foremost the engineering requirements of its construction, with the influence of process being marginal, if any.

  • Managing OpenBSD Environments
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 12 May 2008
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, system management
    MP3 version (11 Mb, 103 minutes)

    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.

  • Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 03 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, codeweavers, crossover, jeremy white
    Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 16 minutes)

    Interview with Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers. We talk about the recent availability of an experimental build of Crossover Games for BSD.

  • OpenBSD 4.3 Release Song - "Home to Hypocrisy"
    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)

    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.

April 2008

March 2008

February 2008

January 2008

  • Dru Lavigne
    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)

    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

  • Central Syslog
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 25 January 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, syslog
    Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)

    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.

  • SSARES
    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)

    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.

  • Open Community Camp with Marten Vijn
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 08 January 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencommunitycamp, marten vijn
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)

    Interview with Marten Vijn about www.OpenCommunityCamp.org.

December 2007

November 2007

  • Joerg Sonnenberger
    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)

    Michael Dexter sent me an interview he recorded on behalf of BSDTalk with Joerg Sonnenberger at EuroBSDCon 2007.

  • OpenBSD 4.2 Release Song - "100001 1010101"
    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)

    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.

October 2007

September 2007

August 2007

July 2007

  • William "whurley" Hurley, Chief Architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc.
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 31 July 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bmc software, whurley, william hurley
    Ogg version (28 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 28 minutes)

    Interview with William "whurley" Hurley, Chief Architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc. We talk about the BMC Developer Network.

  • Embedding FreeBSD with M. Warner Losh
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 27 July 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, embedding freebsd, m warner losh
    Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 16 minutes)

    Interview with M. Warner Losh about embedding FreeBSD.

  • Fast IPSec with George Neville-Neil
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 16 July 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ipsec, george neville-neil
    Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)

    Interview with George Neville-Neil about Fast IPSec.

  • BSD Hacker Isaac "Ike" Levy
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 16 July 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, nycbug, isaac levy
    Ogg version (26 minutes), MP3 version (13 Mb, 26 minutes)

    Interview with BSD Hacker Isaac "Ike" Levy. To hear more of Ike and other NYCBUG audio, visit http://www.fetissov.org/public/nycbug/

  • Isaac 'Ike' Levy on the Real Unix Tradition
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 08 July 2007
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, unix tradition, isaac levy
    MP3 version (10Mb)

    "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).

  • Playing with IPv6
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 06 July 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, ipv6
    Ogg version (15 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 15 minutes)

    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.

  • Google Tech Talks June 20, 2007: How the FreeBSD Project Works
    Source: Google Tech Talks
    Added: 04 July 2007
    Tags: google, presentation, freebsd, freebsd project, robert watson
    AVI (321 Mb, 51 minutes)

    The FreeBSD Project is one of the oldest and most successful open source operating system ... all projects, seeing wide deployment across the IT industry. From the root name servers, to top tier ISPs, to core router operating systems, to firewalls, to embedded appliances, you can't use a networked computer for ten minutes without using FreeBSD dozens of times. Part of FreeBSD's reputation for quality and reliability comes from the nature of its development organization--driven by a hundreds of highly skilled volunteers, from high school students to university professors. And unlike most open source projects, the FreeBSD Project has developers who have been working on the same source base for over twenty years. But how does this organization work? Who pays the bandwidth bills, runs the web servers, writes the documentation, writes the code, and calls the shots? And how can developers in a dozen time zones reach agreement on the time of day, let alone a kernel architecture? This presentation will attempt to provide, in 45 minutes, a brief if entertaining snapshot into what makes FreeBSD run.

    Speaker: Robert Watson 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 a Senior Principal Scientist at McAfee Research, now SPARTA ISSO, a leading security research and development organization, where he directed 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.

June 2007

  • Sidsel Jensen from EuroBSDCon
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 25 June 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, sidsel jensen
    Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 9 minutes)

    Interview with Sidsel Jensen from www.eurobsdcon.org.

  • One Time Passwords
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 14 June 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, security, one time passwords
    Ogg version (6 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 6 minutes)

    • 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.

  • Steven Kreuzer on Denial of Service Mitigation Techniques
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 08 June 2007
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, denialofservice, steven kreuzer
    MP3 version (10Mb)

    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.

  • Rick Macklem and NFSv4
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 07 June 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, nfs, rick macklem
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)

    Interview with Rick Macklem about his work with NFSv4. More information at http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/nfsv4/.

  • 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)

    Interview with KAME project core researcher Jun-ichiro "itojun" Itoh Hagino.

May 2007

April 2007

March 2007

February 2007

January 2007

December 2006

November 2006

October 2006

  • 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)

    Interview with Kris Moore from PC-BSD.

  • Matt Olander from iXsystems
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 18 October 2006
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, ixsystems, matt olander
    Ogg version (19 minutes), MP3 version (9 Mb, 19 minutes)

    Interview with Matt Olander from www.iXsystems.com.

  • OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer
    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 OpenBSD Developer Marc Balmer. We talk about www.opencon.org and his work with OpenBSD.

  • OpenBSD 4.0 Release Songs - OpenVOX
    Source: OpenBSD
    Added: 10 October 2006
    Tags: openbsd, artwork
    Ogg version (6.0 Mb, 4 minutes), MP3 version (3.9 Mb, 4 minutes)

    This is an extra track by the artist Ty Semaka (who really has "had Puffy on his mind") which we included on the audio CD.

    This song details the process that Ty has to go through to make the art and music for each OpenBSD release. Ty and Theo really do go to a (very specific) bar and discuss what is going on in the project, and then try to find a theme that will work...

    For RSS readers: Please note that the download URL is an FTP site.

  • OpenBSD 4.0 Release Song - Humppa negala
    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 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.

  • Interview with Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil from AsiaBSDCon
    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 Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil from AsiaBSDCon. More info at http://www.asiabsdcon.org/.

  • Interview with Sevan Janiyan
    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 Sevan Janiyan. We talk about the Brighton Chilli WiFi hotspot project, which can be found at http://brightonchilli.geeklan.co.uk/

  • Interview with Poul-Henning Kamp about Varnish
    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 Poul-Henning Kamp about Varnish. More information at http://www.varnish-cache.org/.

  • Releaseparty, the Varnish HTTP accelerator
    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)

    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)

September 2006

August 2006

July 2006

June 2006

May 2006