gmane.org.user-groups.bsd.nycbug

Presentation Follow-up

Jim B. — 2012-05-25T20:08:46

There were about 20-25 attendees in the Open Source
group meeting.  I only had about 15 minutes, so yes
I did talk pretty fast.

There were some basic questions and comments, but the
really interesting thing was to meet other BSD aficionados 
here in my unnamed company.  One guy is a ports committer
for a few FreeBSD ports, another is a former BSDi user,
and there were a couple more.  We chatted after the meeting.


Maybe something cool will come of it downstream. Hey - you
never know...


Thanks to all who helped out.

Jim B.

BSD Overview Preso

Jim B. — 2012-05-23T19:05:22

Hi All,

The scrubbed preso is at http://www.jimby.name/bsdov/bsdov_01.pdf

All errors are my own :-)



Enjoy,
Jim B.

Facebook, For users with Flash installed

Isaac Levy — 2012-05-21T02:01:52

Hi All,

Fascinating info-porn relating to the Facebook IPO friday:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/17/business/dealbook/how-the-facebook-offering-compares.html

(if you look hard, you see wind river systems buried in there, along with every other 'tech' company to IPO).

Pretty strange/obtuse/telling to see companies like Tandem and Cray put in the same chart as Facebook…
(what the heck is a tech IPO anyhow?)

Fascinating info-porn, none the less ideologically flawed.

Rocket-
.ike

NetBSD pkgsrc question

David Billsbrough — 2012-05-17T11:41:16

Hello,

I have used FreeBSD and the ports packages for a while and do upgrades
via portsnap/portupgrade.  Now have another machine
using NetBSD 5.1 and the "pkgsrc" package system.  Am using cvsup to
keep it updated so how do you have the system build all current
packages of interest like FreeBSD's portupgrade?

regards,

David -- KC4ZVW

2 Copies of FreeBSD Device Drivers

Matthew Story — 2012-05-15T15:28:55

I have 2 copies of the no starch title:

FreeBSD Device Drivers

For anyone who has a desire to learn about writing device drivers for
FreeBSD.  The price:

1. Must review the book (preferably on Amazon)
2. Must come pick the book up from me at the next NYC*BUG meeting

The book is yours to keep, so long as you provide a review ... Takers?

Soekris NTP Box (via: Michael Dexter)

Matthew Story — 2012-05-15T15:30:08

"Is This the World's Most Accurate NTP Server Hardware?"

A Soekris NTP server hardware hack in pursuit of accuracy:
http://www.febo.com/time-freq/**ntp/soekris/index.html<http://www.febo.com/time-freq/ntp/soekris/index.html>

Request for NYCBUG Help

Jim B. — 2012-05-15T01:33:12

Hi All,

So I return from BSDCan to find an email invitation
to speak at the Open Source Working Group at my current
employer (who should remain unnamed please).

I had earlier mentioned that I was a BSD aficionado and
was offered an opportunity to join this group which
explores, discusses, tests, recommends, and actually
uses Open Source software.  While most of the discussions
I've seen in the past are about software libraries, and
specific applications, they offered to let me talk at
the next meeting (May 24) on anything BSD.  I'll have
20-30 minutes, so it's not a lot of time.

As are most organizations using OSS, there is a large
Linux presence, but there is also a lot of other Unix
throughout the enterprise - AIX, Solaris, HPUX, and
probably many others.  I'll have to introduce a bit of
BSD history, philosophy, and the projects before I get
into the details of BSD "gems".

So, put yourself in my audience's shoes - enterprise IT
guys, with a good set of processes in place for a very
large infrastructure based primarily on Windows, AIX,
Linux, and Solaris; with established architecture and
very high expectations for professional IT on a global
scale, who also know quite a lot about Open Source
Software (though mostly Linux).  These are some pretty
smart people.

What would you like to see and hear about regarding
BSD software and the BSD community?

Here's my current draft agenda - suggestions welcome.



I - A Brief History of BSD
 
 - ATT/UCB partnership
 - ATT lawsuit
 - BSD Family Tree
 - BSD License
 
II - FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, PC-BSD  Introductions
 
 - Main features
 - Community
 - Future directions
 
III - Cool Hot Stuff
 
 - ZFS
 - Hammer
 - HAST
 - FreeNAS, TrueNAS
 - pf Firewall, CARP, pfSense
 - Embedded BSD
 - Capsicum
 - Virtualization
   - Jails, Xen, Hyper-v, VIMAGE, EC2, and other virtualization topics
 - Desktop PC-BSD
 
IV - BSD Certification


Remember- only 20-30 minutes!


Cheers,
Jim B.

BSDCan

George Rosamond — 2012-05-14T15:13:15

Looking forward to hearing about BSDCan from those who attended.

Fill us in!

g

An awesome resource for cross-bsd/linux reference andsearch ...

Matthew Story — 2012-05-12T19:16:49

Much touted at BSDCan, this resource is phenomenal for viewing historical
changes within and across source-trees for all BSDs and many Linuxen ...

http://fxr.watson.org

Screencasts using ffmpeg [PARTIALLY SOLVED]

Eric Radman — 2012-05-10T02:37:23

----- Forwarded message from Eric Radman <ericshane< at >eradman.com> -----

Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 08:33:59 -0500
From: Eric Radman <ericshane< at >eradman.com>
To: talk< at >lists.nycbug.org
Subject: Screencasts using ffmpeg
X-Mailer: Mutt 1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

I don't have a good solution yet, but I learned that the framebuffer
read rate is primarily bandwidth limited, and a feature of the hardware
and video driver [1]. I never noticed before, but x11vnc prints an
estimate of the throughput when you start it

09/05/2012 22:23:45 fb read rate: 7 MB/sec

One interesting solution is to disable hardware acceleration by adding
Option "ShadowFB" "true" in the Device section of the xorg.conf. This
will keep a copy of the framebuffer in main memory where can be read
at high frame rates.

--

[1] http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/#limitations

Screencasts using ffmpeg

Eric Radman — 2012-05-08T13:33:59

Has anyone used ffmpeg for doing screencasts? FreeBSD 9 and OpenBSD 5.1
both deliver 4fps while Linux 2.6.32 + Nouveau does 30 with CPU to
spare. Perhaps this is really a question for an xorg mailing list.

What I've tried:

ffmpeg -n -f x11grab -r 30 -s 800x600 -i :0.0+20,20 \
    -vcodec ffv1 -sameq out.avi

ffmpeg -n -f x11grab -r 30 -s 800x600 -i :0.0+35,86 \
    -vcodec libx264 -vpre lossless_ultrafast out.mkv


Some information from the FreeBSD install:

$ glxinfo | head
...
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2

$ dmesg | head
...
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU          6600  < at > 2.40GHz (2400.13-MHz 686-class CPU)

$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
...
(--) NV: Found NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS at 01< at >00:00:0
(II) NV(0): Initializing int10
...
(--) NV(0): Chipset: "GeForce 7600 GS"
(==) NV(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
(==) NV(0): RGB weight 888
(==) NV(0): Default visual is TrueColor
(==) NV(0): Using HW cursor
(--) NV(0): Linear framebuffer at 0x80000000

Group Password Support

Mark Saad — 2012-05-07T18:15:45

All
  I have no need for this , but I was wondering if any of the BSD's
supported group passwords. I ran into a typo in a group file and
someone had the GID in the password field.
The FreeBSD man page for group states" The passwd field is an optional
encrypted password.  This field is rarely used and an asterisk is
normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank."
So the two obvious questions are how would I set a group password, and
how would one use it ?

useless use of awk? how to fix?

Jesse Callaway — 2012-05-04T00:07:32

This is OBVIOUSLY an rhel/vmware related example, but check it out...

rpm -qa | awk 'BEGIN {x=0} /^vmware-tools/ {x++; pkgs[x] = $1} END{
print "yum -y remove \\"; for (y = 1; y < x; y++) print pkgs[y] " \\";
print ";"}' | awk -F '-[[:digit:]]' '{print $1}'

Yeah, it could be wrapped in an awk system() call instead of finally
piping to the shell, but that would be another construct completely.
Although suggestions for solving that are also welcome. Would love to
see how this could be done more succinctly YET retaining the somewhat
readable instructions.

This was probably best asked a few months ago when the awk specific
talk was fresh in our minds...

Optional Variable Assignments and Builtins in``Simple Commands''

Matthew Story — 2012-05-03T17:26:50

Given a little bit of discussion last night surrounding the following
statements:

VAR=VAL; for i in 1 2 3; do echo "$VAR"; done
VAR=VAL for i in 1 2 3; do echo "$VAR"; done

I decided to take Jan's advice and "test all the things" in bash, dash and
FreeBSD sh:

bash $ VAR=VAL for i in 1 2 3; do echo "$VAR"; done
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `do'
dash $ VAR=VAL for i in 1 2 3; do echo "$VAR"; done
/bin/sh: for: not found
freebsd sh$ VAR=VAL for i in 1 2 3; do echo "$VAR"; done
Syntax error: "do" unexpected

None of them seem to work, so I took a look at the POSIX 1.2008 Shell
Command Language Specification for Simple Commands (
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_09_01),
which says that the ``command'' lookup following an optional variable
assignment is subject to the rules governing ``Command Search and
Execution'' (
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_09_01_01).
 The rules governing this search (without a slash) starts with ``Special
Builtins'', then functions, then moves to a few utilities that will always
execute even if they are not in PATH, followed by a PATH search.  When we
look at the list of ``Special Builtins'', we will see that ``for'' is not
there (
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_14).
 The reason for this is that ``for'' is a reserved word (
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_04),
which just means that for is a part of the grammar of shell itself, and is
not a command.

So, assuming that we do have a special built-in, let's say eval ...

bash $ VAR=VAL eval echo \$VAR
VAL
dash $ VAR=VAL eval echo \$VAR
VAL
freebsd sh$ VAR=VAL eval echo \$VAR
VAL

All of our shells do support the optional variable assignment syntax for
simple commands, as required by the spec.  So now to the second question
from last night, does optional variable assignment effect the environment
of the shell itself, when combined with a special built-in, or do they only
effect the environment of the shell itself for the duration of the
execution of the special built-in ...

bash $ VAR=VAL eval echo \$VAR
VAL
bash $ echo $VAR

bash $
dash $ VAR=VAL eval echo \$VAR
VAL
dash $ echo $VAR
VAL
freebsd sh $ echo $VAR
VAL

So, the answer here is that it depends on the shell ... and that is largely
because the POSIX standard is mostly silent about this:

If no command name results, variable assignments shall affect the current
execution environment. Otherwise, the variable assignments shall be
exported for the execution environment of the command and shall not affect
the current execution environment (except for special built-ins).

I believe that either the behavior of bash here is incorrect, or that
either behavior is permissible.  But it should be assumed that when using a
special built-in with optional variable assignment on the command line,
that the variable value may persist in the current execution environment.

Bourne Shell (and ksh 88) Are Dead ... Thank God

Matthew Story — 2012-05-03T15:34:21

Following up on the chatter from the tail end of last night's meeting,
Solaris 11 has supplanted both the 1 true Bourne Shell and ksh 88 with ksh
93 ...

https://blogs.oracle.com/OTNGarage/entry/new_shell_in_oracle_solaris

Can we now finally be rid of ${1+"$< at >"} ...

May 2012 meeting audio

Nikolai Fetissov — 2012-05-03T13:10:29

Folks,

mp3 of Jan's presentation is online at:
www.fetissov.org/public/nycbug/nycbug-05-02-12.mp3

Cheers,
--
 Nikolai

OpenBSD Development Cycle

Bill Totman — 2012-05-02T16:29:05

Hello Talk,

Some years ago, it seems, I remember reading about the development
cycle of OpenBSD.

The highlights I remember had to deal with how Theo will essentially
surprise the devs with the actual freeze date and how committers are
required to participate in the QA process.

Did I imagine this article or can someone help point me to it?


-bt

RetroBSD

George Rosamond — 2012-04-21T20:05:25

Wow.  Cool.

http://retrobsd.org/

If people don't already, definitely follow Justin's DragonFly BSD blog, 
which is where I found it.

http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/

g

Roomies for BSDCan

Matthew Story — 2012-04-17T16:02:23

Howdy all,

I've decided to make the arduous journey to BSDCan in early May, and I'm
wondering if anyone else is planning to head up that way and wants to split
a room with me.  Gonna try to get an on-campus suite, and I'll probably be
up there from Tuesday (late) or Wednesday (early) through Sunday morning.

Ping me if you'd be interested in splitting a room.

#nycbug is alive and well on EFNet

Matthew Story — 2012-04-12T17:33:16

The #nycbug channel on EFNet has been revived after years of inactivity
(aside from ezekiel and eadler, who have been steadfastly holding down the
fort), if you're able to connect to IRC, and so inclined, come join in the
fun.

http://www.efnet.org/?module=servers

I'm sure george can follow-up with more on how to connect to IRC using tor
...

Summer Installfest

George Rosamond — 2012-04-12T16:43:30

We're looking to do an installfest of sorts this summer. . but not the 
usual type.

We are planning on lining up some people to illustrate their funky 
hardware installs, and the usual part of assisting others in their installs.

On that note, does anyone have any decent contacts at any embedded 
hardware manufacturers that might want to donate a bunch, say one to 
many?  EOL'd products are fine, as long as *some* BSD or another 
installs on their architecture.  ARM, PPC, i386, whatever.

Preference for those that provide required documentation to developers, 
of course.

Ping admin< at > offlist if you can help.

g