NetBSD fully reproducible builds

Today (2017-02-20) NetBSD got our first reproducible build on the debian build farm. Here's a short description how we got here, what implementation choices we made, and what we had to fix.[Read More] [4 comments]

 

The first patch-bulk upstreamed to LLDB

The LLVM project is a quickly moving target, this also applies to the LLVM debugger -- LLDB. It's actively used in several first-class operating systems, while - thanks to my spare time dedication - NetBSD joined the LLDB club in 2014, only lately the native support has been substantially improved and the feature set is quickly approaching the support level of Linux and FreeBSD. During this work 12 patches were committed to upstream, 12 patches were submitted to review, 11 new ATF were tests added, 2 NetBSD bugs filed and several dozens of commits were introduced in pkgsrc-wip, reducing the local patch set to mostly Native Process Plugin for NetBSD.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

Firefox 51 on sparc64 - we did not hit the wall yet

Keeping a current firefox working is a tough task. All NetBSD architectures are "tier 3" from the Mozilla foundations point of view.

Onodera-san (who does most of the pkgsrc work for mozilla based pkgs - and others) does a great job.

And on "strange" architectures like sparc64 it is even worse...

[Read More] [3 comments]

 

Summary of the preliminary LLDB support project

Operating systems can be called monitors as they handle system calls from userland processes. A similar task is performed by debuggers as they implement monitors for traced applications and interpret various events that occurred in tracees and are messaged usually with signals to their tracers. During this month I have started a new Process Plugin within LLDB to incept NativeProcessNetBSD - copied from NativeProcessLinux - implementing basic functionality and handling all the needed events in the MonitorCallback() function. To achieve these tasks, I had to add a bunch of new ptrace(2) interfaces in the kernel to cover all that is required by LLDB monitors. The current Process Plugin for NetBSD is capable to start a process, catch all the needed events correctly and if applicable resume or step the process.[Read More] [1 comment]

 

NetBSD.org outage 2017-01-16

NetBSD.org DNS is down because our secondary stopped serving our zone and the network of our primary went offline.

[Update, 2017-01-16 20:48 UTC: NetBSD.org is back up now.]

[Read More] [1 comment]

 

Google Summer of Code 2016 summary

The NetBSD Foundation took part in the 2016 Google Summer of Code.

Hrishikesh Goyal worked on the project "Implement Ext4fs support in ReadOnly mode". He tackled two features of an ext4fs implementation: extents and HTree DIR read/write support. His work was committed into the NetBSD source tree in multiple commits.

charles cui worked on adding tests for better "POSIX Test Suite Compliance". This involved porting the Open Posix benchmark suite to NetBSD. Many of the tests showed missing features, and Charles worked with his mentors to improve the results. See his summary for details.

Leonardo Taccari worked on "Split debug symbols for pkgsrc builds". He already blogged about this in much detail on this blog.

A big thank you to Google for sponsoring the students to work on NetBSD, the students for working on the projects, and the mentors that were helping them along! [0 comments]

 

NetBSD 7.1_RC1 available

7.1_RC1 is out! Help us by testing it![Read More] [1 comment]

 

Summary of the ptrace(2) project

In short, we are already in a good state with the existing ptrace(2) interfaces, as most necessary functions in LLDB are representable by existing NetBSD specific interfaces. We can fully implement core LLDB functionality without further extensions in ptrace(2). During this project dozen of bugs were investigated & fixed and several hundreds of ATF tests added. The major addition is newly added support for hardware assisted watchpoints API for ptrace(2) on amd64 and preliminary code for i386 and XEN.[Read More] [6 comments]

 

NetBSD 7.0.2 released

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.0.2, the second security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 7.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons. If you are running an earlier release of NetBSD, we strongly suggest updating to 7.0.2.

For more details, please see the release notes.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

[2 comments]

 

Funded contract: 2016-2017

Greetings,


The NetBSD Foundation has initiated a contract with Kamil Rytarowski
 to complete the following during it:

   1.  Add missing interfaces in ptrace(2), mostly sync it with
       the FreeBSD capabilities, add ATF tests, add documentation.

   2.  Develop process plugin in LLDB based on the FreeBSD code in
       LLDB and make it functional (start passing at least some tests).

   3.  Revamp the process plugin in LLDB for new remote debugging
       capabilities (in order to get it accepted and merged upstream),
       pass more tests.

   4.  LLDB x86 support, pass more of the standard LLDB tests
       and import LLDB to the NetBSD base. Add some ATF LLDB basic
       functionality tests to the tree. The original tests are
       unreliable and generate false positives.

   5.  Develop missing features needed for .NET (POSIX robust
       mutexes), add ATF tests.

   6.  Develop missing features for VirtualBox as host, including
       needing sigevent(2) on par with POSIX and SIGEV_KEVENT, and
       other real-time AIO related interfaces as needed.

   7.  Port Apple's Swift programming language. Enhance .NET port to
       validate new interface and correct more issues as needed.

   8.  Improve VirtualBox host support. Make it build first by disabling
       missing features of providing empty facades for them.

   9.  Implement CDROM, floppy, NIC support for NetBSD in VBox as host.

  10.  Make VirtualBox runnable at least with a restricted feature set, ship
        it in pkgsrc, and submit it upstream.


The NetBSD Foundation will continue to work diligently with the
community to fund projects furthering specific key and quality
improvements to the NetBSD projects.  We have a list of projects at
http://wiki.netbsd.org/projects/ as well as welcome other proposals
to move our flag forward to next releases!

Thank you to Kamil for committing to it and we all look forward to it!

The NetBSD Foundation is a non-profit organization and welcomes any
donations to help us continue to fund projects and services to the
open-source community.  Please consider visiting the following URL,
and chip in what you can:

		http://netbsd.org/donations/#how-to-donate





			Submitted for The NetBSD Foundation,
				William J. Coldwell (billc@)
				President, Chairperson

20161012: edited to fix #10 to be the correct wording.

[2 comments]

 

The 2016-2017 NetBSD Foundation Board of Directors

Please join us in welcoming the new Directors to the NetBSD Foundation Board:

Michael van Elst, Taylor R. Campbell, Thomas Klausner

We'd like to sincerely thank the departing board members for their service during their term:

Matthew Sporleder, SAITOH Masanobu, Christos Zoulas

Christos will be remaining as Secretary and Treasurer for the Foundation.


Your 2016-2017 Directors of the Foundation are:

Erik Berls
Taylor R. Campbell
William J. Coldwell
Michael van Elst
Thomas Klausner
Jeremy C. Reed
S. P. Zeidler

The current office holders of the Foundation are:

President: William J. Coldwell
Vice President: Jeremy C. Reed
Secretary: Christos Zoulas
Treasurer: Christos Zoulas

Thank you to all of the developers that nominated and voted, the NomCom, the Voting Administrator and Voting Validator.

Respectfully submitted for the Board of Directors,
William J. Coldwell

[0 comments]

 

GSoC 2016 Reports: Split debug symbols for pkgsrc builds, part 2

Google Summer of Code 2016 is now over. We have polished the code and documentation and submitted the final term evaluation on 23rd of August 2016. The mentors evaluated us in the following week.

If you are impatient (and this time impatience is definitely a virtue!) please take a look to all The NetBSD Foundation GSoC 2016 projects' code submissions!

[Read More] [0 comments]