Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
On Thu, January 24, 2008 8:59 pm, Dave Hayes wrote: > As a related point, I really want to contribute this server CD back, but > I'm concerned it's not good enough for the standards that many of you > have for these things; it's really not clean yet according to my own > standards. The issues I see at the moment are: The first person to complain about it not being up to standards gets to be the one who brings it up to standards. Seriously, though, please share. I've wanted a CD/DVD that does this for a long time.
Re: SMP question
has a decision been made on the SMP development? > In other words - is it still on the list of tasks to do, will it be > native Dfly implemenation, or will it be a port of FreeBSD's > implementation? Not a developer, but from what I know DragonFly will not be using FreeBSDs SMP implementation (with maybe a few exceptions) and its locking principles as DragonFlys SMP is greatly different to FreeBSDs. Petr
Re: SMP question
On Thu, January 24, 2008 8:38 pm, Haidut wrote: > So my question is - has a decision been made on the SMP development? > In other words - is it still on the list of tasks to do, will it be > native Dfly implemenation, or will it be a port of FreeBSD's > implementation? I think it's on the list; someone just needs to pick it up. As I understand it, it's a matter of taking various subsystems one at a time and removing their need for the Giant Lock. For example, I recall that Jeffrey Hsu had come close to getting networking out from under the lock. I don't think it would be possible to use FreeBSD's SMP mechanism; one of the reasons DragonFly was forked was to avoid the shape FreeBSD's SMP implementation was taking, at the time.
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
Sascha Wildner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Haidut wrote: >> The DFLY "release" process I think is geared towards creating an >> "installation" live CD. It will boot but won't be a ready-to run GUI >> environment just like your HDD deployment but rather a live CD from >> which you can install the applications you chose to include when >> creating this custom "release" CD. > I'm with Matt on this one. If someone does such a thing, please > integrate it into the nrelease framework. Something like "make gui > release" or so. ... > 2) Adjusting to the current CD setup where most available disk space is > read only. A real effort would probably include laying out filesystems > differently. I'm very interested in efforts along these lines myself. I've gone through some issues with CD creation. I do have something somewhat like what you are all talking about, but for a different purpose. I've hacked together a CD that Dragonfly "runs directly on". Really, it mounts an MFS root, and then copies from or maps the CD onto that. I have a methodology for caching frequently used binaries into the memory filesystem, but my goal was not to lay out filesystems any more differently than I had to and I'm not sure it's even necessary. My CD is primarily for running servers (especially firewalls) where you really want some solid rootkit/rogue SA protection and/or you want to upgrade many multiple servers all as a single unit. I doubt it would be very good for desktop use. (That doesn't mean I'm not interested in desktop dragonfly CDs, I'd love to see an effort for that and would even help where I could.) As a related point, I really want to contribute this server CD back, but I'm concerned it's not good enough for the standards that many of you have for these things; it's really not clean yet according to my own standards. The issues I see at the moment are: * I had to modify /etc/rc and insert a small shell script into the startup process. * I've hacked the installer quite a bit (even found a bug) in ways I doubt very much are compatable with the direction the installer is going. (I just wrote my extra code in C, for example). * It's not clear how supported an MFS root filesystem is. * Trying to get pkgsrc packages on it proved to be extremely problmatic. It was easier just to make an anonymous read-only FTP archive of pre-built packages and populate that from a development box. The other issue with this is that packages are faster moving targets than Dragonfly is (even with the HAMMER hacking). In fact I'm really not sure it is possible to have applications that BSD users won't be upgrading as soon as they get them anyway. Just consider the rash of Firefox upgrades a while ago as an example. * The process for making one of these CDs is in a bourne shell script and -not- in the /usr/src/nrelease/Makefile. It does use "make" whereever possible to stay compatable with what goes on in development. However, I am not a Makefile guru, just a humble power user. You need to be a guru to deal with BSD Makefiles these days, and I am very leary of changing that Makefile when I'm not a guru and when I don't have (or really want) commit access. That last point is really my show stopper. I'd love to work on the current /usr/src/nrelease/Makefile system, but there's no clear and comprehensive documentation that I have found that would aid me in making changes that would be acceptable to the community. I've been told it doesn't exist. Maybe I'm confused? > I also think it should be a live DVD then. But it depends on the > packages you'd want on it, of course. This would be great, but can DFly boot off a DVD? I've never tried to write an ISO on one... -- Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<< A cat and a dog were fighting. A man asked them what they were doing. They said: "The winner will decide which of us is a rat." "You are both wrong," said the man. So they set upon him and put him to flight.
SMP question
I may be starting a flamewar with this question, so I apologize in advance. Some time ago there was a discussion about the status of SMP in Dfly. As far as I can remember, the developers behind Dfly said that the SMP implementation is currently not on their schedule, even though progress was made in implementing various part of the system so that it's not running under the big lock. Then the news came out that FreeBSD completed their SMP implementation as of version 7.0, and some benchmarks were performed showing it beating Linux SMP. Then there was a discussion again on this list hinting that Dfly would simply import the FreeBSD SMP implementation. So my question is - has a decision been made on the SMP development? In other words - is it still on the list of tasks to do, will it be native Dfly implemenation, or will it be a port of FreeBSD's implementation? IF SMP is no longer pursued in Dfly b/c of limited developer time, then I'd like to get an estimate if possible on how much work remains to be done to get SMP fully functional. It doesn't matter if it would be a port from another *BSD or custom Dfly implementation. I just need a rough estimate in terms of man-hours. If you can give an estimate for each option and the preferred option then it's even better. The reason I am asking is that I am a co-founder of several startups and we plan on becoming exclusively Dfly-centric. We already use Dfly extensively as a DB platform (both MySQL and recently switching to PostgreSQL given that Sun bought the former). The HAMMER filesystem will be a major feature that we will use extensively, but SMP is also high on the needs list. Without going into too much detail, one of the projects we are working is a very large scale distributed search engine. You can see why HAMMER and SMP are important to us. So, we may be able to sponsor some/all work on getting SMP implemented in Dfly if it's a feature that Dfly still wants to implement. Anyways, let me know. Thanks in advance.
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
:1) That with pkgsrc it seemed impossible to have meta packages on a :local drive and have it download their dependencies from some mirror. : :2) Adjusting to the current CD setup where most available disk space is :read only. A real effort would probably include laying out filesystems :differently. : :I also think it should be a live DVD then. But it depends on the :packages you'd want on it, of course. : :Sascha Not sure whats going on w/ pkgsrc, but we've already got the read-only issue mostly dealth with. The CD is basically just a starting image and we overload the bits that we want to make R/W using MFS mounts. -Matt
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
Haidut wrote: OK, that answers part of the question - we can create live CDs. How about the compressed filesystem? Does Dfly have anything similar to SquashFS (Linux) or cloop2 (FreeBSD/NetBSD) so we can cram a lot of software in the 700MB ISO limit? No, we don't have that. This could be a nice project to use the userland vfs for. cheers simon -- Serve - BSD +++ RENT this banner advert +++ASCII Ribbon /"\ Work - Mac +++ space for low €€€ NOW!1 +++ Campaign \ / Party Enjoy Relax | http://dragonflybsd.org Against HTML \ Dude 2c 2 the max ! http://golden-apple.biz Mail + News / \
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
OK, that answers part of the question - we can create live CDs. How about the compressed filesystem? Does Dfly have anything similar to SquashFS (Linux) or cloop2 (FreeBSD/NetBSD) so we can cram a lot of software in the 700MB ISO limit? Thanks in advance. On Jan 24, 2008 2:05 PM, Matthew Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The DragonFly /usr/src/nrelease process can be used to build any > live-cd, it doesn't have to be an install-cd. It's very modular but > you need to play around with it to find the right combination of base > packages to include before you roll in the custom changes that it wouldn't > be able to handle. > > -Matt > >
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
Haidut wrote: The DFLY "release" process I think is geared towards creating an "installation" live CD. It will boot but won't be a ready-to run GUI environment just like your HDD deployment but rather a live CD from which you can install the applications you chose to include when creating this custom "release" CD. I'm with Matt on this one. If someone does such a thing, please integrate it into the nrelease framework. Something like "make gui release" or so. In fact, I hacked a bit on it once, and the main issues up to the point where I got (I think it was starting up X from the CD but not much more) were iirc: 1) That with pkgsrc it seemed impossible to have meta packages on a local drive and have it download their dependencies from some mirror. 2) Adjusting to the current CD setup where most available disk space is read only. A real effort would probably include laying out filesystems differently. I also think it should be a live DVD then. But it depends on the packages you'd want on it, of course. Sascha -- http://yoyodyne.ath.cx
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
The DragonFly /usr/src/nrelease process can be used to build any live-cd, it doesn't have to be an install-cd. It's very modular but you need to play around with it to find the right combination of base packages to include before you roll in the custom changes that it wouldn't be able to handle. -Matt
Re: How to rebuild LiveCD
I think his question is essentially something I'd asked long time ago - how to create a LiveCD from a pre-installed environment. Sort of like the FreeSBIE (FreeBSD), Linux, or NetBSD live CDs floating out there. Basically, you have a running environment with configured applications such as Firefox and OO, and you want to convert it to an ISO, which when booted gives you all the apps you had installed on your HDD. The DFLY "release" process I think is geared towards creating an "installation" live CD. It will boot but won't be a ready-to run GUI environment just like your HDD deployment but rather a live CD from which you can install the applications you chose to include when creating this custom "release" CD. As far as I remember Matt said that you can create a FreeSBIE-style live CD yourself but you have to do it manually and also Dfly doesn't support a compressed filesystem over the ISO so that your CD will be limited to 700MB of software, not 2-3GB like FreeSBIE. NetBSD have a script in pkgsrc called "livecd" but I think it's deprecated at this point. If the live CD situation for Dfly has changed then please let me know. I'd very interested in experimenting with Dfly and maybe create a desktop oriented live CD like FreeSBIE. It's a great marketing tool for Dfly. On Jan 24, 2008 2:17 AM, Sascha Wildner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Sdävtaker wrote: > > Hello, > > I had installed DFBSD and a couple of basic apps through pkg-src in a > > 4GB HD and want to move them to a LiveDVD (or CD, actually im not using > > the 4GB, just 900MB and can maybe do some extra cleaning). > > I was wondering if someone can point me to some documentation of how to > > create the LiveCD. > > Thanks for any info. > > Sdav > > > > man release > > -- > http://yoyodyne.ath.cx >
Re: Documentation navigation
Hi, * Sdvtaker wrote: > Hello, > I just noticed that when u use the handbook from > http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/DragonFlyBSD_Handbook > there is no navigation links > IE: http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/kernelconfig-building.html > To read th Some pages already have navigation buttons (eg http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/x-understanding.html), but most of the pages still lack the buttons :( So, if you have some spare time don't hesitate to add them to all pages or help cleaning up the Handbook :) Regards Matthias
Documentation navigation
Hello, I just noticed that when u use the handbook from http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/DragonFlyBSD_Handbook there is no navigation links IE: http://wiki.dragonflybsd.org/index.cgi/kernelconfig-building.html To read the full chapter you need to go index -> page -> index -> page -> index... or just open all pages in a second tab if u using a GUI browser, anyway it would be nice to add the navigation bar at bottom, sure a little tcsh or php script with regexs can generate all the links from index in few lines and add them to the full handbook. Sdav
