Episode Details

A pledge of love to OpenBSD, combating ransomware like WannaCry with OpenZFS, and using PFsense to maximize your non-gigabit Internet connection

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Headlines

ino64 project committed to FreeBSD 12-CURRENT

• The ino64 project has been completed and merged into FreeBSD 12-CURRENT

Extend the ino_t, dev_t, nlink_t types to 64-bit ints. Modify struct dirent layout to add d_off, increase the size of d_fileno to 64-bits, increase the size of d_namlen to 16-bits, and change the required alignment. Increase struct statfs f_mntfromname[] and f_mntonname[] array length MNAMELEN to 1024

• This means the length of a mount point (MNAMELEN) has been increased from 88 byte to 1024 bytes. This allows longer ZFS dataset names and more nesting, and generally improves the usefulness of nested jails
• It also allow more than 4 billion files to be stored in a single file system (both UFS and ZFS). It also deals with a number of NFS problems, such as Amazon’s EFS (cloud NFS), which uses 64 bit IDs even with small numbers of files.

ABI breakage is mitigated by providing compatibility using versioned symbols, ingenious use of the existing padding in structures, and by employing other tricks. Unfortunately, not everything can be fixed, especially outside the base system. For instance, third-party APIs which pass struct stat around are broken in backward and forward incompatible ways.

• A bug in poudriere that may cause some packages to not rebuild is being fixed. Many packages like perl will need to be rebuilt after this change

Update note: strictly follow the instructions in UPDATING. Build and install the new kernel with COMPAT_FREEBSD11 option enabled, then reboot, and only then install new world.

• So you need the new GENERIC kernel with the COMPAT_FREEBSD11 option, so that your old userland will work with the new kernel, and you need to build, install, and reboot onto the new kernel before attempting to install world. The usual process of installing both and then rebooting will NOT WORK

Credits: The 64-bit inode project, also known as ino64, started life many years ago as a project by Gleb Kurtsou (gleb). Kirk McKusick (mckusick) then picked up and updated the patch, and acted as a flag-waver. Feedback, suggestions, and discussions were carried by Ed Maste (emaste), John Baldwin (jhb), Jilles Tjoelker (jilles), and Rick Macklem (rmacklem). Kris Moore (kmoore) performed an initial ports investigation followed by an exp-run by Antoine Brodin (antoine). Essential and all-embracing testing was done by Peter Holm (pho). The heavy lifting of coordinating all these efforts and bringing the project to completion were done by Konstantin Belousov (kib).

Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation (emaste, kib)

Why I love OpenBSD

• Jeroen Janssen writes:

I do love open source software. Oh boy, I really do love open source software. It’s extendable, auditable, and customizable. What’s not to love?
I’m astonished by the idea that tens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of enthusiasti