From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 10 06:55:55 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95D791065680 for ; Sun, 10 Jun 2012 06:55:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from decke@FreeBSD.org) Received: from groupware.itac.at (groupware.itac.at [91.205.172.99]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44B6A8FC17 for ; Sun, 10 Jun 2012 06:55:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: from home.bluelife.at (93.104.210.95) by groupware.itac.at (Axigen) with (AES256-SHA encrypted) ESMTPSA id 3E86BC; Sun, 10 Jun 2012 08:55:58 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 08:55:52 +0200 From: Bernhard Froehlich To: Message-ID: X-Sender: decke@FreeBSD.org User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/0.7.2 X-AxigenSpam-Level: 1 X-CTCH-RefID: str=0001.0A0B0204.4FD444F9.00AF,ss=1,fgs=0 X-CTCH-VOD: Unknown X-CTCH-Spam: Unknown Cc: Subject: VirtualBox on FreeBSD is looking for you! X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 06:55:55 -0000 Hi VirtualBox users! We are again at the point where I am kindly asking if someone is interested to help with the VirtualBox on FreeBSD work. We started with an active team of around 3 people but since about one year I ended up being a lonely ranger. Maintaining such a beast/high profile port by a single person is not possible for a longer period so we should really try to form a team to improve the situation. Additionally I started working on redports.org which requires more and more time so I cannot dedicate all my work to virtualbox. The situation of the port right now is not bad but I always end up fire fighting and only concentrate on serious problems due to the limited time I have. So it happens that people send bugreports and patches for virtualbox and don't get a response for weeks if at all. A lot of bugs that we have since day one are still present and the list of items that we should seriously do is getting longer. Many things of them are userland and porting stuff but there are also a lot of things to do in the kernel modules. Andriy Gapon has rewritten the r0 memory allocation stuff which significantly improved the situation in that area but the networking kernel modules are still in a bad shape. There are various known bugs (performance problems, instabilities, ...) in that area so it would be great if someone with networking expertise could have a look at the code. The USB stuff needs some love too. It is there but only works for a few special combinations of Device and Guest OS. Since VirtualBox 4.1 there is experimental support for PCI Passthrough so if we want that we need some Kernel API for the Intel/AMD IOMMU. I think the IOMMU code has already been written for BeHyVe so we need someone who puts all the stuff together and wants to find out how to integrate that in the kernel and vbox. The vbox developers offered their help on that but they need a Kernel API before we can start talking about it. So what is it that the virtualbox team needs to do? - regulary test latest SVN sources to find new problems early (build, runtime testing, create build fixes) - maintain all 8 ports (changes in CURRENT or other port updates keep breaking virtualbox around once per month) - update ports to new bugfix releases - review patches from the community and send them upstream then nag vbox developers to get them committed - help users to diagnose problems (help debugging, get stacktraces, collect information, give hints) - further porting efforts (coordinate and probably do it yourself) - optionsng adaptions - FreeBSD installer for the vbox additions to be able to build a VBoxAdditions.iso with FreeBSD support - implement vboxsf support (Shared Folders) - PCI Passthrough support - USB support (needs fixing) - Networking support (needs fixing) It is unrealistic that one single person can do a majority of these things so we seriously need a few people from different areas to improve the situation. Be it kernel developers, ports people or just power users that can help testing and diagnosing bugs. If you have an interest in VirtualBox on FreeBSD and a few spare cycles please get in contact with us (me?) to coordinate the further steps. I will do my best to help answering questions and help you with your first steps in vbox land. Don't worry if you think you are not experienced enough for the task. We all started that way and you get the chance to learn a lot - it just needs some time to get used to it. I have also created a dedicated VirtualBox on FreeBSD channel on freenode: #freebsd-vbox so you're welcome to join us! -- Bernhard Froehlich http://www.bluelife.at/