Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 19:23:11 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: hackers@FreeBSD.org, developers@FreeBSD.org Subject: FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report, June 2001 Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010613185804.5910E-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report
June 2001
<rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
- Introduction
One of the benefits of the FreeBSD development model is a focus on
centralized design and implementation, in which the operating system is
maintained in a central repository, and discussed on centrally maintained
lists. This allows for a high level of coordination between authors of
various components of the system, and allows policies to be enforced over
the entire system, covering issues ranging from architecture to style.
However, as the FreeSBD developer community has grown, and the rate of
both mailing list traffic and tree modifications has increased, making it
difficult even for the most dedicated developer to remain on top of all
the work going on in the tree.
The FreeBSD Monthly Development Status Report attempts to address this
problem by providing a vehicle that allows developers to make the broader
community aware of their on-going work on FreeBSD, both in and out of the
central source repository. This is the first issue, and as such is an
experiment. For each project and sub-project, a one paragraph summary is
included, indicating progress since the last summary (in this case, simply
recent progress, as there have been no prior summaries).
This status report may be reproduced in whole or in part, as long as the
source is clearly identified and appropriate credit given.
- Future Editions
Assuming there is some positive feedback on this idea, and that future
submissions get made such that there is content for future issues, the
goal is to release a development status report once a month. As such, the
next deadline will be July 31, 2001, with a scheduled publication date in
the first week of August. This will put the status report on a schedule
in line with the calendar, as well as providing a little over a month
until the next deadline, which will include a number of pertinent events,
including the Annual USENIX Technical Conference in Boston, MA.
Submissions should be e-mailed to:
robert+freebsd.monthly@cyrus.watson.org
Many submitters will want to wait until the last week of July so as to
provide the most up-to-date status report; however, submissions will be
accepted at any time prior to that date.
- Projects
The following projects submitted summaries for the June 2001 report:
Binary Updater Project
"Close a PR drive"
CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy
DEVFS
digi driver
Diskcheckd
if_fxp driver
Java Project
Kernel Graphics Interface port
libh
Mount(2) API
OLDCARD pccard implemenation
PowerPC port
pseudofs
PPP
RELNOTESng
SMPng Project
SMPng mbuf allocator
Sparc64 Port
TrustedBSD ACLs
TrustedBSD Capabilities
TrustedBSD MAC and Object Labeling
- Status Reports
Binary Updater Project
Contacts: Eric Melville <eric@FreeBSD.org>,
Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/updater.html
The FreeBSD Binary Updater Project aims to provide a secure mechanism
for the distribution of binary updates for FreeBSD. This project is
complementary to the Open Packages and libh efforts and there should
be very little overlap with those projects. The system uses a client
/ server mechanism that allows clients to install any known "profile"
or release of FreeBSD over the network. Where a specific profile
might contain a specific set of FreeBSD software to install,
additional packages, and configuration actions that make it more
ideal for a specific environment (ie FreeBSD 4.3 Secure Web Server
Profile)
The system can currently be used to install a FreeBSD system or
perform the most simple of upgrades but many features are absent. In
particular, the client is in its infancy and much work remains to be
done. We need additional developers so please get in touch with us
at updater@osd.bsdi.com if you are interested in spending some cycles
on this.
--
"Close a PR drive"
Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://phk.freebsd.dk/Gnats/
Poul-Henning Kamp kicked off a drive to get our GNATS PR database
cleaned up so the wheat can be sorted from the chaff. Progress is
good, but there is still a lot of work to do. Give a hand if you
can. Remember: every unhandled PR is a pissed off contributor or
user.
--
CVSROOT script rewrite/tidy
Contact: Josef Karthauser <joe@FreeBSD.org>
I'm in the process of rewriting the CVSROOT/scripts to make them more
clean and configurable. A lot of other projects also use these and
so it makes sense to make them as easy to use in other environments as
possible.
Status: work in progress. There is now a configuration file, but not
all the scripts use it yet.
--
DEVFS
Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>
Work is progressing on implementing true cloning devices in DEVFS.
Brian Somers and Poul-Henning Kamp are working to make if_tun the
first truly cloning driver in the system. Next will be the pty
driver and the bpf driver.
From july 1st DEVFS will be standard in -current.
--
digi driver
Contact: Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org>
Added the digi driver. Initial work was done by John Prince
<johnp@knight-trosoft.com>, but all the modular stuff was done by me
and initial work on supporting Xe and Xi cards (ala dgb) was done by
me. I'm now awaiting an Xe card being sent from joerg@ (almost a
donation) so that I can get that side of things working properly.
--
Diskcheckd
Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://phantom.cris.net/freebsd/projects/viewproj.php?p_id=15
Ben Smithurst has written a "diskcheckd" daemon which will read all
sectors on the disks over a configured period. With recent increases
in disksizes it is by no means a given that disk read errors will be
discovered before they are fatal. This daemon will hopefully result
in the drive firmware being able to relocate bad sectors before they
become unreadable. This code is now committed to 5.0-CURRENT.
--
if_fxp driver
Contact: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@FreeBSD.org>
In the last month (May-June), the new fxp driver was brought
into -stable. This new driver uses the common MII code, so
support for new PHYs is easy to add. Support for the new Intel
82562 chips was added. The driver was updated to add VLAN
support and a workaround for a bug affecting Intel 815-based boards.
--
Java Project
Contact: Greg Lewis <glewis@eyesbeyond.com>
The FreeBSD Java Project has continued its "behind the scenes" work
over the last month. Progress was made both technically, with the
help of Bill Huey (of Wind River), on a port of JDK 1.3.1 and
legally, with Nate Williams continuing negotiations with Sun on a
mutually acceptable license to release a binary Java 2 SDK under.
The JDK 1.2.2 port has also seen some development, with a new
patchset likely to be released soon which includes JPDA and NetBSD
support (the latter courtesy of Scott Bartram).
--
Kernel Graphics Interface port
Contact: Nicolas Souchu <nsouch@fr.alcove.com>
URL: http://kgi.sourceforge.net/
The Kernel Graphics Interface project has worked for several years to
provide a framework for graphic drivers under Linux receiving input
from other groups like the UDI project. Currently the KGI core
implementation is quite settled, as is the driver coding model as a
whole. Work is being done to newbussify KGI and produce a kld, as
part of a future redesign of the graphics subsystem in FreeBSD. KGI
will be an alternative for graphic card producers that don't accept
the XFree86 model of userland graphic adapters and will also provide
accelerated support for any other graphic alternative.
--
libh Project
Contacts: Alexander Langer <alex@FreeBSD.org>,
Nathan Ahlstrom <nra@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~alex/libh/
The libh project is a next generation sysinstall. It is written
in C++ using QT for its graphical frontend and tvision for its console
support. The menus are scriptable via an embedded tcl interpreter.
It has been growing functionality quite a bit lately, including a new
disklabel editor. Current work is on installation scripts for CDROM,
FTP, ... installs as well as a fully functional standalone
disk-partition and label editor. The GUI API was extended a little
and many bugs were fixed. There seems to be some interest in i18n
work.
--
Mount(2) API
Contact: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.org>
Maxime Henrion is working on implementing a new and more extensible
mount(2) systemcall, mainly to overcome the 32 bits for mountoptions
limit, secondary goal to make it possible to mount filesystems from
inside the kernel.
--
OLDCARD pccard implementation
Contact: Warner Losh <imp@FreeBSD.org>
In the last two months, the OLDCARD pccard implemenation was
rototilled to within an inch of its life. Many new pci cardbus
bridges were added. Power handling was improved. PCI Card cardbus
bridges are nearly supported and should be committed in early June to
the tree. This will likely be the last major work done on OLDCARD.
After pci cards are supported, work will shift to improving NEWCARD.
--
PowerPC Port
Contact: Benno Rice <benno@FreeBSD.org>
The PowerPC port is proceeding well. All seems to be working in
pmap.c after a number of problems encountered where FreeBSD passes a
vm_page_t to a NetBSD-derived function that expects a vm_offset_t.
Then after debugging the atomic operations code, I'm now at the point
where VM appears to be initialised and it's now hanging while in
sys/kern/kern_malloc.c:kmeminit(). Progress continues. =)
--
PPP
Contact: Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org>
Developing full MPPE support for Andre Opperman @ Monzoon in
Switzerland. Work is now complete and will eventually be brought
into -current, but no dates are yet known.
--
pseudofs
Contact: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>
Pseudofs is a framework for pseudo-filesystems, like procfs and
linprocfs. The goal of pseudofs is twofold:
- eliminate code duplication between (and within) procfs and
linprocfs
- isolate procfs and linprocfs from the complexities of the vfs
system to simplify maintenance and further development.
Pseudofs has reached the point where it is sufficiently
functional and stable that linprocfs has been almost fully
reimplemented on top of it; the only bit that's missing is the
proc/<pid>/mem file.
The primary to-do item for pseudofs right now is to add support
for writeable files (which are required for procfs, and are quite
a bit less trivial to handle than read-only files). In addition,
pseudofs needs either generic support for raw (non-sbuf'ed,
possibly mmap'able) files, or failing that, special-case code to
handle proc/<pid>/mem.
--
RELNOTESng
Contact: Bruce A. May <bmah@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/relnotes/
RELNOTESng is the name I've given to the rewrite of the *.TXT files
that typically accompany a FreeBSD release. The information from
these files (which include, among other things, the release notes and
the supported hardware list) have been reorganized and converted to
SGML. This helps us produce the documentation in various formats, as
well as facilitating the maintainence of documentation for multiple
architectures. This work was recently committed to -CURRENT, and I
intend to MFC it to 4-STABLE before 4.4-RELEASE.
--
SMPng Project
Contacts: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>,
Jake Burkholder <jake@FreeBSD.org>,
SMP Mailing list <smp@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://www.freebsd.org/~jasone/smp/
The SMPng project aims to provide multithreaded support for the
FreeBSD kernel. Currently the kernel still runs almost exclusively
under the Giant kernel lock. Recently, progress has been made in
locking the process group and session structures as well as file
descriptors by Seigo Tanimura-san. Alfred Perlstein has also added
in a giant lock around the entire virtual memory (VM) subsystem which
will eventually be split up into several smaller locks. The locking
of the VM subsystem has proved tricky, and some of the current effort
is focused on finding and fixing a few remaining bugs in on the alpha
architecture.
--
SMPng mbuf allocator
Contact: Bosko Milekic <bmilekic@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://people.freebsd.org/~bmilekic/code/mb_slab/
mb_alloc is a new specialized allocator for mbufs and mbuf clusters.
Presently, it offers various important advantages over the old
(status quo) mbuf allocator, particularily for MP machines.
Additionally, it is designed with the possibility of future
enchancements in mind.
Presently in initial review & testing stages, most of the code is
already written.
--
Sparc64 Port
Contact: Jake Burkholder <jake@FreeBSD.org>
Work has (re)started on a port of FreeBSD to the UltraSPARC
architecture, specifically targeting PCI based workstations. Jake
Burkholder will be porting the kernel, and Ade Lovett has expressed
an interest in working on userland. Recent work on the project
includes:
- built a gnu cross toolchain targeting sparc64
- obtained remote access to an ultra 5 development machine
(thanks to emmy)
- developed a minimal set of headers and source files to allow
the kernel to be compiled and linked
- implemented a mini-loader which relocates the kernel, maps it
into the tlbs and calls it
- nabbed Benno Rice's openfirmware console driver which allows
printf and panic to work
At this point the kernel can be net-booted and prints the FreeBSD
copyright before calling code that is not yet implemented. I am
currently working on a design for the pmap module and plan to begin
implementation in the next few days.
--
TrustedBSD
Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://www.TrustedBSD.org/
The TrustedBSD Project seeks to improve the security of the FreeBSD
operating system by adding new security features, many derived from
common trusted operating system requirements. This includes Access
Control Lists (ACLs), Fine-grained Event Logging (Audit), Fine-grained
Privileges (Capabilities), Mandatory Access Control (MAC), and other
architecture features, including file system extended attributes,
and improved object labeling.
Individual feature status reports are documented seperately below;
in general, basic features (such as EAs, ACLs, and kernel support
for Capabilities) will be initially available in 5.0-RELEASE,
conditional on specific kernel options. A performance-enhanced
version of EAs is currently being targetted at 6.0-RELEASE, along
with an integrated capability-aware userland, and MAC support.
--
TrustedBSD: ACLs
Contact: Chris D. Faulhaber <jedgar@FreeBSD.org>
Patches are now available to add ACL support to cp(1) and mv(1) along
with preliminary support for install(1). Ilmar's i18n patches for
getfacl(1) and setfacl(1) need to be updated for the last set of
changes and committed. Some other functional improvements are also
in the pipeline.
--
TrustedBSD Capabilities
Contact: Thomas Moestl <tmm@FreeBSD.org>
The kernel part of the capability implementation is mostly finished;
all uses of suser() and suser_xxx() and nearly all comparisons of
uid's with 0 have been converted to use the newly introduced
cap_check() call. Some details still need clarification. More
documentation for this needs to be done.
POSIX.2c-compatible getfcap and setfcap programs have been written.
Experimental capability support in su(1), login(1), install(1) and
bsd.prog.mk is being tested.
Support for capabilities, ACL's, capabilities and MAC labels in
tar(1) is being developed; only the capability part is tested right
now. Generic support for extended attributes is planned, this will
require extensions to the current EA interface, which are written and
will probably be committed to -CURRENT in a few weeks. A port of
these features to pax(1) is planned.
--
TrustedBSD MAC and Object Labeling
Contact: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
URL: http://www.TrustedBSD.org/
An initial prototype of a Mandatory Access Control implementation
was completed earlier this year, supporting Multi-Level Security,
Bibe Integrity protection, and a more general jail-based access
control model. Based on that implementation, I'm now in the process
of improving the FreeBSD security abstractions to simplify both the
implementation and integration of MAC support, as well as increase the
number of kernel objects protected by both discretionary and mandatory
protection schemes. Generic object labeling introduces a structure
not dissimilar in properties to the kernel ucred structure, only it is
intended to be associated with kernel objects, rather than kernel
subjects, permitting the creation of generic security protection
routines for objects. This would allow the easy extension of procfs
and devfs to support ACLs and MAC, for example. A prototype is
underway, with compiling and running code and simple protections
now associated with sysctl's.
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