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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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