Skip to main content.

NetBSD Multimedia Resources List

Links on this page refer to multimedia resources (podcast, vodcast, audio recordings, video recordings, photos) related to NetBSD or of interest for NetBSD users.


This list is available as chronological overview, as a tag cloud and via the sources.
This list is also available as RSS feed

If you know any resources not listed here, or notice any dead links, please send details to Edwin Groothuis so that it can be included or updated.

Newest resources

August 2008

July 2008

  • Martin Tournoij from DaemonForums.org
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 23 July 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, daemonforums, martin tournoij
    Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)
    A brief interview with Martin Tournoij, one of the founders of DaemonForums.org.

  • Matthew Dillon
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 09 July 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, hammer, matthew dillon
    Ogg version (30 minutes), MP3 version (14 Mb, 30 minutes)
    An interview with Matthew Dillon. He gives a fairly technical description of the HAMMER filesystem features that will make it in the DragonflyBSD 2.0 release.

  • Configuration Management with Cfengine
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 03 July 2008
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, configuration management, cfengine
    MP3 version (6 Mb, 58 minutes)

    Configuration Management with Cfengine

    Cfengine is a policy-based configuration management system. Its primary function is to provide automated configuration and maintenance of computers, from a policy specification.

    The cfengine project was started in 1993 as a reaction to the complexity and non-portability of shell scripting for Unix configuration management, and continues today. The aim was to absorb frequently used coding paradigms into a declarative, domain-specific language that would offer self-documenting configuration.

    about the speaker:
    Steven Kreuzer has been working with Open Source technologies since as long as he can remember, starting out with a 486 salvaged from a dumpster behind his neighborhood computer store. In his spare time he enjoys doing things with technology that have absolutely no redeeming social value.

June 2008

May 2008

  • Sean Cody from Frantic Films VFX
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 31 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, bsdcan2008, frantic films, sean cody
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
    Interview with Sean Cody at BSDCan2008. We talk about his use of BSD at a visual effects studio.

  • Bjoern A. Zeeb - BSDCan08 devsummit summary
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, writeup, bjoern a zeeb
    200805DevSummit - BSDCan 2008 FreeBSD Developer summit summary

  • MeetBSD 2007 - Presentations and recordings
    Source: MeetBSD
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: meetbsd, meetbsd2007
    Slawomir Zak - DTrace - Monitoring i strojenie systemu w XXI wieku (546 Mb), Brooks Davis - Reflections on Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD (401 Mb), Christian Brüffer - Protecting your Privacy with FreeBSD and Tor (416 Kb, 34 Pages), Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD do zabudowy, czyli nie tylko pecety (600 Kb, 21 pages), Dominik Hamera, Jakub Klausa - Nowoczesne rozwiazania bezprzewodowe w systemie FreeBSD (165 Mb), Christian Brüffer - Protecting your Privacy with FreeBSD and Tor (409 Kb), Matt Olander - PC-BSD: FreeBSD on the Desktop (272 Mb), Adam Bartman, Rafal Grzebyk - Nowoczesna infrastruktura telefoniczna w oparciu o systemy z rodziny BSD (105 Mb), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (6.0 Mb), Brooks Davis - Reflections on Building a High-Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD (1.7 Mb, 25 Pages), Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD do zabudowy, czyli nie tylko pecety (638 Mb), Philip Paeps - Detangling and debugging: friends in unexpected places (162 Mb), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (3.7 Mb, 71 Pages), Pawel Solyga - Meet BSD projects from Google Summer of Code 2007 (308 Mb), Adam Bartman, Rafal Grzebyk - Nowoczesna infrastruktura telefoniczna w oparciu o systemy z rodziny BSD (3.9 Mb, 71 Pages), Philip Paeps - Detangling and debugging: friends in unexpected places (495 Kb, 53 Pages), Kris Kennaway - New features and improvements in FreeBSD 7 (336 Kb, 37 pages), Slawomir Zak - DTrace - Monitoring i strojenie systemu w XXI wieku (1.1 Mb, 35 Pages), Kris Kennaway - New features and improvements in FreeBSD 7 (564 Mb)
    MeetBSD 2007 at the Conference Centre-PWSBiA Congress in Warsaw

  • Scott Ullrich, Chris Buechler - pfSense Tutorial
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, tutorial, freebsd, pfsense, scott ullrich, chris buechler
    PDF file (4.1 Kb, 91 pages)

    pfSense Tutorial

    From Zero to Hero with pfSense

    pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.

    This tutorial is being presented by the founders of the pfSense project, Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich.

    The session will start with an introduction to the project, hardware sizing and selection, installation, firewalling concepts and basic configuration, and continue to cover all the most popular features of the system. Common usage scenarios, deployment considerations, step by step configuration guidance, and best practices will be covered for each feature. Most configurations will be demonstrated in a live lab environment.

    Attendees are assumed to have basic knowledge of TCP/IP and firewalling concepts, however no in-depth knowledge in these areas or prior knowledge of pfSense or FreeBSD is necessary.

  • Daniel Braniss
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 28 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, presentation, iscsi, daniel braniss
    PDF file (1.4 Mb, 30 pages)

    iSCSI

    not an Apple appliance.

    iSCSI is not an Apple appliance.

    The i in iSCSI stands for internet, some say for insecure, personally I like to think interesting. I'll try to share the road followed from RFC-3720 to the actual working driver, the challenges, the frustrations.

  • Jesús Rodriguez - SIP y VozIP con FreeBSD (527 Kb, 40 pages)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, asterisk, openser, freebsd, sip, voip, jesus rodriguez

    Repaso a las diferentes aplicaciones y servicios relacionados con SIP y VozIP que pueden usarse en FreeBSD. Entre estas apliaciones destacan OpenSER y Asterisk, ya que usados de forma conjunta pueden ofrecer una larga lista de servicios de forma rápida, segura y escalable.

  • Julio M. Merino Vidal - ATF: Sistema de pruebas automatizado para NetBSD (234 Kb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, atf, netbsd, julio m merino vidal

    La presentación empezará describiendo la necesidad de poder probar automáticamente la validez del código del sistema operativo NetBSD para así saber que se comporta correctamente en cualquiera de las plataformas soportadas. Luego se explicará cómo se estructura ATF, cómo se integra con NetBSD y se daran ejemplos prácticos de su uso tanto como programador o usuario.

    ATF es un proyecto autocontenido que funciona en multitud de plataformas (y no sólo BSD). Aún así, está centrado en NetBSD y las pruebas automatizadas para este sistema son específicas de él, no del proyecto ATF en sí.

  • Robert Watson - How a large scale opensource project works (81 Mb, 45 minutes)
    Source: Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: fosdem, fosdem2008, presentation, freebsd project, robert watson

    The FreeBSD Project is one of the oldest and most successful open source operating system projects, seeing wide deployment across the IT industry. From the root name servers, to top tier ISPs, to core router operating systems, to firewalls, to embedded appliances, you can't use a networked computer for ten minutes without using FreeBSD dozens of times.

    Part of FreeBSD's reputation for quality and reliability comes from the nature of its development organization -- driven by a hundreds of highly skilled volunteers, from high school students to university professors. And unlike most open source projects, the FreeBSD Project has developers who have been working on the same source base for over twenty years.

    But how does this organization work? Who pays the bandwidth bills, runs the web servers, writes the documentation, writes the code, and calls the shots? And how can developers in a dozen time zones reach agreement on the time of day, let alone a kernel architecture?

    This presentation will attempt to provide, in 45 minutes, a brief if entertaining snapshot into what makes FreeBSD run.

  • Jordi Espasa Clofent - Sistema de cortafuegos redundantes con OpenBSD y Packet Filter en modo bridge (1 Mb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, openbsd, firewall, pf, jordi espasa clofent

    Se trataran los siguientes apartados: Porqué OpenBSD y porqué PF. Eligiendo un buen hardware para el cortafuegos. Redundancia en modo bridge: RSTP. Implementación en si.

  • Manuel Trujillo - FreeBSD para usuarios de GNU/Linux (32 Kb)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, freebsd, linux, manuel trujillo

    Charla sobre las diferencias que puede encontrar un usuario de un sistema operativo GNU/Linux cuando accede a un sistema operativo FreeBSD, y sugerencias superar la posible desorientación.

  • Jordi Prats - Uso de OpenBSD en dispositivos empotrados (1.8 Mb, 44 pages)
    Source: BSDCon Spain
    Added: 27 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcon-barcelona, spanish, presentation, openbsd, embedded, jordi prats

    Los sistemas empotrados gracias a un menor consumo energético y unas dimensiones reducidas, a costa de ciertas limitaciones del hardware, permiten su uso en multitud de entornos. En esta presentación veremos como usarlos con OpenBSD y sus posibles aplicaciones.

  • Kris Moore - Building self-contained PBIs from Ports (Automagically)
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, pc-bsd, ports, pbi, kris moore
    PDF file (120 Kb, 26 pages)

    Building self-contained PBIs from Ports (Automagically)

    Creating a self-contained application from the ports tree

    PC-BSD provides a user-friendly desktop experience, for experts and casual users alike. PC-BSD is 100% FreeBSD under the hood, while providing desktop essentials, such as a graphical installation system, point-n-click package-management using the PBI system, and easy to use system management tools; All integrated into an easy to use K Desktop Environment (KDE).

    The PBI (Push Button Installer) format is the cornerstone of the PC-BSD desktop, which allows users to install applications in a self-contained format, free from dependency problems, and compile issues that stop most casual users from desktop adoption. The PBI format also provides power and flexibility in user interaction, and scripting support, which allows applications to be fine-tuned to the best possible user experience.

    This talk would go over in some detail our new PBI building system, which converts a FreeBSD port, such as FireFox, into a standalone self-contained PBI installer for PC-BSD desktops.

    The presentation will be divided into two main sections:
    The Push Button Installer (PBI) Format

    • The basics of the PBI format
    • The PBI format construction
    • Add & Remove scripting support within PBI

    Building PBIs from Ports "Auto-magically"

    • The PBI build server & standalone software
    • Module creation & configuration
    • Converting messy ports into PBIs

  • Poul-Henning Kamp - Measured (almost) does Air Traffic Control
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, air traffic control, scada, poul-henning kamp
    PDF file (7.7 Mb, 46 pages)

    Measured (almost) does Air Traffic Control

    Monitoring weird hardware reliably

    The new Danish Air Traffic Control system, CASIMO, prompted the development on a modular and general software platform for data collection, control and monitoring of "weird hardware" of all sorts.

    The talk will present the "measured" daemon, and detail some of the uses it has been put to, as an, admittedly peripheral, component of the ATC system.

    Many "SCADA" systems suffer from lack of usable interfaces for external access to the data. Measured takes the opposite point of view and makes real-time situation available, and accepts control instructions as ASCII text stream over TCP connections. Several examples of how this can be used will be demonstrated.

    Measured will run on any FreeBSD system, but has not been ported to other UNIX variants yet, and it is perfect for that "intelligent house" project of yours.

    I believe I gave a WIP presentation of this about two years ago.

  • Warner Losh - FreeBSD/mips
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, mips, embedded, warner losh
    PDF file (1.3 Mb, 19 pages)

    FreeBSD/mips

    Embedding FreeBSD

    FreeBSD now runs on the MIPS platform. FreeBSD/mips supports MIPS-32 and MIPS-64 targets, including SMP for multicore support.

    FreeBSD/mips is targeted at the embedded MIPS marketplace. FreeBSD has run on the MIPS platform for many years. Juniper ported FreeBSD to the Mips platform in the late 1990's. However, concern about intellectual property issues kept Juniper from contributing the port back to FreeBSD until recently. The contributed port was a 64-bit mips port.

    In the mean time, many efforts were made to bring FreeBSD to the mips platform. The first substantial effort to bring FreeBSD to the Mips platform was done by Juli Mallet. This effort made it to single user, but never further than that. This effort was abandoned due to a change in Juli's life. The port languished.

    Two years ago at BSDcan, as my involvement with FreeBSD/arm was growing, I tried to rally the troops into doing a FreeBSD/mips port. My efforts resulted in what has been commonly called the "mips2" effort. The name comes from the choice of //depot/projects/mips2 to host the work in perforce. A number of people worked on the earliest versions of the port, but it too languished and seemed destined to suffer the same fate as earlier efforts. Then, two individuals stood up and started working on the port. Wojciech A. Koszek and Oleksandr Tymoshenko pulled in code from the prior efforts. Through their efforts of stabilizing this code, the port to the single user stage and ported it to three different platforms. Others ported it to a few more. Snapshots of this work were released from time to time.

    Cavium Networks picked up one of these snapshots and ported it to their multicore mips64 network processor. Cavium has kindly donated much of their work to the comminuty.

    In December, I started at Cisco systems. My first job was to merge all the divergent variants of FreeBSD/mips and get it into shape to push into the tree. With luck, this should be in the tree before I give my talk.

    In parallel to this, other advances in the embedded support for FreeBSD have been happening as well. I'll talk about new device drivers, new subsystems, and new build tools that help to support the embedded developer.

  • Kern Sibbald - Bacula
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, bacula, kern sibbald
    PDF file (505 Kb, 30 pages)

    Bacula

    The Open Source Enterprise Backup Solution

    The Bacula project started in January 2000 with several goals, one of which was the ability to backup any client from a Palm to a mainframe computer. Bacula is available under a GPL license.

    Bacula uses several distinct components, each communicating via TCP/IP, to achieve a very scalable and robust solution to backups.

    Kern is one of the original project founders and still one of the most productive Bacula developers.

  • Ivan Voras - "finstall" - the new FreeBSD installer
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, installer, ivan voras
    PDF file (1.1 Mb, 39 pages)

    "finstall" - the new FreeBSD installer

    A graphical installer for FreeBSD

    The "finstall" project, sponsored by Google as a Summer of Code 2007 project, is an attempt to create a user-friendly graphical installer for FreeBSD, with enough strong technical features to appeal to the more professional users. A long term goal for it is to be a replacement for sysinstall, and as such should support almost all of the features present in sysinstall, as well as add support for new FreeBSD features such as GEOM, ZFS, etc. This talk will describe the architecture of "finstall" and focus on its lesser known features such as remote installation.

    "finstall" is funded by Google SoC as a possible long-term replacement for sysinstall, as a "LiveCD" with the whole FreeBSD base system on the CD, with X11 and XFCE4 GUI. In the talk I intend to describe what I did so far, and what are the future plans for it. This includes the installer GUI, the backend (which has the potential to become a generic FreeBSD configuration backend) and the assorted tools developed for finstall ("LiveCD" creation scripts). More information on finstall can be found here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/finstall.

  • Rafal Jaworowski - FreeBSD Embedded Report
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, embedded, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (58 Kb, 6 pages)
    FreeBSD Embedded Report

  • John Pertalion - An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, openbsd, openvpn, john pertalion
    PDF file (127 Kb, 26 pages)

    An Open Source Enterprise VPN Solution with OpenVPN and OpenBSD

    Solving the problem

    At Appalachian State University, we utilize an open source VPN to allow faculty, staff and vendors secure access to Appalachian State University's internal network from any location that has an Internet connection. To implement our virtual private network project, we needed a secure VPN that is flexible enough to work with our existing network registration and LDAP authentication systems, has simple client installation, is redundant, allows multiple VPN server instances for special site-to-site tunnels and unique configurations, and can run on multiple platforms. Using OpenVPN running on OpenBSD, we met those requirements and added a distributed administration system that allows select users to allow VPN access to specific computers for external users and vendors without requiring intervention from our network or security personnel. Our presentation will start with a quick overview of OpenVPN and OpenBSD and then detail the specifics of our VPN implementation.

    Dissatisfied with IPSec for road warrior VPN usage we went looking for a better solution. We had hopped that we could find a solution that would run on multiple platforms, was flexible and worked well. We found OpenVPN and have been pleased. Initially we ran it on RHEL. We migrated to OpenBSD for pf functionality and general security concerns. ...and because we like OpenBSD.

    Our presentation will focus on the specifics of our VPN implementation. We will quickly cover the basics of OpenVPN and the most used features of OpenBSD. Moving along we will cover multiple authentication methods, redundancy, running multiple instances, integration with our netreg system, how pf has extended functionality, embedding in appliances, and client configuration. The system has proven helpful with providing vendor access where needed and we'll cover this aspect as well. Time permitting we will cover current enhancement efforts and future plans.

    OpenVPN has been called the "Swiss army knife" of VPN solutions. We hope our presentation leaves participants with that feeling.

  • Robert Watson - TCP SMP Scalability
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 26 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, smp, robert watson
    PDF file (70 Kb, 8 pages)
    TCP SMP Scalability

  • Erwin Lansing - What's happening in the world of ports and portmgr
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 24 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, devsummit, devsummit2008, freebsd, portmgr, erwin lansing
    PDF file (146 Kb, 14 pages)
    What's happening in the world of ports and portmgr

  • Leslie Hawthorn - Google SoC
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, google, summer of code, leslie hawthorn
    PDF file (2.2 Mb, 44 pages)

    Google SoC

    Summer of Code

    In this talk, I will briefly discuss some general ways Google's Open Source Team contributes to the wider community. The rest of the talk will explore some highlights of the Google Summer of Code program, our initiative to get university students involved in Open Source development.

    I will cover the program's inception, lessons learned over time and tips for success in the program for both mentors and students. In particular, the talk will detail some experiences of the *BSD mentoring organizations involved in the program as a case study in successfully managing the program from the Open Source project's perspective. Any Google Summer of Code participants in the audience are welcome and encouraged to chime in with their own insights.

  • Rafal Jaworowski - Interfacing embedded FreeBSD with U-Boot
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, embedded, freebsd, u-boot, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (300 Kb, 26 pages)

    Interfacing embedded FreeBSD with U-Boot

    Working with the de facto standard for an initial level boot loader

    In the embedded world U-Boot is a de facto standard for an initial level boot loader (firmware). It runs on a great number of platforms and architectures, and is open source.

    This talk covers the development work on integrating FreeBSD with U-Boot-based systems. Starting with an overview of differences between booting an all-purpose desktop computer vs. embedded system, FreeBSD booting concepts are explained along with requirements for the underlying firmware.

    Historical attempts to interface FreeBSD with this firmware are mentioned and explanation given on why they failed or proved incomplete. Finally, the recently developed approach to integrate FreeBSD and U-Boot is presented, with implementation details and particular attention on how it's been made architecture and platform independent, and how loader(8) has been bound to it.

  • Matthieu Herrb - X.org
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, x.org, matthieu herrb
    PDF file (1.6 Mb, 30 pages)

    X.org

    upcoming plans

    The X.Org project provides an open source implementation of the X Window System. The development work is being done in conjunction with the freedesktop.org community. The X.Org Foundation is the educational non-profit corporation whose Board serves this effort, and whose Members lead this work.

    The X window system has been changing a lot in the recent years, and still changing. This talk will present this evolution, summarizing what has already been done and showing the current roadmap for future evolutions, with some focus on how *BSD kernels can be affected by the developments done with Linux as the primary target.

  • Chris Lattner - BSD licensed C++ compiler
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, bsdl, llvm, chris lattner
    PDF file (5.8 Mb, 33 pages)

    BSD licensed C++ compiler

    LLVM is a suite of carefully designed open source libraries that implement compiler components (like language front-ends, code generators, aggressive optimizers, Just-In-Time compiler support, debug support, link-time optimization, etc.). The goal of the LLVM project is to build these components in a way that allows them to be combined together to create familiar tools (like a C compiler), interesting new tools (like an OpenGL JIT compiler), and many other things we haven't thought of yet. Because LLVM is under continuous development, clients of these components naturally benefit from improvements in the libraries.

    This talk gives an overview of LLVM's design and approach to compiler construction, and gives several example applications. It describes applications of LLVM technology to llvm-gcc (a C/C++/Objective C compiler based on the GNU GCC front-end), the OpenGL stack in Mac OS/X Leopard, and Clang. Among other things, the Clang+LLVM Compiler provides a fully BSD-Licensed C and Objective-C compiler (with C++ in development) which compiles code several times faster than GCC, produces code that is faster than GCC in many cases, produces better warnings and error messages, and supports many other applications (e.g. static analysis and refactoring).

  • Adrian Chad - What Not To Do When Writing Network Applications
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, network applications, adrian chad
    PDF file (190 Kb, 73 pages)

    What Not To Do When Writing Network Applications

    The lessons learnt working with not-so-high-performance network applications

    This talk will look at issues which face the modern network application developer, from the point of view of poorly-designed examples. This will cover internal code structure and dataflow, interaction with the TCP stack, IO scheduling in high and low latency environments and high-availability considerations. In essence, this presentation should be seen as a checklist of what not to do when writing network applications.

    Plenty of examples of well designed network applications exist in the open and closed source world today. Unfortunately there are just as many examples of fast network applications as there are "fast but workload specific"; sometimes failing miserably in handling the general case. This may be due to explicit design (eg Varnish) but many are simply due to the designer not fully appreciating the wide variance in "networks" - and their network application degrades ungracefully when under duress. My aim in this presentation is to touch on a wide number of issues which face network application programmers - most of which seem not "application related" to the newcomer - such as including pipelining into network communication, managing a balance between accepting new requests and servicing existing requests, or providing back-pressure to a L4 loadbalancer in case of traffic bursts. Various schemes for working with these issues will be presented, and hopefully participants will walk away with more of an understanding about how the network, application and operating systems interact.

  • John Baldwin - Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, paper, debugging, freebsd, john baldwin
    paper, PDF file (121 Kb, 15 pages), slides, PDF file (113 Kb, 26 pages)

    Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel

    Just like every other piece of software, the FreeBSD kernel has bugs. Debugging a kernel is a bit different from debugging a userland program as there is nothing underneath the kernel to provide debugging facilities such as ptrace() or procfs. This paper will give a brief overview of some of the tools available for investigating bugs in the FreeBSD kernel. It will cover the in-kernel debugger DDB and the external debugger kgdb which is used to perform post-mortem analysis on kernel crash dumps.

    Introduction to Debugging the FreeBSD Kernel

    • Basic crash messages, what a crash looks like
      • typical panic() invocation
      • page fault example
    • "live" debugging with DDB
      • stack traces
      • ps
      • deadlock examples
      • show lockchain
      • show sleepchain
      • Adding new DDB commands
    • KGDB
      • inspecting processes and threads
      • working with kernel modules
      • using scripts to extend
    • examining crashdumps using utilities
      • ps, netstat, etc.
    • debugging strategies
      • kernel crashes
      • system hangs

  • Dan Langille - BSDCan 2008 - Opening session
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, dan langille
    PDF file (500 Kb, 17 pages)

    Opening session

    Welcome to BSDCan 2008
    Traditional greetings

  • Pawel Jakub Dawidek - A closer look at the ZFS file system
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, zfs, freebsd, pawel jakub dawidek
    PDF file (150 Kb, 33 pages)

    A closer look at the ZFS file system

    simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity

    SUN's ZFS file system became part of FreeBSD on 6th April 2007. ZFS is a new kind of file system that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use.

    ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded storage. Thousands of file systems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times.

    All operations are copy-on-write transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. There is no need to fsck(1M) a ZFS file system, ever. Every block is checksummed to prevent silent data corruption, and the data is self-healing in replicated (mirrored or RAID) configurations. If one copy is damaged, ZFS detects it and uses another copy to repair it.

  • Randall Stewart - SCTP what it is and how to use it
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, abstract, freebsd, sctp, randall stewart
    PDF file (130 Kb, 10 pages)

    SCTP - SCTP what it is and how to use it

    This talk will introduce the attendee into the interesting world of SCTP.

    We will first discuss the new and different features that SCTP (a new transport in FreeBSD 7.0) provide to the user. Then we will shift gears and discuss the extended socket API that is available to SCTP users and will cover such items as:

    • The two socket programming models
    • Extended system calls that support the SCTP feature set.
    • What model may fit you best

  • John Birrell - DTrace for FreeBSD
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, dtrace, freebsd, john birrell
    PDF file (148 Kb, 49 pages)

    DTrace for FreeBSD

    What on earth is that system doing?!

    DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing facility originally developed for Solaris that can be used by administrators and developers on live production systems to examine the behavior of both user programs and of the operating system itself. DTrace enables users to explore their system to understand how it works, track down performance problems across many layers of software, or locate the cause of aberrant behavior. DTrace lets users create their own custom programs to dynamically instrument the system and provide immediate, concise answers to arbitrary questions you can formulate using the DTrace D programming language.

    This talk discusses the port of the DTrace facility to FreeBSD and demonstrates examples on a live FreeBSD system.

    • Introduction to the D language - probes, predicates and actions.
    • dtrace(8) and libdtrace - the userland side of the DTrace story.
    • The DTrace kernel module, it's ioctl interface to userland and the provider infrastructure in the kernel.
    • DTrace kernel hooks and the problem of code licensed under Sun's CDDL.
    • What does a DTrace probe actually do?
    • DTrace safety and how it is implemented.
    • Build system changes to add CTF (Compact C Type Format) data to objects, shared libraries and executables.
    • The DTrace test suite.
    • A brief list of things to do to port the DTrace facility to other BSD-derived operating systems.

  • Rafal Jaworowski - Porting FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion System-On-Chip
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, freebsd, arm, marvell orion, rafal jaworowski
    PDF file (193 Kb, 25 pages)

    Porting FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion System-On-Chip

    This talk covers the development work on porting the FreeBSD/ARM to Marvell Orion family of highly integrated chips.

    ARM architecture is widely adopted in the embedded devices, and since the architecture can be licensed, many implementation variations exist: Orion is a derivative compliant with the ARMv5TE definition, it provides a rich set of on-chip peripherals.

    Present state of the FreeBSD support for ARM is explained, areas for improvement highlighted and its overall shape and condition presented.

    The main discussion covers scope of the Orion port (what integrated peripherals required new development, what was adapted from existing code base); design decisions are explained for the most critical items, and implementation details revealed.

    Summary notes are given on general porting methodology, debugging techniques and difficulties encountered during such undertaking.

  • Robert Watson - BSDCan 2008 - Closing
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, slides, robert watson
    PDF file (428 Kb, 55 pages)

    Closing

    Beer, prizes, secrets, Works In Progress

    The traditional closing...
    with some new and interesting twists. Sleep in if you must, but don't miss this session.

  • Brooks Davis - Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods
    Source: BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference
    Added: 21 May 2008
    Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2008, abstract, software development, brooks davis
    PDF file (1 Mb, 33 pages), PDF file (72 Kb, 2 pages)

    Using FreeBSD to Promote Open Source Development Methods

    In this talk we present Aerosource, an initiative to bring Open Source Software development methods to internal software developers at The Aerospace Corporation.

    Within Aerosource, FreeBSD is used in several key roles. First, we run most of our tools on top of FreeBSD. Second, the ports collection (both official ports and custom internal ones) eases our administrative burden. Third, the FreeBSD project serves as an example and role model for the results that can be achieved by an Open Source Software projects. We discuss the development infrastructure we have built for Aerosource based largely on BSD licensed software including FreeBSD, PostgreSQL, Apache, and Trac. We will also discuss our custom management tools including our system for managing our custom internal ports. Finally, we will cover our development successes and how we use projects like FreeBSD as exemplars of OSS development.

  • Alex Feldman from Sangoma
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 20 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, sangoma, alex feldman
    Ogg version (9 minutes), MP3 version (4 Mb, 9 minutes)
    Interview at BSDCan2008 with Alex Feldman from Sangoma.

  • Justin Gibbs from the FreeBSD Foundation
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 18 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd foundation, justin gibbs
    Ogg version (11 minutes), MP3 version (5 Mb, 11 minutes)
    Interview with Justin Gibbs from the FreeBSD Foundation.

  • A Tale of Four Kernels
    Source: Diomidis Spinellis
    Added: 17 May 2008
    Tags: freebsd, linux, solaris, windows, article, kernel, diomidis spinellis
    Diomidis Spinellis. A tale of four kernels. In Wilhem Schfer, Matthew B. Dwyer, and Volker Gruhn, editors, ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 381-390, New York, May 2008. Association for Computing Machinery. , Diomidis Spinellis. A tale of four kernels. In Wilhem Schfer, Matthew B. Dwyer, and Volker Gruhn, editors, ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 381-390, New York, May 2008. Association for Computing Machinery.
    The FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, and Windows operating systems have kernels that provide comparable facilities. Interestingly, their code bases share almost no common parts, while their development processes vary dramatically. We analyze the source code of the four systems by collecting metrics in the areas of file organization, code structure, code style, the use of the C preprocessor, and data organization. The aggregate results indicate that across various areas and many different metrics, four systems developed using wildly different processes score comparably. This allows us to posit that the structure and internal quality attributes of a working, non-trivial software artifact will represent first and foremost the engineering requirements of its construction, with the influence of process being marginal, if any.

  • Managing OpenBSD Environments
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 12 May 2008
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, openbsd, system management
    MP3 version (11 Mb, 103 minutes)

    This talk is the result of an after-meeting discussion with a few folks, when it became apparent that there is some confusion as to how to deal with OpenBSD in small and large environments. The topic of installation and upgrading came up again. This talk is aimed to hopefully dispel many of the rumors, provide a thorough description and walk through of the various stages of running OpenBSD in any size environment, and some of the features and tools at the administrator`s disposal.

    Okan Demirmen has been working with UNIX-like systems for as long as he can remember and has found OpenBSD to match some of the same philosophies in which he believes, namely simplicity and correctness, and reap the benefits of such.

  • Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 03 May 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, freebsd, codeweavers, crossover, jeremy white
    Ogg version (16 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 16 minutes)
    Interview with Jeremy White, Founder of CodeWeavers. We talk about the recent availability of an experimental build of Crossover Games for BSD.

  • OpenBSD 4.3 Release Song - "Home to Hypocrisy"
    Source: OpenBSD
    Added: 03 May 2008
    Tags: openbsd, artwork
    Ogg version (6.5 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds), MP3 version (8.2 Mb, 4 minutes 48 seconds)

    We are just plain tired of being lectured to by a man who is a lot like Naomi Campbell.

    In 1998 when a United Airlines plane was waiting in the queue at Washington Dulles International Airport for take-off to New Orleans (where a Usenix conference was taking place), one man stood up from his seat, demanded that they stop waiting in the queue and be permitted to deplane. Even after orders from the crew and a pilot from the cockpit he refused to sit down. The plane exited the queue and returned to the airport gangway. Security personnel ran onto the plane and removed this man, Richard Stallman, from the plane. After Richard was removed from the plane, everyone else stayed onboard and continued their journey to New Orleans. A few OpenBSD developers were on that same plane, seated very closeby, so we have an accurate story of the events.

    This is the man who presumes that he should preach to us about morality, freedom, and what is best for us. He believes it is his God-given role to tell us what is best for us, when he has shown that he takes actions which are not best for everyone. He prefers actions which he thinks are best for him -- and him alone -- and then lies to the public. Richard Stallman is no Spock.

    We release our software in ways that are maximally free. We remove all restrictions on use and distribution, but leave a requirement to be known as the authors. We follow a pattern of free source code distribution that started in the mid-1980's in Berkeley, from before Richard Stallman had any powerful influence which he could use so falsely.

    We have a development sub-tree called "ports". Our "ports" tree builds software that is 'found on the net' into packages that OpenBSD users can use more easily. A scaffold of Makefiles and scripts automatically fetch these pieces of software, apply patches as required by OpenBSD, and then build them into nice neat little tarballs. This is provided as a convenience for users. The ports tree is maintained by OpenBSD entirely separately from our main source tree. Some of the software which is fetched and compiled is not as free as we would like, but what can we do. All the other operating system projects make exactly the same decision, and provide these same conveniences to their users.

    Richard felt that this "ports tree" of ours made OpenBSD non-free. He came to our mailing lists and lectured to us specifically, yet he said nothing to the many other vendors who do the same; many of them donate to the FSF and perhaps that has something to do with it. Meanwhile, Richard has personally made sure that all the official GNU software -- including Emacs -- compiles and runs on Windows.

    That man is a false leader. He is a hypocrite. There may be some people who listen to him. But we don't listen to people who do not follow their own stupid rules.

April 2008

March 2008

February 2008

January 2008

  • Dru Lavigne
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 31 January 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, dru lavigne, the best of freebsd basics
    Ogg version (14 minutes), MP3 version (7 Mb, 14 minutes)

    Interview with Dru Lavigne. We talk about her new book "The Best of FreeBSD Basics" and also get an update on some other projects including BSD Certification.

    See the following links for more information:

    • https://register.bsdcertification.org/register/get-a-bsdcg-id
    • http://reedmedia.net/books/freebsd-basics
    • http://www.osbr.ca

  • Central Syslog
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 25 January 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, syslog
    Ogg version (7 minutes), MP3 version (3 Mb, 7 minutes)

    Setting up a central syslog server.

    • If you are concerned about the security of your logs, use a dedicated machine and lock it down.
    • Keep clocks in sync.
    • You may need to change log rotation schedule in /etc/newsyslog.conf. You can rotate based in size and/or time. This can be as much a policy decision as a hardware decision.
    • On central log host, change syslogd flags to listen to network. Each BSD does this differently, so check the man pages. Also, check out the -n flag for busy environments.
    • Make sure host firewall allows syslog traffic through.
    • Be careful to limit syslog traffic to just the trusted network or hosts. FreeBSD man page refers to syslogd as a "remote disk filling service".
    • For heavy logging environments, it is important to have a dedicated network. A down syslogd server can create a lot of "ARP who-has" broadcasts.
    • Most network devices such as printers and commercial firewalls support sending to a central syslog server. Take a look at "Snare" for Windows hosts.
    • To send messages from a Unix host, specify the host name prepended with @ instead of a file for logging in /etc/syslog.conf. For example, change /var/log/xferlog to @loghost.mydomain.biz. You can also copy and edit the line to have it log to both a local file and a remote host.

  • SSARES
    Source: New York City *BSD User Group
    Added: 11 January 2008
    Tags: nycbug, presentation, ipv6, gene cronk
    Paper (443 Kb, 10 pages), MP3 version (7 Mb, 67 minutes)

    SSARES: Secure Searchable Automated Remote Email Storage - A usable, secure email system on a remote untrusted server

    The increasing centralization of networked services places user data at considerable risk. For example, many users store email on remote servers rather than on their local disk. Doing so allows users to gain the benefit of regular backups and remote access, but it also places a great deal of unwarranted trust in the server. Since most email is stored in plaintext, a compromise of the server implies the loss of confidentiality and integrity of the email stored therein. Although users could employ an end-to-end encryption scheme (e.g., PGP), such measures are not widely adopted, require action on the sender side, only provide partial protection (the email headers remain in the clear), and prevent the users from performing some common operations, such as server-side search.

    To address this problem, we present Secure Searchable Automated Remote Email Storage (SSARES), a novel system that offers a practical approach to both securing remotely stored email and allowing privacy-preserving search of that email collection. Our solution encrypts email (the headers, body, and attachments) as it arrives on the server using public-key encryption. SSARES uses a combination of Identity Based Encryption and Bloom Filters to create a searchable index. This index reveals little information about search keywords and queries, even against adversaries that compromise the server. SSARES remains largely transparent to both the sender and recipient. However, the system also incurs significant costs, primarily in terms of expanded storage requirements. We view our work as a starting point toward creating privacy-friendly hosted services.

    Angelos Keromytis is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, and director of the Network Security Laboratory. He received his B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Crete, Greece, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Computer and Information Science (CIS) Department, University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and co-author of more than 100 papers on refereed conferences and journals, and has served on over 40 conference program committees. He is an associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Information and Systems Security (TISSEC). He recently co-authored a book on using graphics cards for security, and is a co-founder of StackSafe Inc. His current research interests revolve around systems and network security, and cryptography.

  • Open Community Camp with Marten Vijn
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 08 January 2008
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, opencommunitycamp, marten vijn
    Ogg version (13 minutes), MP3 version (6 Mb, 13 minutes)
    Interview with Marten Vijn about www.OpenCommunityCamp.org.

December 2007

November 2007

  • Joerg Sonnenberger
    Source: bsdtalk
    Added: 18 November 2007
    Tags: bsdtalk, interview, eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2007, michael dexter, joerg sonnenberger
    Ogg version (17 minutes), MP3 version (8 Mb, 17 minutes)
    Michael Dexter sent me an interview he recorded on behalf of BSDTalk with Joerg Sonnenberger at EuroBSDCon 2007.

  • OpenBSD 4.2 Release Song - "100001 1010101"
    Source: OpenBSD
    Added: 02 November 2007
    Tags: openbsd, artwork
    Ogg version (6.4 Mb, 4 minutes 4- seconds), MP3 version (4.0 Mb, 4 minutes 40 seconds)

    Those of us who work on OpenBSD are often asked why we do what we do. This song's lyrics express the core motivations and goals which have remained unchanged over the years - secure, free, reliable software, that can be shared with anyone. Many other projects purport to share these same goals, and love to wrap themselves in a banner of "Open Source" and "Free Software". Given how many projects there are one would think it might be easy to stick to those goals, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. A variety of desires drag many projects away from the ideals very quickly.

    Much of any operating system's usability depends on device support, and there are some very tempting alternative ways to support devices available to those who will surrender their moral code. A project could compromise by entering into NDA agreements with vendors, or including binary objects in the operating system for which no source code exists, or tying their users down with contract terms hidden inside copyright notices. All of these choices surrender some subset of the ideals, and we simply will not do this. Sure, we care about getting devices working, but not at the expense of our original goals.

    Of course since "free to share with anyone" is part of our goals, we've been at the forefront of many licensing and NDA issues, resulting in a good number of successes. This success had led to much recognition for the advancement of Free Software causes, but has also led to other issues.

    We fully admit that some BSD licensed software has been taken and used by many commercial entities, but contributions come back more often than people seem to know, and when they do, they're always still properly attributed to the original authors, and given back in the same spirit that they were given in the first place.

    That's the best we can expect from companies. After all, we make our stuff so free so that everyone can benefit -- it remains a core goal; we really have not strayed at all in 10 years. But we can expect more from projects who talk about sharing -- such as the various Linux projects.

    Now rather than seeing us as friends who can cooperatively improve all codebases, we are seen as foes who oppose the GPL. The participants of "the race" are being manipulated by the FSF and their legal arm, the SFLC, for the FSF's aims, rather than the goal of getting good source into Linux (and all other code bases). We don't want this to come off as some conspiracy theory, but we simply urge those developers caution -- they should ensure that the path they are being shown by those who have positioned themselves as leaders is still true. Run for yourself, not for their agenda.

    The Race is there to be run, for ourselves, not for others. We do what we do to run our own race, and finish it the best we can. We don't rush off at every distraction, or worry how this will affect our image. We are here to have fun doing right.

October 2007

September 2007