OpenBSD Multimedia Resources List

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

Tag: slides

• Chris Buechler - Network perimeter redundancy with pfsense
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, pfsense, chris buechler
  PDF (6.2 Kb, 30 pages)
  This session will first provide an introduction and overview of pfSense and its common uses. It will then go on to cover means of providing redundancy for the critical portions of your network perimeter using pfSense, including redundancy for your Internet connections, firewalls and DNS. Live configuration examples will be shown for as many of these topics as the session's length permits. This session will cover pfSense 1.2.1, but will also offer an overview of some of the enhanced capabilities in this area that pfSense 2.0 will provide in the future.

• Richard Bejtlich - Network security monitoring using FreeBSD
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, network security, monitoring, richard bejtlich
  PDF (972 Kb, 23 pages)
  I've been using FreeBSD as my preferred platform for Network Security Monitoring (NSM) since 2000. In this presentation I'll discuss my latest thinking on using FreeBSD to identify normal, suspicious, and malicious traffic in enterprise networks. FreeBSD is a powerful platform for network traffic inspection and log analysis, and I'll share a few ways I use it in production environments.

• Henning Brauer - Faster packets: Performance tuning in the OpenBSD network stack and PF
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, performance, henning brauer
  PDF (27 Mb, 69 pages)
  n/a

• Kristaps Dzonsons - Process isolation for NetBSD and OpenBSD
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, netbsd, process isolation, kristaps dzonsons
  PDF (687 Kb, 27 pages)
  In NetBSD and OpenBSD, user-land process and process-context isolation is limited to credential cross-checks, file-system chroot and explicit systrace/kauth applications. I'll demonstrate a working mechanism of isolated process trees in branched OpenBSD-4.4 and NetBSD-5.0-beta kernels where an isolated process is started by a system call similar to fork; following that, the child process and its descendants execute in a context isolated from the caller. This system is the continued work of "mult" -- first prototyped in a branched NetBSD-3.1 kernel and isolating all system resources -- pared down to a lightweight, auditable patch of process-only separation for both OpenBSD and NetBSD. I specifically address solutions to performance issues and mechanism design with an eye toward more resources being isolated in the future.

• Robert Luciani - M:N threading in DragonflyBSD
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, dragonflybsd, concurrency, robert luciani
  PDF (1.5 Mb, 23 pages)
  Ineffective concurrency mechanisms in an operating system can lead to low performance in both single and multiprocessor environments. Practical setbacks involved with attempting overly invasive kernel changes have made it difficult in the past to implement new and innovative concurrency systems. This paper describes the rationale behind interfaces in the DragonFly BSD operating system intended to provide high performance and scalability on multiprocessor architectures. Using a lock-free processor centric approach, DragonFly BSD has developed a unique thread system with the potential for excellent scalability.

• Ken Caruso - Using BSD in Shmoocon labs
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, scmoocon, ken caruso
  PDF (447 Kb, 13 pages)
  n/a

• Brooks Davis - Isolating cluster jobs for performance and predictability
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, clusters, brooks davis
  PDF (952 Kb, 24 pages)
  At The Aerospace Corporation, we run a large FreeBSD based computing cluster to support engineering applications. These applications come in all shapes, sizes, and qualities of implementation. To support them and our diverse userbase we have been searching for ways to isolate jobs from one another in ways that are more effective than Unix time sharing and more fine grained than allocating whole nodes to jobs. In this paper we discuss the problem space and our efforts so far. These efforts include implementation of partial file systems vitalization and CPU isolation using CPU sets.

• Marco Peereboom - Epitome
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, epitome, backup, marco peereboom
  PDF (197 Kb, 34 pages)
  

  Tired of tape and their weaknesses? So am I!

  Epitome is the next generation backup mechanism. It is based on the idea of providing instant available backup data while removing duplicate files & blocks from backups (yes really!). It is a disk based WORM backup system.

  This talk will go into the Epitome protocol and its application. The code is generic enough that it can address all 3 major (buzzword compliant) technologies known as: CAS, DEDUP & SIS.

• Kurt Miller - Implementing PIE on OpenBSD
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, pie, kurt miller
  PDF (4.1 Mb, 24 pages)
  In this session, Kurt will discuss OpenBSD's PIE implementation, its impact on existing security mechanisms such as W^X on i386, and the various enhancements needed to the runtime linker, kernel and other system libs.

• Ted Unangst - OpenBSD vs SMP, threading, and concurrency
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, openbsd, smp, threading, concurrency, ted unangst
  PDF (675 Kb, 32 pages)
  I will discuss the current status of kernel SMP support, the rthreads thread library, and relevant future developments. Over the years, we have accumulated several concurrency primitives in the kernel, causing some confusion amongst developers, so I will lay out the origin and correct usage for each. The talk is primarily targeted at the budding OpenBSD kernel developer, but I will also describe the end-user effects of each topic.

• George Neville-Neil - Performance analysis with (hwpmc)
  Source: DCBSDCon
  Added: 24 May 2009
  Tags: dcbsdcon, dcbsdcon2009, slides, freebsd, hwpmc, george neville-neil
  PDF (469 Kb, 71 pages)
  FreeBSD has included support for Hardware Performance Monitoring Counters (hwpmc) for several years now. The hwpmc system provides access to counters that are present in all modern Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as other chipsets, and which give the programmer the ability to understand the low level performance issues that may effect their code. This talk will cover the motivation behind and basic usage of HWPMC.

• AsiaBSDCon 2007 Paper/Slides List
  Source: AsiaBSDCon
  Added: 17 March 2007
  Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2007
  SHISA: The Mobile IPv6/NEMO BS Stack Implementation Current Status, Keiichi Shima (Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Japan), Koshiro Mitsuya, Ryuji Wakikawa (Keio University, Japan), Tsuyoshi Momose (NEC Corporation, Japan), Keisuke Uehara (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (311 Kb), An ISP Perspective, jail(8) Virtual Private Servers, Isaac Levy (NYC*BUG/LESMUUG, USA) [paper] (140 Kb), A NetBSD-based IPv6 NEMO Mobile Router, Jean Lorchat, Koshiro Mitsuya, Romain Kuntz (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (412 Kb), Whole of the Proceedings (6.5 Mb), Cover page (588 Kb), Porting the ZFS File System to the FreeBSD Operating System, Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd at FreeBSD.org, Poland) [slides] (278 Kb), Implementation and Evaluation of the Dual Stack Mobile IPv6, Koshiro Mitsuya, Ryuji Wakikawa, Jun Murai (Keio University, Japan) [paper] (1071 Kb), puffs - Pass to Userspace Framework File System, Antti Kantee (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) [slides] (116 Kb), Reflections on Building a High Performance Computing Cluster Using FreeBSD, Brooks Davis (The Aerospace Corporation/brooks at FreeBSD.org, USA) [paper] (1371 Kb), Nsswitch Development: Nss-modules and libc Separation and Caching, Michael A Bushkov (Southern Federal University/bushman at FreeBSD.org, Russia) [paper] (32 Kb), Bluffs: BSD Logging Updated Fast File System, Stephan Uphoff (Yahoo!, Inc./ups at FreeBSD.org, USA) [slides] (601 Kb), Security Measures in OpenSSH, Damien Miller (djm at openbsd.org, Australia) [paper] (97 Kb), Porting the ZFS File System to the FreeBSD Operating System, Pawel Jakub Dawidek (pjd at FreeBSD.org, Poland) [paper] (96 Kb), An ISP Perspective, jail(8) Virtual Private Servers, Isaac Levy (NYC*BUG/LESMUUG, USA) [slides] (20 Mb), Support for Radio Clocks in OpenBSD, Marc Balmer (mbalmer at openbsd.org, Switzerland) [paper] (86 Kb), How the FreeBSD Project Works, Robert N M Watson (University of Cambridge/rwatson at FreeBSD.org, United Kingdom) [paper] (328 Kb), puffs - Pass to Userspace Framework File System, Antti Kantee (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) [paper] (68 Kb)
  Slides and papers of the AsiaBSDCon 2007

• Robert Watson's Slides from EuroBSDCon 2004
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2004, slides, trustedbsd, freebsd, mac, robert watson
  TrustedBSD MAC Framework on FreeBSD and Darwin (270 Kb)
  Robert Watson will describe the design and application of the TrustedBSD MAC Framework, a flexible kernel security framework developed on FreeBSD, and recently experimentally ported to Apple's Darwin operating system. The MAC Framework permits loadable access control kernel modules to be loaded, modifying the security behavior of the operating system, including SEBSD, a port of the SELinux FLASK/TE security model to FreeBSD.

• Robert Watson's Slides from UKUUG LISA 2006
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: ukuug, slides, openbsm, trustedbsd, freebsd, robert watson
  CAPP-Compliant Security Event Audit System for Mac OS X and FreeBSD (UKUUG LISA 2006). (199 Kb)
  UKUUG LISA 2006 took place in Durham, UK in March, 2006. On this page, you can find my slides from this conference.
  OpenBSM is a BSD-licensed implementation of Sun's Basic Security Module (BSM) API and file format, and is the foundation of the TrustedBSD audit implementation for FreeBSD. This talk will cover the requirements, design, and implementation of audit support for FreeBSD. Security audit support provides detailed logging of security-relevant events, and meets the requirements of the CAPP Common Criteria protection profile.

• Robert Watson's Slides from EuroBSDCon 2006 and FreeBSD Developer Summit
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2006, robert watson
  How the FreeBSD Project Works (EuroBSDCon 2006 Full Conference) (4.4 Mb), TrustedBSD presentation on Audit and priv(9) (Developer Summit) (166 Kb)
  EuroBSDCon 2006 took place in Milan, Italy, and not only offered excellent food on a flexible schedule, but also an interesting array of talks on work spanning the BSD's. On this page, you can find my slides from the FreeBSD developer summit and full conference.
  Status report on the TrustedBSD Project: introduction and status regarding Audit, plus a TODO list; introduction to the priv(9) work recently merged to 7.x.
  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.

• Robert Watson's Slides from EuroBSDCon 2005
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: eurobsdcon, eurobsdcon2005, slides, freebsd, smp, robert watson, poul-henning kamp, ed maste
  Introduction to Multithreading and Multiprocessing in the FreeBSD SMPng Network Stack (370 Kb)
  EuroBSDCon 2005 took place in Basel, Switzerland in November, 2005. Due to an injury, I was unable to attend the conference itself, and my talks were presented in absentia by Poul-Henning Kamp and Ed Maste, who have my greatest appreciation!
  The FreeBSD SMPng Project has spent the past five years redesigning and reimplementing SMP support for the FreeBSD operating system, moving from a Giant-locked kernel to a fine-grained locking implementation with greater kernel threading and parallelism. This paper introduces the FreeBSD SMPng Project, its architectural goals and implementation approach. It then explores the impact of SMPng on the FreeBSD network stack, including strategies for integrating SMP support into the network stack, locking approaches, optimizations, and challenges.

• Robert Watson's Slides from BSDCan 2004
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: bsdcan, bsdcan2004, slides, trustedbsd, freebsd, robert watson
  TrustedBSD: Trusted Operating System Features for BSD (277 Kb)
  BSDCan 2004 took place at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. On this page, you can find my slides from the conference.
  Robert Watson will describe a variety of pieces of work done as part of the TrustedBSD Project, including the TrustedBSD MAC Framework, Audit facilities for FreeBSD, as well as supporting infrastructure work such as GEOM/GBDE, UFS2, OpenPAM. He will also discuss how certification and evaluation play into feature selection, design, and documentation.

• Robert Watson's Slides from AsiaBSDCon 2004
  Source: Robert Watson
  Added: 14 January 2007
  Tags: asiabsdcon, asiabsdcon2004, robert watson
  AsiaBSDCon 2004 BSD (FreeBSD) BoF session (1.4 Mb), Extensible Kernel Security through the TrustedBSD MAC Framework. (135 Kb)
  AsiaBSDCon 2004 took place in Taipei, Taiwan, in March 2004, and was hosted by Academia Sinica.

• COMPLETE Hard Disk Encryption with FreeBSD
  Source: 22nd Chaos Communication Congress
  Added: 23 August 2006
  Tags: ccc, ccc2005, ccc22, presentation, freebsd, harddisk encryption, marc schiesser
  Google Video (1:06:07), Slides (679Kb), Bittorrent link (37Kb)
  

  COMPLETE Hard Disk Encryption with FreeBSD, by Marc Schiesser

  Learn how to effectively protect not only your data but also your applications.

  Most technologies and techniques intended for securing digital data focus on protection while the machine is turned on mostly by defending against remote attacks. An attacker with physical access to the machine, however, can easily circumvent these defenses by reading out the contents of the storage medium on a different, fully accessible system or even compromise program code on it in order to leak encrypted information. Especially for mobile users, that threat is real. And for those carrying around sensitive data, the risk is most likely high. This talk will introduce a method of mitigating that particular risk by protecting not only the data through encryption, but also the applications and the operating system from being compromised while the machine is turned off.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

• Server deployment in mass-hosting environment using FreeBSD Ports system by Stanislav Sedov (in russian)
  Source: Hostobzor, the Russian conference of hosting provider
  Added: 24 November 2008
  Tags: hostobzor, hostobzor12, freebsd, ports, stanislav sedov, russian
  PDF version (470 Kb, 30 pages), PDF version (61 Kb, 5 pages)
  

  Recently I have been attending Hostobzor 12th, the Russian conference of hosting providers, beeing held at Raivola hotel near St. Petersburg. The event was great as always thanks to organizers. There was a number of intersting talks given, a lot of interesting discussions held, and, what I appreciate better, a lot of new people with great ideas met.

  I gave a talk on using the FreeBSD Ports system to mange a large-scale virtual hosting installations based on Hosting Telesystems experience. I tried to describe in detail how we use the ports collection to deploy a large number of servers diverced by architecture and OS versions, how we build packages and distribute them among servers, talked about how we use Mercurial VCS to incrementally merge upstream changes into our modified ports collection and FreeBSD src trees. Hopefully, I've not screwed it much... At least, some people was interested a lot and asked interesting questions.