9 ms·

DragonFly BSD 4.8 released

167 points by ceratopisan 10y ago

geff82 10y ago
Anyone using DragonFly BSD in production? Or as a desktop system? What is your experience? I love the BSDs, but never used DragonFly.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  I run a little VPS on DragonFlyBSD that I use for misc hobby projects and personal file hosting. Mostly it runs Postgres. It's quite fast. I had redis running on there as a message queue for a distributed web crawler for a while. I benchmarked it against Arch Linux (which is what I was using on that server before DragonFly) and it was somewhat faster. HAMMER is a really nice filesystem. It's not one of the fancy COW filesystems (HAMMER2 is, though), but it still has built-in versioning and snapshots and a host of other features. It's great for storing personal projects on. It's also rock solid and easy to tinker with. I've recompiled my kernel several times with various configs and patches. It is probably the easiest production-ready OS to hack around with. Also #dragonflybsd on efnet is super helpful.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    What benchmarks showed an improvement between Arch and DragonFlyBSD?
    - PeCaN 10y ago
      redis's redis-benchmark utility. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
      - searchhn 10y ago
        If you have a copy of the results, that will be awesome ! Thanks !
- ky738 10y ago
  I wanna know that too. Never heard of anyone using it in production.
  - ianai 10y ago
    The hammer FS might be its main improvement. I think it's, right now, an exercise in maintaining options.
- patrickg_zill 10y ago
  I have used it on 1 server as a test. Worked pretty well, did a few NFS exports from it to other servers. Has been up 546 days, running v4.3 of the OS. No complaints, but I haven't tested it under high load.
tiffanyh 10y ago
In case people are wondering what makes DBSD so interesting, DragonflyBSD is: - focused only on x64 architecture - has an extremely small but exceptionally talented team of developers (e.g. Matt Dillon from DICE and Amiga fame) - has it's own unique filesystem called Hammer (and work is being down on Hammer2 which is a complete rewrite) - Network performance is particularly good with Dragonfly and even better than FreeBSD which is known as being the golf standard for network performance [1] [1] https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf Edit: formatting Edit2: it should also be noted in the release notes, it refers to detailed NVME disk performance testing the Dragonfly team performed. These results are largely agnostic of what OS you run. Really interesting to see the Samsung NVME device come out on top and Intel in last. This is a good read even if you don't run Dragonfly. http://apollo.backplane.com/DFlyMisc/nvme_randread.txt http://apollo.backplane.com/DFlyMisc/nvme_randread.txt
- AtticusTheGreat 10y ago
  I know you probably meant "gold standard" but I was amused thinking about what a golf standard might mean ;)
  - akerro 10y ago
    Why do you assume he meant "gold standard"? Have you ever seen how fast a golf ball flies just after a strong hit?
    - flukus 10y ago
      Never from the point of view I'd like to see it from.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    I just assumed "golf standard" was some QA term I hadn't heard of before.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
lwlml 10y ago
I appreciate that there is so much operating system innovation coming from the *BSD's like the Hammer file systems in DragonFly and security concepts like the new pledge() system call from OpenBSD which informs the operating system that an executing program pledges to never use certain system calls. (i.e. if you say you'll never do something, the operating system will have the privilege of killing your application should there be some kind of buffer overflow/compromise.)
- aduitsis 10y ago
  Re: pledge() in OpenBSD: In FreeBSD for quite some time there is Capsicum and CloudABI has been included in FreeBSD 11. Definitely worth a look, especially the second which is also present in DragonFly. https://wiki.freebsd.org/Capsicum https://wiki.freebsd.org/Capsicum https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/ https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/
bujarron 10y ago
Strange that there is another dragonfly, a framework for newlisp.
mozumder 10y ago
Been looking for Skylake GPU support for BSD. Does it support Skylake OpenCL? How compatible is this with FreeBSD? Can I test it alongside a FreeBSD distribution with minimal changes? Does it use the same Ports/Packages system? Do I need to recompile/reinstall all applications? Is there ZFS support?
- tiffanyh 10y ago
  Yes, Skylake is supported. See https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/ Re: FreeBSD. Dragonfly forked from FreeBSD around 11 years ago (v4.x). So the two have diverged quite a bit of the years. E.g. Different file systems. Different kernel approaches to SMP. Etc. The package management system is the same though.
  - cat199 10y ago
    to expand - Shough package systems are based on the same code, syscall/binary level compatibility has diverged, so it does entail a separate installation on another partition/disk/etc and separate set of application packages, etc.
arca_vorago 10y ago
Awesome news, and props to the DBSD team for all the consistent hard work they put into it, usually without much fanfare. I'm a pretty hardcore GNU/GPL guy, but I have said before if I were starting an ISP I would probably be doing it with DBSD. The networking stack alone is top-notch, and once HAMMER2 rolls out I honestly expect it to get the momentum to compete with ZFS and BTRFS. (not much traction now though, so as others have said, probably years down the road).
JdeBP 10y ago
Checking the release notes, it does include the recent fix mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13882171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13882171 .

167 points by ceratopisan 10y ago

Anyone using DragonFly BSD in production? Or as a desktop system? What is your experience? I love the BSDs, but never used DragonFly.

PeCaN 10y ago
I run a little VPS on DragonFlyBSD that I use for misc hobby projects and personal file hosting. Mostly it runs Postgres. It's quite fast. I had redis running on there as a message queue for a distributed web crawler for a while. I benchmarked it against Arch Linux (which is what I was using on that server before DragonFly) and it was somewhat faster. HAMMER is a really nice filesystem. It's not one of the fancy COW filesystems (HAMMER2 is, though), but it still has built-in versioning and snapshots and a host of other features. It's great for storing personal projects on. It's also rock solid and easy to tinker with. I've recompiled my kernel several times with various configs and patches. It is probably the easiest production-ready OS to hack around with. Also #dragonflybsd on efnet is super helpful.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  What benchmarks showed an improvement between Arch and DragonFlyBSD?
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    redis's redis-benchmark utility. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
    - searchhn 10y ago
      If you have a copy of the results, that will be awesome ! Thanks !
ky738 10y ago
I wanna know that too. Never heard of anyone using it in production.
- ianai 10y ago
  The hammer FS might be its main improvement. I think it's, right now, an exercise in maintaining options.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
I have used it on 1 server as a test. Worked pretty well, did a few NFS exports from it to other servers. Has been up 546 days, running v4.3 of the OS. No complaints, but I haven't tested it under high load.

tiffanyh 10y ago

In case people are wondering what makes DBSD so interesting, DragonflyBSD is: - focused only on x64 architecture - has an extremely small but exceptionally talented team of developers (e.g. Matt Dillon from DICE and Amiga fame) - has it's own unique filesystem called Hammer (and work is being down on Hammer2 which is a complete rewrite) - Network performance is particularly good with Dragonfly and even better than FreeBSD which is known as being the golf standard for network performance [1] [1] https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf Edit: formatting Edit2: it should also be noted in the release notes, it refers to detailed NVME disk performance testing the Dragonfly team performed. These results are largely agnostic of what OS you run. Really interesting to see the Samsung NVME device come out on top and Intel in last. This is a good read even if you don't run Dragonfly. http://apollo.backplane.com/DFlyMisc/nvme_randread.txt http://apollo.backplane.com/DFlyMisc/nvme_randread.txt

AtticusTheGreat 10y ago
I know you probably meant "gold standard" but I was amused thinking about what a golf standard might mean ;)
- akerro 10y ago
  Why do you assume he meant "gold standard"? Have you ever seen how fast a golf ball flies just after a strong hit?
  - flukus 10y ago
    Never from the point of view I'd like to see it from.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I just assumed "golf standard" was some QA term I hadn't heard of before.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago

lwlml 10y ago

I appreciate that there is so much operating system innovation coming from the *BSD's like the Hammer file systems in DragonFly and security concepts like the new pledge() system call from OpenBSD which informs the operating system that an executing program pledges to never use certain system calls. (i.e. if you say you'll never do something, the operating system will have the privilege of killing your application should there be some kind of buffer overflow/compromise.)

aduitsis 10y ago
Re: pledge() in OpenBSD: In FreeBSD for quite some time there is Capsicum and CloudABI has been included in FreeBSD 11. Definitely worth a look, especially the second which is also present in DragonFly. https://wiki.freebsd.org/Capsicum https://wiki.freebsd.org/Capsicum https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/ https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/

bujarron 10y ago

Strange that there is another dragonfly, a framework for newlisp.

mozumder 10y ago

Been looking for Skylake GPU support for BSD. Does it support Skylake OpenCL? How compatible is this with FreeBSD? Can I test it alongside a FreeBSD distribution with minimal changes? Does it use the same Ports/Packages system? Do I need to recompile/reinstall all applications? Is there ZFS support?

tiffanyh 10y ago
Yes, Skylake is supported. See https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/ Re: FreeBSD. Dragonfly forked from FreeBSD around 11 years ago (v4.x). So the two have diverged quite a bit of the years. E.g. Different file systems. Different kernel approaches to SMP. Etc. The package management system is the same though.
- cat199 10y ago
  to expand - Shough package systems are based on the same code, syscall/binary level compatibility has diverged, so it does entail a separate installation on another partition/disk/etc and separate set of application packages, etc.

arca_vorago 10y ago

Awesome news, and props to the DBSD team for all the consistent hard work they put into it, usually without much fanfare. I'm a pretty hardcore GNU/GPL guy, but I have said before if I were starting an ISP I would probably be doing it with DBSD. The networking stack alone is top-notch, and once HAMMER2 rolls out I honestly expect it to get the momentum to compete with ZFS and BTRFS. (not much traction now though, so as others have said, probably years down the road).

JdeBP 10y ago

Checking the release notes, it does include the recent fix mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13882171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13882171 .