7 ms·

DragonflyBSD 5.0

184 points by joeschmoe3 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago
Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477482
tiffanyh 9y ago
This is a big release for a few reasons: * major new filesystem (Hammer2)[1] * OpenBSD might even adopt Hammer2 has a replacement of it's legacy filesystem [2] * huge work on network performance. DragonflyBSD is agrubably the fastest BSD for network intensive tasks [3] * IPFW has been rewritten to be multi-threaded which has resulted in huge performance improvements [4] [1] https://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/sys/vfs/hammer2/DESIGN https://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/blob_plain/HEA... [2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=142755452428573 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=142755452428573 [3] https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf [4] http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2017-September/626329.html http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2017-Septemb... UPDATE: To also give context as to what Dragonfly BSD is, DragonFly BSD was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 in June of 2003, by Matthew Dillon over a differing of opinion on how to handle SMP support in FreeBSD. Dragonfly is generally consider as having a much simpler (and cleaning) implementation of SMP which has allowed the core team to more easily maintain SMP support; yet without sacrificing performance (numerous benchmarks demonstrate that Dragonfly is even more performant than FreeBSD [5]). The core team of Dragonfly developers is small but extremely talented (e.g. they have frequently found hardware bugs in Intel/AMD that no one else has found in the Linux/BSD community [6]). They strive for correctness of code, ease of maintainability (e.g. only support x86 architecture, design decisions, etc.) and performance as project goals. If you haven't already looked at Dragonfly, I highly recommend you to do so. [5] https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/ [6] http://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-owns-up-to-cpu-bug/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-owns-up-to-cpu-bug/
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  FWIW, [2] is a 2.5-year-old mailing list post. Nothing came of it, IIRC.
- tomcam 9y ago
  Very good overview; perfect for this crowd – or at least me. Thank you for giving us non-Dragonfly users something to hang our hats on.
- wmf 9y ago
  https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf Gotta love an undated presentation that compares DragonFlyBSD version 719bf70a37139bc3bedc84ab0975df7107155714 with FreeBSD version r314268. It can't be super old because Linux 4.9 was released in Dec 2016, but still.
  - Arnavion 9y ago
    https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD/commit/719bf70a37139bc3bedc84ab0975df7107155714 https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD/commit/719bf70a... https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=314268 https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=31426... So around 2017-02-25
- beagle3 9y ago
  The HAMMER2 docs talk about replication in a cluster, but not about RAID5/RAID6/ZRAID-style redundancy (e.g., n+r disks working together to allow up to r disks to fail with no data loss or losing ability to write). Does anyone here know how/if this cheaper-but-slower kind of redundancy is addressed in DflyBSD?
paulmd 9y ago
Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase. Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month, and the dustbins of history are littered with one-man-show filesystems that didn't make the cut. btrfs is fighting much the same battle for adoption and frankly has a much better chance of seeing success since it's not tied to a niche OS like DragonflyBSD. ZFS-on-Linux finally being available+stable was a massive milestone in terms of adoption since it finally broke away from the tight ties to the Solaris/BSD ecosystems. So yeah, regardless of how amazing Hammer is, I do have to ask whether there's really space for another filesystem out there. Kudos to Dillon for going ahead and doing it anyway though ;)
- tiffanyh 9y ago
  Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month and running v1.0 of a new codebase doesn't sound appealing. Just as a counterpoint to running a v1.0 filesystem, Apple just rewrote from scratch their entire filesystem (APFS) and force updated their entire userbase of hundreds of millions of iOS devices and macOS to use a v1.0 of APFS. They haven't seem to have any problems running a v1.0 filesystem and I have to imagine way more people are now running APFS then ZFS ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System
  - dmpk2k 9y ago
    Apple must have invested incredible resources on testing that internally, because that was a very risky move, and well outside the norm for filesystem development.
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      Judging by how nightmarishly buggy the upgrade to iOS11 has been, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't test it at all. My phone actually stopped functioning as a phone upon upgrade [0]! [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=...
saghm 9y ago
When installing with Hammer2 (EFI, encrypted root and swap), after rebooting and decrypting the root I get an error saying `mount_hammer2` isn't found. Has anyone else had this issue and figured out if there's a fix?
- Elhana 9y ago
  mount_hammer2 is probably not in initrd
  - saghm 9y ago
    Sorry, I'm still a relative beginner with regards to BSD; is this something I can fix during/post installation?
    - terminalcommand 9y ago
      I'd suggest trying more popular flavors of BSD first. Especially if you're installing on physical hardware, dragonflyBSD may be hard to begin with. FreeBSD on the laptop has decent support, and in a couple of weeks you will learn about initrd etc. to be able to work with DragonflyBSD. If you want to learn more about system internals, you might want to learn how to use bhyve (FreeBSD's awesome hypervisor) on FreeBSD. By trying to use bhyve you will learn how to extract the kernel from an img build, load it etc. Have fun and good luck on your studies!
- ceratopisan 9y ago
  What Elhana said - mount_hammer2 isn't included in /usr/share/initrd so it's not copied into the image used there. You can build a new initrd - cd into src/share/initrd/sbin, add it to the makefile, type 'wmake install' I think, and you may be good. I am guessing because I don't have an encrypted disk to test. Otherwise, wait and there will be an updated 5.01 image soon, I'm sure - the recent KRACK vulnerability will prompt that, if nothing else.
  - saghm 9y ago
    Thanks for the info! I'm fine with waiting for a 5.01; I just wasn't sure if I had installed it wrong or something
ryanpcmcquen 9y ago
How does DragonFlyBSD compare to OpenBSD in terms of security?
- joeschmoe3 9y ago
  About the same as FreeBSD. IF you google youl find a few openbsd VS FreeBSD comparisons
insulanian 9y ago
Is anyone using DragonflyBSD in production due to its advantages? Are these advantages so significant that it is worth it?
- rurban 9y ago
  Those companies here https://www.dragonflybsd.org/commercial/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/commercial/ are providing commercial DragonflyBSD packaging or support. Of course it's worth it. It's significantly faster and better

184 points by joeschmoe3 9y ago

Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477482

This is a big release for a few reasons: * major new filesystem (Hammer2)[1] * OpenBSD might even adopt Hammer2 has a replacement of it's legacy filesystem [2] * huge work on network performance. DragonflyBSD is agrubably the fastest BSD for network intensive tasks [3] * IPFW has been rewritten to be multi-threaded which has resulted in huge performance improvements [4] [1] https://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/sys/vfs/hammer2/DESIGN https://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/blob_plain/HEA... [2] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=142755452428573 https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=142755452428573 [3] https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf [4] http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2017-September/626329.html http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2017-Septemb... UPDATE: To also give context as to what Dragonfly BSD is, DragonFly BSD was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 in June of 2003, by Matthew Dillon over a differing of opinion on how to handle SMP support in FreeBSD. Dragonfly is generally consider as having a much simpler (and cleaning) implementation of SMP which has allowed the core team to more easily maintain SMP support; yet without sacrificing performance (numerous benchmarks demonstrate that Dragonfly is even more performant than FreeBSD [5]). The core team of Dragonfly developers is small but extremely talented (e.g. they have frequently found hardware bugs in Intel/AMD that no one else has found in the Linux/BSD community [6]). They strive for correctness of code, ease of maintainability (e.g. only support x86 architecture, design decisions, etc.) and performance as project goals. If you haven't already looked at Dragonfly, I highly recommend you to do so. [5] https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/ [6] http://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-owns-up-to-cpu-bug/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-owns-up-to-cpu-bug/

jlgaddis 9y ago
FWIW, [2] is a 2.5-year-old mailing list post. Nothing came of it, IIRC.
tomcam 9y ago
Very good overview; perfect for this crowd – or at least me. Thank you for giving us non-Dragonfly users something to hang our hats on.
wmf 9y ago
https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf https://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/~sephe/perf_cmp.pdf Gotta love an undated presentation that compares DragonFlyBSD version 719bf70a37139bc3bedc84ab0975df7107155714 with FreeBSD version r314268. It can't be super old because Linux 4.9 was released in Dec 2016, but still.
- Arnavion 9y ago
  https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD/commit/719bf70a37139bc3bedc84ab0975df7107155714 https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DragonFlyBSD/commit/719bf70a... https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=314268 https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=31426... So around 2017-02-25
beagle3 9y ago
The HAMMER2 docs talk about replication in a cluster, but not about RAID5/RAID6/ZRAID-style redundancy (e.g., n+r disks working together to allow up to r disks to fail with no data loss or losing ability to write). Does anyone here know how/if this cheaper-but-slower kind of redundancy is addressed in DflyBSD?

paulmd 9y ago

Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase. Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month, and the dustbins of history are littered with one-man-show filesystems that didn't make the cut. btrfs is fighting much the same battle for adoption and frankly has a much better chance of seeing success since it's not tied to a niche OS like DragonflyBSD. ZFS-on-Linux finally being available+stable was a massive milestone in terms of adoption since it finally broke away from the tight ties to the Solaris/BSD ecosystems. So yeah, regardless of how amazing Hammer is, I do have to ask whether there's really space for another filesystem out there. Kudos to Dillon for going ahead and doing it anyway though ;)

tiffanyh 9y ago
Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month and running v1.0 of a new codebase doesn't sound appealing. Just as a counterpoint to running a v1.0 filesystem, Apple just rewrote from scratch their entire filesystem (APFS) and force updated their entire userbase of hundreds of millions of iOS devices and macOS to use a v1.0 of APFS. They haven't seem to have any problems running a v1.0 filesystem and I have to imagine way more people are now running APFS then ZFS ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System
- dmpk2k 9y ago
  Apple must have invested incredible resources on testing that internally, because that was a very risky move, and well outside the norm for filesystem development.
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    Judging by how nightmarishly buggy the upgrade to iOS11 has been, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't test it at all. My phone actually stopped functioning as a phone upon upgrade [0]! [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=...

saghm 9y ago

When installing with Hammer2 (EFI, encrypted root and swap), after rebooting and decrypting the root I get an error saying `mount_hammer2` isn't found. Has anyone else had this issue and figured out if there's a fix?

Elhana 9y ago
mount_hammer2 is probably not in initrd
- saghm 9y ago
  Sorry, I'm still a relative beginner with regards to BSD; is this something I can fix during/post installation?
  - terminalcommand 9y ago
    I'd suggest trying more popular flavors of BSD first. Especially if you're installing on physical hardware, dragonflyBSD may be hard to begin with. FreeBSD on the laptop has decent support, and in a couple of weeks you will learn about initrd etc. to be able to work with DragonflyBSD. If you want to learn more about system internals, you might want to learn how to use bhyve (FreeBSD's awesome hypervisor) on FreeBSD. By trying to use bhyve you will learn how to extract the kernel from an img build, load it etc. Have fun and good luck on your studies!
ceratopisan 9y ago
What Elhana said - mount_hammer2 isn't included in /usr/share/initrd so it's not copied into the image used there. You can build a new initrd - cd into src/share/initrd/sbin, add it to the makefile, type 'wmake install' I think, and you may be good. I am guessing because I don't have an encrypted disk to test. Otherwise, wait and there will be an updated 5.01 image soon, I'm sure - the recent KRACK vulnerability will prompt that, if nothing else.
- saghm 9y ago
  Thanks for the info! I'm fine with waiting for a 5.01; I just wasn't sure if I had installed it wrong or something

ryanpcmcquen 9y ago

How does DragonFlyBSD compare to OpenBSD in terms of security?

joeschmoe3 9y ago
About the same as FreeBSD. IF you google youl find a few openbsd VS FreeBSD comparisons

insulanian 9y ago

Is anyone using DragonflyBSD in production due to its advantages? Are these advantages so significant that it is worth it?

rurban 9y ago
Those companies here https://www.dragonflybsd.org/commercial/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/commercial/ are providing commercial DragonflyBSD packaging or support. Of course it's worth it. It's significantly faster and better