6 ms·

DragonFlyBSD's HAMMER2 File-System Being Ported to NetBSD

142 points by networked 4y ago

hestefisk 4y ago
Well done to the NetBSD team. I haven’t used it for many moons, so maybe it’s time giving it a spin again.
- nortonham 4y ago
  yeah you should check it out. Hopefully NetBSD 10 will be out soon
jmclnx 4y ago
NetBSD always does interesting things that to me seems hard to do. Me, I am looking forward to v10 to replace another OS with that has a very hard hard time with that laptop. I donated early this year after seeing how far away they were from their 2022 goal, which is very modest. I hope this news stores up their finances :)
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  I think the corresponding page is https://www.netbsd.org/donations/ https://www.netbsd.org/donations/, which suggests they're hoping to raise $50k this year.
wejick 4y ago
Anyone can enlighten where do usually netBSD and dragonflyBSD get deployed? What kind of usecase or who's high profile user?
- j16sdiz 4y ago
  NetBSD are mostly embeded systems. and dragonfly don’t get deployed =) edit: dragonflybsd is mostly a playground for those innovative ideas and features
- ksec 4y ago
  The good old AirPort Extreme runs on NetBSD.
- nortonham 4y ago
  I believe Japanese ISP's used netBSD in their hardware. I think it's used in many embedded systems as another user pointed out. NASA has used NetBSD in the past as well. https://netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#sams-ii https://netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#sams-ii https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html
- nazgulsenpai 4y ago
  Sega Dreamcast owners :) https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/dreamcast/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/dreamcast/
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I have a DEC Alpha sitting around I want to get NetBSD on along with a few others that could run it.
    - johnklos 4y ago
      Try it! We have Alpha binary packages :) https://zia.io/notice/ARclSIZzZKNlAfXoFE https://zia.io/notice/ARclSIZzZKNlAfXoFE
- weitzj 4y ago
  At University
- fs111 4y ago
  http://sdf.org http://sdf.org
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  I used it. As Desktop, daily driver, and on servers. The same way I used Gentoo. The thing is, if you compile from source, and don't need proprietary apps which assume linuxisms, anything which is compiled from source runs just the same way, as it would under Linux, or even(slightly) better. But that seems to be an almost lost art, nowadays? (Assuming you have fully supported hardware, drivers, and such, which was the case for a while with some systems) Meanwhile they also have a package manager for binaries, but I've never used that because I've been used to using sources :-) http://netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/using.html http://netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/using.html ( https://pkgsrc.se/ https://pkgsrc.se/ is like FreshPorts for FreeBSD ) However, I've got lazy, too, and now use some ready made distro booted from USB-keychain, running from RAM. Besides that, what would be the usecase? The base system is small, lean & mean, and in my experience rock solid, as in UNKAPUTTBAR. The organization and style of source was more understandable to me, as was the framework to recompile the base via build.sh (make world in FreeBSD terminology), and applications from their 'Ports/Portage/AUR' which is called PKGSRC there. The same goes for the filesystem layout, /etc, init, and so on. It's just really nice, all in all. Thinking about it, the question is like what would be the usecase for Alpine-Linux? Some people are using that as desktop, too, for probably similar reasons, but enjoying better hardware driver support. I think the highest hurdle for people has been the 'strange concept' of using 'slices' and 'BSD-Disklabels' to further split apart MBR-style partitions. Like explained here: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst.html#chap-inst-install-partition http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst.html#chap-inst-ins... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel I don't know how that applies to UEFI/GPT-partitioning and secure-boot actually. Haven't tried that, so far. Seems to be another hurdle, though I know from others that it runs, at least without secure-boot. Seems to be that 'The Guide' and FAQs are lagging behind reality. As often is the case, need to read mailing lists then, sigh... Or simply searching for UEFI and GPT on their wiki, which leads to: https://wiki.netbsd.org/Installation_on_UEFI_systems/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/Installation_on_UEFI_systems/ & https://wiki.netbsd.org/users/spz/moderndisk/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/users/spz/moderndisk/ Furthermore: different device names. And an INIT which is neither SysV, nor systemd. http://www.mewburn.net/luke/talks/auug-2003/ http://www.mewburn.net/luke/talks/auug-2003/ & https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rc.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rc.html Which wasn't even mentioned in all the (mainstream) discussions of SysV vs. systemd because NIH? I don't know exactly how to say this, but IMO you've missed out on an experience, if you don't know it. No matter how inconvenient initial installation or hardware support is. This belongs under your belt.
alberth 4y ago
I’ve always felt BSDs are way underrated, and Dragonfly being underrated the most. Dragonfly has some really innovative features: - H2 - virtual kernels - how it achieves SMP with no locking - and much more
- viraptor 4y ago
  That's the kernel memory allocator in SMP being lockless, right? (https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/) You still can't get around locks for many shared resources, especially hardware ones.
  - jpfr 4y ago
    Linus Torvalds says that the RCU mechanism in the kernel making filesystem access lockless is one of the greatest achievements in Linux.
  - black7375 4y ago
    wow LWKT and HAMMER2 look good.
- xvilka 4y ago
  Too bad it's only x86(64)-compatible. Even port to ARMv8 (Raspberry Pi especially) could help to increase the interest to this OS.
  - snvzz 4y ago
    Today, I'd instead look at 64bit RISC-V, as that's where computing seems to be going.
    - nix23 4y ago
      Really? Please show me a production server based on RISC-V, dont get me wrong i would love that, but reality being reality ARM is something atm..and not RISC-V...nor POWER...hmhmmm..
zdw 4y ago
Back in 2015 there was attempt to port Hammer2 to OpenBSD: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150429080405&count=12 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150429080405&co... It doesn't seem to have been finished: https://github.com/bradla/OpenBSD-Hammer2 https://github.com/bradla/OpenBSD-Hammer2
nortonham 4y ago
and freebsd as well. NetBSD is great. For such a small project they accomplish a lot.
Bancakes 4y ago
BSDs are the slowest OSs by far on phoronix benchmarks. What’s so good about them?
- rahen 4y ago
  I'm not sure being dismissive or judging from only one metric is big picture thinking. Some may even call it narrow mindedness. A quick Google search would show many interesting aspects of the BSDs and especially NetBSD, from resource efficiency to keeping the "original" Unix alive on current hardware, but I suspect you may not the kind of person to be receptive to that.
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    It was an honest question, also having used all BSDs for a week each. It was great to have one giant config file, a simple init, and the portstree being better than even the AUR. However what stood out was lack of GPU acceleration, shady Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, and overall slowness. You should stop being so defensive.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
      > ...also having used all BSDs for a week each. On bare metal, or virtualized? > ...lack of GPU acceleration Depends, for some older chipsets it was there, for me, then. Though I have to concur, that is annoying, when your's is much too new, and thus badly supported, if at all. > ...shady Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support I'm a caveman and really don't care about that. Not even under Linux :-) > ...and overall slowness Yes. That was unimpressive. But it went away after https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-kernel.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-kernel.html and even more so after https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-updating.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-updating.html with https://pkgsrc.se/devel/cpuflags https://pkgsrc.se/devel/cpuflags ( Could probably be done from elsewhere with https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html also, because cross-compiling is built in! ) Lastly applying some https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-tuning.html#tuning-system-sysctl https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-tuning.html#tuning... That sounds all really complicated and time consuming, but at the times it wasn't. Because the base is smaller, the compilers were faster. Expecting it to perform out of the box without adapting it to the environment will lead to frustration. It really can fly.
codesniperjoe 4y ago
FreeBSD Hammer2 [r/o][pending] Lots of work will end up (as often) in the ports section, if nobody has a strong point why it is usefull to maintain it in base. Users/use-cases feedback are welcome. https://reviews.freebsd.org/D37354 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D37354 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pulls https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pulls
mrjin 4y ago
Tried to use DragonFlyBSD as a desktop environment a couple of years ago, which turned out to be a disappointment. Haven't touched it since, did it get any better recently?
- nix23 4y ago
  I asked the Oracle of Delphi and she told me that all your problems with DFly are a thing of the past. Please touch it again.

142 points by networked 4y ago

hestefisk 4y ago

Well done to the NetBSD team. I haven’t used it for many moons, so maybe it’s time giving it a spin again.

nortonham 4y ago
yeah you should check it out. Hopefully NetBSD 10 will be out soon

jmclnx 4y ago

NetBSD always does interesting things that to me seems hard to do. Me, I am looking forward to v10 to replace another OS with that has a very hard hard time with that laptop. I donated early this year after seeing how far away they were from their 2022 goal, which is very modest. I hope this news stores up their finances :)

JonChesterfield 4y ago
I think the corresponding page is https://www.netbsd.org/donations/ https://www.netbsd.org/donations/, which suggests they're hoping to raise $50k this year.

wejick 4y ago

Anyone can enlighten where do usually netBSD and dragonflyBSD get deployed? What kind of usecase or who's high profile user?

j16sdiz 4y ago
NetBSD are mostly embeded systems. and dragonfly don’t get deployed =) edit: dragonflybsd is mostly a playground for those innovative ideas and features
ksec 4y ago
The good old AirPort Extreme runs on NetBSD.
nortonham 4y ago
I believe Japanese ISP's used netBSD in their hardware. I think it's used in many embedded systems as another user pointed out. NASA has used NetBSD in the past as well. https://netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#sams-ii https://netbsd.org/gallery/research.html#sams-ii https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html
nazgulsenpai 4y ago
Sega Dreamcast owners :) https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/dreamcast/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/dreamcast/
- the_only_law 4y ago
  I have a DEC Alpha sitting around I want to get NetBSD on along with a few others that could run it.
  - johnklos 4y ago
    Try it! We have Alpha binary packages :) https://zia.io/notice/ARclSIZzZKNlAfXoFE https://zia.io/notice/ARclSIZzZKNlAfXoFE
weitzj 4y ago
At University
fs111 4y ago
http://sdf.org http://sdf.org
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
I used it. As Desktop, daily driver, and on servers. The same way I used Gentoo. The thing is, if you compile from source, and don't need proprietary apps which assume linuxisms, anything which is compiled from source runs just the same way, as it would under Linux, or even(slightly) better. But that seems to be an almost lost art, nowadays? (Assuming you have fully supported hardware, drivers, and such, which was the case for a while with some systems) Meanwhile they also have a package manager for binaries, but I've never used that because I've been used to using sources :-) http://netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/using.html http://netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/using.html ( https://pkgsrc.se/ https://pkgsrc.se/ is like FreshPorts for FreeBSD ) However, I've got lazy, too, and now use some ready made distro booted from USB-keychain, running from RAM. Besides that, what would be the usecase? The base system is small, lean & mean, and in my experience rock solid, as in UNKAPUTTBAR. The organization and style of source was more understandable to me, as was the framework to recompile the base via build.sh (make world in FreeBSD terminology), and applications from their 'Ports/Portage/AUR' which is called PKGSRC there. The same goes for the filesystem layout, /etc, init, and so on. It's just really nice, all in all. Thinking about it, the question is like what would be the usecase for Alpine-Linux? Some people are using that as desktop, too, for probably similar reasons, but enjoying better hardware driver support. I think the highest hurdle for people has been the 'strange concept' of using 'slices' and 'BSD-Disklabels' to further split apart MBR-style partitions. Like explained here: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst.html#chap-inst-install-partition http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-inst.html#chap-inst-ins... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel I don't know how that applies to UEFI/GPT-partitioning and secure-boot actually. Haven't tried that, so far. Seems to be another hurdle, though I know from others that it runs, at least without secure-boot. Seems to be that 'The Guide' and FAQs are lagging behind reality. As often is the case, need to read mailing lists then, sigh... Or simply searching for UEFI and GPT on their wiki, which leads to: https://wiki.netbsd.org/Installation_on_UEFI_systems/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/Installation_on_UEFI_systems/ & https://wiki.netbsd.org/users/spz/moderndisk/ https://wiki.netbsd.org/users/spz/moderndisk/ Furthermore: different device names. And an INIT which is neither SysV, nor systemd. http://www.mewburn.net/luke/talks/auug-2003/ http://www.mewburn.net/luke/talks/auug-2003/ & https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rc.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rc.html Which wasn't even mentioned in all the (mainstream) discussions of SysV vs. systemd because NIH? I don't know exactly how to say this, but IMO you've missed out on an experience, if you don't know it. No matter how inconvenient initial installation or hardware support is. This belongs under your belt.

alberth 4y ago

I’ve always felt BSDs are way underrated, and Dragonfly being underrated the most. Dragonfly has some really innovative features: - H2 - virtual kernels - how it achieves SMP with no locking - and much more

viraptor 4y ago
That's the kernel memory allocator in SMP being lockless, right? (https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/) You still can't get around locks for many shared resources, especially hardware ones.
- jpfr 4y ago
  Linus Torvalds says that the RCU mechanism in the kernel making filesystem access lockless is one of the greatest achievements in Linux.
- black7375 4y ago
  wow LWKT and HAMMER2 look good.
xvilka 4y ago
Too bad it's only x86(64)-compatible. Even port to ARMv8 (Raspberry Pi especially) could help to increase the interest to this OS.
- snvzz 4y ago
  Today, I'd instead look at 64bit RISC-V, as that's where computing seems to be going.
  - nix23 4y ago
    Really? Please show me a production server based on RISC-V, dont get me wrong i would love that, but reality being reality ARM is something atm..and not RISC-V...nor POWER...hmhmmm..

zdw 4y ago

Back in 2015 there was attempt to port Hammer2 to OpenBSD: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150429080405&count=12 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20150429080405&co... It doesn't seem to have been finished: https://github.com/bradla/OpenBSD-Hammer2 https://github.com/bradla/OpenBSD-Hammer2

nortonham 4y ago

and freebsd as well. NetBSD is great. For such a small project they accomplish a lot.

Bancakes 4y ago

BSDs are the slowest OSs by far on phoronix benchmarks. What’s so good about them?

rahen 4y ago
I'm not sure being dismissive or judging from only one metric is big picture thinking. Some may even call it narrow mindedness. A quick Google search would show many interesting aspects of the BSDs and especially NetBSD, from resource efficiency to keeping the "original" Unix alive on current hardware, but I suspect you may not the kind of person to be receptive to that.
- Bancakes 4y ago
  It was an honest question, also having used all BSDs for a week each. It was great to have one giant config file, a simple init, and the portstree being better than even the AUR. However what stood out was lack of GPU acceleration, shady Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, and overall slowness. You should stop being so defensive.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    > ...also having used all BSDs for a week each. On bare metal, or virtualized? > ...lack of GPU acceleration Depends, for some older chipsets it was there, for me, then. Though I have to concur, that is annoying, when your's is much too new, and thus badly supported, if at all. > ...shady Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support I'm a caveman and really don't care about that. Not even under Linux :-) > ...and overall slowness Yes. That was unimpressive. But it went away after https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-kernel.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-kernel.html and even more so after https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-updating.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-updating.html with https://pkgsrc.se/devel/cpuflags https://pkgsrc.se/devel/cpuflags ( Could probably be done from elsewhere with https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-build.html also, because cross-compiling is built in! ) Lastly applying some https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-tuning.html#tuning-system-sysctl https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-tuning.html#tuning... That sounds all really complicated and time consuming, but at the times it wasn't. Because the base is smaller, the compilers were faster. Expecting it to perform out of the box without adapting it to the environment will lead to frustration. It really can fly.

codesniperjoe 4y ago

FreeBSD Hammer2 [r/o][pending] Lots of work will end up (as often) in the ports section, if nobody has a strong point why it is usefull to maintain it in base. Users/use-cases feedback are welcome. https://reviews.freebsd.org/D37354 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D37354 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pulls https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/pulls

mrjin 4y ago

Tried to use DragonFlyBSD as a desktop environment a couple of years ago, which turned out to be a disappointment. Haven't touched it since, did it get any better recently?

nix23 4y ago
I asked the Oracle of Delphi and she told me that all your problems with DFly are a thing of the past. Please touch it again.