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FreeBSD 11.1-Beta1 is out, we discuss Kernel address randomized link (KARL), and explore the benefits of daily OpenBSD source code reading
11.1-BETA1 amd64 GENERIC
Over the last three weeks I've been working on a new randomization feature which will protect the kernel.
Besides the greater enhancements this month I performed a cleanup in the ATF ptrace(2) tests again. Additionally I have managed to unbreak the LLDB Debug build and to eliminate compiler warnings in the NetBSD Native Process Plugin. It is worth noting that LLVM can run tests on NetBSD again, the patch in gtest/LLVM has been installed by Joerg Sonnenberg and a more generic one has been submitted to the upstream googletest repository. There was also an improvement in ftruncate(2) on the LLVM side (authored by Joerg).
I have researched (in pkgsrc-wip) initial support for multiple threads in the NetBSD Native Process Plugin. This code revealed - when running the LLDB regression test-suite - new kernel bugs. This unfortunately affects the usability of a debugger in a multithread environment in general and explains why GDB was never doing its job properly in such circumstances. One of the first errors was asserting kernel panic with PT_*STEP, when a debuggee has more than a single thread. I have narrowed it down to lock primitives misuse in the do_ptrace() kernel code. The fix has been committed.
Unfortunately this is not the full story and there is further mandatory work.
There are also unpleasant issues at the core of the Operating System.
The current troubles can be summarized as data races in the kernel and at the same time in LLDB. I have decided to port the LLVM sanitizers, as I require the Thread Sanitizer (tsan). Temporarily I have removed the code for tracing processes with multiple threads to hide the known kernel bugs and focus on the LLDB races.
More information on these BSDRP lab scripts available on How to build a BSDRP router lab.
[root@FreeBSD]~# tools/BSDRP-lab-bhyve.sh -i BSDRP-1.71-full-amd64-serial.img.xz -n 5 -l 1
pf need a little more configuration because by default /dev/pf is hidden from jail. Then, on the host we need to:
I made a new year's resolution to read at least one C source file from OpenBSD daily. The goal was to both get better at C and to contribute more to the base system and userland development. I have to admit that initially I wasn’t consistent with it at all. In the first quarter of the year I read the code of a few small base utilities and nothing else. Still, every bit counts and it’s never too late to get better.
If you’re usually programming on Linux and you consider a potential switch to FreeBSD, this article will give you an overview of the possibilities.
FreeBSD comes with either applications from binary packages or compiled from sources (ports). They are arranged according to software types (programming languages mainly in lang (or java specifically for Java), libraries in devel, web servers in www …) and the main tool for modern FreeBSD versions is pkg, similar to Debian apt tools suite. Hence, most of the time if you are looking for a specific application/library, simply
pkg search
without necessarily knowing the fully qualified name of the package. It is somehow sufficient. For example pkg search php7 will display php7 itself and the modules. Furthermore, php70 specific version and so on.
Basically, this is the easiest area to migrate to. Most Web languages do not use specific platform features. Thus, most of the time, your existing projects might just be “drop-in” use cases.
The BSDs are shipped with C and C++ compilers in the base. In the case of FreeBSD 11.0, it is clang 3.8.0 (in x86 architectures) otherwise, modern versions of gcc exist for developing with C++11. Examples are of course available too (lang/gcc … until gcc 7.0 devel).
To be able to do Android development, to a certain degree, the Linux’s compatibility layer (aka linuxulator) needs to be enabled. Also, x11-toolkits/swt and linux-f10-gtk2 port/package need to be installed (note that libswt-gtk-3550.so and libswt-pi-gtk-3550.so are necessary. The current package is versioned as 3557 and can be solved using symlinks). In the worst case scenario, remember that bhyve (or Virtualbox) is available, and can run any Linux distribution efficiently.
FreeBSD comes in base with a version of subversion. As FreeBSD source is in a subversion repository, a prefixed svnlite command prevents conflicts with the package/port.
FreeBSD has made tremendous improvements over the years to fill the gap created by Linux. FreeBSD still maintains its interesting specificities; hence there will not be too much blockers if your projects are reasonably sized to allow a migration to FreeBSD.
It is almost two years since I finished building Aeronix and it has served me well during that time. Only thing that ever broke was Noctua CPU fan, which I have replaced with the same model. However, for long time, I wanted to run Aeronix on OpenBSD instead of GNU/Linux Debian.
I first experimented with RAID1 OpenBSD setup in VirtualBox, plugging and unplugging drives and learned that OpenBSD RAID1 is really smooth. When I finally got the courage, I copied all the data on two drives outside of Aeronix. One external HDD I regulary use to backup Aeronix and second internal drive in my desktop computer. Copying the data took about two afternoons. Aeronix usually has higher temperatures (somewhere around 55°C or 65°C depending on time of the year), and when stressed, it can go really high (around 75°C). During full speed copy over NFS and to external drive it went as high as 85°C, which made me a bit nervous. After the data were copied, I temporarily un-configured computers on local network to not touch Aeronix, plugged keyboard, display and OpenBSD 6.1 thumb drive. Installing OpenBSD 6.1 on full disk RAID1 was super easy.
Aeronix serves primarily as NAS, which means NFS and SMB. NFS is used by computers in local network with persistent connection (via Ethernet). SMB is used by other devices in local network with volatile connection (via WiFi). When configuring NFS, I expected similar configuration to what I had in Debian, but on OpenBSD, it is very different. However, after reading through exports(5), it was really easy to put it together.
Copying from the external drive took few days, since the transfer speed was something around 5MB/s. I didn't really mind. It was sort of a good thing, because Aeronix wasn't overheating that way. I guess I need to figure new backup strategy though.
Migrating to OpenBSD was way easier than I anticipated. There are various benefits like more security, realiable RAID1 setup (which I know how will work when drive dies), better documentation and much more. However, the true benefit for me is just the fact I like OpenBSD and makes me happy to have one more OpenBSD machine. On to the next two years of service!
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FreeBSD 11.1-Beta1 is out, we discuss Kernel address randomized link (KARL), and explore the benefits of daily OpenBSD source code reading
11.1-BETA1 amd64 GENERIC
Over the last three weeks I've been working on a new randomization feature which will protect the kernel.
Besides the greater enhancements this month I performed a cleanup in the ATF ptrace(2) tests again. Additionally I have managed to unbreak the LLDB Debug build and to eliminate compiler warnings in the NetBSD Native Process Plugin. It is worth noting that LLVM can run tests on NetBSD again, the patch in gtest/LLVM has been installed by Joerg Sonnenberg and a more generic one has been submitted to the upstream googletest repository. There was also an improvement in ftruncate(2) on the LLVM side (authored by Joerg).
I have researched (in pkgsrc-wip) initial support for multiple threads in the NetBSD Native Process Plugin. This code revealed - when running the LLDB regression test-suite - new kernel bugs. This unfortunately affects the usability of a debugger in a multithread environment in general and explains why GDB was never doing its job properly in such circumstances. One of the first errors was asserting kernel panic with PT_*STEP, when a debuggee has more than a single thread. I have narrowed it down to lock primitives misuse in the do_ptrace() kernel code. The fix has been committed.
Unfortunately this is not the full story and there is further mandatory work.
There are also unpleasant issues at the core of the Operating System.
The current troubles can be summarized as data races in the kernel and at the same time in LLDB. I have decided to port the LLVM sanitizers, as I require the Thread Sanitizer (tsan). Temporarily I have removed the code for tracing processes with multiple threads to hide the known kernel bugs and focus on the LLDB races.
More information on these BSDRP lab scripts available on How to build a BSDRP router lab.
[root@FreeBSD]~# tools/BSDRP-lab-bhyve.sh -i BSDRP-1.71-full-amd64-serial.img.xz -n 5 -l 1
pf need a little more configuration because by default /dev/pf is hidden from jail. Then, on the host we need to:
I made a new year's resolution to read at least one C source file from OpenBSD daily. The goal was to both get better at C and to contribute more to the base system and userland development. I have to admit that initially I wasn’t consistent with it at all. In the first quarter of the year I read the code of a few small base utilities and nothing else. Still, every bit counts and it’s never too late to get better.
If you’re usually programming on Linux and you consider a potential switch to FreeBSD, this article will give you an overview of the possibilities.
FreeBSD comes with either applications from binary packages or compiled from sources (ports). They are arranged according to software types (programming languages mainly in lang (or java specifically for Java), libraries in devel, web servers in www …) and the main tool for modern FreeBSD versions is pkg, similar to Debian apt tools suite. Hence, most of the time if you are looking for a specific application/library, simply
pkg search
without necessarily knowing the fully qualified name of the package. It is somehow sufficient. For example pkg search php7 will display php7 itself and the modules. Furthermore, php70 specific version and so on.
Basically, this is the easiest area to migrate to. Most Web languages do not use specific platform features. Thus, most of the time, your existing projects might just be “drop-in” use cases.
The BSDs are shipped with C and C++ compilers in the base. In the case of FreeBSD 11.0, it is clang 3.8.0 (in x86 architectures) otherwise, modern versions of gcc exist for developing with C++11. Examples are of course available too (lang/gcc … until gcc 7.0 devel).
To be able to do Android development, to a certain degree, the Linux’s compatibility layer (aka linuxulator) needs to be enabled. Also, x11-toolkits/swt and linux-f10-gtk2 port/package need to be installed (note that libswt-gtk-3550.so and libswt-pi-gtk-3550.so are necessary. The current package is versioned as 3557 and can be solved using symlinks). In the worst case scenario, remember that bhyve (or Virtualbox) is available, and can run any Linux distribution efficiently.
FreeBSD comes in base with a version of subversion. As FreeBSD source is in a subversion repository, a prefixed svnlite command prevents conflicts with the package/port.
FreeBSD has made tremendous improvements over the years to fill the gap created by Linux. FreeBSD still maintains its interesting specificities; hence there will not be too much blockers if your projects are reasonably sized to allow a migration to FreeBSD.
It is almost two years since I finished building Aeronix and it has served me well during that time. Only thing that ever broke was Noctua CPU fan, which I have replaced with the same model. However, for long time, I wanted to run Aeronix on OpenBSD instead of GNU/Linux Debian.
I first experimented with RAID1 OpenBSD setup in VirtualBox, plugging and unplugging drives and learned that OpenBSD RAID1 is really smooth. When I finally got the courage, I copied all the data on two drives outside of Aeronix. One external HDD I regulary use to backup Aeronix and second internal drive in my desktop computer. Copying the data took about two afternoons. Aeronix usually has higher temperatures (somewhere around 55°C or 65°C depending on time of the year), and when stressed, it can go really high (around 75°C). During full speed copy over NFS and to external drive it went as high as 85°C, which made me a bit nervous. After the data were copied, I temporarily un-configured computers on local network to not touch Aeronix, plugged keyboard, display and OpenBSD 6.1 thumb drive. Installing OpenBSD 6.1 on full disk RAID1 was super easy.
Aeronix serves primarily as NAS, which means NFS and SMB. NFS is used by computers in local network with persistent connection (via Ethernet). SMB is used by other devices in local network with volatile connection (via WiFi). When configuring NFS, I expected similar configuration to what I had in Debian, but on OpenBSD, it is very different. However, after reading through exports(5), it was really easy to put it together.
Copying from the external drive took few days, since the transfer speed was something around 5MB/s. I didn't really mind. It was sort of a good thing, because Aeronix wasn't overheating that way. I guess I need to figure new backup strategy though.
Migrating to OpenBSD was way easier than I anticipated. There are various benefits like more security, realiable RAID1 setup (which I know how will work when drive dies), better documentation and much more. However, the true benefit for me is just the fact I like OpenBSD and makes me happy to have one more OpenBSD machine. On to the next two years of service!
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