On this week's episode, we'll be giving you an introductory guide on OpenBSD's ports and package system. There's also a pretty fly interview with Karl Lehenbauer, about how they use FreeBSD at FlightAware. Lots of interesting news and answers to all your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
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BSDCan 2014 talks and reports, part 2
More presentations and trip reports are still being uploadedIngo Schwarze, New Trends in mandocVsevolod Stakhov, The Architecture of the New Solver in pkgJulio Merino, The FreeBSD Test SuiteZbigniew Bodek, Transparent Superpages for FreeBSD on ARMThere's also a trip report from Michael Dexter and another (very long and detailed) trip report from our friend Warren Block that even gives us some linkage, thanks!***
Beyond security, getting to know OpenBSD's real purpose
Michael W Lucas (who, we learn through this video, has been using BSD since 1986) gave a "webcast" last week, and the audio and slides are finally upIt clocks in at just over 30 minutes, managing to touch on a lot of OpenBSD topicsSome of those topics include: what is OpenBSD and why you should care, the philosophy of the project, how it serves as a "pressure cooker for ideas," briefly touches on GPL vs BSDL, their "do it right or don't do it at all" attitude, their stance on NDAs and blobs, recent LibreSSL development, some of the security functions that OpenBSD enabled before anyone else (and the ripple effect that had) and, of course, their disturbing preference for comic sansHere's a direct link to the slidesGreat presentation if you'd like to learn a bit about OpenBSD, but also contains a bit of information that long-time users might not know too***
FreeBSD vs Linux, a comprehensive comparison
Another blog post covering something people seem to be obsessed with - FreeBSD vs LinuxThis one was worth mentioning because it's very thorough in regards to how things are done behind the scenes, not just the usual technical differencesIt highlights the concept of a "core team" and their role vs "contributors" and "committers" (similar to a presentation Kirk McKusick did not long ago)While a lot of things will be the same on both platforms, you might still be asking "which one is right for me?" - this article weighs in with some points for both sides and different use casesPretty well-written and unbiased article that also mentions areas where Linux might be better, so don't hate us for linking it***
Expand FreeNAS with plugins
One of the things people love the most about FreeNAS (other than ZFS) is their cool plugin frameworkWith these plugins, you can greatly expand the feature set of your NAS via third party programsThis page talks about a few of the more popular ones and how they can be used to improve your NAS or media box experienceSome examples include setting up an OwnCloud server, Bacula for backups, Maraschino for managing a home theater PC, Plex Media Server for an easy to use video experience and a few moreIt then goes into more detail about each of them, how to actually install plugins and then how to set them up***
Interview - Karl Lehenbauer -
[email protected] / @flightaware
FreeBSD at FlightAware, BSD history, various topics
Tutorial
Ports and packages in OpenBSD
News Roundup
Code review culture meets FreeBSD
In most of the BSDs, changes need to be reviewed by more than one person before being committed to the treeThis article describes Phabricator, an open source code review system that we briefly mentioned last weekInstructions for using it are on the wikiWhile not approved by the core team yet for anything official, it's in a testing phase and developers are encouraged to try it out and get their patches reviewedJust look at that fancy interface!!***
Upcoming BSD books
Sneaky MWL somehow finds his way into both our headlines and the news roundupHe gives us an update on the next BSD books that he's planning to releaseThe plan is to release three (or so) books based on different aspects of FreeBSD's storage system(s) - GEOM, UFS, ZFS, etc.This has the advantage of only requiring you to buy the one(s) you're specifically interested in"When will they be released? When I'm done writing them. How much will they cost? Dunno."It's not Absolute FreeBSD 3rd edition...***
CARP failover and high availability on FreeBSD
If you're running a cluster or a group of servers, you should have some sort of failover in placeBut the question comes up, "how do you load balance the load balancers!?"This video goes through the process of giving more than one machine the same IP, how to set up CARP, securing it and demonstrates a node dyingAlso mentions DNS-based load balancing as another option***
PCBSD weekly digest
This time in PCBSD land, we're getting ready for the 10.0.2 release (ISOs here)AppCafe got a good number of fixes, and now shows 10 random highlighted applicationsEasyPBI added a "bulk" mode to create PBIs of an entire FreeBSD port categoryLumina, the new desktop environment, is still being worked on and got some bug fixes too***
Feedback/Questions
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