i summon one kim

I just hate it when I test a new version of NetBSD on a couple of machines successfully, and only run into trouble when I push the ugprade to a busy server. After upgrading the server where these pages live to 3.99.1 the machine paniced in the TCP/SACK routines roughly once every 36 hours (really has to do with the traffic, not time). I tried upgrading again, to 3.99.3, but that was worse: the machine would hang within 2 hours. Now I’ve downgraded back to 3.99.1 and disabled SACK, hoping to get a stable environment.

I’m still running 2.99.15 on other busy machines, and it has been very solid — I cannot recall a single panic, hang or crash. It’s just that a) somebody needs to test the new stuff, b) I keep hearing things like “it only happens on your machine” (ugh) and c) holding off from upgrading for too long tends to make for painful upgrades. However, it might still be possible to convince me to run the netbsd-3 stable branch…

So if you can’t read this, please check back soon — I’m just recovering from a panic. :-)

Antoine Reilles submitted a package for the Little Brother’s Database (lbdb) in PR pkg/29164. I’ve had lbdb in my reminders for quite some time, but never got around to packaging it. I tweaked Antoine’s package a bit, and now I have committed it to pkgsrc. Thanks, Antoine!

The Little Brother’s Database provides a lookup interface for mail addresses for several data sources. It can retrieve data from its own database, Emacs bbdb, abook, LDAP and even MacOS X addressbooks, and provide the results to external programs such as the Mutt mail reader.

I announced tcsh 6.14 today. The major “new feature” for me in this release is working UTF-8 support. Anyone using multibyte character sets should be much happier now. It has been great having a number of people work on the code — there are over 70 fixes in this release.

I have been practising release engineering for tcsh by cutting the last 3 developer test versions. I have automated the release procedure a bit more to minimize the chance for errors from having to type in detailed commands repeatedly. Let’s see if I can push out another release a bit closer to my desired goal of every 6 months.

I have also installed an issue tracker to make it easier to produce change logs and make sure that issues are not falling through the cracks. I hope it will also provide a searchable long-term memory on past decisions on what will get included in tcsh and when.

Naturally right after announcing the release I updated the pgksrc package for tcsh, so you can install the package right now by updating your pkgsrc tree.

Hans Rosenfeld ported EtherIP support from OpenBSD to NetBSD 2.0. Today I’ve committed that work to NetBSD-current, to be included in future releases of NetBSD.

EtherIP (RFC-3378) makes it possible to bridge Ethernet networks using tunnels over the Internet. While you could already use tunnels for IP traffic, now they can be used for any Ethernet traffic. I’m looking forward to using the Internet with my friends to play legacy networked games that only use IPX for LAN communication.

To setup a bridged network using tunnels, you need to create gif(4) interfaces for the tunnels, and a bridge(4) interface to connect the tunnels and the Ethernet (LAN) interfaces. (more…)

I finally got around to upgrading Apachce::Gallery to version 0.9.1. The upgrade is relatively easy: just edit your templates to change variable expansions from $FOO to {$FOO}. If you are using a copyright image, you now have the option of using a text string in the config (rendered using a TrueType font of your choice). It’s worth glancing through the manual (use perldoc Apache::Gallery to see the manual).

If you are having a problem with new pictures not showing up, check the version of imlib2 you have installed. I had to downgrade to 1.1.2nb3 to be able to generate cached images again. There is possibly some glitch between p5-Image-Imlib2 and the new imlib2 1.2.0 code. I’ve filed PR pkg/29054 as a reminder.

I’ve upgraded the leafnode package to version 1.10.7 in order to get Xref: headers in the XOVER responses. There was a bug since 1.9.50 that inadvertently caused Xref: to be dropped out when creating the overview database.

If you think it is no more deja vu when reading an article again, this could be the reason. At least nn depends exclusively on overview data for the Xref: header contents when determining cross-posts you have already read.

Another long-standing nuisance resolved: the files in the Mailman package end up with incorrect permissions, resulting in a non-functional installation. Running check_perms -f will report the problem and fix the permissions. (See PR pkg/24041 for details.)

After some more learning about the bsd.pkg.install.mk machinery, I’ve committed a fix that makes sure files are installed correctly.