Wes Peters writes (via DaemonNews): " I bought an ABIT BP6 dual Celeron (socket 370) motherboard today, to work SMP projects with FreeBSD. While poking through the user manual, I was pleasantly surprised to find the following in section 1-5.

Dual Processor Knowledge You Should Know

For best performance, you should use an OS (Operating System) that supports multi-processors. The following OSes can support multi-processor functions: Microsoft Windows(R) NT (3.5x, 4.x and 5.x), SCO Unix, FreeBSD 3.0 or later, Linux, etc.

(emphasis added) This is the first specific mention of BSD I've seen in a PC hardware manual. This board comes strongly recommended."

AC wrote in to say, "It seems that Informix are considering a port to FreeBSD. Cindy Munns at Informix has written to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc asking for people interested in a port to e-mail her with your name, your company, the number of users, and so on." I've seen this message, but it doesn't seem to have hit Deja yet. However, I've tracked down a variant from Cindy in comp.databases.informix. Informix for Linux already works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI, but it's great that they're considering a native version. And remember, there's no point mailing them if you're not genuinely interested...

the_ed writes, "After a seven month sabatical, FreeBSDZine has returned, with a new look and new articles. Check it out. "

howardjp writes "Computerworld is running an article by Simson Garfinkel. In it, Garfinkel effectively blasts Linux and the Linux development model in favor of the BSDs and their development model. It is nice to see the BSDs getting the respect and press they have deserved for so long."

shlong writes "Just wanted to let you all know that the release candidate of FreeBSD 4.0 is now available at the usual places. Both i386 and Alpha iso images are available (and both are bootable!). A full list of changes is at the release notes. "

howardjp writes "Bell Labs has released Eclipse/BSD, a quality of service research platform based on FreeBSD 3.4. From the Web page: 'Eclipse provides flexible and fine-grained QoS support for applications. Its design allows legacy or Eclipse-unaware applications to provide QoS without the need of modification or recompilation. A simple API is provided for (new) applications to take addvantage [sic] of the fine-grained QoS support.'"

A few bits and pieces on the BSD front in the recent past. Scott Bartram announced that JDK 1.1.8 is now available for NetBSD-current/i386. Over at LinuxWorld, Jonathan Bresler sent in this e-mail about BSD related activities. Sun are releasing source code for NFS under the SISSL (and boosting funding for a Linux only effort to implement v4, sigh). Anti Basic wants you to know that you can now pre-order FreeBSD 4.0 from the FreeBSD Mall. And finally, this month's edition of DaemonNews hit the stands a few days ago, including a particularly interesting article by Greg Lehey, outlining his work on software RAID, Vinum.

Going to LinuxWorld this year? Robert Bruce, head honcho at Walnut Creek CDROM, writes "There is going to be a BSD BOF at the New York Linuxworld on Thursday, Feb. 3, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. We are in room 1D05, Jacob Javits Convention Center, near the conference area in the lower (2nd level down) of Javits. You do not need to be a Linuxworld attendee to come to the BOF. Everyone is welcome. There will be representatives from BSDi, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD."

MagusX writes "FreeBSD 4.0 has just gone into a 30 day code freeze leading up to release." This is as good an opportunity as any to mention that our earlier "code freeze" story in fact turned out to be a feature freeze in the run up to the release, and not a code freeze. The 30-day freeze is longer than average for FreeBSD, but as this will be a .0 release, it was felt necessary to spend as much time as possible making sure it's as stable as possible.

From David Brownlee, via the NetBSD announce mailing list "The Canadian Special Olympics 2000 Winter Games run from Jan. 25 to 29 in Ottawa, Ontario. They are using NetBSD servers to provide connectivity, file storage, and results posting for event officials, media, and athletes." And more details on the games are available as well.

From the archives at Security Focus, In January 1997 a fatal flaw in *BSD procfs code (leading to a local root compromise) was discussed on various security forums. The exploit code dealt with /proc/pid/mem interface. Since then *BSD kernels contained a simple fix which was meant to close this hole. Unfortunately, throughout these three years it was still possible to abuse /proc/pid/mem in a similar, though more complicated fashion, which could lead to local root compromise." Patches are included.

JunkMale writes "The FreeBSD Diary, a chronicle of what one guy is doing with FreeBSD, has been around for almost two years. Until today, it was tucked away in a corner of his site. Following significant growth, a new-look site was launched today. The site contains a huge number of how-to guides and the readership includes NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux users."

This security advisory and associated patch documents and fixes a security hole in Berkeley Make, relating to the "-j" option and temporary file name handling. The advisory was issued by the FreeBSD security team, but it is believed that NetBSD and OpenBSD are affected as well. Obviously, if you have downloaded Berkeley Make to a non-BSD system then you should investigate as well.

Over at DaemonNews is an excellent explanation of the FreeBSD VM design, from Matt Dillon, who's been doing a great deal of work on it recently. It's rare to see good descriptions of the internals (or parts of the internals) of any OS OS (that's "Open Source Operating System") so this is particularly welcome. As is customary, there are a number of other excellent articles over at DaemonNews, including a new Darby Daemon adventure.

[Courtesy of the NetBSD Newsletter] Continuing their quest to have NetBSD run on every platform in existence, the NetBSD/Luna68k port is now stable enough to run multiuser. The Luna is a Japanese machine, with a 68030 processor running at 20Mhz, about equal to a sun3/60. The port's the result of hard work put in by Toru Nishimura. The port's announcement is available.

Continuing it's reputation for security, the OpenBSD kernel can now encrypt the contents of swap space, so that sensitive data can no longer be swapped to disk 'in clear', where it could survive reboots. The Blowfish cypher is used, as it is strong, fast, with a big key space. Obviously, there's a small speed penalty for this option. Note: The BSD section has been a little empty recently, due to illness. Thanks to all who enquired after me, I appreciate it :-)

FreeBSD has now entered code freeze for the up and coming 4.0 release. In the words of Jordan Hubbard, the release engineer; The code freeze will last for 15 days, during which time the 4.0 snapshot server (current.freebsd.org) will be cranking out its daily snapshots (and, in the last half of the release cycle, ISO images as well). 4.0 is the first release from the latest FreeBSD -current development branch. Work also continues on the 3.x -stable branch.

jay_rf writes "Found this by way of Linux Today: BSD vs. GPL posted at OS Opinion. " Its an ongoing debate, but what do you think about it?

Data.com has got an interesting article about FreeBSD. Very nice coverage of FreeBSD 3.3, essentially calling it a very robust and ready OS for Internet/Intranet deployment.

hill writes "An article over on Economic Times explains why BSD is as not as popular as Linux. Both use an open-source model, but Linux demands the user community to disclose modifications on its source code, while BSD allows its users to make proprietary changes. The current size of the BSD community is estimated at 2 million, with Linux being around 10 million. This is definately worth the read for anyone interested in comparing the two operating systems. " I'm sure we have a few opinions on the subject.