Blue Lang writes: "Saw on the squid mailing list today that the results of the second polygraph Web-cache benchmarks are in, and squid on FreeBSD captured a few top marks, as well as performing exceptionally well overall. Interesting reading, especially as a comparison of free and open systems versus some very well-architected proprietary solutions."

Silmaril writes "OpenBSD started a CVS branch to add SMP to the kernel." Meanwhile, over on the NetBSD side of the fence, Bill Sommerfeld has committed his i386 MP spinup work. See both those links for more details.

stephen.schaubach writes, "The new IBM InterJet II is a small net appliance that looks cool, is small and has some kick-ass features, including: e-mail server, Apache, Firewall, FTP, DNS and DHCP services. Admin it from a Web browser like the cobalt's. But, best of all it runs an embedded operating system based on FreeBSD UNIX. The down side is that it looks as though you kinda of ASP-lease the thing. Anyone told VA yet? heh " The InterJet is a neat piece of kit, and the developers at Whistle have contributed a lot of high-quality code back to the BSD project, both before and after their buyout by IBM.

Hawks writes, "For you NetBSD junkies out there who don't like Darwin, according to the Changes to NetBSD/macpps 1.5 page, NetBSD now boots on the PowerMac G4's and iMacDV's. I would assume that means it should boot on the iBook and possibly the new Pismo PowerBooks. Hummm, 400Mhz laptop running *BSD...droolllll

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.