MirOS News

Bugs in the current snapshot

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:42:00 +0000

The following bugs are known in the MirOS #10-current snapshot, dated 2008-07-22:

The user shell for the default “live” user is /usr/dbin/mksh, which however has been optimised away. This is a bug in the production of this one snapshot and easy to fix in future issues. Workaround: while the rc.netselect script runs, choose ‘9’ to escape to a shell, and change the “live” user’s shell using vipw(8) – chsh -s /bin/mksh live might also work, but has not been tested.
Running “startx” does not work because /usr/X11R6/bin/X is no symbolic link but a copy of the XFree86® server itself (on other baselive CDs it was a hard link instead of a copy; the change is due to production differences, but both break startx(1) and xinit(1)). Workaround is to use xdm(1) instead or try: startx -- /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 :0
The X11 server may not switch to graphics mode on the ALIX.1c board.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused, and will try to solve these issues in the next development snapshot.

MirOS Project @ FrOSCon 2008

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:16:00 +0000

The MirOS Project will show up with both developers to run a booth at FrOSCon; we will be giving away Live CDs (either #10-stable or #10-current) and flyers. You will be able to meet us and a few helpers (known from IRC and mailing lists) there, chat about mksh, have a beer, fun, whatever.

This year, one of the two XFree86® developers will also attend; you can probably meet him at our booth.

MirOS-current DuaLive snapshot on BT

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:12:00 +0000

The 2008-07-22 snapshot of MirOS BSD/i386 #10-current has been released as a new-style dualive CD image (BaseLive + Install CD for i386, Install CD for sparc, build logs, a selected few binary packages and their distfiles, but nothing fancy) on the usual BitTorrent tracker, multi-tracked with a major BT site for these who pick it up there.

It's also available for NetInstall on both architectures. Note that /MirOS/ has been cleaned up a little: some old NetInstall or upgrade packages are removed.

The #10/i386 binary packages should all be installable on this snapshot, although it does come with more recent MirPorts Framework and a couple of current binary packages as well.

mksh R35 released! [Update: R35b]

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The MirBSD Korn Shell R35 has just been released; as per the Changelog this is a major update with some bugfixes, a lot of new features, and licence simplification (the advertising clause is gone). This version was not tested on AIX, BSD/OS, Interix, IRIX, GNU/kFreeBSD, UWIN, the Intel compiler, but we expect no regressions on these platforms either. New supported platforms include dietlibc, LLVM. Platforms already working continue to be MirOS BSD, DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, MidnightBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DEC ULTRIX, Mac OSX, HP Tru64, HP-UX, Solaris, Debian GNU/HURD, Cygwin, and various GNU/Linux systems; using gcc, pcc, SUNWcc, llvm-gcc, Compaq C, HP aCC, TenDRA; on a variety of hardware architectures.

Online manual: HTML, PDF (ISO A4 paper, we don’t support Imperial units, as even the USA has converted to Metric)

Update 18.07.2008 – mksh R35b is out, with major bug fixes, read the changelog.

anoncvs mirror naming scheme changed [updated]

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:20:00 +0000

As mentioned on the Downloads page, the naming scheme of the anoncvs mirrors changed. We now have:

master system, restricted access, ssh, rsync + cvs:
- offering: /MirOS /Pkgs /cvs /ncvs /ocvs
- _anoncvs@herc.mirbsd.org (private, IPv4 + IPv6)
- _anoncvs@herc.66h.42h.de (private, IPv4 + IPv6)
primary mirror, ssh, rsync + cvs, currently the same as 2.anoncvs:
- anoncvs@anoncvs.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 + IPv6)
- anoncvs@anoncvs4.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 only)
- anoncvs@anoncvs6.mirbsd.org (public, IPv6 only)
hephaistos (unixforge.de), Germany, ssh, rsync + cvs:
- ‣ sshd(8) host keys
- offering: /MirOS /Pkgs /cvs
- anoncvs@1.anoncvs.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 + IPv6)
- anoncvs@1.anoncvs4.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 only)
- anoncvs@1.anoncvs6.mirbsd.org (public, IPv6 only)
eurynome (VMware instance), Germany, ssh, rsync + cvs:
- ‣ sshd(8) host key
- offering: /MirOS /Pkgs /cvs (/Distfiles /www not yet)
- anoncvs@2.anoncvs.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 + IPv6)
- anoncvs@2.anoncvs4.mirbsd.org (public, IPv4 only)
- anoncvs@2.anoncvs6.mirbsd.org (public, IPv6 only)
allbsd.org, Japan, IPv4 + IPv6, rsync only:
- offering: /MirOS /cvs
- rsync://rsync.allbsd.org/miros-cvs/ = /cvs
- rsync://rsync.allbsd.org/miros-ftp/ = /MirOS

We are in the process of setting up eurynome (see above) to take over most functions from www.mirbsd.org and mirror everything, but, as this is a new system and VMware has issues, this will probably take a while. However, all data should be available from some place anytime.

Update 20.07.2008: moved SSH host keys from this page, to keep width inside some reasonable bounds, 10x gecko2@ for noticing in MobileSafari

CVE-2008-1447

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:19:00 +0000

The CVE-2008-1447 does not, according to various sources, affect systems that randomise their source port. MirOS libc’s integrated resolver, according to some OpenBSD developers, does this, as does DJBDNS. The net/bind mirport is affected, but by using pf(4) to NAT yourself (thanks to Vutral for the suggestion), you can randomise these ports too. According to RUS-CERT, only using DNSSEC is a fix… I wonder if this is truth or advertising for a technique without wide-spread use.

update for 2008-05-14 snapshot available

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:24:00 +0000

The fixes10.ngz set, of course gzsig(1)d, contains an updated mksh binary and dot.mkshrc as well as /.profile (root) and /etc/profile (user) files, which speed up logins, as well as an updated /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts file. It can be directly applied from the installer, or untarred in / (do not forget the 'h' and 'p' options to tar(1)). Note that this will overwrite any existing changes to these files:

/.profile
/etc/profile
/etc/skel/.mkshrc
/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts

Use this for integrity checking:
RMD160 (fixes10.ngz) = 6c85c3e8eb4a5046b5b45373a0996cee2a3208b7

ssh host key changes for anoncvs mirror [updated]

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:42:00 +0000

Our anoncvs mirror has changed its ssh host keys due to a Debian-specific problem (it's hosted on a machine running Debian GNU/Linux courtesy of gecko2@). The new keys are: [Update: moved]

Please copy these into /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts or ~/.etc/ssh/known_hosts, overriding the existing keys for the same IPs or host names.

The current version of the /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts file can be retrieved via anonymous CVS (from the server affected), anonymous rsync (also from rsync.allbsd.org), CVSweb (from both servers) or by an eMail request.

Yesterday's snapshot does not yet include the new public host keys, as they were generated only today.

MirOS-current snapshot on BT

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:37:00 +0000

The 2008-05-14 snapshot of MirOS BSD/i386 #10-current has been released as a simple baselive CD image (Live + Install CD, build logs, but nothing fancy) on the usual BitTorrent tracker, multi-tracked with a major BT site for these who pick it up there.

It's also available for NetInstall, although you shouldn't pick up the perl CVS fix in that directory, as it applies to a much older #10-beta snapshot.

The #10/i386 binary packages should all be installable on this snapshot, although it does come with more recent MirPorts Framework.

mksh, mirmake, pkgtools upgraded

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The MirBSD Korn Shell R33d has been released, mostly containing a security fix for the -T option, see the Changelog for details.

A new MirMake version has been issued, to fix problems compiling C++ code with strange file extensions (.cpp as on Microsoft® Windows®, and .C as BOINC uses). MirMake is a sort-of-portable version of the MirOS make(1) utility, a few header files and a libmirmake.a containing helper functions, and some supporting utilities: install(1) lndir(1) lorder(1) mkdep(1) readlink(1) tsort(1)

The MirPorts Package Tools have been updated as well, as Lucas “laffer1” Holt, the MidnightBSD founder, has implemented ldconfig(8) -U too, and the use of this option by pkg_create(1) is now required for a lot of packages (since GNU libiconv, expat and libpng use their own fake-pkgview subdirectories.

Hashes of our current distfiles:

RMD160 (gzsigkey.cer) = 0a24e416b26e4753eee4cbfe8f1dc74f2486eb6e gzsig(1) distribution sign key
RMD160 (fwcf-1.05b.tar.gz) = 355e1a46ef384b4ca26cccb7892a2f60eff2ffe2 for FreeWRT
RMD160 (libnointl-20070726.tar.gz) = 3b97197a9bd8f693bebd8b528dd0d5c942e83e64
RMD160 (arc4random.c) = ad0ef189b7ffe80b9224b1f3886377847341bac5
RMD160 (joe-3.1jupp8.cpio.gz) = bbcc42ff82fd7a47feb51579864a487f31ca3a91
RMD160 (cksum-20080314.cgz) = 7566313c6db3182a99437eb6543b0da6abbed5bd
RMD160 (paxmirabilis-20080314.cpio.gz) = 3966925c2d87838b0b55e2a0c715f027df3d965b
RMD160 (ed-20060924.tar.gz) = 7d41e76e169caa73c8bbd043ad40b2b84339761a
RMD160 (mirmake-20080411.cpio.gz) = e18bd36bc6c260332ab5df008f30b57a9849bc50
RMD160 (mksh-R33d.cpio.gz) = d810a705b01e146f9addd184c168798a22a36d38
RMD160 (mpczar-20061119.cgz) = cccf88ae27225c808f327ae7d56dbd9f2c053249
RMD160 (mirmtree-20050912.cpio.gz) = b4de12ddfd022538732b2c14dad60c2351b3011c
RMD160 (mirnroff-20050912.cpio.gz) = 5063466a267a64b3f088c86a29e011b5ad712c4a for Interix ONLY
RMD160 (sitetmac-20071023.tar.gz) = 107e5b64ecbf1214e19681f6fc0add6599fef25d temporary
RMD160 (tmacmbsd-20071003.tar.gz) = 223c38916e489469703627b189f6fc16b9a36e27 temporary
RMD160 (patch-20051110.cpio.gz) = ac32b2b0a1e7203256ec4bd255c7525053afb3ed for Interix
RMD160 (pkgtools-20080411.cgz) = edf320a3798aa40c015e57c579310df754f28820
RMD160 (rdate-20070817.tar.gz) = 3501ae05c05d7c4f39ccb1c76dd51663c2b91e34
RMD160 (mirsort-20050912.cpio.gz) = 69a1a632c7343c09ca7bab39f6359667bb461c1c

mksh R33b, no, R33c released

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The MirBSD Korn Shell R33b has just been released; as per the Changelog this is a minor update: portability fixes, support for dæmonising scripts, and manual page improvements.

Online manual: HTML, PDF (ISO A4 paper, we don’t support Imperial units, as even the USA has converted to Metric)

UPDATE 02.04.2008: mksh R33c is out, with a bugfix and a new fully supported OS (ULTRIX 4.5).

MirOS #10 Serial Console NetInstall ISOs available

tg@mirbsd.org (MirOS Developer tg) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I thought these might come in handy for poor i386 users:

The ISOs itself (both El Torito and Live-HD/CF boot) as well as the included 1440 KiB Floppy images have been adjusted to automatically boot from serial console. To accomodate broken BIOSes (like the one from my VIA C7 server, or the Soekris COMBIOS), the bootloader does not wait for input, but instead directly boots into the kernel. This prevents you from using “boot -c”, but you can patch boot.cfg in the top directory of the ISO or floppy to achieve that.

Users of the sparc architecture just setenv input-device ttya and setenv output-device ttya instead; OpenBOOT can handle a serial console just fine out of the box and provides the speed as well.

MirOS #10 first binary update published

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The Errata page lists a binary update for the Sendmail and Apache security flaws and a shortcoming in the <bsd.lkm.mk> file. We advise to upgrade.

MirOS #10 downloads reloaded; new Errata page

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After 1600+ downloads, we think it has settled down a little. Nevertheless, we got a request to use a new form of distribution, the metalinks.

MirOS #10 Metalink

There is also a list of errata for MirOS #10; we will issue a binary update within a few days, as at least the Sendmail bug is severe.

MirOS #10 downloads

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

We had about 1500 downloads of the full ISO in the last 4 days, which is actually making our primary mirror traffic problems.

Please use BitTorrent to download the full ISO, or use the NetInstall ISO instead.

You can also switch to one of the following mirrors:

Due to popular request: the SFV (CRC32) of the ISO is 76D0638A, more hashes are here, and for these who still use the insecure MD5, 0afb38491f7557b1f7bc9ec8997ca5b4 should matche. Note: the CKSUM.gz file hyperlinked in this paragraph is, of course, gzsig(1)d.

Note to avoid confusion: the release CD is no Live CD, but we do have Live CDs. However, only development snapshots are distributed as Live CD. It would not fit on a release CD due to the size of the data included, sorry.

We’re really surprised from the number of downloads – seems as MirOS has become popular. We hope that the traffic throtteling/limiting methods our hoster has installed on the Germany 1 mirror do not produce too much inconvenience for you. Thanks for using MirOS!

MirOS ξ relased

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

MirOS BSD #10 for the i386 and sparc architectures is our eleventh formal major release. Grab it while you can, either via the usual BitTorrent tracker, or use the NetInstall ISO (details on the Download page).

MirOS #10 focuses on Unicode support and a lot of improvements all over the place. The sparc platform is now fully supported again, and en par with i386 regarding the base system. MirOS thusly is almost a reference implementation of a 32-bit sparc OS now that Debian killed support, Gentoo wants to go that way too and the other BSDs focus on sparc64; and the reference implementation of XFree86® in modern open source OSes.

Read the release announcement, or the CVS ChangeLog files, for more information on this release.

Note that, while a lot of virtualisation software performs quite well (Parallels, qemu) or works (VMware Server, bochs, MS VirtualPC, Xen+HVM) with MirBSD, sadly, VirtualBox doesn’t. Due to a bug in it, a lot of operating systems do not work.

MirPorts running on MidnightBSD

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The MirPorts Framework now also runs on MidnightBSD, in addition to MirOS BSD (native), OpenBSD (legacy), Darwin and Mac OSX, and Interix (in theory). Support of individual ports for certain operating environments may not yet be given, but the infrastructure already works. Sadly, systrace(1) is not part of the MidnightBSD base system. MirPorts work independently of the native mports system, do not depend on it or interfere with it, as usual, and can be installed per user or system-wide.

New RSS feed: Developers’ Weblog (latest)

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new RSS feed which does not encode the OS version after which it started. You must subscribe to it manually, as we have no way to embed it in any header; it is implemented as a symbolic link to the latest respective feed:

http://www.mirbsd.org/wlog.rss

Of course, you can instead continue to use the versioned feeds.

Heads-Up: MirPorts changes

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new MirMake version, with getopt(3) changes for Darwin again. We do not think that this has any effect on already-built packages, but be careful.

The variables FLAVOR and FLAVORS have been renamed to FLAVOUR and FLAVOURS, respectively, to reflect correct English spelling.

mksh R33 released

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

mksh R33 has been released; read the ChangeLog for details. (Happy Birthday to everyone who has on this day.)

The news in short and human-readable:

Improved build system, once again; better error tracking; better portability with regards to tools in /usr/bin at build and compilers
Integrate all changes from OpenBSD ksh
Integrate some changes from Debian: the “dot” command needs an argument; prevent namespace conflict between (built-in) aliases and (POSIX, not Korn) shell functions
Add \uXXXX and \xXX escapes to the print builtin
No longer check if we are called as “sh” for special handling
Implement here strings: you can now replace print -r -- "$foo" | command with command <<<"$foo" – like ksh93, zsh; GNU bash behaves differently if and only if $foo is not quoted
Implement string replacement ${var/pattern/string}

Especially cool feature: replace x=$(print -r -- "$x" | sed -e 's/foo.*bar/baz/g') with x=${x//foo*bar/baz} ☺

Note: the distfile is not here yet, it’ll take a while to be released. Once it’s uploaded, the mksh homepage will be updated with appropriate information. UPDATE: It’s out now.

FOSDEM follow-up

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

mirmake-20080224 and assorted commits in the MirPorts Framework fix all known Mac OSX Leopard issues.

There are two BSD booths at FOSDEM: one with OpenBSD and FreeBSD (with DesktopBSD and PC-BSD CDs) at the usual place in the main building, and one with OpenBSD, NetBSD and MirOS in the AW building, near the shared PostgreSQL/BSD developer room. Meet us at the latter! CDs are out though (MirOS, FreeSBIE, etc. – only some of the other BSDs left).

Despite the crappy WLAN and no LAN availability even for booths, Benny and I managed to hack on stuff (e.g., mksh). We also made plans for a very short-term follow-up #10semel release; mostly, security updates for XFree86® and a lot of ports. (FOSDEM was great as usual, though.)

The <link rel=…> tags for RSS have been fixed. After removing and re-adding, they should work with Opera now, and the pages are XHTML/1.1 compliant again now.

Currently, pcc cannot compile anything with <stdio.h>.

MirOS @ FOSDEM 2008

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

bsiegert@ currently sits at the Early Bird beer event in Bruxelles, tg@ and gecko2@ will follow tomorrow and man the MirOS booth ☻

mirmake 20080218 released

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

mirmake-20080218 has been released. Read the release notes here.

MirOS at FOSDEM 2008

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The MirOS project will be present at FOSDEM 2008 in Bruxelles, Belgium. We will have a booth and distribute the usual CDs and flyers. The BSD projects share a developer room with PostgreSQL. I will hold a talk about "Build systems with autoconf, automake, and libtool" at Sunday, Feb 24, from 2pm to 3pm.

Update: the schedule for the developer room is available on the FOSDEM web site.

RSS feeds

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

RSS feeds (in RSS 2.0 format) are now available (again). The available feeds are news and wlog-9. link tags have also been placed, so your browser should be able to auto-detect them. If you have any problem, do not hesitate to contact me.