NetBSD AGM2025 details, valuable UNIX/BSD updates, and optimizing TCP input in OpenBSD and more.
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News
NetBSD AGM2025: Annual General Meeting Announcement: The NetBSD Foundation will host its 2025 Annual General Meeting on May 17 at 21:00 UTC in the #netbsd-agm channel on irc.libera.chat. The event includes presentations on NetBSD’s technical direction, project servers, publicity, and a Q&A session. Attendees can join via their preferred IRC client or directly through the provided link. A full transcript will be available for those unable to attend. Time zone details are provided for global participation.
Valuable News – 2025/04/21: The “Valuable News” weekly series provides a curated summary of news, articles, and insights primarily focused on UNIX/BSD/Linux systems. This edition highlights key updates such as FreeBSD 15.0 release details, new tools for system administrators, and discussions on hardware and open-source projects.
Optimizing TCP Input in Parallel: Measured Performance Improvements: Alexander Bluhm has proposed a patch to enhance parallel TCP input efficiency in OpenBSD by optimizing socket locking mechanisms. The patch introduces a TCP input queue to reduce lock contention, resulting in a 5% increase in single-stream throughput and a 160% boost in multi-stream performance. Bluhm’s tests demonstrate the benefits of batch processing locked sockets, with detailed performance graphs available for review. Feedback from testers is welcome to further validate these improvements.
BSD Now 607: Sign Git Commits with SSH Keys and BSD Updates: This episode of BSD Now covers essential topics for BSD users, including improving libzfs, effective storage performance benchmarks, and debugging pf firewall rules on FreeBSD. It also discusses OpenBSD’s Thunderbolt issue on ThinkPad T480s, signing Git commits with SSH keys, and the rising popularity of LibreOffice. Additional insights include tools like pgrep and community feedback on bhyve and NVME. A must-listen for BSD enthusiasts and developers.
ZFS Log Compression on FreeBSD: System logs in FreeBSD are managed by syslog and stored in /var/log/, with log rotation handled by newsyslog. ZFS offers efficient data compression, automatically compressing and decompressing log files. To optimize log storage, ZFS compression can replace traditional syslog compression by configuring newsyslog and syslog settings. This approach simplifies log management, improves compression ratios, and saves storage space while maintaining easy access to log data.
Tutorials
KDE on GhostBSD: Someone recently complained that there wasn’t a KDE version of GhostBSD - well, no there isn’t, but it is very easy to install it on GhostBSD, so here is a quick guide.
Hosting a Blog on a Nintendo Wii using NetBSD: The blog post describes the process of hosting a blog on a Nintendo Wii using NetBSD. The author details the steps taken to set up the Wii, install NetBSD, and configure it to serve a static website using the lighttpd web server. Challenges such as performance constraints and resource management are addressed, including optimizing TLS encryption and monitoring system status. The author concludes that the experiment was successful and cost-effective, highlighting the unique and educational aspects of the project.
Create a Personal Blog with NetBSD on a €1 VPS: Efficient and Secure: This tutorial guides you through creating a personal blog using NetBSD and a €1 VPS. NetBSD is highlighted for its stability, efficiency, and reliability, making it ideal for low-cost, high-performance setups. The guide covers the installation of NetBSD, configuring a minimalistic blog with BSSG, and deploying it using different web servers like bozohttpd, nginx, and Caddy. Performance benchmarks demonstrate the efficiency of NetBSD and nginx, achieving up to 1400-1500 requests per second. This setup offers full control, security, and a cost-effective solution for hosting a personal blog.
Setting FreeBSD Time AFTER install: A quick video which is about time on how to adjust your timezone and system time POST install.
Why AI Can’t Be Trusted for ZFS Tuning: The article explains why relying on AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) for tuning ZFS can lead to misleading and potentially harmful configuration advice. Real-world tests reveal that AI often provides outdated, incorrect, or incomplete recommendations due to its reliance on statistical models and training data. ZFS, a complex file system with numerous adjustable parameters, requires a deep understanding of its parameters and their interactions, which AI cannot consistently provide. The article highlights several examples where AI gave inaccurate advice about ZFS parameters, emphasizing the risks of trusting AI for critical system configurations. Instead, it recommends consulting experienced engineers or upstream contributors for reliable ZFS tuning and support.
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