Geek Attitude
OpenRD console access on FreeBSD.
This morning, I received the Open-RD I bought a few days ago and started playing with my new device. One of the first thing I wanted to access was (of course) the system console. While the default setup provides a SSH daemon and even GDM and a full desktop, my goal is to have FreeBSD on this device and move the services I run at home from my personal computer to this low-consumption computer (and I don't intend to switch to GNU/Linux).
Since the console is usually available on the serial port, I looked for some cable to connect the OpenRD to my computer. Unfortunately, I didn't have the required cable. I then spent about two hour with various serial cables, cables looking like serial cables but which where not serial cables, parallel SUB-D25 connectors, a serial SUB-D25 cross-over cable and a soldering iron to build a null-modem SUB-D9 serial cable. Unfortunately, when I connected my computer to the OpenRD, I was still not able to access the console using cu(1).
After reading a bit of documentation, I realised I missed the fact that the console was available on USB and not via the serial port. However, FreeBSD did not recognised the chip the OpenRD uses to provide serial over USB support.
Using usbconfig(8), I could get the vendor ID and product ID the uftdi(4) driver was lacking. I patches the source code and a few minutes later could enjoy a set of new devices when I plug the OpenRD on my computer:
% ls /dev/cuaU* /dev/cuaU0 /dev/cuaU0.init /dev/cuaU0.lock /dev/cuaU1 /dev/cuaU1.init /dev/cuaU1.lock
I can now access the OpenRD console using cu(1):
% cu -l /dev/cuaU1 -s 115200
\o/ I can boot a FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE arm kernel!
I filled-in the usb/140951 problem report in the FreeBSD GNATS with the patch. If you own an OpenRD and want to have access to the console, the patch is just waiting for you.
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Updating FreeBSD 7 (i386) to 8 (amd64)
Goal
Update to the latest FreeBSD version, switch to 64 bit, and switch to full ZFS. In short, use the best I can have (or what is supposed to be the best I can have) on my computer.
Install an amd64 system
While cross compiling an amd64 system from i386 should be possible, I wanted to get sure that the nouveau video driver actually worked on amd64. I have so decided to install a fresh FreeBSD 8 on my system and perform a few tests before updating.
At that time, FreeBSD 8-BETA2 was just available, so I downloaded and installed it on a fresh partition created in place of the mysterious free space at the end of my hard disk:
# mkdir goinfre/FreeBSD # cd goinfre/FreeBSD # mkdir base kernels manpages # ftp -a ftp.freebsd.org ftp> cd /pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/8.0-BETA2/base ftp> lcd base ftp> mget * ftp> cd ../kernels ftp> lcd ../kernels ftp> mget * ftp> cd ../manpages ftp> lcd ../manpages ftp> mget * ftp> bye # ( cd base && DESTDIR=/goinfre sh install.sh ) # ( cd kernels && DESTDIR=/goinfre sh install.sh generic ) # mv /goinfre/boot/GENERIC /goinfre/boot/kernel # ( cd manpages && DESTDIR=/goinfre sh install.sh ) # bsdlabel -w -B -b /goinfre/boot/boot /dev/ad10s3
Since my hardware BIOS sucks when it is supposed to give up control of USB to the kernel, USB is disabled in my BIOS and I have no keyboard to choose from which slice to boot when the system starts. I have so to instruct the boot manager to boot on the third slice on next boot:
# boot0cfg -s 3 ad10
I then rebooted and setup FreeBSD 8-BETA2 networking, patched the kernel sources, checked that the nouveau video driver worked as expected, installed packages, and so on.
Setting up the disks
I basically followed instructions from the blog post Setting up a zfs-only system by Ulf Lilleengen (nanolulf), adjusting settings according to my system (4 GB swap, all available space for the ZFS partition):
# gpart delete -i 1 ad12
# gpart destroy ad12
# gpart create -s GPT ad12
# gpart add -b 34 -s 128 -t freebsd-boot ad12
# echo "4 * 1024*1024*1024 / 512" | bc
8388608
# gpart add -b 162 -s 8388608 -t freebsd-swap ad12
# gpart show ad12
=> 34 625142381 ad12 GPT (298G)
34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64K)
162 8388608 2 freebsd-swap (4.0G)
8388770 616753645 - free - (294G)
# gpart add -b 8388770 -s 616753645 -t freebsd-zfs ad12
# gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr ad12
# gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad12
Then I created the various ZFS filesystems and extracted FreeBSD 8 stable (well, still named 8.0-RC1 actually)
# zpool create data /dev/ad12p3 # zfs create data/tmp # zfs create data/usr # zfs create data/var
Installing FreeBSD 8 from sources
Since I had the right branch of the FreeBSD subversion repository checked in into the temporary FreeBSD 8 system — with local patches — I copied it to the ZFS filesystem and updated it.
# cp -R /usr/src /data/usr # cd /data/usr/src # svn up # make buildworld buildkernel # make DESTDIR=/data installworld # make DESTDIR=/data installkernel # make DESTDIR=/data distribution
I then customezed /boot/loader.conf:
cat << EOT > /data/boot/loader.conf nouveau_load=yes zfs_load=yes vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:data" EOT
Configured the swap device:
cat << EOT > /data/etc/fstab # Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass# /dev/ad12p2 none swap sw 0 0 EOT
Customised new /etc/make.conf:
cat << EOT > /data/etc/make.conf LOADER_ZFS_SUPPORT=YES EOT
Setup the network in /etc/rc.conf:
cat << EOT > /data/etc/rc.conf # This file now contains just the overrides from /etc/defaults/rc.conf. # Please make all changes to this file, not to /etc/defaults/rc.conf. # Enable network daemons for user convenience. ifconfig_rl0="inet 192.168.63.42 netmask 255.255.255.0" defaultrouter="192.168.63.1" hostname="marvin.blogreen.org" named_enable="YES" # asterisk_enable="YES" # dbus_enable="YES" # hald_enable="YES" # gdm_enable="YES" # gdm_lang="fr_FR.UTF-8" EOT
I finally finished the ZFS setup:
# zfs export data && zfs import data # cp /boot/zfs/zpool.cache /data/boot/zfs # zfs set mountpoint=legacy data # zfs set mountpoint=/usr data/usr # zfs set mountpoint=/var data/var # zpool set bootfs=data data
I then booted the fresh install from ZFS and finished the system configuration:
# passwd # tzsetup # adduser
Mirroring data
Since I have two identical disks on my system and wanted to have some kind of redundancy for a while, I set-up the second disk as a mirror of the first one.
First, I prepared the old disk so it has the same structure as the new with the ZFS filesystem:
# gpart show ad10
=> 63 625142385 ad10 MBR (298G)
63 104856192 1 freebsd (50G)
104856255 419425020 2 freebsd (200G)
524281275 100856070 3 freebsd (48G)
625137345 5103 - free - (2.5M)
# gpart delete -i 1 ad10
# gpart delete -i 2 ad10
# gpart delete -i 3 ad10
# gpart destroy ad10
# gpart create -s GPT ad10
# gpart add -b 34 -s 128 -t freebsd-boot ad10
# gpart add -b 162 -s 8388608 -t freebsd-swap ad10
# gpart show ad10
=> 34 625142381 ad10 GPT (298G)
34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64K)
162 8388608 2 freebsd-swap (4.0G)
8388770 616753645 - free - (294G)
# gpart add -b 8388770 -s 616753645 -t freebsd-zfs ad10
# gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr ad10
# gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad10
I added my new 4 Gib swap to /etc/fstab and enabled it:
# echo "/dev/ad10p2 none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab # swapon /dev/ad10p2
I could then tell ZFS to mirror ad10p3 and ad12p3:
# zpool attach data ad12p3 ad10p3 # zpool status pool: data state: ONLINE status: One or more devices is currently being resilvered. The pool will continue to function, possibly in a degraded state. action: Wait for the resilver to complete. scrub: resilver in progress for 0h2m, 0.35% done, 13h33m to go config: NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM data ONLINE 0 0 0 mirror ONLINE 0 0 0 ad12p3 ONLINE 0 0 0 44.6M resilvered ad10p3 ONLINE 0 0 0 754M resilvered errors: No known data errors
The nice part is of course that you can continue to use the system while you are doing all this!
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April!
After waiting and turning impatient, that's it!
TypeMatrix skins are available!
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March
Last month, I wrote to the TypeMatrix guys asking for skins availability. They hopped to have some by February, unfortunatelly, no TypeMatrix skins are available yet 
.
While the keyboard I am working with has an interesting background, and I really love it in some way, I am quite hurried to change it because is has some electronics problems and from time to time, I have to twist the PS2 cable to be able to type-in again or stop the keyboard from sending endlessly the same characterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
February!
Tadaaam!
According to the answer I got for an e-mail sent earlier this year to the guys at TypeMatrix, the TypeMatrix 2030 skins will be available this month:
On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Romain Tartière wrote: > Hi! > > 2030 is available again ! Great! But I can't find the skins in the shop. I > would be interested in a Dvorak keyboard with a black qwerty skin. How to > proceed ? May I pre-order a dvorak keyboard now ? > > Thank you! Romain -- Yes, we are back! but the skins are not yet available. We are working on them now and hope to have some by February. Check back with us then! The Dvorak-labeled keyboards are due to arrive this week, so we will have all three keyboards ready for shipping out: Qwerty, Dvorak, blank.
I'm impatient!
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Why you should not use old-style PGP encrypted / signed messages
Just received another mail signed in the the old-style way:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----Hash: SHA1
Hello, [...] Cordialement - --
[...] Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » - [...] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org sDJOSYR9U4W6YR8d794Y5f0296J0Fg9847ED904h780592347dJ5F924e3UoiY58 reptup34eo8t9568gdfg8spf2dgj3Fdf =iDPk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
First, it is really painful since a lot a junk prevent the mail from being read easily:
- There are separators for different parts of the PGP signed message , and
; - The first line of the
message
is not part of the message; - Lines starting with a dash have
prepended to them. As a consequence, the signature is not a signature anymore-; - The message ends with data that is definitively intended to be read by a program .
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Downgrading to the last stable GNOME version
I decided to stop tracking the development version of GNOME and revert to the stable version available through the FreeBSD ports tree. I wanted to avoid dropping every single package and re-installing everything but the system from scratch, so I tried to handle too-much up-to-date packages and update them to the last stable version (ie. with a lower version number).
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[patch] Opening the fridge from the right side
Most of the time, you open(2) a fridge device on the left side. Most fridge implementation ./configure scripts however support a --open-from-the-right-side switch so that you compile a device that fits your environ(7).
You, bash users, are driving me crazy!
This is a visceral message with a lot of emotion (I mean I am not thinking before writing) so I will exceptionally use my big voice:
WILL YOU EVER BASH SCRIPTS WRITERS STOP THIS INSANE MESS WITH THIS SHELL?
Details bellow... with some words in capital letters as proposed by [RFC2119].
Raid-1 using gmirror(8)
When configuring Astase development server, I set up software mirroring using FreeBSD gmirror. This is much more a memo than a technical note, but I decided to blog about it anyway.
In this post, the disk where FreeBSD was installed is ad4 and will be referred as the first disk, while the disk that we will configure for mirroring is ad6 and will be referred as the second disk. FreeBSD is installed on the second slice of the disk using the default partition scheme.
Both disks have been sliced the same way when installing using sysinstall(8). It would of course have been possible to use fdisk(8) to do this. If both disks are identical, the quick way of doing this is to copy the slice table:
# fdisk -p ad4 > /tmp/slices # fdisk -f /tmp/slices ad6