While compiling a custom kernel for FreeBSD/amd64 base/head r264077, I began wondering how old is the oldest source file, how young is the youngest? This is the command I devised: The oldest source files are: The youngest source file is: That’s a span of about 10.815 years.

Read More → Youngest and oldest source file in FreeBSD base/head

My advice is to switch careers from programming to ditch digging (where at least at the end of the day you will know you did something). From: George V. Neville-Neil. 2014. This is the foo field. Commun. ACM 57, 4 (April 2014), 30-31. DOI=10.1145/2580942 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2580942.

Read More → Career advice

I grew tired of handholding portupgrade because of the latter’s inability to handle new dependencies. The script below is the result of my frustration. The script is available for downloading at http://ximalas.info/~trond/create-zfs/canmount/upgrade-outdated-ports.sh.

Read More → Coping with portupgrade’s inability to handle new dependencies

While pondering why darkstat all of a sudden shows corrupted timestamps when running on FreeBSD/amd64 stable/9, I wrote a small program to decode the export format. The program is available using svn co svn://svn.ximalas.info/darkstattype or http://svnweb.ximalas.info/darkstattype/. The license is the 2-clause BSD license.

Read More → Decoding darkstat’s export format

I’m probably not paying enough attention to new developments in FreeBSD after all. After updating the installed ports in my VMs running base/head and base/stable/10, X11 stopped working. It turns out the new version of X.org requires KMS and what not in the kernel. This doesn’t fare well with VMs running inside VirtualBox. The solution? […]

Read More → WITHOUT_NEW_XORG=yes → true

If you’re like me, eager to test new stuff in FreeBSD, you might as well run a virtualized FreeBSD laboratory on your desktop. I use Oracle VirtualBox, but you might as well use Microsoft Hyper-V, real hardware, or some other contraption. Couple this with ZFS and boot environments, and you’re even able to rapidly revert […]

Read More → Your own virtualized desktop FreeBSD lab

Update 2015-01-05: I was more or less forced to adopt VT, UTF-8, KMS, and DRM2 when I upgraded my laptop from stable/9 to stable/10 in the time between Christmas of 2014 and New Year of 2015. My laptop, a Dell Latitude D531 of mid-2007 design, is equipped with the AMD/ATI Radeon X1270 GPU. What an […]

Read More → FreeBSD VT aka newcons in base/head