sábado, 30 de agosto de 2008

Firefox Gets Massive JavaScript Performance Boost

"Mozilla has integrated tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter in Firefox. This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by a factor of 20 to 40 in certain contexts."

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FreeBSD: How To Add A Second Hard Disk

"There are two ways to install a new hard disk under FreeBSD system. You can use all command line utilities such as fdisk,bsdlabel and newfs to create partitions, label and format it. This method requires complete understanding of BSD partitions and other stuff."

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gmirror - recovering from a failed HDD

I like RAID. On my development server, I use both hardware and software RAID. For hardware RAID on FreeBSD, I like 3Ware. For software RAID, I tend to use gmirror, because I don't need more than RAID-1.

Some time ago I added two 120GB HDD to this system. One was SATA, one was PATA. They were joined together via gmirror. Tonight I received some errors that one of the drives was failing. I replaced the drive, and recovered the mirror. I'll show you what I did, mostly so I know what to do the next time it happens, but also so you can see what to do as well.

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Firebug 1.2 Released

Firebug, the latest version of the indispensable debugging utility for Firefox, has released version 1.2 of the plugin for Firefox 3.0.

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PC-BSD 7 Beta 1 Available for Download

"The PC BSD has declared the new first beta version PC BSD-7 with the advance features, is now available to you. PC BSD is a operating system lined up with additional features based on freeBSD, popular KDE 4.1 environment ,easy to use for new users, can install your favorite application with setup wizard from CD and DVD media and also support the audio, video and office documents."

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miércoles, 27 de agosto de 2008

Network-Attached Storage on the Cheap

I discussed in an earlier column using Microsoft's $180 Windows Home Server to turn an old PC into a media-streaming, backup-friendly server. "Great idea," wrote many a reader, "but too pricey." For those penny-pinchers, I suggest FreeNAS.

Based on the FreeBSD operating system (a Unix derivative), FreeNAS is a server operating system that offers lots of features, a very small footprint, and a can't-beat-it price (it's free). Developed by an open-source community, it is constantly evolving (with even nightly builds).

FreeNAS is more complicated to install and use than Microsoft's more feature-rich product, but people willing to navigate the sometimes confusing installation routine are rewarded with a robust network-attached storage device.

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Java Installable Packages Now Available

"The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of the Java JDK and JRE 6.0 binary installable packages for FreeBSD 6.x and 7.x on the i386 and amd64 architectures! The binaries are available at http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/downloads/java.shtml.

We would like to thank Kurt Miller for his hard work on this project. We would also like to thank Greg Lewis and Jung-uk Kim from the FreeBSD Java Project for their help and support."

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lunes, 25 de agosto de 2008

Interview with Kris Moore, PC-BSD lead developer

The so-called "distribution for the average Joe" market has been expanding at a rapid pace in recent years. While the vast majority of these projects is invariably based on Linux, we have also witnessed a few attempts to create a user-friendly "distribution" based on operating systems that traditionally belonged to the hacker's domain, notably FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. One of them is PC-BSD, a project launched in 2005. Its main goal? To hide the complexity of FreeBSD and to deliver an alternative to Linux on the desktop. Its main claim to fame? The web-based software installation infrastructure called PBI. Its community? Over 8,000 registered forum members and a growing network of world-wide community sites. All this thanks to the original vision and undying conviction of Kris Moore, the founder and lead developer of PC-BSD.

Kris was kind enough to answer a few questions about his beginnings with FreeBSD and the forthcoming release of PC-BSD 7.0.

sábado, 23 de agosto de 2008

BSD Magazine - Issue 2

The second issue of the BSD Magazine (September 2008) is out now.

More than 60 pages full of news, great articles, tutorials, how-tos and extras.

Call for proposals of requirements for a complete support of Phar archives in Eclipse PDT

As PHP 5.3 is marching towards the final release, Eclipse PDT's next version needs to support its new features. Two major additions to PHP 5.3 are namespaces and bundling the Phar extension. Especially used in combination, libraries could/should be distributed like Jars in the Java world.

The Phar extension provides a way to put entire PHP libraries or applications into a single file called a "Phar" (PHP Archive) for easy distribution and installation. Phar archives are best characterized as a convenient way to group several files into a single file. As such, a Phar archive provides a way to distribute a complete PHP library or application in a single file and run it from that file without the need to extract it to disk. Additionally, Phar archives can be executed by PHP as easily as any other file, both on the command line and from a web server. Phar is kind of like a thumb drive for PHP applications.

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FreeBSD flash player

"According to Alex Bustin, an engineer of Flash development at Sony, there’s a 32-bit Flash player for FreeBSD.

I know that iXsystems, the corporate sponsor behind the PC-BSD project, is talking to/collaborating with Adobe on a FreeBSD version of Flash, but it would be great if this report is true."

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Bordeaux for FreeBSD coming soon

Over the last couple day's I have been working on the Bordeaux for FreeBSD 7 port. We now have everything compiling and running but a lot more testing needs to be done before it's ready for a final release. Internet Explorer, Steam and Office 2003 are the only applications ive gotten around to testing thus far. The good news is everything that I have tested works fairly well on FreeBSD.

If you're a FreeBSD user and need to run any of the software that we currently support on the Linux client you might be interested in helping beta test this build and future builds up to the final stable release.


Setting Up Squid on FreeBSD

Squid is web caching and conserving badwidth application. With Squid, we will reduce the traffic 30% or more from normal usage (without squid) and enhance respone time. In here, i will use squid 2.7.STABLE3.

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How to install Ruby on Rails on FreeBSD

One of the development frameworks that grows most these days is Ruby on Rails, a framework to develop agile applications on the web using the object-oriented Ruby language.


In this tutorial you'll learn how to install Ruby on Rails with MySQL on FreeBSD. You need to have your ports up-to-date.

FreeBSD: Upcoming Releases Schedule...

We're about to start the release cycle for FreeBSD-7.1 and FreeBSD-6.4. The proposed schedule for the "major events" of the cycle is:

Freeze         August 29
BETA          September 1
Branch        September 6
6.4-RC1       September 8
7.1-RC1       September 15
6.4-RC2       September 22
7.1-RC2       September 29
6.4-REL       October 6
7.1-REL       October 13


I haven't posted the schedule on the Web site yet, I'll try to get that done over the weekend.

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Software RAID1 on FreeBSD

Since 5.3-Release, FreeBSD has gmirror utility, which allows you create software RAID1. So if you have some low-end server and you need some redundancy - gmirror is right choice.


RAID1 creation process is _very simple_ and completely described in gmirror(8) man page, but i will post small how-to here.

jueves, 21 de agosto de 2008

Take a closer look at OpenBSD 4.3

OpenBSD provides a UNIX® distribution with a primary emphasis on security and cryptography. If you're looking for a UNIX distribution to deploy in the most critical nexus in your network infrastructure, look no further than OpenBSD. The recent release of OpenBSD—version 4.3—includes several new features and bug fixes that this article reviews.

How to resize ZFS in FreeNAS

One of the frequently asked questions regarding ZFS. Is it possible to resize a RAIDZ, RAIDZ2 or MIRRORED ZPOOL?

The answer is a littlebit complicated...
If you want to change the 'geometry' of the ZPOOL (for example: change from a mirrored pool to a raidz, or simply add a disk to a raidz, or change from raidz to raidz2) then the answer is no.

But it is possible to change the disks of a pool with bigger ones and use the space.

Here is what I've tested with a FreeNAS 0.7 (rev 3514) installed as a Virtual Machine.


viernes, 15 de agosto de 2008

VNStat On FreeBSD 7 With A PHP GUI

I installed VNStat and the PHP GUI to be able to view basic information regarding incoming and outgoing traffic per interface. I am using FreeBSD 7 with PHP4, as I had problems setting the GUI up with PHP5.


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Preview of ZFS on FreeNAS 0.7 Server Video on YouTube

I have created a new FreeNAS tutorial video previewing ZFS on FreeNAS 0.7. It has been uploaded to YouTube.


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PartedMagic: An Open Source Alternative for Partition Editing

"If you want to add space to a drive, store personal data on a separate partition from your operating system, or run multiple operating systems from the same hard drive, then you need a partition editor.

Traditionally, this is a field where alternative operating systems have always lead in the available tools. PartitionMagic, the first partition editor, started life as an OS/2 program for users who wanted to dual boot, and GNU Parted brought partition editing to the GNU/Linux command line in 1999. Since then, various interfaces -- most notably, GParted -- have tried to bring GNU Parted's functionality to the desktop.

However, from what I've seen, by far the most successful of these efforts is the newly released PartedMagic version 3.0. The name suggests that PartedMagic is meant as a free alternative to proprietary tools like PartitionMagic -- a goal in which it easily succeeds, despite a mildly eccentric desktop."

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jueves, 14 de agosto de 2008

FreeBSD KDE 4.1 packages available

"The FreeBSD packages for KDE4.1 are now available on the FreeBSD FTP servers. If you don’t want to build from source you can now use these packages to quickly install a KDE 4.1.0 desktop."

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lunes, 11 de agosto de 2008

Home Adding Greylisting To A FreeBSD Postfix Mail Server

This article is based around FreeBSD, it is not much different to get greylisting working on other systems with minimal of changes.

Accessing IPhone 3G with FreeBSD

This post show you how to make FreeBSD recognize your iPhone as a camera device, so that you can download the photos taken with your iPhone to a FreeBSD host.

domingo, 3 de agosto de 2008

List of Firebug Extensions

"Have you ever been interested in what extensions are available for Firebug? If yes, take a look at what I have found".

Upcoming features in PHP 5.3

"PHP 5.3 alpha1 just got released yesterday, and I thought this might be a good time to list some of the new things that are coming, and how it could benefit you. Even though its a minor release, a lot of new features made it in and from a marketing standpoint it should have really been 6.0, if you'd ask me."

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viernes, 1 de agosto de 2008

Adobe AMF Support in Zend Framework

"This ZF component will allow for client-side applications built with Flex and Adobe AIR to communicate easily and efficiently with PHP on the server-side."

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Setting up FAMP on FreeBSD

Setting up a LAMP server is a common task for systems administrators, and FreeBSD is one of the most reliable and stable operating systems available. You can swap out the L in LAMP with F for FreeBSD to build a fast and reliable Web server.

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PHP 5.3 alpha1 released!

The PHP development team is proud to announce the first alpha release (Windows binaries will appear in the next few days) of the upcoming minor version update of PHP. The new version PHP 5.3 is expected to improve stability and performance as well as add new language syntax and extensions. Several new features have already been documented in the official documentation, others are listed on the wiki in preparation of getting documented. Please also review the NEWS file.

There have been a great number of other additions and improvements, but here is a short overview of the most important changes:

* Namespaces (documentation maybe out dated)

* Late static binding and __callStatic

* Lambda functions and closures

* Addition of the intl, phar (phar is scheduled for some more work a head of
alpha2), fileinfo and sqlite3 extensions

* Optional cyclic garbage collection

* Optional support for the MySQLnd replacement driver for libmysql

* Windows older than Windows 2000 (Windows 98, NT4, etc.) are not supported anymore
(details)

* New syntax features like NOWDOC, limited GOTO, ternary short cut "?:"

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NetBSD adds metadata journaling support to FFS

Simon Burge has just added metadata journaling to the FFS (fast file system) code to NetBSD-current.

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