The MirBSD Korn Shell R39b has been released. This upgrade is strongly recommended for everyone. While being a stable series release there are, due to standards compliance and bug fixes, a number of caveats users should be aware of when upgrading; these shall be documented on the webpage RSN. (In fact I simply do not have the time to do so now, but will do it later.)

Beware, the Objective-C and C++ header files (includes) will, as the libraries have already, move to compiler-specific directories, so that llvm-gcc4.2 and gcc-4.4.2 can use their own ones exclusively, and Clang will get a wrapper asking its CCLD which ones it prefers.

I have compiled a new snapshot (i386 only) and uploaded the following flavours: MirOS bsd4grml, MirOS bsd4me-current (Live OS), MirBSD-current netboot (NetInstall for i386), the Midi-ISO (bi-arch manifold NetInstall), and the checksums.

The /MirOS/current/older/ subdirectory containing partial and incremental upgrades for older MirBSD-current snapshots is gone for now. The 20091115 (i386) snapshot is a security upgrade (contains the OpenSSL panic patch in its second version), bugfix (all errata mentioned in the “wtf ist hallowe’en” announcement are fixed if applicable), and feature upgrade: the installer and first boot recognise a Simtec Entropy Key if plugged in (for the installer, break into a shell and run /usr/libexec/ekeyrng if plugging it in later) for increased entropy generation; after first-time installation and reboot, the user is supposed to install ports/security/ekeyd and use that (for which there are binary packages as well).

The MirOS Project’s servers are or will be upgraded as well; please bear in mind this implies short outages of service. Furthermore, due to the TLS protocol design error, some things may not work any more, since we applied the OpenSSL “panic patch”, which disables all renegotiation, but allows applications to re-enable it, if they knew about that possibility at compile time, by setting a run-time flag before initiating the connection. (None we know of does, though.)

Gee...  I don’t know what “hallowe’en” means…

Does this match what you’re thinking? Well, there is a new MirOS snapshot, with several components, (as usual) out on BitTorrent. It was also distributed on CDs at OpenRheinRuhr 2009, and will be (by formorer) at 26C3 in Berlin.

This is the combination of an ISO 9660 filesystem image with the “Samhain” edition of MirBSD and the “Hello, Wien!” edition of grml GNU/Linux, Triforce (as usual), and the „Allerheiligen“ CVS snapshot. And a tribute to UF.

Update 01.11. – This is tagged 「event」 because I intend on distributing this snapshot on CDs at OpenRheinRuhr next weekend, and maybe Benny on bootable tapes at 26C3…

MirGRML 2009.10 is based on grml-small 2009.10-rc3 and contains a couple more programmes, and, as usual, is fitted to match the rest of The MirOS Project’s offers, for instance by not using a framebuffer by default, having mksh as login shell, etc.
This time, all (required) source code is available either from our CVS or from sources.grml.org.

The Squash-and-Steffl background comes from Christoph Prokop, and was used in our desktop wallpaper with permission from Mika.

Update 01.11. – The GRUB2 「memtest86+」 bootmenu option does not work because nobody told the Grml team that it must now be booted with 「linux16」 ipv 「linux」 – fix is to type ‘e’ to edit the entry, move right, type the “16” and hit ^X to boot.

Note: This is “MirGRML”, a mini-Grml coming with MirBSD. There is also “MirOS bsd4grml”, a mini-MirBSD coming with Grml. This should clear up any possible confusion. (This snapshot contains a full MirOS BSD, i386 and sparc, no MirOS bsd4grml, plus MirGRML, but no Grml. The Grml 2009.10 release contains a full/medium/small Grml, no MirGRML, plus MirOS bsd4grml (the small one).

MirOS BSD, both i486 and sparc architectures. Most recent snapshot, compiled 2009-10-30, with an updated kernel for a security fix from 2009-10-31 we urge people to upgrade to, even if running older versions. Hence, MirOS-current snapshots are now recommended over MirOS #10-RELEASE, updates for which we have been unable to provide regularily due to lack of time. (Sorry.) This snapshot could have been released as MirOS #11 if it were not for our release plans (so please consider it a new stable release, albeit one without intentions to release binary incremental security updates, but then, we can’t do so for #10 either, so you still win).

MirBSD/i386 is called MirOS BSD/i486 above. We might produce a MirOS BSD/i386 platform with user-space soft-float (like ARM), for a SoC device, if we want and have the time to play with such platforms. What is currently MirBSD/i386 requires an Intel 80486DX or compatible, such as a Cyrix 80486DLC (the one in nwt, see my wlog entries for details). Neither 80386 compatibles nor FPU-less systems will work with this release.
MirBSD/sparc is still compiled for v8 CPUs, with optimisation for HyperSPARC turned on. It is possible to compile your own variant for a v7 CPU (sun4 or sun4c system), though.

This Live CD comes with IceWM, Dillo 2 and a couple of other tools installed and partially preconfigured (you can even run MirBSD inside MirBSD, as qemu is shipped). Enjoy!

Update 02.11. – The /etc/rc shipped breaks pflogd(8) and hence spamlogd(8) – part of the spamd(8) suite – please update this file from the etc10.ngz set manually to cvs(1) revision 1.107 if you are running a spamfilter scenario. Our apologies.

Update 08.11. – Append the following line: CHARACTER_SET:utf-8 to /etc/lynx.cfg or re-enable locale-based charset setting.

Once this release is done, I will create a cpio-with-crc-ball of the CVS repository again, for initial extraction purposes, to speed up an rsync mirror process. It will be available from our usual web mirrors. (Link)

You can also pull /cvs directly, and /MirOS and /Pkgs. We plan to make all distfiles used to build MirPorts packages available as well, but currently lack disc space on some of the boxen involved (they are still usually available from the original mirrors, as well as on request directly from bsiegert@/tg@, plus we fully intend on making binary packages the viable option).

Due to a bug mksh fixed after inheriting it from pdksh via OpenBSD ksh (oksh), which probably got it from AT&T ksh88 (ksh93 exhibits the correct behaviour, as does posh), coupled with the unfortunate lines

	CC=${CC:Q} ${MKDEP_SH} -a ${MKDEP} ${CFLAGS:M-[ID]*} \
	    ${CPPFLAGS} $$files; \

in <bsd.dep.mk, where ${MKDEP} can be the mkdep(1) option -p as well as additional CPPFLAGS like -I... (which I actually found in our tree), you absolutely must upgrade your MirMake package, as well as mkdep(1) in the base system, before upgrading to mksh-20091015 or newer. (Note that R40, which will carry the breaking fix, has not been released yet, but FreeWRT uses an mksh-current snapshot bearing it with still major 39 enacted.) It is actually pretty hard to work around, see the mkdep source code for details. There are basically two things to take care of:

• For each x in getopts "...x..." c, make sure you not only case (x) ... ;; but also either case (+x) ... ;; or have a (*) ... ;; default trailing block, because mksh(1) getopts will also catch foo -x +y -z sanely. This is, in contrast to oksh, not disablable with a shell option.
• If you case (\?) cmds ;; (either explicitly or via a default block), special rules apply: if you do anything other than exiting from there (e.g. via usage), $OPTIND will differ: newer shells count this option, olders don't.

The new distfile {RMD160 (/MirOS/dist/mir/make/mirmake-20091020.cpio.gz) = b9ac1258bc66b3d0d63537cc82d02c91408d1ba8} has been uploaded for your convenience already and will be integrated (after testing) into both The MirPorts Framework and FreeWRT as soon as we get to it, probably tomorrow.