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Links 18/02/2023: FreeBSD 13.2 Beta 2



  • GNU/Linux

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • BSD

      • FreeBSDFreeBSD 13.2-BETA2 Now Available
        The second BETA build of the 13.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available.
        
        

        Installation images are available for:

        o 13.2-BETA2 amd64 GENERIC o 13.2-BETA2 i386 GENERIC o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc GENERIC o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc64 GENERIC64 o 13.2-BETA2 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE o 13.2-BETA2 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE o 13.2-BETA2 armv6 RPI-B o 13.2-BETA2 armv7 GENERICSD o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 GENERIC o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 RPI o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINE64 o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINE64-LTS o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 PINEBOOK o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 ROCK64 o 13.2-BETA2 aarch64 ROCKPRO64 o 13.2-BETA2 riscv64 GENERIC o 13.2-BETA2 riscv64 GENERICSD

        Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access. Additionally, the root user password is set to root. It is strongly recommended to change the password for both users after gaining access to the system.

        Installer images and memory stick images are available here:

        https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.2/

        The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.

        If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list.

        If you would like to use Git to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/13.2" branch.

        A summary of changes since 13.2-BETA1 includes:

        o OpenSSH has been updated to version 9.2p1.

        o The ahci(4) timeout on Marvell 88SE9230 has been increased.

        o A bug fix to [hash]sum -c.

        A list of changes since 13.1 is available in the releng/13.2 release notes:

        https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.2R/relnotes/

        Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 13.2-RELEASE cycle progresses.

        === Virtual Machine Disk Images ===

        VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64 architectures. Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL (or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):

        https://download.freebsd.org/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.2-BETA2/

        BASIC-CI images can be found at:

        https://download.freebsd.org/releases/CI-IMAGES/13.2-BETA2/

        The partition layout is:

        ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label) ~ 1 GB - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label) ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

        The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats. The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.

        Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the virtual machine images. See this page for more information:

        https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU

        To boot the VM image, run:

        % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt \ -bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \ -drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \ -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \ -device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \ -netdev user,id=net0

        Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.
    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • SJVNCanonical announces the general availability of Real-Time Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS

        Most of you know Ubuntu as a desktop operating system; others know it as an outstanding server Linux; or as a popular cloud OS. But Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, is also a serious Internet of Things (IoT) player. And after years of work, IoT release, Ubuntu Core 22.04, Canonical is offering a true real-time operating system.

        A real-time operating system is one that's fast enough that it can guarantee a reaction to data within a tight, real-world deadline. Typically, real-time computing delivers results from microseconds (one-millionth of a second) to milliseconds (one-thousandth of a second). Real-time applications that take things down to microsecond latency include stock market high-frequency trading (HFT) applications. The much more common millisecond real-time processing is used in banking and telecom applications, digital ad networks, and self-driving cars. Us? People? We have average reaction times of around 250 milliseconds.

        According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's CEO, "The real-time Ubuntu kernel delivers industrial-grade performance and resilience for software-defined manufacturing, monitoring, and operational tech."

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • ArduinoAll aboard the java train!

        These days, everyone seems to turn to robots for automating tasks in the physical world. But robots are often clumsy and unreliable — not to mention expensive.

      • Tom's HardwarePolish Raspberry Pi Clone Sports M.2 Socket, Real-Time Clock | Tom's Hardware

        Though the situation is improving, it can still be difficult to find a Raspberry Pi in stock. Meanwhile, companies from around the world continue to offer their own alternatives to the world's most popular single-board computer. A product of Polish Electronics Maker EVEO, the Urve Board Pi (opens in new tab) has identical dimensions and a nearly-identical layout to the Raspberry Pi 3B / 3B+ but throws in unique features such as an M.2 SSD port, a real-time clock and a power-over-Ethernet (PoE) connector.

        Available now for the equivalent of $90 (opens in new tab)on Polish web store TEM, the Urve Board Pi has an all-white PC PCB that's the same 85 x 56 mm size as the Pi 3B and it has pretty-much the same ports in the same locations so it should fit into a case that would accept a Pi 3B / 3B+.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Leftovers

    • Copenhagen PostStress Wärnings: Be aware of your resources

      Stress occurs when there is a perceived imbalance between demands and resources. It is therefore important to address stressors, perception and resources when dealing with stress, as often the importance of resources is overlooked.€  Resources are keyResources are the aspects

    • Ben CongdonOn Prompt Engineering
    • teleSURStrikes Bring Air Traffic To Standstill in Germany

      Around 2,340 flights were to be canceled, affecting almost 300,000 passengers, said the German Airports Association.

    • Off GuardianParanoia: Is it Always a Bad Thing?

      Todd Hayen “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Kurt Cobain What is paranoia? Usually the condition is coupled with another mental malady: schizophrenia, due to the psychosis brought about by that particular mental illness.

    • Off GuardianVirtue and Terror: How the New Normal was Created

      Simon Elmer “If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the mainspring of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but swift, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

    • France24‘No doctors, no clinics near them’: French and Turkish medics visit Turkey’s rural areas

      Turkey's hospitals are full of€ patients€ injured in the earthquakes, and many of the millions left homeless in the cities have left for rural areas to find refuge with relatives, making it harder for sick people to find medical assistance. A group of Turkish and French paramedics has been travelling to rural areas to respond to this need. FRANCE 24's Thameen Al-Kheetan, Julien Chehida and Brice Agier-Grégoire accompanied the team on a visit to a village near Adiyaman.

    • France24Turkey-Syria death toll tops 45,000; three found alive 13 days after quakes

      More than 45,000 people have been killed in the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, and the toll is expected to soar with some 264,000 apartments in Turkey destroyed and many still missing in the country's worst modern disaster.

    • Tedium Old Archives, New Controversy

      The New York Times has the most robust online archives of any newspaper, but it’s proving difficult to square their handling of a recent controversy with the quality of those archives.

    • Computers Are BadSomething up there pt II

      As we discussed previously, the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017: the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to very little. I believe the termination of the AATIP (which lead to the creation of TTSA) to be a result of the AATIP's failure to address the DoD's actual concern: that UAP represented a threat to airspace sovereignty.

      I just used a lot of four- and five-letter acronyms without explaining them. These topics were all discussed in the previous post and if you are not familiar with them I would encourage you to read it. Still, I will try to knock it off. Besides, now there is a new set of four- and five-letter acronyms. The end of the AATIP was not the end of the DoD's efforts to investigate UAP. Instead, military UAP research was reorganized, first into Naval intelligence as the UAP Task Force, and later in the cross-branch military intelligence All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO.

      It is unclear exactly what the AARO has accomplished. As a military intelligence organization, the DoD will not comment on it. Most of what we know comes from legislators briefed on the program, like Sen. Gillibrand and Sen. Rubio. In various interviews and statements, they have said that AARO's work is underway but hampered by underfunding---underfunding that is, embarrassingly, a result of some kind of technical error in defense appropriation.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • More Fountain Pens

        Well fountain pen madness continues. I have acquired another teeny tiny pen - a Kaweco Liliput. This is a similar size to the Ohto Tasche but in a more attractive package. There is some 3 to 5 mm difference. I ended up getting a black aluminium version of the Liliput, mostly down to cost and worry about how well it writes. There are lots of warnings about bad nibs. It cost around $45. The steel and brass versions are closer to $100. The design of theLiliput is essentially a tube with rounded edges.

      • SMILE: Progress and collapse

        While we are accelerating towards a crash due to unsustainable consumption, there are still believers in progress. The singularity is near, we are told. Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension – summarised in the catchy formula SMI€²LE – was LSD guru Timothy Leary's vision already in the early 1970's. General AI might reach a point where it becomes capable of improving itself and, at that point, we're done; the all-mighty AI will start making paper clips in enormous quantities and will be unstoppable, unless it comes up with something even worse. Already, automation and AI have seriously reshaped the labour market, increased wage gaps between skilled and unskilled workers, and is about to make some previous professions obsolete. Designers and illustrators might feel somewhat threatened by generative art, now that anyone can produce images from a text prompt. Contemporary artists hardly worry, for them generative art is just another opportunity to be explored.

    • Technical

      • Messing with pkg_info and ditching password-store

        This week has been a tinkering one where I haven't been doing anything very productive. It has been so long since I properly used C, so I am working my way through a book on C programming as a refresher. I was recommended a game, Tales of Maj'Eyal [0], on IRC [1] and I have been hooked on that most of the day! As a sidenote, I am pleasantly surprised with the games available on OpenBSD so far.

        I did notice at the beginning of the week that bash somehow ended up installed on my system, since I use ksh and never installed it directly it must be a package dependency. I managed to track it down to the password-store [2] utility.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Gemini Capsule on Pico W

          I received my Pico W long time ago but couldn't find the time to finish this.

          I decided to do this in Python (using MicroPython) first, then translate to C and see how things can be improved.

          It's very simple and very basic, without concurrency. Like my ESP32 setup, it uses Duck DNS.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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