We would like to apologise for the unavailability of our main website, and in general HTTPS access to everything hosted on eurynome, during today, Monday. It turns out that our hoster accidentally botched up a Linux netfilter prerouting table at about Sunday 01:00 UTC (i.e. Saturday evening, way past midnight, local time) affecting the IPv4 address set aside for eurynome. We believe IPv6 services were not affected. Our hoster would like to apologise and comment that he is, after all, a human being as well.

Please note that X.509v3 SSL certificate validation will have prevented you from connecting to the wrong server, as this ended up like a MITM (man-in-the-middle) attack.

Christian Hofstaedtler «ch:#grml» pointed me to an article about netboot.me, a service providing bootable Live and Install variants of some OSes over the Internet (via gPXE and HTTP transport, mostly). They offer a bootable floppy/disc, USB stick, and El Torito ISO image. One gets a graphical menu if not careful, out of which there is no escape, and which isn’t compatible with most graphics cards, but if ^B is pressed quickly enough, there will be a usable command line.

An experimental MirOS bsd4me bootable image is available as well:

gPXE> autoboot
gPXE> chain http://netboot.me/2032

This will be loaded via plain, unencrypted HTTP from our main webserver. It’s the usual <5 MiB Mini-ISO for the i386 architecture and contains a full installer, as well as e3 and tinyirc known from MirOS bsd4grml. Source code of the GPL’d parts and overall licencing information is also included inside the ISO image. Please remember this is for beta testing only. We do not support MEMDISK boot methods with our second stage boot(8/i386) loader, as these are not reliable.

On an unrelated side note: dutch Windows XP Professional is weird. Translations were laughed at by several dutch-speaking people in the mksh IRC channel, but I was able to disable Blåtand on “blau” (the new IBM X40, successor of “bleu”). And it works!

A more related side note: when virtualising MirBSD, do not use VirtualBox. If you do have Vanderpool/Pacifica available and enabled, both the OSE and the full edition may be viable, but kvm is the better option. If VT-x/HVM is not used, it does not emulate the i386 architecture properly. Use qemu, kqemu, kvm, bochs, VMware Server 2 (not 1 — timekeeping is broken in there), Microsoft® VirtualPC 2004, Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion for Macintosh, … instead.

Tonight and the last few days have seen several releases of things like MirMake, the package tools, etc. You might want to upgrade your MirPorts Framework checkout. (We now have enough Lua tools to access the Simtec eKey, I just need to order one. We’re currently at 2¾ interested people, not quite enough to make sense.)

arandom(4) is a high quality SRNG (stretched RNG). It passes these test suites quite well on bleu (IBM X40, without TPM support). I also took 128 MiB samples from the same /dev/arandom, as well as from tear (Via C7), herc (P-233MMX), ss5, eurynome. The results are similar to each other (some of the tests rewind the input file a lot of times, so there are of course differences to the test using the arandom(4) stream directly – but the results are as good as can be expected, and tests that happen to fail (which is expected too, as it’s random after all) pass quite well with other runs). Another 128 MiB snippet of the TPM output looks to be as good as the arandom one, which doesn’t infer that it’s a TRNG, but it’ll at least help; the C7 xstore-rng output however looks rather bad in some tests (such as the Chi square test); apparently, the kernel initialises it with not optimum values (which may even be correct, as we use the RNG from kernel space, so a bias doesn’t matter, whereas Von Neumann bias correction would eat up very many bits; additionally, it’s designed to work from VIA C3 onwards).

I think the Entropy Key will have even better results. It’s still a thermal noise (or Johnson noise?) type, not a “real” QRNG (using photons and a mirror, or radioactive material and a Geiger counter), unless the one from fourmilab.ch (I’d insert a link here, but John Walker’s site appears to be down). Personally, I use the use-many-sources and mix approach, getting “best” entropy from external sources, including fourmilab’s (via https), “good” from myself (VIA C7, IBM TPM, soon eKey); “medium”, “regular” and “bad” from myself, where most of these are non-interceptible – the RANDOM.SYS for DOS author says every bit counts, and I think so too. cprng(8) is an example of “medium” (or “bad” if you lack the appropriate hardware) source; keyboard/mouse are “regular”, disc/net I/O are “bad” but available. The four-pool mixing helps, and the results show. Hell, even nwt has good entropy. And the RANDEX protocol helps some, too. Untrusted, but potentially good bits; wrandom(4) pool.

Karolina Lesińska writes: “We have placed the first 3 issue of BSDmagazine on our website as free downloads. The issues are:

1. FreeBSD Ins & Outs
2. OpenBSD in the Limelight
3. Explore NetBSD

“The link is: http://bsdmag.org/prt/view/pdf-articles.html”

My comment: The BSD magazine is a rather interesting piece of print, which already carried a small article about MirBSD. We have, I admit, been offered to write more which would get published, but, I am ashamed, haven’t quite gotten around to doing so.

Today, it's only been 29°C, and I died. What will I do tomorrow, where it is supposed to climb up to 35°C over today's 32°C?

MirOS #10uAA addresses the mount_ext2fs(8) bug mentioned in an advisory: the symlink(7) bug was fixed by pulling up more recent code from OpenBSD, and 256 byte inode support works as well (other sizes may or may not work; support is only barely tested).

We now also have a wake(8) utility courtesy of Marc Balmer from OpenBSD, no ÆrieBSD, no NetBSD® to Wake-on-LAN other computers.

I took the weekend to release a couple of things… MirBSD™ base code stuff and base releases (printf.c for mksh in Debian; arc4random.c for Win32 and other non-BSD OSes, now with a HKCU key used in addition to the HKLM seed key which may not be writable; MirMake; MirPorts Package Tools; mirdate — rdate(8)), jupp, mksh including a new PDF manpage, KWalletCLI, and the RANDEX plugin for XChat (Win32, BSD and *nix). I also prepared for the inclusion of more Debian source packages in my CVS “home subtree” and creation of SRPMs for more software (not in CVS though). I cleaned up the mess that were the X11 dist sets in base, cleaned up compiler warnings on half a dozen or more platforms in several parts of the code, fixed bugs in a lot of subprojects, integrated things better, updated the BSD::arc4random MirPort as well as TinyIRC, MirSirc, the irssi and XChat RANDEX plugins to include better version reporting and, for XChat, seedfile support and better responsibility. Now all I need to do is build more binaries and ports (DEB RPM OpenBSD FreeWRT etc.) of the subprojects, update Lynx in base and ports (there is a new major release out, even), update MirGRML, fix the HDD in my sparc, compile stuff, … you see I’m busy.

Here’s a “checksum and link collection” for today’s finest:

• Simple CVS file drops
• RMD160 (printf.c.1.10) = 8e8b88401a04474db973be07540a79b129919ff5
• TIGER (printf.c.1.10) = 3cec4bc24074e88c7889143d19f7659ced17482115ea5afb
• 3098389975 10575 /MirOS/dist/hosted/other/printf.c.1.10
• MD5 (printf.c.1.10) = d09ae97aebac104f834d3d3ddd1702ca
• RMD160 (arc4random.c.1.16) = b0caa3509d2cade6d86cb2c13e6b8817ced2d9a9
• TIGER (arc4random.c.1.16) = ef6d7a281d451e28434b0e003990eebb47edd0cd4d899fd1
• 2199066621 12558 /MirOS/dist/hosted/other/arc4random.c.1.16
• MD5 (arc4random.c.1.16) = e8376a9b51c0ce08f5ed20722b05cad3
• Simple subproject checkouts
• RMD160 (mirmake-20090801.cpio.gz) = 79e0d15aab4c7a05690e66769c12dbeb3d99daa1
• TIGER (mirmake-20090801.cpio.gz) = 2c6642b9515f38e736386945e72c06f402134ebf898613de
• 788720631 372063 /MirOS/dist/mir/make/mirmake-20090801.cpio.gz
• MD5 (mirmake-20090801.cpio.gz) = 47c63503210054d86db80040474f1f71
• RMD160 (pkgtools-20090801.mcz) = 482dcf4b915a10bb6b76859f0c1755b67d6343bb
• TIGER (pkgtools-20090801.mcz) = 3a622ac3c895c4af9df719dd30cfd3fe45e6d719cc34db5e
• 2864495035 180188 /MirOS/dist/mir/pkgtools/pkgtools-20090801.mcz
• MD5 (pkgtools-20090801.mcz) = 87378c95bde1c219d4a09e6bb8ccb897
• RMD160 (rdate-20090802.tar.gz) = abac9ae8a08ac566d6c0396d39cd5d2cd724f7b0
• TIGER (rdate-20090802.tar.gz) = f38a164e9d77412203349f79e8033c413335dd6f43a5cbf5
• 3840714105 11987 /MirOS/dist/mir/rdate/rdate-20090802.tar.gz
• MD5 (rdate-20090802.tar.gz) = a8fa4550b5a77cff6db1ed0a9d8aa357
• JUPP (including Win32 binary)
• PDF manpage
• HTML manpage
• RMD160 (joe-3.1jupp11.cpio.gz) = 7ade55cb8511600b3a9d77f37bc581b2d09ab2aa
• TIGER (joe-3.1jupp11.cpio.gz) = b7bb4aa464b705e697ab2a52ad75fc8755a5817bfb83e09a
• 805235529 419484 /MirOS/dist/jupp/joe-3.1jupp11.cpio.gz
• MD5 (joe-3.1jupp11.cpio.gz) = 1e2f21a6fdebe678b125e96806267f33
• RMD160 (JWIN31B.EXE) = f9eb9f6b3bd2a1bb5874e36d2dcc6dbdaabf75cc
• TIGER (JWIN31B.EXE) = 771461b752114978ed64f67c01e3ef22a9a9cdf76fda6b11
• 674256238 948176 /MirOS/dist/jupp/JWIN31B.EXE
• MD5 (JWIN31B.EXE) = b2d3f1044221fdea76f15621e94e1ae4
• mksh (including Cygwin package)
• PDF manpage
• RMD160 (mksh-R39.cpio.gz) = 5a5bcbe288e722f9772e27d2fdc36eee174bbb7b
• TIGER (mksh-R39.cpio.gz) = 2a2c08ccf5e27365aa652663629789ade93b3d30c0d1d51f
• 4103085544 278476 /MirOS/dist/mir/mksh/mksh-R39.cpio.gz
• MD5 (mksh-R39.cpio.gz) = b2eeb4fe4ccac2704e1440e53cd2672c
• RMD160 (mksh-39.1-cygwin.tgz) = 0cecd4ffb72f2d51a5c935da58e67350fab10e81
• TIGER (mksh-39.1-cygwin.tgz) = 3157abadc40696bcb8df1d3574df571b728bef3d4d2ac2f2
• 2818578374 144625 mksh R39 for Cygwin
• MD5 (mksh-39.1-cygwin.tgz) = ca949841e39721be666e6a82803e7769
• KWalletCLI
• RMD160 (kwalletcli-1.00.tar.gz) = f04ebd39e9714212a915b6d7d4524c8cc2daaee7
• TIGER (kwalletcli-1.00.tar.gz) = 0fc673c0c813608f0f0d863dfd924a6d62a8507c7bdf361b
• 2355082724 11524 /MirOS/dist/hosted/kwalletcli/kwalletcli-1.00.tar.gz
• MD5 (kwalletcli-1.00.tar.gz) = 76ef3c1d611a11ea13dc805d67d82208
• RANDEX plugin for XChar (including Win32 binary)
• RMD160 (xchat-randex-1.10.tar.gz) = fd61babbf4e5189f69dae8eb664ee2780433bf4b
• TIGER (xchat-randex-1.10.tar.gz) = 6bd888b157fcd931e54b71e9778950cbfa675ae6b784ddd5
• 2651117045 8702 /MirOS/dist/hosted/xchat-randex/xchat-randex-1.10.tar.gz
• MD5 (xchat-randex-1.10.tar.gz) = d1585c5fae3ee531deeffc8314910553
• RMD160 (randex.dll.gz.1.10) = a4aaa67cfdad1f9a1bcdc3eea797aff3a30703c4
• TIGER (randex.dll.gz.1.10) = 55b2dcd7d790d28944d7424121cf5c6d4d386a99751fb556
• 972086546 23998 /MirOS/dist/hosted/xchat-randex/randex.dll.gz.1.10
• MD5 (randex.dll.gz.1.10) = 793ce548256efc6a23f7a37dde9215a2

An observation… mksh “print $RANDOM” on Cygwin is very slow, and the HKCU seed changes each time. This should be debugged, it shan’t unless RANDOM is being written to or 400k calls are done.

jupp development has been split into two active development lines: jupp for DOS (based on joe 2.8) and jupp for Unix (based on joe 3.x).

There are binaries for both DOS (jupp for DOS) and Win32 (jupp for Unix, via Cygwin) available.

The jupp for DOS development line incorporates only minor patches relative to the original source code (it wasn’t that buggy as the sourceforge development made the code later…) and a jupprc file tuned for it but feature-complete with joe-3.1jupp10’s one.

The jupp for Unix development line incorporates all of the very extensive patches to the binary, and an enriched jupprc with, due to popular demand, syntax highlighting enabled by default — even though I still loathe it personally, and feel with Rob Pike when he questions the use of pretty printers. It will also try to correctly guess CR-LF vs LF-only line endings, indentation, and terminal colour. Furthermore, the language selection of the jupp flavour is now en par with that of the joe flavour, and the Python variants honour the standard coding style of theirs (needed that by the third quarter of last year, remember?). Autoindent is still off, by default, though — with reason.

Now give it a try. Hint: ^J (Ctrl-J) invokes the help.

The NetInstall directory contains a new intermediate snapshot of MirOS BSD/i386 built last night. I also brought the fixes for older snapshots a little more up to date. Enjoy!

The MirOS Project will be represented at LinuxTag 2009, Berlin, .de by tg@ with kindly sponsored buttons, some at the joint booth of AllBSD whose Daniel Seuffert kindly sponsored CDs and flyers as usual, and may be seen at the Holarse booth which has history with MirBSD™ on LinuxTag.

We will distribute MirOS BSD CDs (i386 Live, i386 Install, sparc Install, i386 MirGRML 2009.01) as well as grml CDs (containing grml 2009.05 Lackdose-Allergie, which includes MirOS bsd4grml/i386). There will probably not be any MidnightBSD CDs due to lack of an image in time for the deadline. Furthermore, besides the giveaway flyers, there are a couple of buttons for MirBSD, grml, mksh, MidnightBSD and Glenda from Plan 9. We would like to ask for a small donation (the amount does not really matter) in return for these; also, donations for the CDs are welcome to cover printing costs and will go to the respective sponsors (this is especially valid for the grml CDs, as they are not strictly covered by AllBSD).

The next event will be FrOSCon in St. Augustin, with tg@ as well as bsiegert@ and gecko2@ as usual.

The MirBSD Korn Shell R38c has been released. This is one of the everyone-should-upgrade versions because of the fixes for crashes and the likes. Read the online manual page in HTML – mksh(1) – or as PDF for printing.

The MirBSD Korn Shell R38 has been released. Most prominently, our developer wbx@ (Waldemar Brodkorb) has suggested to allow for expansion of “!string” style lines, and several things (string lengths, substring expansion) have been made more aware of UTF-8. Grab it as long as it’s hot!

mksh semantics for evaluating substring expansion ${strvar:pos:len} and string length ${#strvar} expressions has changed today. These operations now work on characters, not on bytes. Characters are octets in non-UTFMODE (which is pretty much the same as bytes, because mksh(1) is a BSD application and, as per style(9), allowed to assume certain things about the environment) and MirOS OPTU-8 multibyte character sequences in utf8-mode.

This means things like typeset -Uui16 -Z7 wc=1#${str::1} now do the right thing (getting you the MirOS OPTU-16 wide character value of the first character in the str).

mksh R38 will thusly be released RSN.