VX weblog

With the first stable releae of LEDE I have finally let OpenWRT go. Without releasing updates for years OpenWRT has been seriously outdated. So I installed LEDE on all my older and newer wireless routers. Which router do I recommend today?

With the introduction of ZFS feature flags many users have experienced compatibility problems working with ZFS pools on different operating systems or operating system versions. In this article I am providing a table comparing the ZFS Feature Flag support on FreeBSD, Linux (zfsonlinux), Mac OSX (OpenZFS OSX) and illumos (OmniOS).

The OpenWRT project is about to release version 14.07 of their alternative home router firmware with many new features like native IPv6, support for NAND flash devices and a new web GUI. In this article I will provide a summary of the new features and a basic guide for choosing a supported device. As of today, considering features, price, performance and power consumption my recommended devices are the TL-WDR3500 and TL-WDR3600 routers from TP-LINK. These devices are for cable use only (no ADSL modem).

My first trip to Japan ever was connected with speaking at the AsiaBSDcon conference on March 15-16 at the Tokyo University of Science. I have met many fellow developers, including Matt Ahrens from the Illumos project who was my co-speaker at EuroBSDcon 2013 in Malta last year. This time I had a completely new topic, my talk had the title "Deploying FreeBSD systems with Foreman and mfsBSD". My special thanks go to Hiroki Sato and George Neville-Neil who have organized this successful conference.
PDF with presentation slides, Youtube Video

Malta's sunny weather and beautiful sea attracted many international speakers and guests to EuroBSDcon 2013. The conference was held at the Hilton Conference Centre in St. Julian’s, Malta on September 26-29, 2013. This year my co-speaker was Matt Ahrens, one of the two founders of the ZFS filesystem. Our talk was about the OpenZFS project and covered the current state and future coordination of open source ZFS development in multiple platforms - illumos, FreeBSD and Linux.
PDF with presentation slides

Matthew Ahrens, myself and other open source ZFS contributors from the illumos, FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X communities have launched the OpenZFS project today:

OpenZFS launch announcement, September 17th, 2013:

Today we announce OpenZFS: the truly open source successor to the ZFS project.

ZFS is the world's most advanced filesystem, in active development for over a decade. Recent development has continued in the open, and OpenZFS is the new formal name for this open community of developers, users, and companies improving, using, and building on ZFS. Founded by members of the Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and illumos communities ...

Read the full announcement here

Since OpenSolaris got discontinued, the development of open source ZFS continues at the illumos project. The main contributors are the companies Delphix, Nexenta and Joyent. In this post I am going to sum up the main user-visible changes in ZFS since the start of illumos.

This is an updated version of the article originally posted on July 9, 2012.

Great news for PHP administrators and site architects - the Facebook's HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) version 2.1 is now available in the FreeBSD ports tree. The port is available under lang/hiphop-php and is limited to the amd64 architecture.

HHVM is an open source virtual machine that can act as a standalone server that can run PHP sites. With it's just-in-time compilation approach PHP sites receive a reasonable speedup.

Special thanks to vanilla@FreeBSD.org who has helped me making this port work. Our patches have been submitted to Facebook via GitHub.

This year's EuroBSDcon took place at the Warsaw University of Technology on October 20-21. The conference was well organized with great keynote talks by Eric Allman and Kirk McKusick. My talk was titled "Tuning ZFS on FreeBSD" and based on my identically named article in the August issue of the BSD Magazine. I presented several do's and don'ts and other findings and recommendations from my experience with the ZFS file system.
PDF with presentation slides

An introductory article about the open-source SSH client for Android VX ConnectBot has been published in the October 2012 issue (pages 6-7) of the freely downloadable BSD Magazine.

Link to the free issue: BSD Magazine 10/2012
Link to project homepage: VX ConnectBot