The FreeBSD 1q2021 status report is online!

My contribution is “sysctl improvements”, a summary of the recent updates about sysctl (to get and set the kernel state at runtime), properly my report describes the improvements and new features of: sysctlinfo 20210222, sysctlbyname-improved 20210223, sysctl-libnv, nsysctl 2.0 and sysctlview 2.1.

Link: https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2021-01-2021-03/#_sysctl_improvements

sysctlmibinfo2 version 2.0.1 is out!

The sysctlmibinfo2 library provides an API to explore the FreeBSD sysctl MIB and to get the properties of an object, so it is useful to handle an object correctly or/and to build a sysctl-like utility; it is used by sysctlview, nsysctl, sysctl-mib-html and mixertui.

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sysctlview 2.1 is out!

sysctlview is a graphical sysctl MIB explorer for FreeBSD, each object represents a parameter of the kernel, sysctlview can show the properties of an object and get or set its value.

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nsysctl version 2.0 is out!

The nsysctl utility can get or set the state of the FreeBSD kernel at runtime. The system exposes the available parameters as objects of a “Management Information Base” (MIB), nsysctl can explore the MIB, print the properties of an object, get or set its value and show the output in human and machine readable formats.

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The nsysctl utility can get or set the state of the FreeBSD kernel at runtime. The system exposes the available parameters as objects of a “Management Information Base” (MIB), nsysctl can explore the MIB, print the properties of an object, get or set its value and show the output in human and machine readable formats.

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The nsysctl utility can get or set the FreeBSD kernel state at runtime, this is the manual; a tutorial is available, too.

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sysctlbyname-improved version 20210223 is out!

The FreeBSD Operating System maintains a Management Information Base (“MIB”) where an object represents a parameter of the system, the sysctl system call explores the MIB to find an object by its Object Identifier (“OID”) to get or set the value of the parameter.

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sysctlinfo version 20210222 is out!

The FreeBSD kernel maintains a Management Information Base (“MIB”) where an object represents a parameter of the system. The sysctl system call explores the MIB to find an object by its OID then calls its handler to get or set the value of the parameter. It is often necessary to find an object not to call its handler but to get its info (description, type, OID by name, next object, and so on).

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Some time ago I a found an interesting question about FreeBSD on https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/: “How can I restore the ls command?”

The comments gave several solutions: copy/use the statically linked ‘ls’ in the /rescue directory, download base.txz from ftp.freebsd.org for extracting ‘ls’, install the port of ‘GNU ls’, and so on.

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This blog is a static site generated by Hakyll and is hosted on GitLab Pages, so it cannot rely on any dynamic server-side processing support to store comments. Usually a static site addresses this problem by using an external service, I chose utteranc.es, it is opensource, fast and easy to customize, other features are described later.

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A system call is the “tool” used by a software in the userspace to request a “service” to the kernel, the FreeBSD Operating System provides over 400 system calls. They are defined in syscalls.master, this file is processed by makesyscalls.sh or makesyscalls.lua to create init_sysent.c, syscall.h, and so on.

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The second FreeBSD quarterly status report 2020 is online!

My contribution is MixerTUI, a volume mixer with a Terminal User Interface built on the FreeBSD sound system: https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2020-04-2020-06.html#MixerTUI

The FreeBSD Operating System provides the sysctl system call and a wrapper utility to get or set the state of the kernel at run time (the handbook shows some useful example). Every user can get the value of a parameter:

% sysctl kern.maxprocperuid
kern.maxprocperuid: 6656

but, only the root user can usually set a value.

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BSDCan is an annual technical conference for people working on and with 4.4BSD based operating systems and related projects.
I had the honor of being a speaker this year, my talk was: “sysctlinfo: a new interface to visit the FreeBSD sysctl MIB and to pass the object info to userland” (video, slides and paper are available online).

MixerTUI 1.1 is out!

MixerTUI is an audio mixer with a Terminal User Interface for FreeBSD, the new features of this version are: -d -h -m -v options and TAB to switch view mode.

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