Call for PCC testing

Contributed by ray on Sun Jan 4 03:05:16 2009 (GMT) from the edit-compile-test-goto-edit dept. Anders Magnusson (ragge@) wrote in, The first step of the development of PCC made possible by donations via BSD Fund is complete and I would like to invite people to start testing PCC more heavily. Some of the changes have been quite substantial and I may have introduced some new bugs. I think the support for GCC-specific extensions should be quite good now, even though most attributes are simply parsed and ignored. The only useful target to currently test is i386. Others are coming but not yet complete. To test PCC under OpenBSD you probably need some patches to the system headers to run it. To apply them, fetch ftp://pcc.ludd.ltu.se/pub/patches/openbsd-include-sys-081220.diff and go to /usr/include/sys and apply them. To compile PCC, it is best to fetch it out of cvs via pserver: "cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@pcc.ludd.ltu.se:/cvsroot co pcc" and then just run ./configure, make and make install There are also daily tarballs generated if you don't want to use cvs by some reason. Please register bug reports in the pcc bug database. The best bug reports is of the form "this particular code snippet doesn't compile" or "this expression generates wrong assembler". Good luck with it and thank you for your support! Alright, ragge@ has worked hard on this, let's help him make pcc awesome!

Extra paranoia for malloc(3)

Contributed by ray on Tue Dec 30 02:09:40 2008 (GMT) from the can't-touch-this dept. Damien Miller (djm@) recently committed some extra paranoia for malloc(3): CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: djm@ 2008/12/29 15:25:50 Modified files: lib/libc/stdlib: malloc.3 malloc.c Log message: extra paranoia for malloc(3): Move all runtime options into a structure that is made read-only (via mprotect) after initialisation to protect against attacks that overwrite options to turn off malloc protections (e.g. use-after-free) Allocate the main bookkeeping data (struct dir_info) using mmap(), thereby giving it an unpredictable address. Place a PROT_NONE guard page on either side to further frustrate attacks on it. Add a new 'L' option that maps struct dir_info PROT_NONE except when in the allocator code itself. Makes attacks on it basically impossible. feedback tedu deraadt otto canacar ok otto Thanks Damien for the hard work!

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Developer blog - mbalmer@: OpenBSD at the Point Of Sale

Contributed by johan on Sun Dec 21 23:04:01 2008 (GMT) from the pitchers dept. Marc Balmer (mbalmer@) has updated his blog with a very nice piece about how OpenBSD can be applied in real world applications other than your typical firewall or router. The blog describes how OpenBSD was setup on Point Of Sales machines at the Basel Zoo. Please read on for a short excerpt from the blog: Read more...

[ 33 comments 3d3:55 ago ] (flat) (expanded)

Cleaning up the back yard (with OpenBSD)

Contributed by mitja on Sat Dec 20 19:50:39 2008 (GMT) from the an-OS-even-your-mom-would-love dept. An alert reader reported that a recent SANS Institute White Paper describes using OpenBSD and a variety of open source software to protect your parent's home network. Read more...

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Heads up! DCBSDCon 2009 now open for registration

Contributed by johan on Sat Dec 20 01:46:02 2008 (GMT) from the quid-pro-quo dept. Jason Dixon (jdixon@) wrote to the misc mailinglist about DCBSDCon 2009 now being open for registration. If you want to attend, please register now! You can also tune in to the official DCBSDCon blog, here. Read more...

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Heads up! Rare OpenBSD CDs for sale

Contributed by johan on Sat Dec 20 00:18:54 2008 (GMT) from the we'll-be-right-back-after-these-messages dept. Austin Hook (austin@) has found a few rare old OpenBSD CD sets. They can be had via the international web store: Read more...

[ 16 comments 16d3:08 ago ] (flat) (expanded)

ongoing azalia work

Contributed by weerd on Fri Dec 19 00:27:37 2008 (GMT) from the patch-a-lot dept. Jacob Meuser (jakemsr@) wrote in about his latest patches for azalia(4) audio devices, which are a continuation of his earlier work we mentioned, that he sent to tech@ : I have just posted a couple patches to tech@. Both are important steps toward a friendlier mixer: better names remove static mixer configurations Please also see my website for prebuilt kernels and more details. Thanks. If you have azalia in your machine and want to help, please test these patches and report your results to Jacob.

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Heads up! New iwn firmware released

Contributed by johan on Sat Dec 13 14:50:05 2008 (GMT) from the stick-it-to-the-bad-guys dept. Damien Bergamini (damien@) has committed an update to the man page for the iwn(4) wireless device. The update describes a firmware update by Intel. As you know, Intel refuses to grant distribution rights without contractual obligations, so OpenBSD cannot include the firmware file and the users have to download it on their own. For further reading please see this article here on Undeadly which explains the matter in depth.

[ 28 comments 17d21:25 ago ] (flat) (expanded)

New Ports of The Week (December 8)

Contributed by jason on Thu Dec 11 13:41:27 2008 (GMT) from the lotta-lotta-cli dept. There were 7 new ports for the week of December 1 to December 7: x11/gnome: libgnomedb net: winexe graphics: goocanvas graphics: py-goocanvas textproc: py-vobject www: pear-SOAP www: retawq Some ports had updates that users should be aware of. One port was removed. Read more...

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