OpenBSD Journal

Continuing to Improve Hardware Support In -Current

Contributed by jolan on from the making-stuff-just-work dept.

joris@ has improved upon drahn@'s work on the macppc snapper(4) audio driver to support more sample rates. He's also working on supporting the bass and treble settings but this code isn't quite finished yet.

mickey@ has been working on fixing some of the PCI interrupt routing/fixup code. I am especially excited by this as my PCI cardbus devices now work in my VIA 8233 based motherboard.

tedu@ just committed enhanced PowerNow! (Cool'n'Quiet) support for the AMD K7 and K8 processor families. Depending on your hardware, you may now be able to take advantage of hw.setperf to scale CPU speed. This is i386 only for now with plans on it being ported to amd64.

And finally, work is in progress to add support for Cypress USB serial adapters because there just aren't enough USB serial drivers yet.

Things can only get better... Here's a choice quote from the 3.8 testing phase (with no context of course):

"ARGH, I just hate it when things get broken!" -- Theo de Raadt

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By David Gwynne (220.245.180.132) loki@animata.net on

    The new ipmi(4) and G5 support is also worth noting, but they've already been mentioned on undeadly recently. Aside from Jolans list there have also been improvements in the ami(4) driver (it's now around 200 lines shorter :D ) in -current since 3.8. Work in the monitoring and raid management area should start picking up again soon.

    If you're a geeban like me then you might be interested in the queue.h fixes that Otto Moerbeek has been spearheading. If anyone has used or is thinking of using the macros in that header then they should definately have a look at what he is doing and why.

    Another new thing that I think is cool but isn't really hardware related is minimo on the zaurus.

    Comments

    1. By Otto Moerbeek (213.84.84.111) otto@drijf.net on http://www.drijf.net

      Well, my queue.h work can hardly be characterized as "improved hardware support" :-)

      The first version triggered some bugs that caused fs corruption and uvm related panics and was backed out. I'll be posting a new version on that made me able to find the actual location of the offending code, and now the uncovered bugs in softdep and uvm code have been fixed. Just watch tech@ if you're interested.

      I also committed some stuff to the queue(3) manpage, warning developers of wrong usage of the macros.

      Comments

      1. By jasper (80.60.145.215) on

        > Well, my queue.h work can hardly be characterized as "improved hardware support" :-)
        I noticed ;-) But I'm glad you fixed it.
        BTW, I'll test your new diff this weekend.

      2. By David Gwynne (203.171.92.135) loki@animata.net on

        I know the queue.h fixes aren't directly related to hardware support, but they are used in a lot of device drivers. So there is a link :)

      3. By Anonymous Coward (203.26.16.66) on

        You have a nice name Otto Moerbeek, what does it mean?

        Comments

        1. By Nate (65.95.228.247) on

          Otto is old german for wealth, it's pronounced aw-toe.

          Moerbeek is more beek, whatever beek means, also german.

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (213.84.84.111) on

            Translated into english moer-beek means swamp-brook.

            There's also a small village in the Netherlands called Moerbeek and in Belgium there's a Moerbeke.

            Comments

            1. By Fearchar (132.185.144.120) fearchar@fearnan.f9.co.uk on

              The equivalent English words would be "moor" and "beck". The former is still in general use, but the latter is rarely used. It comes from the Norse "bekkr".

        2. By Anonymous Coward (203.26.16.66) on

          Your name reminded me of beer

          Comments

          1. By Anonymous Coward (84.12.143.212) on

            with a name like anonymous, your name reminds me of beer also :)

    2. By sthen (81.168.66.254) on

      wow, a 75mb package..!

  2. By Anonymous Coward (24.126.56.226) on

    I have been interested in getting one of those USB to Serial devices for the specific purpose of using my external modem. I wanted to setup up a dial-in server to give myself Internet access through my cable service in case I ever needed it when I'm out on the road or something.

    I followed all those links to the manpages and noticed that each one was formatted different even though each driver basically does the same thing. I wonder, isn't there some sort of style to follow when writing those manpages? Seems to me that they should all follow the same style in order to be more consistent. That's just me.

    Anyway, I'm glad to see more support. OpenBSD seems to be focusing on really useufull things lately. Keep up the good work!

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (61.88.57.1) on

      Why dont you setup a VPN for 'dial-in' ? Or do you mean that you want to setup dial-in as a backup for a broadband outage ?

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (24.126.56.226) on

        Well, I wanted to set it up as dial-in in case I'm somwhere that doesn't have broadband access. A dial-tone is sometimes easier to find than broadband access; then again with more wireless AP's everywhere I bet I can just tap in to a free hotspot somewhere. Still, it would be nice to have the possibility. Also, I've never done a dial-in server before so it would be worth a try just for the experience alone.

        Using a modem as a backup Internet connection at home wouldn't work too well for me since I no longer have a PSTN line. I'm using Vonage (so far pretty good service at a better price than Verizon) with my cable Internet connection. If my Internet goes down, my phone goes down as well.

        Now that I think about it, I wonder how well a modem would work over VoIP anyway. I've been told that it will work, but I'm doubtfull. It's worth a try anyway. It's not like I'm setting up some production server or anything. It's just home networking stuff - just for fun kind of thing.

    2. By djm@ (203.217.30.86) on

      send patches (for the manpages)

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (65.198.20.164) on

        Well, at least this should be and easy patch. All I have to do is practically cut/reformat/paste the information in a more uniform way. Basically, format all those manpages so that they follow the same style. Isn't there a style guide for manpages or something like that?

        Is there an FAQ on how to contribute to OpenBSD? In other words, I need to know how OpenBSD likes their patches and stuff like that. A how-to would be nice too. I've never submitted a patch before in my life, but I think it goes something like "diff -nru oldfile newfile > file.patch" unless OpenBSD wants something like "cvs diff" which then I would need a current repo copy on my machine and stuff like that. Right? I've never done any that before, but noone has ever done anything until they've done it. Right? In other words, I have to do it to figure it out then I can say I've done it. Although, some quick tips would be helpfull.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (213.84.84.111) on

          diff -u oldfile newfile will do, as long as oldfile is current.

          btw, you can run cvs diff against an anoncvs server. No need to have a local repo.

          Do something like: 

          cvs up 
edit file
cvs diff -u
          Watch out when submitting a diff. Use a mailer that does not convert tabs to spaces. Always sent to yourself first and check if you can apply the diff.

        2. By David Gwynne (130.102.78.195) loki@animata.net on

          Can you cc me and jmc@openbsd.org when you have something to show for this. We wont be too concerned if you just send us whole files rather than diffs. Your effort would definately be appreciated though.

          Comments

          1. By Miod Vallat (217.66.123.8) miod@ on

            Tsk, tsk, tsk, manpage diffs to section 4 and 8 need to be run by me as well, as you are supposed to know (-:

            Comments

            1. By David Gwynne (130.102.78.195) loki@animata.net on

              Of course, I was merely volunteering to vet the changes before passing them down the chain of command.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (67.71.176.241) on

      If you don't have a phone line at your house then how are you going to dial into your server? Won't you need a phone number for your house so that you can use dial-up using your remote cable connection? Does not compute >!@#R

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (65.198.20.164) on

        I believe I mentioned it before, but I have VoIP (Vonage) at home over my cable Internet service. Not sure how well (if at all) serial data communications work over VoIP. They say fax machines work, so I assume I can do what I wanted to try.

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