ootput burst!

Tired of sifting through /usr/ports/UPDATING for notes that affect only those packages installed on your system?

Tired of grepping for issues that may have arisen from/to certain dates?

pkg_updating(1) analyses /usr/ports/UPDATING and does the heavy lifting for you.

To obtain the relevant entries from, say, two weeks ago, do:

# /usr/sbin/pkg_updating -d $(/bin/date -v-2w +%Y%m%d)

Use:

• -v-1d for a day;
• -v-1m for a month;
• -v-1y for a year, and so on.

Firstly, read /usr/ports/UPDATING for any advisories for package updates.

Also, to list ports with issued warnings, do:
# portaudit -a

Once you are confident that the advisories for affected packages are negligible, issue:
# DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes portmaster -R -a -f -B -C -d

From portmaster(8):
-R skips ports updated on the previous run
-a checks all ports and updates when needed
-f forces build
-B prevents portmaster from creating a backup package
-C prevents # make clean from being executed before the build
-d always clean distfiles

DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes prevents portmaster from aborting when an 'unsafe' port is encountered.

While testing various memory disk filesystems in FreeBSD, I intelligently made changes to /etc/fstab that pointed to non-existent mountpoints (zroot/usr/home did not exist until later in the boot process - and the system refused to boot into FreeBSD due to mounting errors.)

To remedy this, I booted into my Ubuntu Oneiric installation, which fortunately supported native ZFS. Using the following commands, I was able to mount my root partition zpool - zroot - to make the necessary adjustments to /etc/fstab.

In Ubuntu, as root, list the available zpool imports with:
# zpool import

This will reveal all existing zpools found on all disk drives. Check to see if the zpool can be properly imported by reading the state, status, and action descriptions of the zpool.

Continuing on, create a temporary mountpoint for the zpool:
# mkdir -p /mnt/zpool_temp

Then import the zpool:
# zpool import -N -R /mnt/zpool_temp zroot

To confirm this worked, do:
# zfs list

Also, note the dataset's original mountpoint value with:
# zfs get mountpoint zroot

Then:
# zfs set mountpoint=/mnt/zpool_temp zroot
# zfs mount zroot

This will temporarily mount the root zpool R/W at /mnt/zpool_temp, allowing you to make the necessary changes.

After you are done making changes to the mounted dataset, while making sure that it is no longer in use:
# zfs unmount zroot

Then, reset the mountpoint to it's original value:
# zfs set mountpoint=/ zroot

Now reboot the machine without exporting the zpool - this is very important.

Your FreeBSD should now boot properly.

From md(4):

The md driver provides support for four kinds of memory backed virtual disks:
...
swap:
       Backing store is allocated from buffer memory.  Pages get pushed out to the swap when 
       the system is under memory pressure, otherwise they stay in the operating memory.
       Using swap backing is generally preferable over malloc backing.

Chromium's cache is at $HOME/.cache/chromium, and so, my /etc/fstab contains:

# 256M mfs for google chrome
/dev/md0 /home/ootput/.cache/chromium mfs rw,-s256m,-wootput:ootput,noauto 2 0

From mount_mfs(8):
-s256m specifies a memory reservation of 256 M;
-wootput:ootput hands ownership of the mountpoint from root to the user; and
noauto prevents the system from failing to boot properly if the mountpoint does not (yet) exist.

The following additions to /etc/rc.conf were also made:

mdconfig_md0="-t swap -s 256m"
mdconfig_md0_owner="ootput:ootput"
mdconfig_md0_perms="1777"

which lists arguments to mdconfig(8) for device md0.

At mininum the -t type must be specified and either a -s size for malloc or swap backed md(4) devices or a -f file for vnode backed md(4) devices.

The redundancies found in fstab and rc.conf allows automatic mounting at boot, or manual mounting after boot.

To test the changes made, as root:
# /etc/rc.d/mdconfig restart

On to the $USER/bin/pack_chrome executable script that will both mount the md device, and/or sync contents from the cache at RAM to a backup cache on the HDD:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

CACHE="$HOME/.cache/chromium"
BACKUP="$CACHE.bak"

for DIR in $CACHE $BACKUP; do
   if [ ! -d "${DIR}" ]; then
      mkdir -p ${DIR}
   fi
done

if test -z "$(/sbin/mount | grep -F "$CACHE" )"; then
    sudo /sbin/mount "$CACHE"
fi

if test -f "$CACHE/.synced"; then
    rsync --exclude '.synced' --exclude '.snap' --delete -avrPx \
        "$CACHE/" "$BACKUP"
else
    rsync --delete -avrPx "$BACKUP/" "$CACHE"
    touch "$CACHE/.synced"
fi

The script requires that the $USER is in sudoers(5), and is able to use the /sbin/mount command.

Finally, after $ crontab -e:

*/30 * * * * $HOME/bin/pack_chrome >/dev/null 2>&1

.. the script gets called every half-hour to automate the syncing process. This also requires that $USER is specifically allowed in /var/cron/allow.

As a reminder to myself:

# pkg_add -r fastest_cvsup
# fastest_cvsup -c all

In /root/stable-supfile, have:

*default host=cvsup.au.freebsd.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_8
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
src-all

# csup /root/stable-supfile

# cd /usr/src
# rm -r -f /usr/obj
# script /var/tmp/buildworld-$(date "+%Y%m%d%H%M.%S")
# make -jX buildworld ( where X == number of CPUs + 1 )
# exit
# script /var/tmp/buildkernel-$(date "+%Y%m%d%H%M.%S")
# make buildkernel KODIR=/boot/testing KERNCONF=CUSTOM64
# make installkernel KODIR=/boot/testing KERNCONF=CUSTOM64
# exit
# nextboot -k testing
# shutdown -r now

# cd /boot
# rm -r -f OLD
# mv kernel OLD
# mv testing kernel

# adjkerntz -i
# mergemaster -p
# cd /usr/src
# make installworld
# mergemaster -iU
# make delete-old
# shutdown -r now

In /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/CUSTOM64, I have:

include GENERIC
machine amd64
cpu	HAMMER 			# aka K8, aka Opteron & Athlon64
nocpu   i486_CPU
ident   CUSTOM64
nomakeoption DEBUG

## No IPv6
nooptions       INET6
nooptions 	SCTP		# Stream Control Transmission Protocol

## No Debugging stuff
nooptions INVARIANTS
nooptions INVARIANT_SUPPORT
nooptions WITNESS
nooptions WITNESS_SKIPSPIN

nodevice        eisa

nodevice        fdc

## Disable various ATA systems we will never have
nodevice	atapicd		# ATAPI CDROM drives
nodevice	atapifd		# ATAPI floppy drives
nodevice	atapist		# ATAPI tape drives

nooptions 	MSDOSFS		# MSDOS Filesystem
nooptions 	CD9660		# ISO 9660 Filesystem

device          ahci

nodevice 	urio
nodevice 	uscanner
nodevice 	aue
nodevice 	axe
nodevice 	cdce
nodevice 	cue
nodevice 	kue
nodevice 	rue

# PCMCIA and cardbus bridge support
nodevice	cbb		# cardbus (yenta) bridge
nodevice	pccard		# PC Card (16-bit) bus
nodevice	cardbus		# CardBus (32-bit) bus

# Parallel port
nodevice	ppc
nodevice	ppbus		# Parallel port bus (required)
nodevice	lpt		# Printer
nodevice	plip		# TCP/IP over parallel
nodevice	ppi		# Parallel port interface device

# FireWire support
nodevice	firewire	# FireWire bus code
nodevice	sbp		# SCSI over FireWire (Requires scbus and da)
nodevice	fwe		# Ethernet over FireWire (non-standard!)
nodevice	fwip		# IP over FireWire (RFC 2734,3146)
nodevice	dcons		# Dumb console driver
nodevice	dcons_crom	# Configuration ROM for dcons