	May 2016
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9 pkgsrc-2016Q1 - the Fiftieth pkgsrc Release pkgsrc-2016Q1 - the Fiftieth pkgsrc Release	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27 What to do when you run out of (ancient) 50 pin SCSI disks? What to do when you run out of (ancient) 50 pin SCSI disks?	28 NetBSD 7.0.1 released NetBSD 7.0.1 released
29	30	31 pkgsrc 50th release interviews - Joerg Sonnenberger pkgsrc 50th release interviews - Joerg Sonnenberger

Alistair Crooks (NetBSD Blog)

I was asked to prepare some stats on pkgsrc's growth, as part of the celebrations of pkgsrc-2016Q1, pkgsrc's fiftieth quarterly release.

This mail from 2004 says:

By my calculations, at the end of December 2003, there were 4310 packages in the NetBSD Packages Collection, up from 4170 the previous month, a rise of only 140. We also tagged a new branch for pkgsrc, which is being actively maintained - the branch is called "pkgsrc-2003Q4". As the name implies, we will be branching pkgsrc on a regular basis from now on, and maintaining the branch.

We had previously cut pkgsrc releases to coincide with NetBSD releases, and for some other events, but pkgsrc-2003Q4 can be seen as the first branch where pkgsrc was really its own entity. It can be checked out with the "pkgsrc-2003Q4" tag, and browsed at:

We keep a complete log of changes we have made to pkgsrc since its inception. At the lowest level, pkgsrc-2003Q4 had 3059 pkgsrc entries, whilst 2016Q1 had 14311 pkgsrc entries. Due to different versions of some languages, like python, perl, ruby and php, the number of packages is a much higher number. For instance, 2003Q4 had 4310 packages, and 2016Q1 had 17154. We have also provided a histogram of pkgsrc activity from its inception until now.

To see how pkgsrc has spread across platforms, 2003Q4 supported 7 platforms, 2016Q1 supports 23 platforms.

In addition, pkgsrc has now grown its own conference. The first pkgsrccon was in Vienna in 2004 -- see the original 2004 pkgsrccon information and this year's pkgsrccon is in Krakow -- see the 2016 pkgsrccon information We also produced a map of pkgsrccon venues for those interested in the history and geography of pkgsrccon.

Alistair Crooks
for the pkgsrc team
Sun May 8 11:26:15 PDT 2016

Posted late Monday evening, May 9th, 2016 Tags: blog

Alistair Crooks (NetBSD Blog)

I was asked to prepare some stats on pkgsrc's growth, as part of the celebrations of pkgsrc-2016Q1, pkgsrc's fiftieth quarterly release.

This mail from 2004 says:

By my calculations, at the end of December 2003, there were 4310 packages in the NetBSD Packages Collection, up from 4170 the previous month, a rise of only 140. We also tagged a new branch for pkgsrc, which is being actively maintained - the branch is called "pkgsrc-2003Q4". As the name implies, we will be branching pkgsrc on a regular basis from now on, and maintaining the branch.

We had previously cut pkgsrc releases to coincide with NetBSD releases, and for some other events, but pkgsrc-2003Q4 can be seen as the first branch where pkgsrc was really its own entity. It can be checked out with the "pkgsrc-2003Q4" tag, and browsed at:

We keep a complete log of changes we have made to pkgsrc since its inception. At the lowest level, pkgsrc-2003Q4 had 3059 pkgsrc entries, whilst 2016Q1 had 14311 pkgsrc entries. Due to different versions of some languages, like python, perl, ruby and php, the number of packages is a much higher number. For instance, 2003Q4 had 4310 packages, and 2016Q1 had 17154. We have also provided a histogram of pkgsrc activity from its inception until now.

To see how pkgsrc has spread across platforms, 2003Q4 supported 7 platforms, 2016Q1 supports 23 platforms.

In addition, pkgsrc has now grown its own conference. The first pkgsrccon was in Vienna in 2004 -- see the original 2004 pkgsrccon information and this year's pkgsrccon is in Krakow -- see the 2016 pkgsrccon information We also produced a map of pkgsrccon venues for those interested in the history and geography of pkgsrccon.

Alistair Crooks
for the pkgsrc team
Sun May 8 11:26:15 PDT 2016

Posted late Monday evening, May 9th, 2016 Tags: blog

martin (NetBSD Blog)

Recently on a few mailing lists a discussion about creating a simple turbo-channel USB adapter came up. I have an old Alpha machine with turbo channel and no on-board USB, so considered ordering one - but wanted to know upfront whether that alpha machine still worked.

I started with updating the installation on the alpha to -current, and ran out of disk space!

No big deal, it still had the original ~1GB disk (RZ26) in it, and a full NetBSD install nowadays needs slightly more. I have plenty of unused SCSI disks lying around, but when looking for 50pin ones, I found I have none left.

Another machine I was looking at for a different root disk solution was an old mac68k (Quadra 640 AV). I had replaced the disk it came with by an 8GB one, but it draws too much power for the internal PSU, so I had to move it to an external SCSI enclosure, which is inconvenient.

Additionally both disks made quite some noise and probably would not last a lot longer. So I started looking for "cheap", silent and low-power alternatives.

I found the SCSI2SD project, which looked promising and had a firmware update earlier this year. I ordered a few boards from idead studio and started testing.

The solution is mostly plug & play, a configuration utility allows updating the firmware and configuring the devices.

I did several bonnie++ runs to get an idea of the speed achievable. All machines are not fast, and disk access has always been slow. To get an overall idea, I also tested on a faster alpha (still with slow scsi disks). Then I moved both test machines over to "root on sd card" and tested again. The results look like this:

Test	Sequential Output						Sequential Input				Random Seeks		Sequential Create						Random Create
	Per Chr		Block		Rewrite		Per Chr		Block		K/s	CPU	Create		Read		Delete		Create		Read		Delete
	K/s	CPU	K/s	CPU	K/s	CPU	K/s	CPU	K/s	CPU	K/s	CPU	/s	CPU	/s	CPU	/s	CPU	/s	CPU	/s	CPU	/s	CPU
Ref: DS20	3436	35	3460	6	2935	5	9565	94	19494	285.7	16	3	878	81	31793	99	2939	54	940	84	1351	96	203	10
Alpha HD	906	92	2146	41	980	24	947	93	2178	23	78.5	14	36	95	926	72	290	90	37	96	39	97	25	34
Alpha SD	548	77	897	19	450	9	490	97	1140	9	24.9	4	85	89	1245	75	437	84	90	93	119	96	29	16
Mac HD	98	95	737	89	373	91	94	96	647	89	14.1	47	22	93	502	75	122	81	23	94	31	97	14	43
Mac SD	95	95	646	89	339	92	93	96	636	79	14.5	75	22	90	473	75	124	85	23	92	32	97	13	46

So even for machines with very slow hard disk access, there is a (relatively small?) performance hit with the SCSI2SD solution. Whether it is too bad for your application, depends on various factors - all of the affected machines are very slow overall anyway.

Just a few days ago a new hardware revision of the SCSI2SD cards has been announced which is supposed to improve performance in the future (when the firmware has caught up), so it may be worth to wait (or get the newer hardware) if performance is important.

I have a VAX machine that could go with this solution as well, but results are expected to be similar (or worse) than for the slow alpha, as my vax is pretty fast (for a vax) and has a decent SCSI subsystem.

For reference, below are the full dmesg from the fast reference and both test machines after switching to SD root, and the sniplet for the original hard disk

AlphaServer DS20

"Fast" reference machine
file system: FFSv2, log


Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,

    2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993

    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.



NetBSD 7.99.29 (GENERIC-$Revision: 1.368 $) #7: Mon May 23 20:44:04 CEST 2016

	martin@martins.aprisoft.de:/ssd/src/sys/arch/alpha/compile/GENERIC

AlphaServer DS20 500 MHz, s/n AY94910150

8192 byte page size, 1 processor.

total memory = 1024 MB

(2712 KB reserved for PROM, 1021 MB used by NetBSD)

avail memory = 994 MB

timecounter: Timecounters tick every 0.976 msec

Kernelized RAIDframe activated

mainbus0 (root)

cpu0 at mainbus0: ID 0 (primary), 21264-4

cpu0: Architecture extensions: 0x303

tsc0 at mainbus0: 21272 Core Logic Chipset, Cchip rev 0

tsc0: 8 Dchips, 2 memory buses of 32 bytes

tsc0: arrays present: 512MB, 512MB, 0MB, 0MB, Dchip 0 rev 1

tsp0 at tsc0

pci0 at tsp0 bus 0

pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, rd/mult, wr/inv ok

sio0 at pci0 dev 5 function 0: vendor 1080 product c693 (rev. 0x00)

cypide0 at pci0 dev 5 function 1: Cypress 82C693 IDE Controller (rev. 0x00)

cypide0: bus-master DMA support present, but unused (registers at unsafe address 0x10000)

cypide0: primary channel wired to compatibility mode

cypide0: primary channel interrupting at isa irq 14

atabus0 at cypide0 channel 0

cypide1 at pci0 dev 5 function 2: Cypress 82C693 IDE Controller (rev. 0x00)

cypide1: hardware does not support DMA

cypide1: primary channel wired to compatibility mode

cypide1: secondary channel interrupting at isa irq 15

atabus1 at cypide1 channel 0

ohci0 at pci0 dev 5 function 3: vendor 1080 product c693 (rev. 0x00)

ohci0: interrupting at isa irq 10

ohci0: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support

usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0

isa0 at sio0

lpt0 at isa0 port 0x3bc-0x3bf irq 7

com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4: ns16550a, working fifo

com0: console

com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3: ns16550a, working fifo

pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60-0x64

attimer0 at isa0 port 0x40-0x43

pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61

midi0 at pcppi0: PC speaker

spkr0 at pcppi0

isabeep0 at pcppi0

fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2

mcclock0 at isa0 port 0x70-0x71: mc146818 compatible time-of-day clock

attimer0: attached to pcppi0

tsp1 at tsc0

pci1 at tsp1 bus 0

pci1: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, rd/mult, wr/inv ok

tlp0 at pci1 dev 7 function 0: Macronix MX98713 Ethernet, pass 0.0

tlp0: interrupting at dec 6600 irq 47

tlp0: Ethernet address 00:40:05:50:ee:9b

tlp0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX

isp0 at pci1 dev 8 function 0: QLogic 1020 Fast Wide SCSI HBA

isp0: interrupting at dec 6600 irq 43

isp1 at pci1 dev 9 function 0: QLogic 1020 Fast Wide SCSI HBA

isp1: interrupting at dec 6600 irq 39

tsciic0 at tsc0

iic0 at tsciic0: I2C bus

timecounter: Timecounter "clockinterrupt" frequency 1024 Hz quality 0

timecounter: Timecounter "PCC" frequency 499882560 Hz quality 1000

scsibus0 at isp0: 16 targets, 8 luns per target

scsibus1 at isp1: 16 targets, 8 luns per target

scsibus0: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...

scsibus1: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...

uhub0 at usb0: vendor 1080 OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1

uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered

sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0: <COMPAQ, BB00911CA0, 3B05> disk fixed

sd0: 8678 MB, 5273 cyl, 20 head, 168 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 17773524 sectors

sd0: sync (50.00ns offset 8), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

sd1 at scsibus0 target 1 lun 0: <COMPAQ, BB00912301, B016> disk fixed

sd1: 8678 MB, 5273 cyl, 20 head, 168 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 17773524 sectors

sd1: sync (50.00ns offset 8), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

sd2 at scsibus0 target 2 lun 0: <COMPAQ, BB00911CA0, 3B05> disk fixed

sd2: 8678 MB, 5273 cyl, 20 head, 168 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 17773524 sectors

sd2: sync (50.00ns offset 8), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec

sd3 at scsibus0 target 3 lun 0: <COMPAQ, BB00912301, B016> disk fixed

sd3: 8678 MB, 5273 cyl, 20 head, 168 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 17773524 sectors

sd3: sync (50.00ns offset 8), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

cd0 at scsibus1 target 5 lun 0: <DEC, RRD47   (C) DEC, 1206> cdrom removable

raid0: RAID Level 1

raid0: Components: /dev/sd0a /dev/sd1a

raid0: Total Sectors: 17773440 (8678 MB)

raid1: RAID Level 1

raid1: Components: /dev/sd2a /dev/sd3a

raid1: Total Sectors: 17773440 (8678 MB)

root on raid0a dumps on raid0b

root file system type: ffs

kern.module.path=/stand/alpha/7.99.29/modules

Alpha DEC 3000

with SCSI2SD


Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,

    2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993

    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.



NetBSD 7.99.29 (GENERIC-$Revision: 1.368 $) #3: Thu May  5 09:17:11 CEST 2016

	martin@martins.aprisoft.de:/ssd/src/sys/arch/alpha/compile/GENERIC

DEC 3000 - M300, 150MHz, s/n 

8192 byte page size, 1 processor.

total memory = 98304 KB

(2048 KB reserved for PROM, 96256 KB used by NetBSD)

avail memory = 82352 KB

timecounter: Timecounters tick every 0.976 msec

Kernelized RAIDframe activated

mainbus0 (root)

cpu0 at mainbus0: ID 0 (primary), 21064-1

tcasic0 at mainbus0

tc0 at tcasic0: 12.5 MHz clock

sfb0 at tc0 slot 6 offset 0x2000000: 1280x1024, 8bpp

wsdisplay1 at sfb0 kbdmux 1

wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay1

ioasic0 at tc0 slot 5 offset 0x0: slow mode

le0 at ioasic0 offset 0xc0000: address 08:00:2b:3c:93:27

le0: 32 receive buffers, 8 transmit buffers

zsc0 at ioasic0 offset 0x100000

vsms0 at zsc0 channel 0

wsmouse0 at vsms0 mux 0

zstty0 at zsc0 channel 1 (console i/o)

zsc1 at ioasic0 offset 0x180000

lkkbd0 at zsc1 channel 0

wskbd0 at lkkbd0 mux 1

wskbd0: connecting to wsdisplay1

zsc1: channel 1 not configured

mcclock0 at ioasic0 offset 0x200000: mc146818 compatible time-of-day clock

bba0 at ioasic0 offset 0x240000

audio0 at bba0: full duplex, playback, capture, mmap

tcds0 at tc0 slot 4 offset 0x0: TurboChannel Dual SCSI (baseboard)

asc0 at tcds0 chip 0: NCR53C94, 25MHz, SCSI ID 0

scsibus0 at asc0: 8 targets, 8 luns per target

timecounter: Timecounter "clockinterrupt" frequency 1024 Hz quality 0

timecounter: Timecounter "PCC" frequency 150006528 Hz quality 1000

lkkbd0: no keyboard

scsibus0: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...

sd0 at scsibus0 target 1 lun 0: <codesrc, SCSI2SD, 1.0> disk fixed

sd0: 3712 MB, 473 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 7603200 sectors

sd0: async, 8-bit transfers

root on sd0a dumps on sd0b

root file system type: ffs

kern.module.path=/stand/alpha/7.99.29/modules

with original RZ26


sd0 at scsibus0 target 3 lun 0:  disk fixed

sd0: 1001 MB, 2570 cyl, 14 head, 57 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 2050860 sectors

sd0: sync (200.00ns offset 15), 8-bit (5.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

Mac Quadra 640AV

File system: FFSv1, log

with SCSI2SD


Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,

    2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993

    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.



NetBSD 7.99.29 (MAC-BETH) #18: Tue May 10 05:40:16 CEST 2016

	martin@night-owl.duskware.de:/usr/src/sys/arch/mac68k/compile/MAC-BETH

Apple Macintosh Centris 660AV  (68040)

cpu: delay factor 800

fpu: mc68040

total memory = 45056 KB

avail memory = 40248 KB

timecounter: Timecounters tick every 16.666 msec

mrg: 'Quadra AV ROMs' ROM glue, tracing off, debug off, silent traps

mainbus0 (root)

obio0 at mainbus0

esp0 at obio0 addr 0: address 0x2da000: NCR53C96, 25MHz, SCSI ID 7

scsibus0 at esp0: 8 targets, 8 luns per target

adb0 at obio0

intvid0 at obio0 @ 50100600: CIVIC video subsystem

intvid0: 640 x 480, 65536 color

macfb0 at intvid0

wsdisplay0 at macfb0 (kbdmux ignored)

mc0 at obio0: address 08:00:07:46:74:0a

zsc0 at obio0 chip type 0 

zsc0 channel 0: d_speed   9600 DCD clk 0 CTS clk 0

zstty0 at zsc0 channel 0 (console i/o)

zsc0 channel 1: d_speed   9600 DCD clk 0 CTS clk 0

zstty1 at zsc0 channel 1

nubus0 at mainbus0

timecounter: Timecounter "clockinterrupt" frequency 60 Hz quality 0

timecounter: Timecounter "VIA1 T2" frequency 783360 Hz quality 100

scsibus0: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...

adb0 (direct, Cuda): 2 targets

aed0 at adb0 addr 0: ADB Event device

akbd0 at adb0 addr 2: keyboard II (ISO layout)

wskbd0 at akbd0 (mux ignored)

ams0 at adb0 addr 3: 1-button, 100 dpi mouse

wsmouse0 at ams0 (mux ignored)

sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0: <codesrc, SCSI2SD, 4.6> disk fixed

sd0: 15104 MB, 1925 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 30934016 sectors

sd0: async, 8-bit transfers

cd0 at scsibus0 target 3 lun 0: <SONY, CD-ROM CDU-8003A, 1.9a> cdrom removable

cd0: async, 8-bit transfers

boot device: sd0

root on sd0a dumps on sd0b

root file system type: ffs

kern.module.path=/stand/mac68k/7.99.29/modules

with hard disk


sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0:  disk fixed

sd0: 8761 MB, 14384 cyl, 3 head, 415 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 17942584 sectors

sd0: async, 8-bit transfers, tagged queueing

Posted late Friday afternoon, May 27th, 2016 Tags: blog