FreeBSD News

A new issue of the BSD Magazine is available as free PDF:  Embedded BSD (issue 2010-02)

This is the Table of Contents:

MaheshaBSD: A Live CD Project From The Lake Mansarovar

MaheshaBSD is the name for a Live CD project. Why Mahesha? What does it mean? Mahesha is one of the 1008 names of Lord Shiva – Supreme God of the universe who stands above all gods. This name was chosen because Shiva’s weapon is the same as the FreeBSD’s one – the trident. There is yet another important correlation – supremacy of the BSD code, which (as many IT professionals believe) stands supreme above all operating systems. The connection of Lord Shiva and BSD is therefore logical.

OpenBSD as a Primary Domain Controller

Once a Windows-based network grows beyond around a dozen computers, setting up a Primary Domain Controller to simplify and centralize the management of users, computers and network resources becomes a must. But does the Domain Controller necessarily have to be a Windows machine, thus meaning the end of our project of a completly OpenBSD-based server network?
Of course not! Once again, OpenBSD comes to our rescue and, with the help of a few additional pieces of software, it will turn into a full-blown, secure and reliable Domain Controller.

FreeBSD MySQL Clustering How-to

The PHP, MySQL and Apache stack is a very popular implementation on standalone BSD servers but in demanding high availability [HA] environments the twin spectres of redundancy and fail-over rear their heads. In these scenarios, it is essential to eliminate the single point of failure which is the enemy of 100% uptime.

BSD FILE SHARING – Part 3. FTP

Last time I wrote on SAMBA on different BSD’s. This time I am going to dedicate the article of the series to FTP. Some people do not know that the FTP protocol is the true BSD heritage, as it originated in the 1970′s at Berkeley University, so it is the right thing to dedicate it some space in the BSDMag anyway.

Exploring HAMMER

One of DragonFly’s features is a new file system, called HAMMER. HAMMER has, to quote from the man page, instant crash recovery, large file systems spanning multiple volumes, data integrity checking, fine-grained history retention, mirroring capability, and pseudo file systems HAMMER is available by default on DragonFly BSD.

Embedded OpenBSD

Unix-like operating systems aren’t picky at all. Despite the extreme physical conditions, they can take root on those old computers where most (proprietary) operating systems risk extinction and help them, after years of faithful service, to start new lives as firewalls, routers, proxies …
But sometimes this is not enough: servers must be reliable and old computers are (guess what?) … Old, and this increases their risk of disease. That’s why embedded systems are a great option: they are (relatively) inexpensive, silent, small , reliable … What else could you need? Ok, you have to learn to cohabit with very basic hardware, but the right OS, with the right configuration, will wallow in it!

Making Sense of Data Management on Intelligent Devices

The demand for embedded devices is growing rapidly, and there is a clear need for development of advanced software to deliver new features on limited hardware. Data management is a critical component in these new software systems. Embedded databases are used by portable media players to store information about music and video, GPS vehicle tracking systems to store map data, and monitoring systems to log information. These and other leading-edge industries have learned the importance of managing data reliably with a relational embedded data management system.

BSD in the Industry

After several years of slavery with windows based programs, many programs related with Industry or Engineering are opening the doors to the new trends of UNIX like OS. This is a natural evolution because as the Economy crisis strikes on whole World, the IT infrastructures are also under pressure to decrease at maximum the overall cost.