[OmniOS-discuss] Last OmniOS bloody update for 2014 (long, please read)

[Dan McDonald]

This will be the last OmniOS bloody update for the calendar year, AND you likely won't see the next one until the end of January.  Please read on for what's new, and why the big upcoming gap.

Only out to the pkg servers this time, this OmniOS bloody update (r151013-20141218):

- omnios-build master branch, revision 9d22dd3

- Fix for os.mknod() in 64-bit runtimes.  If any python wizards in the audience can help me upstream this, I'd appreciate it.

- New M2Crypto features needed for CRL handling, part of the pkg(5) modernization effort.

- illumos-omnios master branch, revision eb4c8f3 (last illumos-gate merge 9c30721)

- Fast reboot is now DISABLED by default.

- Non-interactive mode for ypinit(1M)

- NFS bugfixes (illumos 5436 & 5440)

- Several man page updates

- Hung mount in one zone no longer affects boot/halt of another (illumos 5419)

- Underlying infrastructure for global-zone rulesets for zones using ipfilter.
 (If this interests you, please let me know so an RFE can be tracked in the OmniOS ipkg brand)

- One mpt_sas hang-on-reset bug fixed (illumos 5297)

- Two ZFS bugfixes (illumos 5377 & 5369-5370).

.  .  .

We are suspending bloody updates during the month of January to run tests on a modernization of pkg(5).  I may be altering the bloody pkg repo during this time, but I would HIGHLY recommend that users who update to this version save a backup BE afterwards (using beadm(1m)) in case they accidentially take unannounced experimental updates during the month of January.

This modernization of pkg(5) has been bootstrapped by becoming a downstream child of the OpenIndiana Hipster work.  I am in contact with OI pkg(5) people, and of course everything we do will be open-sourced (testing it all is the hard part).  I've found bugs in Python thanks to this work, so I know it's being helpful.  We have the pkg(5) test suite passing 100% in API tests, and ~90% in CLI tests, where almost all of those failures are either to either assumptions about where apache22 lives, or by having the existence of python2.7 in /usr/lib/python2.7... which runs a bit counter to OmniOS's "Keep your sh*t to yourself" philosophy.

This pkg(5) work is difficult.  Once it's in an OmniOS bloody update, I hope to aid illumos community members in upstreaming pieces from other distros, as well as our own.  During January, I hope to define what will be in r151014, which is not only our next Stable release, but also our next Long-Term Support release.  This bloody period is critical to r151014's success, so if you have spare machines to run this bloody on, PLEASE do so, as you'll be helping the OmniOS community.

Thanks,
Dan McDonald -- OmniOS Engineering