Simple Quorum Drive for the FreeBSD CTL HA and the BeaST Storage System

Dear Readers,

I hope you have all been well, safe and warm. We have been having a crazy and unexpected winter attack in Europe. It’s been great enjoying all the snow like how I used to when I was a kid. But in some regions it has been pretty dangerous, so I hope you were all prepared.

Crazy winter weather is almost finished as well as my adventure with BSD Magazine. I would love to thank all of you for being with me during my work as Product Manager in the Mag. Thank you for your support, kind words, help and feedback.

We have been carrying on long disputes, whether we should close the Mag or keep the project. Just now, as I’m writing, I’ve received a final decision about Ewa, the previous Product Manager, taking it back. With this positive information, let’s hop right into the issue.

The issue is being opened by Mikahail Zakharow’s article, Simple Quorum Drive for the FreeBSD CTL HA and the BeaST Storage System. Staying in FreeBSD Corner, you will read Pedro Giffuni’s article BSD:It never really dies.

We have two great articles about OpenBSD this time around. One isfrom our all time favorite author, David Carlier, whoshared with us his thoughts in The State of Multimedia in OpenBSD. From thesecurity standpoint, Albert Hui shared his thoughts on  OpenBSD 6.0 Security Feature Changes and Pledge Security Interface.

And for all of you who have been asking about ownCloud, here it is! Marcus Schmitt shows us  how to Control Your Files Using Your Own Cloud With ownCloud.

Next, you will read an interview with Aryeh Friedman, CTO and co-CEO of Friedman-Nixon-Wong Enterprises, LLC.

Last, but not least, Rob Somerville contributes his insight  on failure in communication and toxic people.

Enjoy reading! I wish you all the best of 2017, and continued satisfaction from upcoming BSD Mag issues.

Marta & BSD Team

Contents:

News

BSD World Monthly News                                      

by Marta Ziemianowicz

This column presents the latest news coverage of events, product releases and trending topics.

FreeBSD Corner 

Simple Quorum Drive for the FreeBSD CTL HA and the BeaST Storage System                

by Mikhail Zakharov

During our experiments on developing the BeaST storage system we faced the lack of an automatic LUN failover function of the CTL HA subsystem. Yes, we can switch LUNs with CTL HA, but we have to do it manually setting “Primary role” to the alive controller: sysctl kern.cam.ctl.ha_role=0

We also have to do it fast enough, otherwise, a client host may lose access to the drives of the storage system. 

BSD: It Really Never Dies     

by Pedro Giffuni

This year, I was one of three developers representing FreeBSD at the Google Summer of Code 2016 Mentor Summit in Sunnyvale, California. It was a nice opportunity to get in touch with other projects and let FreeBSD get a little better known. We don’t really have many chances to meet other developers from our own project so during the dinner, we started discussing a variety of matters. While we knew there was someone from NetBSD, we hadn’t seen anyone from the other BSD projects. One of my colleagues made a comment along the lines of “perhaps NetBSD should be reconsidering its mere existence,” to which I replied ... “that will never happen, pretty much as we will not ever consider closing our project just because another project is more popular.”

OpenBSD 

The State of Multimedia in OpenBSD           

by David Carlier

OpenBSD is often seen as an excellent operating system for routers, in which it indeed excels.

In this article, we will see that OpenBSD can have more use cases, thus being used for sound editing, video games or multimedia at large.

OpenBSD 6.0 Security Feature Changes and Pledge  Security Interface      

by Albert Hui

The OpenBSD operating system is well known to be security focused. For the 6.0 release, a noteworthy change is that systrace, support for Linux emulation and the usermount option has been removed. If interested, I highly recommend you watch Theo de Raddt’s excellent talk at dotSecurity 2016.

ownCloud

Control Your Files Using Your Own Cloud With ownCloud                         

by Marcus Schmitt

If you search for cloud solutions within the internet, you are able to find hundreds of solution providers. But what  happens with your private data? Who really has access to your data? Very restrictive file access settings within the cloud service doesn’t guarantee that the cloud company won’t copy or forward your private files. Furthermore, some providers simply scan your data to create a user profile in order to sell the profile to marketing organisations.

Interview

Interview with Aryeh Friedman     

by Marta Ziemianowicz, Marta Strzelec & Marta Sienicka

Rob’s Column                                     

by Rob Somerville

More than 30 years have passed since he first typed at a computer keyboard. Rob Somerville looks back over the major changes in the IT industry and enquires what will be the next revolution on the horizon..