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Blog System/5

Blog System/5
Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than...
5 months ago
67
5 months ago
NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than Unix, if anything? And is that still the case?
Blog System/5
Picking glibc versions at runtime Using a glibc version that is different from the system-provided one shouldn't require the use of...
6 months ago
66
6 months ago
Using a glibc version that is different from the system-provided one shouldn't require the use of containers, as I recently heard someone claim. Let's take a look at how dynamic linking works and what the options are.
Blog System/5
Rust doesn't solve the CrowdStrike outage Look, I like Rust. I really, really do, and I agree with the premise that memory-unsafe languages...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
Look, I like Rust. I really, really do, and I agree with the premise that memory-unsafe languages like C++ should not be used anymore. But claiming that Rust would have prevented the massive outage that the world went through last Friday is misleading and actively harmful to...
Blog System/5
Synology DS923+ vs. FreeBSD w/ZFS A comparison of a home-built FreeBSD NAS with ZFS against the DS923+ storage appliance from...
2 months ago
Blog System/5
Demystifying secure NFS My lab notes on the arduous process of setting up NFSv4 with Kerberos across a Synology NAS and...
3 months ago
59
3 months ago
My lab notes on the arduous process of setting up NFSv4 with Kerberos across a Synology NAS and various Linux and FreeBSD clients.
Blog System/5
The costs of the i386 to x86-64 upgrade If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as...
4 months ago
57
4 months ago
If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as “legacy cruft from the 1990s that nobody cares about any longer”.  It's time to see how any of that carried over through the 16-bit to 64-bit evolution.
Blog System/5
EndBASIC 0.11 is here Support for user-defined functions, an LCD, and a disassembler
7 months ago
Blog System/5
Revisiting the DOS memory models At the beginning of the year, I wrote a bunch of articles on the various tricks DOS played to...
4 months ago
50
4 months ago
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a bunch of articles on the various tricks DOS played to overcome the tight memory limits of x86’s real mode. There was one question that came up and remained unanswered: what were the various “models” that the compilers of the day offered?
Blog System/5
BazelCon 2024 recap Just like that, BazelCon 2024 came and went. So... it’s obviously time to summarize the two events...
4 months ago
50
4 months ago
Just like that, BazelCon 2024 came and went. So... it’s obviously time to summarize the two events of last week: BazelCon 2024 and the adjacent Build Meetup. There is A LOT to cover, but everything is here in just one article!
Blog System/5
Kyua graduates The story behind the FreeBSD and NetBSD testing frameworks
6 months ago
Blog System/5
20 years of blogging A recap of my experience writing a blog for 20 years straight and the transition to writing a...
8 months ago
47
8 months ago
A recap of my experience writing a blog for 20 years straight and the transition to writing a newsletter using Substack.
Blog System/5
Self-documenting Makefiles Make, as arcane as a build tool can be, may still be a good first fit for certain scenarios. Let's...
a month ago
43
a month ago
Make, as arcane as a build tool can be, may still be a good first fit for certain scenarios. Let's see how to make a build more palatable in this day and age if you choose this tool.
Blog System/5
Revisiting the NetBSD build system I recently picked up an embedded project in which I needed to build a highly customized full system...
a month ago
42
a month ago
I recently picked up an embedded project in which I needed to build a highly customized full system image with minimal boot times and NetBSD was the best choice for it. Let's look at why its build system helps.
Blog System/5
Hands-on graphics without X11 A crash course on direct framebuffer and keyboard access via NetBSD’s wscons
a month ago
Blog System/5
Porting the EndBASIC console to an LCD In this post, I’ll guide you through the process of porting the EndBASIC hybrid console to the...
10 months ago
26
10 months ago
In this post, I’ll guide you through the process of porting the EndBASIC hybrid console to the ST7735s 1.44" LCD, which sports a resolution of 128x128 pixels, a D-pad, and 3 other buttons. I will cover the prerequisite work to make the port possible, dig into the GPIO and SPI...
Blog System/5
The IDEs we had 30 years ago... and we lost A deep dive into the text mode editors we had and how they compare to today's
a year ago
Blog System/5
From 0 to 1 MB in DOS A tour on how DOS was able to use most of the 1 MB address space of the 8086
a year ago
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To C or not to C That's the dilemma at Twitter over the weekend
a year ago
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Links: January 2024 edition Interesting articles, videos and projects from this time period—with commentary
a year ago
Blog System/5
SSH agent forwarding and tmux done right The SSH agent is a little daemon that holds your private keys in memory. This is particularly handy...
a year ago
15
a year ago
The SSH agent is a little daemon that holds your private keys in memory. This is particularly handy when your keys are protected by a passphrase: you can unlock and add your keys to the agent once and, from then on, any SSH client such as ssh(1) can interact with the keys without...
Blog System/5
Running GNU on DOS with DJGPP Peeking under the covers to see how DJGPP manages to run GCC on DOS
a year ago
Blog System/5
Windows NT: Peeking into the cradle A review of "Showstopper!" by G. Pascal Zachary and my own reflections
a year ago
Blog System/5
Links: December 2023 edition Interesting articles, videos and projects from this time period—with commentary
a year ago
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Code reviews: A success story A tale on how a strict code review process helped ship a bug-free feature
a year ago
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Strings, encodings, NULs and Bazel A story on how strings without NULs are problematic for interop with the OS
a year ago
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Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
a year ago
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Why do I know shell, and how can you? My personal story with this ancient language and some tips to learn it
a year ago
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How "new type" helps avoid production outages My January links recap included the “Phantom Types” article by David Soria Parra. In it, the author...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
My January links recap included the “Phantom Types” article by David Soria Parra. In it, the author briefly touches upon the “new type” idiom, its typical implementation in Rust, and then proceeds to propose a better alternative. But the question arises: why should you care?
Blog System/5
A CLI text editor? In my Windows? It’s more likely than you think!
a year ago
Blog System/5
Beyond the 1 MB barrier in DOS Continuing the tour on how DOS apps used memory above the first MB
a year ago
Blog System/5
Links: November 2023 edition Interesting articles, videos and projects from this time period—with commentary
a year ago
Blog System/5
Links: February 2024 edition Interesting articles, videos and projects from this time period—with commentary
11 months ago
Blog System/5
Bazel interview at Software Engineering Daily A detailed summary of the many topics we discussed during this fun interview
a year ago
Blog System/5
End-to-end tool testing with Bazel and shtk If you use Bazel, your project is of a moderate size. And because your project is of a moderate...
a year ago
10
a year ago
If you use Bazel, your project is of a moderate size. And because your project is of a moderate size, it almost-certainly builds one or more binaries, at least one of which is a CLI tool. But let’s face it: you don’t have end-to-end testing for those tools, do you?
Blog System/5
ioctls from Rust Diving into what the ioctl system call is and how to invoke it from Rust
a week ago