1 # Ongoing DragonFly News
3 Check the [DragonFly Digest](http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/) for current events.
5 DragonFly's new HAMMER filesystem is fast becoming a mainstay of the
6 system, with numerous people now using it on production machines!
7 The release of the new filesystem in 2.0 has gone very smoothly with
8 only minor bugs reported to date!
11 # DragonFly-2.0 RELEASED July 2008!!
12 ## 2.0.1 - 27 September 2008
14 The **[[DragonFly-2.0.1 Release|download]]**
16 This September release contains numerous driver updates, minor HAMMER
17 bug fixes, and a new hammer meta command to ease daily maintainance of
18 your HAMMER filesystems.
21 # What is DragonFly BSD?
23 DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating system as BSD and Linux
24 and is based on the same UNIX ideals and APIs. DragonFly gives the BSD
25 base an opportunity to grow in an entirely different direction from the one
26 taken in the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD series.
28 From 2003 (when DragonFly first forked from FreeBSD), to early 2007,
29 the DragonFly project focused on rewriting most of the major kernel
30 subsystems to implement required abstractions and support mechanics
31 for the second phase of the project. This involved a great deal of work
32 in nearly every subsystem, particularly the filsystem APIs and kernel core.
33 During all of this we have managed to keep the system updated with regards
34 to the third party applications and base system utilities needed to make
35 any system usable in production. We have also adopted the PkgSrc system for
36 management of all non-base-system third-party applications in order to pool
37 our resources with other BSD projects using the system.
39 In the 2007-2008 time-frame a new filesystem called HAMMER was developed
40 for DragonFly. HAMMER sees its first light of day in the July 2008
41 2.0 release. This filesystem has been designed to solve numerous issues
42 and to add many new capabilities to DragonFly, such as fine-grained
43 snapshots, instant crash recovery, and near real-time mirroring.
44 The filesytem is also intended to serve as a basis for the clustering
45 work that makes up the second phase of the project.
47 The second phase of the project is now upon us. The DragonFly project's
48 ultimate goal is to provide native clustering support in the kernel.
49 This involves the creation of a sophisticated cache management
50 framework for filesystem namespaces, file spaces, and VM spaces, which
51 allows heavily interactive programs to run across multiple machines with
52 cache coherency fully guaranteed in all respects. This also involves being
53 able to chop up resources, including the cpu by way of a controlled VM
54 context, for safe assignment to unsecured third-party clusters over the
55 internet (though the security of such clusters itself might be in doubt,
56 the first and most important thing is for systems donating resources to not
57 be made vulnerable through their donation).