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Sunday, 15. October 2023
[This article has been bi-posted to Gemini and the Web]
In the previous article I wrote about my arrival journey (which was a bit of an adventure but not as much as the way home!) as well as the two tutorial days.
EuroBSDCon 2023 report (1/2) - arrival & tutorial days
This article follows up by reporting about the main conference days, the journey back home and a conclusion. Sorry for the delay; upon coming home my oldest child had to go to hospital and the stay was extended twice. As you can imagine, things are a mess and leave little time for not strictly essential things.
In the morning after about 30 more minutes or so I finally got the remaining dependencies for the port built that I was working on updating (see tutorial day 2 in the previous article). With that done I updated the Makefile by setting the new version and removing all the old crates, then followed the procedure in the Porter's handbook. Would it just work?
No, it wouldn't, a patch failed to apply. Huh, patch? I couldn't remember any. So I took a look at the port's history on freshports. Aha! Looks like Piotr Kubaj had added a patch to make the port work on powerpc (thank you for the work!). Alright, let's try without the patch first.
Now it compiled but then failed as a file in the manifest was not there. An investigation showed that the configuration file in the distribution tarball had been renamed. That was an easy fix after which the updated port built just fine and the program worked after installing it. Now about that patch... Maybe I could just adapt it to the newer crate?
Oh my, no chance there. It's patching the _libc_ crate which is *slightly* over my head. Sorry Piotr, but I don't have any POWER system available to test it on, anyway (I'm actually planning to change that fact thanks to another EuroBSDCon attendee, but more on that later). And with a bit of luck, the patch was obsolete by then, too. I still need to set up Poudriere (on another machine) and test it again, then I'll open a PR.
View out of my hotel room's window (PNG)
I watched the weather closely and timed things so that I actually arrived at the Universidade catching very little rain along the way. At the registration desk I met Toshaan whom I had spoken to last year and actually sent a mail a week before the conference or so. We talked a bit about Unix in general and AIX in particular as well as configuration management systems. This has been very interesting for me as he's quite knowledgeable in both fields. Afterwards I sat down and had a chat with one of the Punkt-de Employees about previous EuroBSDCons and various things. Patrick showed up as well and our topic shifted a little to filesystems and old stories.
Then it was time for the keynote. There were technical difficulties so the presentation started somewhat late. Right after it Henning made a joke that we were following the example set by Deutsche Bahn and were 20 minutes late now (but hoped to catch up after lunch). The keynote was about something that's not exactly my topic: Gender diversity in Computer Science.
There's too many really weird things going on in that field so I didn't expect much from it, but it was actually good. In fact I'd go as far as claiming that the topic is an important one and some of the points the speaker made resonated with me (while I don't agree with everything). In fact I wrote her a longer email the next morning.
Next I went to Taylor's talk simply for the reason that we had met yesterday (I had planned otherwise originally). I enjoyed it a lot as he's not just a very nice person but also a good speaker. Hadn't known exactly what to expect from the talk but certainly didn't regret going there.
Next for me were lightning talks in the same room. There were problems with laptops and projectors again, so they took longer than anticipated (and we had to further delay taking the family photo which Henning had scheduled at 13:00). Shteryana presented a quick invitation to OpenFest in Sofia, Bulgaria, then Matthieu reported on the status of Wayland on OpenBSD (still quite a bit of work to do, but things are starting to work). Luca presented on adding subpackages to FreeBSD ports (no ETA, yet) and Mohammad talked about the challenges (and necessary tricks) of getting OpenBSD installed on a fairly restricted mini router.
On the way to the Auditorio to take the photo, I talked to Luca about the planned subpackage feature for FreeBSD. I got some interesting info from him and passed on some of the experiences from what we called the "dev split" in Ravenports. It happened in January or so and was a pretty big thing despite us having a much, much smaller tree. Luca's plan is sound as far as I can tell and he's doing the right thing with keeping the very invasive changes out of scope for now.
Not having to wear masks all the time and keeping distance, this year we could take a photo as they usually do. Then we went for lunch. There I recognized Goran whom I had met last year. He was talking with Christos about audio topics, I think. I said hello to him, listened to his arrival journey story (which was actually even more adventurous than mine!) and finished eating. Then I went back to the other building again.
University buildings with nice statues (PNG)
This time I wasn't sure which talk to choose. Should I go to Matthieu's talk on OpenBSD routing domains or to Corwin's one on GPU passthrough for Bhyve again to hear what's new (I had been to his previous talk in Vienna). In the end I didn't go to either as I got stuck at the Moridium table! They were handing out _floppy disks_ (yes, seriously!) which contain a bootable DOS system plus a TCP/IP stack, networking tools, a functional webserver (which supports HTTP/1.1!) as well as FTP and IRC clients among other things. And that's not actually the craziest thing that they had there!
Eirik was sitting at a 80286 computer with a CRT monitor on which he showed that the network and IRC actually worked. The machine had both a physical floppy drive and a floppy emulator; on the latter you would attach a USB stick and select images from it like with a CD emulator. And if that was not geeky enough already, it also featured a sound chip which emulated the floppy drive sounds when it was accessing data! *Brrr-trrr-t-t-t-t!* Lots of cool stuff. We talked a bit about the demo scene and they showed me their favorite demo (which I didn't know before). There's so much breathtakingly awesome things out there that it's hard to believe (and I've had contact to "the scene" and sceners before).
As I was far too late for the talks going on right now I talked to Deb Goodkin at the foundation table instead. Among other things I asked her about some of the legal requirements regarding usage of the FreeBSD logo and she confirmed that the way I plan to use it for my Ravenports guide is perfectly fine. I also grabbed some goodies and thought about donating some money right there but then decided to do so online instead. The difference is unlike when giving them cash your name will appear on the list of donors. While I actually don't care about that, being able to prove that many individuals donate helps the foundation maintain their 501(c)(3) status.
The faculty of literature building (PNG)
I went to Warner's talk next who presented on LinuxBoot and FreeBSD. First he traced the history of the LinuxBoot project, explained what it actually does and why it is useful to make FreeBSD able to boot from it. For me that explanation had definitely been in order as I had been ignorant about this almost entirely. The talk was interesting with a good mix of background info to get the whole picture and more detailed coverage of some of the specific problems he faced and decisions he made. I had trouble following a couple of times, though. Not because Warner was being unclear - he definitely wasn't. But the air in the room had become pretty bad by then, getting low on oxygen (and I was still deprived of sleep).
After having met Jörg Sonnenberger from NetBSD last year (he wasn't around in Coimbra, I think), this year I met another Jörg while getting out for some fresh air. He had been to the very first conferences in Europe (attending even Brighton in 2001!) before losing track of *BSD for a while and now returning after several years. It was really nice to get a bit of an impression on what the early days had been like! While it's always good to get to know some new people, this particular conversation had been something special for me.
Then it was time for Toshaan's presentation. When we had talked earlier, I deliberately hadn't asked him too much about what had happened in the POWER ecosystem, expecting him to elaborate on that anyway. And that was what he did. It was good to get an update but he also touched on some information that was completely new for me. Definitely an interesting topic and I hope that BSD on POWER will gain more traction in the future.
After the last talk of the day we gathered for the Social Event. Most of us walked there, down the hill from the university, then across the bridge and just a little further. When we arrived at the place, I joined the group of NetBSD people around Taylor again. We discussed NetBSD's installer and not being terribly familiar with it, I volunteered to do a couple of NetBSD installations and write down my thoughts. When you know something inside-out it's much harder to see potential problems that other people might have who are not experienced with it and an outsider's perspective can be helpful to identify possible pain-points for newcomers.
We got into the _Tertula d' eventos_ and sat down at the tables. I talked with Christoph most of the evening (who had actually come to Coimbra by car - from north-west Germany!!). Things like tech back in the day and today, some of the organizational problems of foundations, networks, languages and of course quite a bit of NetBSD. He introduced me to what seems to be a pretty unique concept of NetBSD storage: The so-called "wedge" that I had not been aware of so far. Not slices, not partitions - _wedges_ (yep, "when you think you've seen it all" and such!).
There was some really good food and a bit later in the evening three musicians had a short performance. It was nice to also experience some Fado music as the cultural aspects of traveling should never be overlooked. Especially not when you go to places that have a rich heritage (which definitely is the case with Coimbra). Sometime between 22:30 and 23:00 I left as I was really tired by then. The conference day had been fantastic and the evening event also very much worth attending.
View of the river, the university (topmost) and parts of the city from a bridge at night (PNG)
Even though it had been a bit later the day before (especially after writing down some more notes), I got up at my usual time way before sunrise to write a couple of mails and such. After checking the weather I decided to go to the university early as both the chance of it raining and the amount of rain was only to increase. This proved to be a good idea as not too much later it started raining quite a bit.
I ended up with a handful other early birds at the still closed doors of the university. There were some jokes about it not being too hard to get in through the glass wall (as there were enough stones around) or by lock-picking. Some time later the door was opened regularly, though. 😉
Another university building (PNG)
Somebody announced "I need a coffee now!" and offered to also get one for Paul (chairman of the EuroBSDCon foundation board) who had sat down at the registration desk. Paul's "no, thank you" was met with a deliberately not too well acted surprised face and a "what's wrong with you?!". Asked about tea he stated that he didn't drink that, either, which lead to a suspicion of mental illness. When he explained that in fact he didn't drink caffeine and alcohol at all, the "diagnosis" was extended to something even worse. It was very funny.
However that was the point where I had to get involved as I kind of share the same preferences (I do consume energy drinks, though. Far too many actually; but that's it.). When I said that I just don't like hot beverages he was like "See? There's at least two of us now!". He wanted to know if people also kept asking me "what about soup?" which was also funny as I've indeed been asked this multiple times. My answer was "Soup is fine, but that's an entirely different thing." which he totally agreed to.
So after some good laughs we also talked a bit about EuroBSDCon. I told him that last year I had been a first-timer and would love to attend next year again (depending on when and where it'd be). He was happy to hear that. Also we agreed that with last year only going to the main conference and this year tutorials + conference, the logical "upgrade" for next year would be to become a speaker. I'll indeed consider that as I actually like giving talks anyway and if I have something in mind when the CFP opens - why not?
After talking to Paul and Peter (who was also at the table) about OpenBSD I went down the stairs to have a seat. Before too long, Toshaan and somebody else came by and we ended up discussing various developments in Linux land. Soon one of the Modirum guys that I had seen in Benedict's tutorial joined us. Our chat could mostly be summed up as "weird times!" (Red Hat and CentOS, Hashi Corp. and Vagrant, etc).
Then it was time for Sunday's key note. Philipp presented on "20+ Years of EuroBSDCon" which I liked a lot. For people like me who are into history anyway, getting to at least learn something about all that I've missed out on, is also great fun. Nice coincidence: Just after the keynote I ran into Jörg again and could ask him some more precise questions about the very early conferences.
I went to the other building again to see what Jeroen's talk would actually be about. Quickly went to the restroom, though, and had a good laugh again. There had been this broken toilet with a sheet of paper at the door that read: "Broken / kaputt -- DO NOT USE!". In the meantime somebody had made an amendment, so now it said: "Broken / kaputt (like Linux) -- DO NOT USE!". *haha*
Main stairs to the campus (missed them, yet?) (PNG)
The "Defending democracy using BSD" was special for several reasons. It's the only one (I think) that on purpose was not recorded or streamed. So if you weren't there in Coimbra, you're not going to see it. Very old school: Live once, then gone. While I didn't have to sign a treaty with my own blood or anything, I'm not going into too much detail here because I can see why they did that. Short summary: Jeroen's company uses BSD and in addition to pretty standard corporations they have clients from human rights organizations to political parties. As you can imagine, even with not going into undue details, some of the info that he shared with the audience in the room should not be publicly disclosed. There were a couple "oh wow!" moments for me like for example when he explained that they are hosting email for one person who has officially been declared "public enemy" for publishing some information regarding human rights in one country.
He didn't have a lot of slides and the actual talk was over quickly, but that was in fact a good thing as there were *lots* of questions from the audience. I certainly do not regret going there, especially as I'll likely be able to watch the other two talks later. Major takeaway: BSD is being used to protect some preeety high-profile organizations who are target to systematic and well-directed attacks -- and so far has proven a pretty solid solution for that!
Before the talk began I had seen a person in the row before me starting up his laptop and recognized the boot menu. So after the talk I just asked him if I got it wrong or if he actually ran HardenedBSD on his machine. He did and we talked a bit about that system, the good things that Shawn does and the problems that the OS has due to being so very niche. Took us a while to notice, but at some point we figured out that we both spoke German and so continued into various topics (including philosophy and even religion!) over lunch. Hadn't exactly expected that for a tech conference - but why the heck not? Our common interest in tech is not really mainstream, anyway, either. So probably chances are not that bad that people might also be into other non-mainstream topics.
Next talk that I went to was Albert's on Ansible. That one hasn't been terribly useful for me as I am clearly missing the Ansible basics required. Since returning home I've been in contact with Benedict and he was nice enough to give me the Ansible material from his tutorial on the topic last year. Will need to find some time to dig into the topic and later probably re-watch the talk.
The second last talk slot had been especially cruel for me as I would have loved to go to all three. One of them was cancelled, limiting my choices - but still. Running native docker containers on FreeBSD was the more compelling topic, but the other one was given by Michael Dexter whose talk last year had been a great finisher for a great conference. I felt like I could use some of the energy and inspiration which he'd probably provide again, so in the end I opted for the other talk with a bit of a bad conscience. The later quickly went away and after a couple of minutes I didn't regret a thing.
If you're reading this you are likely a BSD person and already know that FreeBSD is such a good platform for building appliances, for learning and teaching - and for so many other things. But if you ever get asked about this by somebody interested, point him or her at this talk when it becomes available! Michael not just makes good points. Many people can do that pretty well. What he does a really outstanding job on is _conveying the passion_ and being completely authentic. If anybody was to doubt his dedication and genuine excitement about what has been achieved and what we might achieve together even for a moment, I would downright question that person's judgement. Thanks again for doing what you do, Michael. Especially since last year you mentioned that in the beginning you were more of a shy person. It would have been a major loss had you not found the determination to muster up enough courage and start giving talks.
Last talk of the conference for me was on webauthn on BSD. That's a topic that I need to look into for work in the not too far future, so going there was a no-brainer. Taylor did a good job of explaining the various dangers and in which cases FIDO might be a better answer to them than many older takes. Some of the examples were hilarious and I definitely am looking forward to dig into the topic now (before I was way more reserved TBH).
Bank of Portugal (left), another building and one more statue (PNG)
Well, and then it was already time for the closing session. The sponsors were mentioned again and we gave some well-deserved applause to the organizers and the local team, too! We were reminded that the next BSD conference (AsiaBSDCon 2024) will not be in the usual place in Tokyo but in Taipei, Taiwan (where it had once started!) and invited to hand in papers or just attend.
After the usual game of delaying the announcement of the well-kept secret of where next year's conference was going to be (with "hints" like "it's colder than here" and "no natas"!), I learned that it's going to be Dublin, Ireland! And then that was it. I saw Goran, went over to say bye. He wanted to give me a QR code so I could download his band's new album, but while doing so was dragged away by some other people who insisted on taking a photo together. Spotted Toshaan who asked me what I was going to do after the conference. He was making plans for the evening, and rightfully so since Coimbra is a nice place. By this point I was exhausted enough to think that I'd have to leave very early in the morning so I said that I'd just return to my hotel, pack things together and get some sleep. So I bid farewell to him and a couple of other people that I met on my way back to the hotel.
Like the arrival journey this section exists because I think getting to and back from a conference is an important part of the experience. Especially regarding fun with conditions in other countries.
Can you believe it? I was just at the first station and the trip had already been quite adventurous again! I had gotten up early, packed my bags and done the check-out at the hotel. I also got to the train station without problems as I already knew the way. There I was in for a surprise, though: No departure was to be found on the screen that would match the for my connection! I asked around and showed my ticket to people, but the reaction always was along the lines of: "Now that's strange!".
Eventually I lined up at the ticket counter and asked again. Oh my, they had changed train schedules _yesterday_ (17th)! No idea why they didn't know about it a couple of weeks in advance when I bought my ticket. Anyway: Mystery solved. According to the new schedule my train was supposed to go 7 minutes later. As I had gone to the station early (which turned out to be a good idea...) and my ticket is valid for any regional train I decided to catch an earlier one. Who'd know if I was going to need more time at Coimbra-B as well?
There's not a whole lot that could go wrong on the short ride, so I arrived at Coimbra-B just a moment later and went looking for which platform my next train would leave from. On my way there I saw another conference attendee sitting on a bank, waiting. Of course we were no longer wearing our badges, but I recognized his face from video recordings: Marc Espie, one of the most knowledgeable OpenBSD ports people. I had never talked to him, but here was my chance. I picked up some very interesting ideas about optimizing full-tree builds that I'll have to share with the rest of the Ravenports team.
Good thing that I looked at my watch at some point because if we had talked on just a couple of minutes longer, I would have missed my train! Turns out that Marc was heading south to Lisbon for his flight back while I had to travel north to Porto for mine. We could easily have continued our conversation if I hadn't had to leave quickly. At the right platform I ran into Toshaan again who is also going to fly in the afternoon. We were to travel in different cars of the train but decided to meet again in Porto to take the Metro to the airport together. I rightfully expected that we wouldn't run out of topics to talk about anytime soon.
There were power sockets on the train, so I decided to do a little work on my laptop after looking out of the window for a while. After leaving the train I met with Toshaan and we walked over to the Metro. While I had charged my card for the way back as well when I bought it, he had to buy a ticket. At the ticket machine we met another attendee who is from Switzerland. The three of us got onto the Metro, changed at Trinidade and boarded the next one to Aeroporto.
That last 'o' in the destination name seems to be silent, BTW. On this whole line I always read the station names and tried to guess how to pronounce them as shortly before arriving a female voice would announce the next station. I was right only two times! My attempt to understand a bit about the rules of Portuguese pronunciation failed miserably as you can see (and I love Romance languages in general!). Want an example? When it read "Francos" it's actually like "Franksh". That certainly wasn't the hardest, just the only one that I remembered later.
Well, we arrived early at the airport, before the check-ins for my flight were open (and mine was the first to depart). So we sat down and talked some more. Before too long we were joined by another German from the OpenBSD camp (he had taken the bus from Coimbra to Porto). Eventually the check-in opened and after about 40 minutes and a long line I got rid of my bag. I returned to the others. Toshaan had gone off to check-in as well, so our smaller group talked a bit in German before it was time for me to go. I was already a bit late at that point so I hurried to the security check - where there was a loooong line...
Fortunately the process was way quicker then in FRA. I didn't need to take electric devices out and such - just to put my hand baggage in the box and to empty my pockets. Thanks to that I made it in time - only to find out that departure was delayed for about 30 minutes. You win! Not jackpot of course (that would be flight cancelled, right?), but still. Especially since for changing planes in MAD was the only occasion for me where I didn't have plenty of time...
Finally the gate opened, I got in line and eventually in. Nothing happened for a while (there's a pattern emerging) and another line formed. Again it took quite some time before the doors opened to let people step outside. Many boarded the bus but right before me the glass door closed. I was a little confused as there were still a couple of us waiting in the hall. A service woman had said something in Portuguese and then left before the door closed. I didn't know what was going on - maybe the bus was full? It departed and the rest of us waited.
A little while later the bus returned -- and brought back the passengers! Now I was _really_ confused. I asked people nearby who had been on the bus but were not able to find any common language. Eventually I was able to talk to the ground personnel and was explained that there had been a systems malfunction: The plane had not passed pre-flight check! Situation was unclear for the moment and I was told to wait until more information became available. Jackpot after all?
Well, not quite it turned out. Just a few seconds after taking some notes the glass doors opened again and we first got into a bus and then boarded the plane. Again late check-in of the trolleys was required and I was happy that I didn't bring one. At 16:50 we were above the clouds again. It should have been 16:35 or so and of course this had to happen on the only connection where I only had one hour to change. But if I were to miss the connecting flight I'd still at least be closer to home. So I adjusted my watch for the proper time zone for MAD and hoped for the best.
At 0:20 on Monday I was finally sitting in the (last?) S-Bahn from Frankfurt to Darmstadt and taking a couple of notes again before my ball pen ran empty -- I had a new one from the FreeBSD foundation booth in my bag, but that wasn't exactly helpful. Why? Well, let me continue on in chronological order. When we arrived in MAD, passengers were told to stay seated and let people who needed to catch connecting flights exit first. I grabbed my hand bag and got off. A quick look at the board told me "FRA: Last call" -- and I still had to get to the right gate! Fortunately it was not all across the terminal again but still far enough that even though I ran as fast as I could, boarding had closed when I arrived. Ok, what to do now?
I explained to the man at the gate what had happened and two other late passengers showed up as well. In the end they were friendly enough to re-open the gate for us and even sent another bus! We got on the plane and I could not have been happier, being able to avoid having to spend the night in Spain. When I arrived at FRA, I went to the baggage claim only to find out that my assumption had been right: My bag wasn't there. Since I as a passenger barely made it to the plane there was basically no way they would have been able to get the baggage from the previous flight into the connecting machine. *sigh* So I tried to find out what to do now. It was late in the evening and there weren't too many people still working. Eventually I found the counter on which I could report missing baggage.
Standard procedures required sending me back to the baggage claim and look again, so I did that. And yes: All empty, not a single bag or anything. Off to the counter again then. By that time three other people had gathered there and were in line before me. When I had gotten my form, filled it out and handed it back in, I was super late. So in a hurry I went off to look at getting back to the other terminal. Damn, the irregular shuttle busses again? Fortunately no, there also is the skyline train as I found out. I had to wait a bit but eventually it took me back. Then I hurried off to the train station where I tried hard to find a ticket machine. Found one, made my choices -- and the damn thing told me that it wouldn't take cash! WTF?
I ran across half the station for another machine which finally accepted my payment and I got my ticket. This episode made me miss another S-Bahn train. The next one would _theoretically_ have taken me to central train station right on time for my connecting S-Bahn -- but that one was delayed for several minutes. Well, what can you do? Hope that the next one would be delayed, too? I've studied in Frankfurt more than a decade ago and thus at least knew the train station well enough to find the shortest way to the platform. I took a look at the board and nope, S-Bahn was gone. I went off to figure out what my next options were and eventually caught the last one (that one was late, BTW, not that it mattered for me anymore).
On the train I called my mother who had agreed to pick me up at my destination as there were no busses leaving until morning and I had decided against leaving my car there for almost a week when I departed for Coimbra. Not having my bag with me meant no toothbrush and stuff like that but yeah, at least I was at my mother's house and had planned to stay for a few more days before driving home anyway. According to the online portal for missing luggage my bag had not been found by Monday afternoon which did not sound too good (I had some more clean clothes in my car but not too many). Very late in the evening there was a surprise, though: A courier service delivered the bag! Which was really helpful as in the meantime my wife had called me and I needed to return home early for various reasons.
The trip has been a little more exciting than fits my taste. But there has been a fair share of bad luck involved in that and honestly it can strike you anywhere. The actual conference has totally been worth any troubles, though, and not too long after returning home I've been able to laugh about some of the things that went wrong. The good conversations I had worked very well to "recharge my BSD battery" as Allan put it a couple of times and I've got enough input to think about for months to come. Like last year the conference has been a personal highlight of the year for me (which admittedly wasn't that hard because for me 2023 was an extremely tough year).
Also EuroBSDCon being held in different countries presents an excellent opportunity to go visit some that you would probably never get to otherwise. I'm not saying that I would never had ended up in Portugal ever in my life, but chances that I would have visited Coimbra if it hadn't been for EuroBSDCon are pretty low, I guess. I'm glad I did come there, though. Lots and lots of good memories to take home (and some to share in these two blog posts).
If you like *BSD and enjoy talking about it you really have to consider going to conferences and meeting other BSD people there. I can't begin to explain what you miss out on if you don't! Money is a thing of course and time is, too. But I'm already making plans for next year and unless something happens that actively prevents me from going, I'll be sure to attend again. Coimbra was nice, but I'm also looking forward to go to a less remote place again. 😉
So see you next year in Dublin perhaps?
I haven't decided what to write about next. While I've got several topics on my list like writing about Poudriere on FreeBSD, I also need to continue the CBSD series. We'll see what I find the time and mood for.
