Ed MasteDigitalOcean: You haven't used our services in a while... "no matter what roadblock lies in your way, we’re here to help."
Me: My roadblock is that you stopped offering #FreeBSD images.
DigitalOcean: You can bring your own image!
Me: BYO images require ext3/ext4, which are not native FreeBSD filesystems.
Neal Gompa (ニール・ゴンパ) 
@emaste Why doesn't FreeBSD support it?
@Conan_Kudo The FreeBSD kernel does support ext3/ext4, but we have no tooling to build VM images on an ext3/ext4 filesystem, I'm not sure it's been tested as a root fs, the loader most likely doesn't support it, etc.
@emaste I assume it could be tested and made to work. DigitalOcean isn't the only provider with restrictions like this. It may be useful to do consider supporting it properly in FreeBSD...
Autolycus 🏴☠️@Conan_Kudo @emaste The only benefit of supporting ext in FreeBSD that I can see is mounting drives. It would be silly to use it for the root fs.
Scott Williams 🐧@autolycus @Conan_Kudo @emaste Back when I ran FreeBSD, the issue was that ext3/4 are GPL and not license compatible with the FreeBSD kernel, which to your point, is why there is limited mount support but not kernel level rootfs support. At the time at least, Linux wasn't great at ufs support either. Getting FreeBSD and Linux to directly share files was much more annoying than I expected it would be.
@vwbusguy @autolycus @Conan_Kudo #FreeBSD includes a BSD licensed ext2/3/4 implementation and there's no fundamental reason an ext3/4 rootfs is impossible.
Neel Chauhan@emaste @vwbusguy @autolycus @Conan_Kudo You could use UFS for boot and ext4 for the system, would that work?
@neel @emaste @autolycus @Conan_Kudo I've been out of the #FreeBSD game for a several years, but last I checked, the driver was incredibly basic and didn't support journaling, so it wasn't really safe beyond read-only mounts (the reverse was also true for ufs on Linux). There's also no generally practical reason to do this on FreeBSD instead of supported filesystems like ufs, zfs, etc. Blindly reverse engineering Filesystems isn't trivial, especially with high risk for data loss.
@neel @emaste @autolycus @Conan_Kudo And yes, it is ironic that zfs's license isn't a showstopper for FreeBSD, but Linux's GPL is a conflict both ways (to be clear, I squarely blame Oracle for this wrt zfs). But openzfs via fuse on Linux is more developed and robust than the ext driver in the FreeBSD kernel.
@neel @emaste @autolycus @Conan_Kudo IANAL, but someone could also fork FreeBSD, license it under GPL, and hack the Linux ext drivers to work with the FreeBSD calls, but this goes against the ideology of much of the BSD community. Distributions might also possibly relicense their Linux kernel version to GPLv3 and ship zfs, but that might break the ability to contribute and changes back to the upstream kernel, which goes against much of the Linux ideology. Again, IANAL.
Bartek Jasicki@vwbusguy @neel @emaste @autolycus @Conan_Kudo You don't need to hack #FreeBSD, it has implemented Linux calls too, on BSD license. 😀 It is called Linuxator. So, ext drivers should work with FreeBSD, same as it is done with Wi-Fi and DRM drivers. All of them are "rip-offs" from Linux.
License also isn't a problem. Even FreeBSD kernel still has some code with GPL.
@thindil Linuxulator provides Linux syscalls for linux (userland) binaries, LinuxKPI is the implementation of a small set of Linux kernel interfaces for use by drivers.
Felix Palmen 📯@thindil @emaste Please understand that a #syscall is something completely different than some other, in-kernel, call. A syscall is the special way userspace can call something in the kernel, which needs a context switch. Some architectures have special CPU instructions for syscalls available, on other architectures, software-interrupts (that the kernel can handle) are used, etc.
Nothing of that is done for in-kernel calls, they're "just" function calls.
#FreeBSD #Linuxulator provides a set of #Linux-compatible syscalls. The #LinuxKPI project on the other hand aims to provide in-kernel Linux compatibility for use by certain drivers. They're completely unrelated.
BTW, you're missing a syllable, it's spelled LinuxULator 😉
@zirias Thank you for the correction. ☺️ Yes, I need to work more on my typing skills, especially in the early morning. 😀
@thindil Haha, that was just a gentle hint 😉. But I think it's really important to understand the difference between #Linuxulator and #LinuxKPI, although you're certainly right, *both* were further improved/extended in #FreeBSD 14.
BTW, I'm pretty sure there is *no* GPL-licensed code in the kernel. There is some GPL-licensed code in base, yes, but you can build base without it; the goal is always to provide a full BSD-licensed OS.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, remains of GPL-licensed files in LinuxKPI are the main reason we still have drm-kmod drivers as a port (and not integrated with the base kernel), where this port includes these small parts of LinuxKPI. The drm drivers themselves are not GPL-licensed.
@zirias Any correction is always good. At least for me, I can learn something new. 😀
While in kernel there shouldn't be that code, I think I saw something to rewrite on the base system list. I didn't check recently.
DRM as port, I think there can be another reason. Its development isn't synchronized with the kernel development cycle. Having it as a separated port allows upgrading it without upgrading the whole system. Plus, there are other modules served as ports, without license problems.
@thindil 1. yes, as I said, #FreeBSD base had (and probably still has? I don't always follow it that close...) GPL-licensed parts. But they can never be absolutely required, you can build a working base without them, so anyone *can* have a "BSD-style" licensed OS from FreeBSD and do with it whatever a BSD license permits.
2. This reasoning about DRM in a port is often cited, but not really proven in practice. These drivers *need* #LinuxKPI, which *should* be part of the kernel (and largely is, the separate module only has GPL-licensed parts and it's ongoing work to replace them). So, you have a dependency on the LinuxKPI in the FreeBSD kernel anyways, you can't just use DRM drivers from some newer #Linux version. Therefore, the drm-kmod port is already a metaport, selecting the specific port based on the FreeBSD version you're running.
@zirias 1. I agree on this point. 😉
2. By "not-synchronized" I mean it is developed by different group of people, for different target (Linux). It is not just a different release cycle. Also, DRM isn't necessary in most cases. For example, Nvidia uses it only for Wayland, not for X. I don't know about AMD/Intel GPUs. I believe, there are several reasons of that situation. Reason: "if it works, don't touch" perhaps too. 😂
@thindil Well, one of the devs who is most active in that area told mit it's his goal to get drm-kmod back into base kernel, because it would remove quite some maintenance pain. And the ongoing efforts to replace GPL-licensed stuff (what's left right now is really minimal) are probably done for exactly that goal. That of course doesn't guarantee it will happen any time soon.
But remember where we came from: #FreeBSD 11 *did* have drm-kmod in the base kernel. It was very aged. It couldn't be updated because we didn't have the necessary #LinuxKPI bits and pieces. So, the "solution" then was creating that port, which could include lots of GPL-licensed code without creating a licensing problem for base.
@thindil BTW, that all said, I *do* agree that it's questionable whether GPU drivers that will only be needed for Desktop/GUI usage *should* be in base at all! After all, although #FreeBSD explicitly supports #Desktop usage, nothing else necessary for it is part of base.
But then, that's a different discussion. If it would be easier to maintain drm-kmod as a part of base, this will probably happen eventually...
@zirias Indeed, we will see. 🙂 Currently, the most important is, that it works. Sure, it requires more work during installation, but later it isn't so bad.
I prefer having a small base system. But that is just a matter of taste. 😉
@thindil I was talking about maintenance pain for devs btw. I assume much of it stems from having *most* of #LinuxKPI in the base kernel (where it actually belongs), but GPL-parts in the port, and also some fixes even duplicated (because the port must work on systems that didn't receive the fix from the main branch of base yet). With everything in the base kernel, you could maintain it in one place, and MFC fixes as a whole (and, if needed create ENs to also update RELEASE versions).
Of course, everyone wants a "reasonable" small base, discussions often evolve around what "reasonable" exactly is 😎