Author Archives: Andreas Drewke

TDME2 – The port of my JAVA based 3D engine to C++11 using J2C

1. Introduction

This is a short (success) story of porting my 3D engine, named TDME, from JAVA 1.6 to C++11.

To introduce myself a bit I can tell that I became in 2010 jobwise and by accident part of a 20-25 man power team that created browser games.

I did this for 3+ years, while playing a key role doing backend stuff, and came to the conclusion that creating games was the most interesting, challenging and also most fun thing to do.

For some reasons I decided in 2012 that I wanted to dig deeper. My interest ranged from multiplayer network code to 3D realtime rendering and such as alternative efficient data storage than relational databases.

Then I just started to develop TDME as a hobby project, which means doing a lot of research, doing a lot of trial and error and just do programming with a strong hands on mentality. This way I got a small JAVA based 3D visualization engine with some basic physics system built in which included e.g. collision detection.

On the backend side a friend of mine helped out and ported parts of the JAVA based TDME engine like collision detection to C++. Later I added network code. TDMECPP was born.

Yes, my luck was that I had some mates with me all the time that were kind enough to support me. Some of them still do and I am very thankful for that. They provided art assets, did game design and helped out gaining ideas for tools and such.

Then we actually decided to create a 3D realtime multiplayer game which type is known as MOBA.

Soon we had a game prototype that even had a multiplayer game mode included.

And now we get to the point. It turned out that doing such kind of game with JAVA in frontend (and C++ in backend) was not the best idea.

2. The issues with TDME/JAVA

2.1 Garbage collection

I had to fight garbage collection which blocked the frontend unpredictable for
even a second sometimes which is bad for such kind of game.

There was this one idea to fix this by allocating all the memory required on game session start up and never release it until the game session was finished, which improved the situation but lead to e.g. ugly code. At the end I decided that this approach was not good enough.

2.2. JIT

One minor thing was also that you could watch getting logic being handled by JIT step by step. Means logic would take some more time if being executed first and later be faster.
Not that big issue but still an issue. The idea to work around that was to have a warm up run or something similar. But I never tried.

2.3. Multi threading

There were some other hacks required because this way getting feasible multi threading ready logic was harder to implement as this kind of code was not renentrant by default even if it could be in C++ easily.

The game was multithreaded. It had one thread for visualization engine, one for game logic plus physics and one for path finding.

2.4. Network latency

Another issue was that frontend network code had too high network latency which I had no influence on as I was just using JAVA functionality. Using JNI and roll something own was not an option for me for various reasons.

2.5. SIMD

Another very valid point is that JAVA does not allow to do SIMD explicitly.

2.6. JAVA and C++ in the same project

Last point is that having C++ in backend and JAVA in frontend means that you can not share code between them thus having game logic twice. And I just did not wanted to do JNI or such.

3. The C++ port

I decided to try a complete C++ port of TDME. Meanwhile TDME had approximatively a 2 MB big codebase. So I searched the web for a JAVA to C++ translator and found J2C. I also checked the option to compile JAVA to native executables but found nothing feasible.

3.1. What does J2C do by default?

J2C is a Eclipse plugin for JAVA 1.6. Basically It is able to parse the sources of a JAVA project into a AST / syntax tree and prints this tree as C++11 into a new project. The generated project also includes a working makefile as well as JRE classes with empty definitions that are required by the project being ported.

You need to know first that during the whole process the top priority was to get a part running first, then fix or improve things, and test if it still works. This way the port might have taken a bit longer but it was the safest way.

3.2. What did I do to adapt J2C to suite the needs

parse JAVADOC and add it into method declaration in header files
do not use full namespace in definitions or declarations, always import classes in header of files
.hpp -> .h
removed null pointer checks (and thus throwing NullPointerExeption)
some other minor things

3.3. Port pre process

Namespace root simplification net.drewke.tdme -> tdme
use as less as possible JAVA classes
- use own ArrayList, HashMap, Console, … classes
Rename some classes to avoid name collision

3.4. Port post process

not 100% of the generated code did compile, there were problems with a few files, but they were easy to fix
remove JOGAMP
- use OpenGL and OpenAL instead
- replace it with GLUT for Window management, GL context initialization and HID events
implement required generated JRE classes/methods, because they get not implemented by J2C!
import code from TDMECPP like
- jsonbox
- tinyXML
- …
get rid of JAVA API usage for accessing JSON and XML files and use the above
replace JAVA data containers with STL data containers like std::vector, std::map
get completely rid of java::lang::String and friends, rather use std::wstring
remove dependency of each class from java::lang::Object and it methods
refactor left required classes from JRE into tdme::utils and use them instead of JRE ones
get completely rid of JRE classes and remove them
refactor static class initialization methods to static variable definitions
convert engine to use std::string instead of std::wstring
use call/return by reference and constness for various classes like std::string, tdme::math::*
convert J2C constructor (structure) to ordinary C++ constructors
do memory management
- put variables on stack instead of heap where appropriate
  - J2C creates everything on heap
- implement destructors to release memory eventually
Include and use 3rd party libraries for certain JAVA functionality, e.g.
- libpng for loading textures
- vorbis/ogg for audio package
- pthreads for multi threading
- …
do inlining where appropriate
convert JAVA protected package modifier, which has been transformed to C++ by just using C++ public modifier, to be implemented via friend class relatationship
manually transfer TDME code comments to TDME2 because Eclipse AST / syntax tree does not contain them thus J2C can just not do it
…

4. Where are we now?

TDME2 is the result of TDME(-JAVA) port to C++11 and TDMECPP. Check its GitHub site.
It already has lots of stuff build in. But please note that TDME2 had no release yet.
A bit of stuff is still left to finish the port. SIMD is missing still too.
But I already continued development on TDME2, as requirements were added, like adding FBX model file support with FBXSDK and much more.

One very good side effect is that now I can now port the engine to other platforms where JAVA is not available or parts of its eco system like JOGAMP.
E.g. I plan to port the engine to Haiku and maybe NetBSD. Lets see.

Yes. I love open source software and open source operating systems.
TDME2 already runs on MacOSX, Windows and Linux.

Now I use the engine for a new game that I am developing with our team. It already works great!!!

I am btw. currently hired to port a medium sized Flash game to OpenFL/Haxe.
Somebody seems to have faith in my porting abilities. 🙂

FYI: This whole process took about 4 months!!!

5. Links

Iterating hash map values, keys without iterator allocations / JAVA

1. The problem

Nobody likes lags. So for some (real time) applications like real time rendered 3D games it is nessessary to avoid memory allocations and garbage collection when beeing e.g. ingame as GC might block your game just when you do not need or want it.

Additionally there is no way to control garbage collection in standard JVMs.

When profiling your application with tools like Visual VM (http://visualvm.java.net) you will notice iterators very fast as one main cause for frequent garbage collection.

While you can work around creating iterators of ArrayList using simple old for loops like


	//
	ArrayList arrayList = new ArrayList();
	arrayList.add("Blues");
	arrayList.add("Rock ann Roll");
	arrayList.add("Swing");

	// avoids creating an iterator
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (int j = 0; j < arrayList.size(); j++) {
		String value = arrayList.get(j);
		System.out.println(value);
	}

	// will create 3 iterators!
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (String value : arrayList) {
		System.out.println(value);
	}

you simply can not work around looping over keys or values within a java.util.HashMap.

The following code will always create iterators on heap!


	// create hash map
	HashMap<string, string=""> hashMap = new HashMap<string, string="">();
	hashMap.put("1", "Blues");
	hashMap.put("2", "Rock and roll");
	hashMap.put("3", "Swing");

	// iterate values, will create 3 iterators!
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (String value : hashMap.values()) {
		System.out.println(value);
	}

	// iterate keys, will create 3 iterators!
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (String key : hashMap.keySet()) {
		System.out.println(key);
	}

	// iterate entries, will create 3 iterators!
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (Map.Entry<string, string=""> entry : hashMap.entrySet()) {
		System.out.println(entry.getKey() + ":" + entry.getValue());
	}

2. The solution

As there is no way to avoid creating iterators in theses cases I just programmed an own unordered hash map which is set up to reuse a single values and key iterator.

There is one drawback as you can not do nesting with the same hash map iterator in it self which is rarely required.

Basically a hash map does some kind of partition based on a hash function (which is provided e.g. in String.hashCode(), …, Object.hashCode())

Here it is called buckets. Each bucket can contain several key value pairs.
The bucket is identified by the hash function of the key object. The key value pair is finally identified by Object.equals() in a bucket as a bucket can contain multiple key value pairs.

The number of buckets always equals the number of elements stored in a hash map.

In best case you would have N buckets for N elements and each bucket would contain a single key value pair.
In this case the complexity for put, get, remove would be O(1). With collisions (means multiple key value pairs in one bucket) complexity will have a little O(n) shadow.


    package net.drewke.tdme.utils;

    import java.util.ArrayList;
    import java.util.Iterator;
    import java.util.Map;

    /**
     * Hashmap which keeps track of keys and values in a array list
     * @author Andreas Drewke
     *
     * @param 
     * @param 
     */
    public class HashMap<K,V> {

            /**
             * Values Iterator 
             * @author Andreas Drewke
             * @param 
             * @param 
             */
            public static class ValuesIterator<K,V> implements Iterator, Iterable {

                    private HashMap<K,V> hashMap;
                    private int bucketIdx;
                    private int keyValuePairIdx;
                    private int elementIdx;

                    /**
                     * Public constructor
                     * @param hashmap
                     */
                    public ValuesIterator(HashMap<K,V> hashmap) {
                            this.hashMap = hashmap;
                            reset();
                    }

                    /**
                     * Reset
                     * @return this iterator
                     */
                    public Iterator reset() {
                            this.bucketIdx = 0;
                            this.keyValuePairIdx = 0;
                            this.elementIdx = 0;
                            return this;
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.lang.Iterable#iterator()
                     */
                    public Iterator iterator() {
                            return reset();
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.util.Iterator#hasNext()
                     */
                    public boolean hasNext() {
                            return elementIdx < hashMap.elements;
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.util.Iterator#next()
                     */
                    public V next() {
                            while (bucketIdx < hashMap.buckets.size()) {
                                    ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = hashMap.buckets.get(bucketIdx);
                                    if (keyValuePairIdx == bucket.size()) {
                                            keyValuePairIdx = 0;
                                            bucketIdx++;
                                    } else {
                                            Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(keyValuePairIdx++);
                                            elementIdx++;
                                            return keyValuePair.value;
                                    }
                            }
                            return null;
                    }
            }

            /**
             * Keys Iterator 
             * @author Andreas Drewke
             * @param 
             * @param 
             */
            public static class KeysIterator<K,V> implements Iterator, Iterable {

                    private HashMap<K,V> hashMap;
                    private int bucketIdx;
                    private int keyValuePairIdx;
                    private int elementIdx;

                    /**
                     * Public constructor
                     * @param hashmap
                     */
                    public KeysIterator(HashMap<K,V> hashmap) {
                            this.hashMap = hashmap;
                            reset();
                    }

                    /**
                     * Reset
                     * @return this iterator
                     */
                    public Iterator reset() {
                            this.bucketIdx = 0;
                            this.keyValuePairIdx = 0;
                            this.elementIdx = 0;
                            return this;
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.lang.Iterable#iterator()
                     */
                    public Iterator iterator() {
                            return reset();
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.util.Iterator#hasNext()
                     */
                    public boolean hasNext() {
                            return elementIdx < hashMap.elements;
                    }

                    /*
                     * (non-Javadoc)
                     * @see java.util.Iterator#next()
                     */
                    public K next() {
                            while (bucketIdx < hashMap.buckets.size()) {
                                    ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = hashMap.buckets.get(bucketIdx);
                                    if (keyValuePairIdx == bucket.size()) {
                                            keyValuePairIdx = 0;
                                            bucketIdx++;
                                    } else {
                                            Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(keyValuePairIdx++);
                                            elementIdx++;
                                            return keyValuePair.key;
                                    }
                            }
                            return null;
                    }
            }

            /**
             * @author Andreas Drewke
             * @param 
             * @param 
             */
            private static class Pair<K,V> {
                    private K key;
                    private V value;
            }

            private int capacity = 256;
            private int elements = 0;
            private ArrayList<ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>> buckets = new ArrayList<ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>>();
            private HashMap.ValuesIterator<K,V> valuesIterator = new ValuesIterator<K,V>(this);
            private HashMap.KeysIterator<K,V> keysIterator = new KeysIterator<K,V>(this);

            /**
             * Public constructor
             */
            public HashMap() {
                    for (int i = 0; i < capacity; i++) {
                            buckets.add(new ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>());
                    }
            }

            /**
             * Clears this hash table
             */
            public void clear() {
                    elements = 0;
                    for (int i = 0; i < capacity; i++) {
                            buckets.get(i).clear();
                    }
            }

            /**
             * Grow hash map
             */
            private void grow() {
                    // store old buckets
                    ArrayList<ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>> oldBuckets = buckets;

                    // create new buckets
                    buckets = new ArrayList<ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>>();
                    capacity*= 2;
                    elements = 0;
                    for (int i = 0; i < capacity; i++) {
                            buckets.add(new ArrayList<Pair<K,V>>());
                    }

                    // recreate bucket table
                    for (int i = 0; i < oldBuckets.size(); i++) {
                            ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = oldBuckets.get(i);
                            for (int j = 0; j < bucket.size(); j++) {
                                    Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(j);
                                    put(keyValuePair.key, keyValuePair.value);
                            }
                    }
            }

            /**
             * Get the associated value of given object / key
             */
            public V get(K key) {
                    ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = buckets.get(Math.abs(key.hashCode()) % capacity);
                    for (int i = 0; i < bucket.size(); i++) {
                            Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(i);
                            if (keyValuePair.key.equals(key)) return keyValuePair.value;  
                    }
                    return null;
            }

            /**
             * Removes associated value of given object / key
             */
            public V remove(K key) {
                    ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = buckets.get(Math.abs(key.hashCode()) % capacity);
                    for (int i = 0; i < bucket.size(); i++) {
                            Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(i);
                            if (keyValuePair.key.equals(key)) {
                                    bucket.remove(i);
                                    elements--;
                                    return keyValuePair.value;  
                            }
                    }
                    return null;
            }

            /**
             * Put given value with associated key into this hash map
             */
            public V put(K key, V value) {
                    if (elements + 1 >= buckets.size()) grow();
                    V oldValue = remove(key);
                    ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = buckets.get(Math.abs(key.hashCode()) % capacity);
                    Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = new Pair<K,V>();
                    keyValuePair.key = key;
                    keyValuePair.value = value;
                    bucket.add(keyValuePair);
                    elements++;
                    return oldValue;
            }

            /**
             * @return number of elements
             */
            public int size() {
                    return elements;
            }

            /**
             * @return Values Iterator
             */
            public ValuesIterator<K,V> getValuesIterator() {
                    valuesIterator.reset();
                    return valuesIterator;
            }

            /**
             * @return Keys Iterator
             */
            public KeysIterator<K,V> getKeysIterator() {
                    keysIterator.reset();
                    return keysIterator;
            }

            /*
             * (non-Javadoc)
             * @see java.lang.Object#toString()
             */
            public String toString() {
                    String string = new String();
                    for (int i = 0; i < buckets.size(); i++) {
                            ArrayList<Pair<K,V>> bucket = buckets.get(i);
                            for (int j = 0; j < bucket.size(); j++) {
                                    Pair<K,V> keyValuePair = bucket.get(j);
                                    if (string.length() > 0) string+=", ";
                                    string+= keyValuePair.key + "=" + keyValuePair.value;
                            }
                    }
                    string ="HashMap[" + string + "]";
                    return string;
            }

    }

With the own hash map implementation you can iterate over values and keys while allocating no new iterators as they are reused:


	// create hash map
	HashMap<string, string=""> hashMap = new HashMap<string, string="">();
	hashMap.put("1", "Blues");
	hashMap.put("2", "Rock and roll");
	hashMap.put("3", "Swing");

	// iterate values, will reuse iterator
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (String value : hashMap.getValuesIterator()) {
		System.out.println(value);
	}

	// iterate over keys, will reuse iterator
	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
	for (String key : hashMap.getKeysIterator()) {
		System.out.println(key);
	}

Bits and Bytes

1. Bit representation in ordinal data types

Every bit has corresponding value in a ordinal data type

BIT_0 -> 1
BIT_1 -> 2
BIT_2 -> 4
BIT_3 -> 8
BIT_4 -> 16
BIT_5 -> 32
BIT_6 -> 64
BIT_7 -> 128

BIT_n -> 2^n

2. How to check if a bit is set

bitN = (value & BIT_N) == BIT_N

3. How to set a bit

value|= BIT_N

4. How to unset/toggle a bit

value~= BIT_N

5. Most/least significant bit

MSB LSB
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

the most significant bit in a byte is BIT_7 with a value of 128
the least significant bit in a byte is BIT_0 with a value of 1

6. Shifting

int<<=1

will multiply a int by 2 by moving the bits 1 bit left in direction to the most significant bit

int>>=1

will divide a int by 2 by moving the bits 1 bit to right in direction to the least significant bit

7. What else can you do

mask more than one bit

byte = int & 0xFF

will return only the first 8 bit (sum of BIT_0 … BIT_7 = 0xFF) from an integer

combined mask and shifting

byte0ofint = int & 0xFF
byte1ofint = (int & (0xFF << 8)) >> 8
byte2ofint = (int & (0xFF << 16)) >> 16
byte3ofint = (int & (0xFF << 24)) >> 24

…

8. Byte order

each cpu stores ordinal data types bigger than one byte in a specific byte order

intel: little endian byte order begins with LSB byte
powerpc: big endian byte order begins with MSB byte
arm: can do both as far as i know
…

so whenever you store and read ordinal data types bigger than a byte binary you should care about byte order

9. Why?

you need most likely work with bits and bytes when doing
- hardware related programming
- network programming
- other stuff
  - e.g. you can implement sets using bits
  - …

Injections

In last time i saw more often security holes in web applications from web developers that actually do create web applications and run them – SQL injections.

I do not understand that, because avoiding them is actually no voodoo.

1. Understanding SQL injections

Its easy. You instruct a mysql server to do things with SQL commands. At the application level these are normal strings consisting of a human readable syntax.
So this is actually where exactly the injection can happen.

Usually you will not write harmful SQL code on your own, so where do they really come from?

This query does not look harmful:

$sql = ‘SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `accounts`’;

This query does:

$sql = ‘SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` = ‘ . $id;

Just depending where your $id does come from.

Consider the following code:

$aid = $_GET[‘aid’]; // read account id from GET parameter
$sql = ‘SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` = ‘ . $aid;
mysql_query($sql);
…

This can lead to a SQL injection, as I could do the following

curl “http://yourwebapplicationhost/account.php?id=0%3B%20DROP%20TABLE%20%60accounts%60%3B”

The above code just means I can directly manipulate the SQL command.
I just need to end the SQL “SELECT” and add a SQL “DROP TABLE `accounts`;”

Its the same like:

$aid = ‘0; DROP TABLE `accounts`’;
$sql = ‘SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` = ‘ . $aid;
mysql_query($sql);
…

I could give more examples. But the idea should be clear now.
No. Magic quotes is not a fix. Its rather a mess and deprecated. Just qoogle that.

2. How to prevent SQL injections

2.1 Escaping

A key to success could be escaping. In easy words escaping means that “user input” data will be prepared to be safely used in a SQL query.
If tied to old functional mysql API you just need to do it with mysql_real_escape_string(). If using PDO just have a look at: PDO::quote()

So our code could be fixed like:

$aid = $_GET[‘aid’]; // read account id from GET parameter
$sql = ‘SELECT `id`, `name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` = ‘ . mysql_real_escape_string($aid);
mysql_query($sql);
…

2.2 Prepared Statements

A better way to prevent SQL injections is to use PDO with prepared statements.
Prepared statements have advantages and disadvantes too.

2.2.1 Advantages:

Prepared statements are SQL commands without the actual parameters. They are more like templates for queries of the same type. They become compiled in the SQL server and can be reused which gives a performance gain as compiling is only required one time.

I tested it once and if i remember right, my application speed increased by 20%
Unfortunatly web application requests have a very short life time so that reusing them does not often makes that much sense.

Well, as the parameters are not included in the SQL command you just can not tweak the SQL command but only its parameters.

2.2.2 Disadvantages:

You need one more request to the database server to set up the prepared statement.
You cannot use parameter binding in SQL commands like:

SELECT `id`,`name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` IN(:id1, :id2)

You would have to use PDO::quote() again and construct your SQL like:

// set up ids
$ids = array(1,2);
// quote ids
foreach($ids as &$id) $id = PDO::quote($id);
// construct SQL
$sql = ‘SELECT `id`,`name` FROM `accounts` WHERE `id` IN(‘ . implode(‘,’, $ids) . ‘)’;
…

3. Conclusion:

You should always be alerted if putting input data not constructed directly from or not validated of your application itself from like $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, … into e.g. a SQL query and thus escape it.
Its even better to have a abstract security concept which might be e.g. using prepared statements.
…

4. XSS/HTML injections

Injections mean injecting something! So injections are all similar.
A simple example of a XSS or HTML injection would be:

$userName = $_GET[‘username’];
echo ‘Hallo ‘ . $userName;

So with this kind of script i can easily put HTML or Javascript on your page just by putting some HTML or Javascript into a GET parameter “username” when calling the script.

You might want to have a look at strip_tags() or using certificates.

I think, i dont need to explain that further.

5. Code injections

Its the same with code injections. The difference is just where you put the injected data. With PHP code injections a candidate e.g. is:

$code = $_GET[‘code’];
eval($_GET[‘code’]);

6. So what?

So this article may not be complete but it should at least make up an idea about this topic in your mind.

Please be aware that this article is about injections related to PHP, but they work the same way in other languages as well like javascript, java, …

How to install a NetBSD 6.0 workstation on a laptop

How to install a NetBSD workstation on a laptop:

This is a very short tutorial how to install NetBSD 6.0
on a Laptop.
It installs the OS on the whole hard disc, sets ups WIFI,
installs pkgin, a binary package manager, and some basic software…

Grab the ISO for NetBSD 6.0 for your machine and burn it:
ftp://iso.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/6.0/

Install NetBSD:

put CD into your CD-ROM drive
setup BIOS to boot from CD
reboot computer
NetBSD installer
- choose language
- choose keyboard type
- Install NetBSD to hard disk
- confirm install to whole hard disk
- press ok to confirm install to whole hard disk again
- choose custom Installation
  - kernel
  - kernel modules
  - base
  - /etc
  - compiler tools
  - online manual pages
  - text processing tools
  - complete X11
  - confirm disc geometry
- use the entire disc
- update boot code
- use predefined partition sizes
  - will create swap with size of memory
  - will create root partition
- confirm disk name
- confirm installation
- use bios console
- choose cd-rom as install media
- choose timezone
- change root password
- finish configuring
- remove cd
- reboot

Basic rc.conf setup:

vi /etc/rc.conf

put under

“# Add local overrides below
wscons = YES”

the following lines:

sshd=NO
postfix=NO
inetd=NO

Enable WIFI:

vi /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Add the following lines:

network={
ssid=”<YOUR SSID/WLAN NAME>”
psk=”<PSK>”
}

vi /etc/rc.conf

put the following to the end of the file

# wlan
wpa_supplicant=YES
wpa_supplicant_flags=”-B -i -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf”
ifconfig_<DEVICE NAME>=”dhcp”
dhclient=YES

reboot

Install pkgin:

export PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/<arch>/6.0/All
pkg_add -v pkgin

echo $PKG_PATH > /usr/pkg/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf

pkgin update

Install Midnight Commander:

pkgin install mc

Install XFCE:

pkgin install xfce4

vi .xinitrc in your home folder and place the following line

startxfce4

to start x type in shell

startx

Install Thunderbird:

pkgin install thunderbird

Install Firefox:

pkgin install firefox36

if xfce asks later for browser executable just type “firefox36”

Install VLC:

pkgin install vlc-2.0.3

Install Scite code editor

pkgin install scite

Add a user

useradd -m -G wheel <name>
passwd <name>

More to come:

GDM or similar
Flash
Java, Eclipse
CodeBlocks
Skype

modular-xorg

for hardware accelerated OpenGL- unfortunatly as of 12-10-27 it was broken with my intel GPU

drewke.net

drewke.net::Andreas Drewke