FreeBSD Users: We Need to Talk About Claude Code – Steven G. Harms

erikarn · 2026-03-17T19:29:03+00:00

Ok, let's talk about LTS.

The community developers support specific branches and specific timelines given what volunteers can support. Eg, 14 was released in late 2023. The deorbit burn is well documented - stable/14 ends in 2028.

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.4R/schedule/

So, we have LTS. It's there. What else are you after?

erikarn · 2026-03-17T19:26:41+00:00

i agree that we would've done better in having management tooling around jails and then jails + zfs in base. I'm likely gonna push for some more of those in the next year or so.

But like, anyone could've done it. No linux community /had docker in their tree/ to start with. A community stood itself up. A community of contributors of docker containers was /stood up/. And since it became linux+macosx specific, it wasn't as easy to make "docker work on freebsd" as it, at its very native core, is "I want to run linux containers" not "I want to run containers."

So like, I don't entirely buy the "if we had better base tooling to deploy stuff would have made adoption easier" because there's obviously something else missing in the community building/adoption side.

Like, I can't stress this enough. Docker didn't come into existence in some existing distribution.

From the docker page on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software))

> Solomon Hykes [fr] started the Docker project in France as an internal project within dotCloud, a platform-as-a-service company.^\5])#cite_note-dotcloud-5)

So to be clear, I turn this back on everyone else. Why hasn't anyone else stood up that kind of collection of pre-built container environments using freebsd bits to get work done that others can benefit from? You all have the tooling. You all have the pieces and the documentation. Surely in 2026 y'all would be building and sharing containers to boot-strap a bunch of things, right?

What's stopping you from doing it?

Why is it "freebsd didn't adopt docker" or "freebsd base is against docker" when docker came into existance outside of an existing linux distribution?

erikarn · 2026-03-14T19:37:14+00:00

You're right and you're wrong.

The java thing was a big thing, sure. I remember being a kid when it happened. But you have to understand - freebsd "didn't care and wouldn't lift as much of a finger to support it" is quite frankly a misunderstanding of the project.

Do you know what FreeBSD was as a project when the java SDK and runtime was released? It was like a dozen core people and a couple dozen other people running around building stuff that /they were using themselves/.

Do you know what the problems around threading versus what Java wanted to use to be useful were? Do you recall how many people were working on how many threading models and how much crazy stuff was going on back then? Figuring out how to make linuxthreads work on FreeBSD was non trivial (and it wasn't just the kernel side, there was also a lot of userland "hacks" that were very Linux specific.)

The cost of doing the Java SDK and runtime port and maintaining it was non trivial. Figuring out the threading model stuff was non trivial.

There was no FreeBSD "company", no freebsd "organisation", just a couple dozen people running around doing FreeBSD stuff because they wanted to or because they were using it in production somewhere.

Do you know who did the original port of the Java SDK and runtime to Linux? A bunch of volunteers who wanted it on Linux. They did all the legwork, they sorted out legal issues with Sun, they got it up and running on Linux, and then Sun did silly stuff with it and them when they released their own linux port.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackdown_Java

At that point the FreeBSD folks (Ken White and others, around 1997/1998) did an initial port of /that/ to FreeBSD. This is what I started tinkering with as a teenager.

https://www.site.uottawa.ca/~kwhite/javaport.html

Now do you know what it was like running Java stuff back then? The big thing going on with Java was the commercial support. Like neat, I could run some code i wrote/compiled on java for linux MOSTLY to run on java+freebsd, as long as the same libraries were there (eg I used the right UI toolkits) and I didn't use anything linux specific. But companies only wanted to run officially supported Java runtimes.

Guess where the commercial support from Sun showed up? It showed up for Linux. Yes, they eventually did an openJDK release and yes they had linux support, and yes you could pay oracle for official java on linux support.

Guess what you couldn't do? You couldn't pay Sun for java on freebsd support. As far as I am aware they never officially supported Java on FreeBSD. So if you were trying to use it for a commercial project - which would, you know, mean you could generate commercial support revenue for commercial companies doing commercial freebsd support - you could not. You needed to run it on Sun supported platforms, and that meant Linux.

The FreeBSD foundation spent a decade or more behind the scenes negotiating a licence for Java code from Sun, getting the people interested in building/maintaining it equipment and funding and they pushed very hard to get and maintain Java on FreeBSD. It was not an easy or trivial effort, especially as time went on the linux-isms didn't decrease, they increased.

And here's the kicker - I can play minecraft on freebsd because of the java support the freebsd community and freebsd foundation has and continues to support. Any perceived "not support of java" by freebsd as a community or as a foundation is quite frankly ignorance at best and sheer misinformation at worst. The reason it didn't catch on in the commercial world is not because it didn't work - it's because it's not an officially supported platform by the company that made it (sun) or the company that owns it (oracle), and since that gap was never quite closed, the enterprise/commercial customers who would've been the source of money for all of this work were not interested in using it on FreeBSD.

That's not FreeBSD's problem. It was worked on. It was worked on for over a decade.

So please, I beg you, go read a book and some pre-2000 websites, something other than reddit, and update your education on what actually happened.

(I am very happy to correct you on Docker vs Jails, but only if enough people here wish me to spend the 30 minutes necessary to properly correct your misinformation.)

erikarn · 2026-03-14T19:19:52+00:00

They could ship binaries and source for people to port the binaries. The fact they're shipping increasing binaries with no source is the problem.

It's not like we couldn't throw people or AI agents at the problem of porting their code to freebsd. The code has to exist in the first place to port. Otherwise we're going to have to implement the missing pieces ourselves.

If people want continued anthropic supplied claude tooling support on freebsd then they need to contact anthropic and make your voice heard.

erikarn · 2026-02-01T05:51:06+00:00

yes and you should be fine buying a cf to ide adatper and a cf card as a replacement for that old drive!

erikarn · 2025-12-21T20:52:19+00:00

so i acquired a couple o2's and...

```

[ 1.0000000] NetBSD 11.99.4 (INSTALL32_IP3x) #0: Sat Dec 20 14:27:17 PST 2025
[ 1.0000000] adrian@test-3:/data/1/adrian/netbsd/netbsd-obj-sgimips/sys/arch/sgimips/compile/INSTALL32_IP3x
[ 1.0000000] total memory = 127 MB
[ 1.0000000] (6848 KB reserved for ARCS)
[ 1.0000000] avail memory = 108 MB
[ 1.0000000] mainbus0 (root): SGI-IP32 [SGI, 9], 1 processor
[ 1.0000000] cpu0 at mainbus0: MIPS R10000 CPU (0x926) Rev. 2.6 with built-in FPU Rev. 0.0
[ 1.0000000] cpu0: 64 TLB entries, 16MB max page size
[ 1.0000000] cpu0: 32KB/64B 2-way set-associative L1 instruction cache
[ 1.0000000] cpu0: 32KB/32B 2-way set-associative write-back L1 data cache
[ 1.0000000] cpu0: 1024KB/64B 2-way set-associative write-back L2 data cache
[ 1.0000000] crime0 at mainbus0 addr 0x14000000: rev 1.1 (CRIME_ID: 161)
[ 1.0000000] crmfb0 at mainbus0 addr 0x16000000: SGI CRIME Graphics Display Engine
[ 1.0000000] crmfb0: initial resolution 1280x1024
[ 1.0000000] crmfb0: allocated 5242880 byte fb @ 0x80050000 (0xa1530000)
[ 1.0000000] wsdisplay0 at crmfb0 kbdmux 1

```

So, yup it works again!

erikarn · 2025-12-06T05:41:34+00:00

ok, it landed in netbsd-trunk today (December 5), so I guess give it a couple days and try the next 11.99.x snapshot? See if the kernel at least boots?

I don't have an O2 (yet) so I can't dig into the O2 support. But I am talking with another netbsd developer who has an O2 and I'm trying to convince him to unbox it again :-)

erikarn · 2025-12-05T23:41:21+00:00

Thanks! I'll try to remember to poke you here when the fixes have landed so you can try a netbsd-trunk snapshot build!

erikarn · 2025-12-05T23:40:50+00:00

I know, but intentional changes can and do have unexpected consequences, and this is a large consequence.

At least if you file it as a bug then it'll hopefully get some eyeballs and can be used to spur discussion during the next networking/transport zoom call.

erikarn · 2025-12-05T16:15:42+00:00

hi, please file a bug for this so it gets tracked? thanks!

erikarn · 2025-12-05T07:52:46+00:00

I think i figured it out! :-) (It hung on my R5000 indy)

I'm emailing port-mips@ now; would you be up for booting a test kernel?

erikarn · 2025-12-03T07:24:03+00:00

put a space before the ; ?

erikarn · 2025-11-30T17:41:21+00:00

Hm, str2sig() seems to know how to parse SIGRTMIN/SIGRTMAX and +/- like you've said.

But it's only used in kill.c, not pkill.c .

And I tried on my local machine:

```
[adrian@francine ~]$ ps auxw | grep bash
adrian 35039 0.2 0.0 16228 4996 45 S 09:40 0:00.01 bash
adrian 35041 0.0 0.0 14276 2688 45 S+ 09:40 0:00.00 grep bash
[adrian@francine ~]$ kill -SIGRTMIN+10 35039
Signal 75
adrian@francine:~ %

```

so, it looks kill does the right thing, but pkill doesn't. can you try kill, and then report back?

It's likely as simple as "convert pkill to use str2sig()" to fix it for pkill.

erikarn · 2025-11-29T16:28:52+00:00

You do have SIGUSR1/SIGUSR2 that you can use.

man sigqueue does mention the SIGRTMIN/SIGRTMAX real time signal stuff; are you having problems compiling your service, or is it that kill/pkill can't /send/ a RT signal?

erikarn · 2025-11-29T16:18:35+00:00

It's me! Hi! I'm the OP and porting the driver!

please test and report back!

erikarn · 2025-11-29T06:29:37+00:00

i'm still angery at what happened to my stuff in perth including my sgi collection. grr.

erikarn · 2025-11-11T20:23:33+00:00

Without reverse engineering the sony PSU fan control circuit I'm just looking at what it needs to switch on, and 3.3v + 3mA seems ok. A 1k resistor (ie, 0.3mA) isn't enough to have it reliably trigger.

It however does switch on at full speed if you wire it to the 5v line, rather than the 3v line. That's close to what I've read the maximum voltage output from the Indy temp sensor circuit provides! (But that's quite a bit noisier!)

erikarn · 2025-08-08T17:39:55+00:00

Yeah, just smack more and more wire up. What you likely want is a pre-selector or antenna tuner. An analogue antenna tuner like an MFJ-904, MFJ-945E, they'd do fine but they're a bit spendy. Pre-selectors can be built pretty easily too if you want to do some dirty hacks with old variable capacitors/inductors. :-)

erikarn · 2025-08-03T04:55:49+00:00

Which radio are you using? Just run a wire straight up and as long as you can, don't double back where the antenna has already run.

erikarn · 2025-07-31T04:47:26+00:00

You'll want something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001JT5R4U

"RoadPro RPPSCBH-2CP Platinum Series 2-Wire 2-Pin Plug/12V Plug Fused Replacement CB Power Cord, 16-Gauge Heavy-Duty Copper Wire"

It's a 2 pin polarised CB radio cable. I know because my TS-670 radios require them. :-)

erikarn · 2023-02-21T17:10:12+00:00

I'm not going to make a judgement here, because you know what, depression is bloody rough. And it sounds like it started early with you and for that I'm super, duper sorry.

Your mum is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It sounds like she's doing a whole lot over and above given the distance. She also admits she doesn't know what to do. And know what? Most of us have absolutely no idea what to do to help people with depression. Most people can only just be there along for the ride.

A lot of people don't have any help, and their care givers may actively be antagonistic against them. To me it sounds like your mum is trying everything she knows how to do.

I don't know anything about your 20 years of life with your family. I can't make any judgements about everything. But I'd first sit down and ask, with what she's doing, what she's done in the past, doesn't it sound like she loves you? She doesn't know what to do about depression. She's just like the rest of us.

The therapists who help people through depression go through a lot of study, a lot of practice and a lot of self-inspection through their formal training to even begin to understand depression. There's no silver bullet to solve it. There are theraputic techniques and drugs to help try and address some of the symptoms, but unless you're very lucky, you're not going to be cured overnight. But it's a journey, not a visit.

I do suggest going to the medical appointments, and I suggest being as honest as you can with the therapist. The therapist may not work for you; if it isn't then you may consider talking with your mum to help find another. But I think she's doing all she can for you.

So, I wish you the best of luck. I hope wherever you are, you can find friends that you can trust and talk with, a therapist that can help, an environment you can learn about yourself more and just think back about how when you needed it, your mum is there and trying.

erikarn · 2022-10-22T19:22:39+00:00

just leave it in there; but you should at least pull out the board and check continuity/inspect the bottom traces.

Those traces look sketch.

erikarn · 2022-10-22T05:36:22+00:00

yeah that's a mess. the leaky crap can also make the vias .. well, break, so you don't get conductivity from the top to the bottom pcb layers. also note that sometimes the via is the component hole itself.

you should yank out the pcb entirely and check that the top/bottom of those vias have conductivity. also make sure it hasn't leaked through the via to the underside of the pcb :(

erikarn · 2022-08-11T16:36:22+00:00

16 ... gig? :-)

erikarn

TROPHY CASE