NetBSD Archive

FORCE10 Uses NetBSD to Build Software Scalability Into OS

Submitted by kwag 2007-02-22 NetBSD 45 Comments

The NetBSD Foundation announced that Force10 Networks, the pioneer in building and securing high performance networks, has leveraged NetBSD as the foundation for the Force10 Operating System (FTOS). Based on the open source UNIX-like system, FTOS provides the software scalability and resiliency that powers the Force10 TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers.

pkgsrc-2006Q4 Branched

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2007-01-08 NetBSD 3 Comments

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the new pkgsrc-2006Q4 branch. At the same time, the pkgsrc-2006Q3 branch has been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2006Q4 branch. The NetBSD Packages Collection is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems, currently containing over 6400 packages. It is used to enable freely available software to be configured and built easily on supported platforms. Please see the detailed pkgsrc-2006Q4 announcement in Alistair Crooks's email to the pkgsrc-users m-l for more information.

Third NetBSD Hackathon Summary

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2006-11-29 NetBSD 1 Comment

The third NetBSD Hackathon was held on Saturday and Sunday, November 25th and 26th, 2006, where NetBSD users and developers met on IRC to prepare NetBSD for the upcoming re-branching of NetBSD 4.0. Approximately thirty NetBSD developers and more than 140 NetBSD users joined in on the two days, paying particular attention to improving install documentation and ensure build stability. A Wiki page as a TODO list was used for the first time, an approach that is likely to be used in future hackathons. All in all, over 200 bugs have been worked on in those two days and while not all of the critical showstoppers could be fixed, valuable progress was made in identifying root causes.

NetBSD Live! 2007 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-11-10 NetBSD 20 Comments

The NetBSD project has released a live CD with automatic hardware detection and an option to boot into KDE. Called NetBSD Live! 2007, the CD image is available for the i386 platform: "This CD-ROM contains a specially constructed version of NetBSD 4.0_BETA sporting a modified kernel based on NetBSD-CURRENT. Booting is done using an adapted version of the GRUB boot loader. The CD contains the following software packages in addition to the base operating system files: XFree86, KDE 3.4.5 with multiple language sets; joe and kvim text editors; AbiWord word processor, Dia 0.9.4 flow-charting and diagramming application, Inkscape 0.4.2 vector graphic application; The GIMP 2.2; Firefox web browser, and more." See the release notes for more information.

NetBSD 3.0.2, 3.1 Released

Submitted by ghen 2006-11-04 NetBSD 3 Comments

NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.1 have been released simultaneously. NetBSD 3.0.2 is a critical/security-only update for NetBSD 3.0, while NetBSD 3.1 brings much broader fixes and improvements, including: Xen3 domU support, LFS stability improvements, Postfix 2.2.11, BIND 9.3.2, msdosfs write optimization, addition of scan_ffs/scan_lfs tools, driver updates, and many, many other bug fixes and enhancements. Binaries and ISO's for both releases are available via FTP and BitTorrent.

NetBSD 3.1_RC4 Released

Submitted by ghen 2006-10-12 NetBSD 7 Comments

There is a new release candidate for the NetBSD 3.1 release, due to a series of recent OpenSSL vulnerabilities. There are more interesting improvements however, see the announcement mail for details. You can expect NetBSD 3.1, alongside NetBSD 3.0.2, to be released within two weeks.

Second NetBSD Bugathon a Bigger Success

Submitted by ghen 2006-10-09 NetBSD 8 Comments

The second NetBSD Bugathon was even more successful than the first: three times as much people (both users and developers) showed up, and together they fixed more than 300 PR's on two days. See Elad's report and the Bugathon's homepage for the details.

NetBSD: Not Just for Toasters

Eugenia Loli 2006-10-07 NetBSD 61 Comments

NetBSD is the oldest and least-used of the three major BSD derivatives. David Chisnall takes a look at how it's survived for so long and where it's going in preparation for the next release.

Recent Security Enhancements in NetBSD

Submitted by ghen 2006-10-04 NetBSD 1 Comment

"Running on almost twenty different architectures, and easily portable to others, NetBSD gained its reputation as the most portable operating system on the planet. While that may indicate high quality code, the ever demanding networked world cares about more than that. Over the past year, NetBSD evolved quite a bit in various areas. This paper will focus on those aspects relating to security."

pkgsrc-2006Q3 Released

Submitted by ghen 2006-10-02 NetBSD 8 Comments

"The pkgsrc developers are very proud to announce the new pkgsrc-2006Q3 branch, which has support for more packages than previous branches. As well as updated versions of many packages, the infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has been improved for better platform and compiler support, and also for enhanced security. At the same time, the pkgsrc-2006Q2 branch has been deprecated, and continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2006Q3 branch."

NetBSD’s First ‘Bugathon’ a Success

Submitted by ghen 2006-09-25 NetBSD 9 Comments

NetBSD held a public 'Bugathon' this weekend: developers and users gathered together on a public IRC channel where they discussed and fixed a lot of PR's (270 bugs closed in just two days). It was such a success that the NetBSD developers plan to organize such event regularly. There's also a website (still under construction).

Booting NetBSD on New Hardware

Submitted by IdaAshley 2006-09-19 NetBSD 1 Comment

"Although we'd all like it to be otherwise, the process of porting an operating system to new hardware is hardly an instantaneous one, and it is not always easy. You might run into a number of potential difficulties, especially if you are coming to the problem for the first time. This article, and likely the next couple in the Testing and measuring the TAMS 3011 series, details my experience porting NetBSD to the TAMS 3011. These articles are not about the finished port, but about the process of developing it. I can only hope you find the hilarious errors as funny as I found them frustrating at the time."

NetBSD 3.1_RC3 Released

Submitted by ghen 2006-09-18 NetBSD 13 Comments

Geert Hendrickx has announced the third release candidate of NetBSD 3.1. Binaries and .iso's can be found on the ftp site, or on one of the mirrors. "We anticipate this to be the final release candidate for the NetBSD 3.1 release, so, if no serious problems arise, we expect NetBSD 3.1 to be released on October 2."

Confessions of a Recovering NetBSD Zealot

Eugenia Loli 2006-09-16 NetBSD 28 Comments

BSD devcenter at onlamp.com has an interview with Charles M. Hannum, one of the creators of the NetBSD Project and the NetBSD Foundation, about the evolution of the project, funds management, problems with licenses and hardware documentation, the link with vendors, past and current mistakes, and what we can learn from the Linux development process.

NetBSD 3.1 RC2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-09-05 NetBSD 10 Comments

Geert Hendrickx has announced the availability of a second release candidate of NetBSD 3.1: Improvements over the first release candidate include: fixed the build of NetBSD-vax; fixed a buffer overflow in PPPoE/ISDN PPP; closed a socket leach in accept(2); removed references to sushi(8) from the afterboot(8) manpage; fixed an integer overflow in FreeType; disabled threading in named(8) to avoid a crash on sparc and sparc64, etc.

The Future of NetBSD

Submitted by sequethin 2006-08-31 NetBSD 83 Comments

Charles Hannum, co-founder of NetBSD posted to 3 major BSD lists saying that "The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. It has gotten to the point that being associated with the project is often more of a liability than an asset. I will attempt to explain how this happened, what the current state of affairs is, and what needs to be done to attempt to fix the situation."

Get to Know NetBSD

Submitted by anonymous 2006-08-30 NetBSD 15 Comments

"NetBSD runs on more hardware platforms than any other UNIX derivative due to smart design decisions and a commitment to portable code. Whether you're porting an operating system to a proprietary embedded system or looking for stability and compatibility across hardware platforms in the lab, NetBSD and its open license is a compelling alternative to Linux and the GNU Public License."

NetBSD 3.1-RC1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-08-22 NetBSD 9 Comments

NetBSD 3.1-RC1 has been released. "NetBSD 3.1 is a feature update for NetBSD 3.0, and features domU support for Xen3, massive LFS stability improvements, and lots of other, smaller improvements, additions, and bug fixes." Get it here.

NetBSD 3.0.1 Released

Submitted by Rui Paulo 2006-07-24 NetBSD 7 Comments

The NetBSD release engineering team has announced that the update 3.0.1 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 3.0.1 is the first security/critical update of the NetBSD 3.0 release branch. This represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for stability or security reasons. More details are available in the NetBSD 3.0.1 Release Announcement.

Xen3 domain0 Support in NetBSD

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2006-07-05 NetBSD 1 Comment

Through lots of hard work by Manuel Bouyer full Xen3 support is now available in NetBSD. Xen3 DomU support has been functional in NetBSD since the end of March, but this added functionality now makes it possible to run a controlling or privileged Xen3 domain under NetBSD as well. Please see Manuel's email to the port-xen mailinglist as well as the NetBSD/xen website for further details.