In this BSD Now episode, hosts Kris Moore and Allan Jude interview Jun Ebihara regarding lesser-known CPU architectures found in NetBSD. They discuss the interesting things about these older machines. Press play below to tune in:
Original: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2015_07_01-lost_technology
NetBSD has just released version 6.1.4, which addresses the recent Heartbleed vulnerability, as well as other security and stability issues.
NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable UNIX-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from 64-bit AlphaServers and desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent in both production and research environments, and it is user-supported with complete source. Many applications are easily available through The NetBSD Packages Collection.
For the full release notes, check out the following link: http://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-6/NetBSD-6.1.4.html
Below some links, photos and videos for some BSD related events in the last few weeks:
NYCBSDCon
NYCBSDCon took place on 14 Nov. Justin Sherill has summarised the 2 days: NYCBSDCon Notes. Will Backman, the man behind bsdtalk, has uploaded a short video showing off the facilities, food and talks:
BSD Day 2010
Some pictures of BSDDay 2010 (Budapest, Hungary, 20 Nov 2010) can be found here.
For the slide, check out the wiki page.
DragonFlyBSD
DragonFlyBSD is taking part in Google Code-In. Several Google Code-In tasks for DragonFlyBSD have already been claimed and finished.
There’s a 15 minutes interview on BSDTalk with Matthew Dillon about the recent 2.8 release of DragonFlyBSD. This interview was done at MeetBSD California 2010. Download/Listen: MP3 – OGG
Soren Jacobsen has announced the release of NetBSD 5.1: “The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that version 5.1 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 5.1 is the first feature update of the NetBSD 5.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in security/critical updates are cumulative, so the latest update contains all such fixes since the corresponding minor release. Some highlights include:
Zafer Aydogan announced Jibbed 5.1, a NetBSD-based live CD featuring automatic hardware detection and the Xfce desktop.
PC-BSD Installer
The new PC-BSD installer (available as GUI and text installer), which is also able to install plain FreeBSD, has now been committed to the FreeBSD source tree. This video goes into the details of the installer.
Kris Moore: PC-SYSINSTALL – A new system installer backend for PC-BSD and FreeBSD
BSD Certification
The BSD Certification Group needs reviewers for the BSDA exam objectives.
BSDA Certification Exam can be taken at MeetBSD 2010, Cracow, Poland: BSDA Certification, Cracow
Help test ZFS v15
ZFS v15 brings in user and group quotas and help is needed to test, before it’s imported.
I would like to do a call for testing for my ZFS v15 patch.
As the user/group quotas feature is too much attractive for my needs, I couldn’t resist and have created (and debugged + tested) a ZFS v15 patch for head (applies cleanly against stable/8 as well).
It is a backport of several onnv-revisions, always consulting pjd’s p4 tree and includes four post-9396 related user/groupquota bugfixes. The bootcode (zfsimpl.h) is properly updated to support v15 as well, the python part is modified (paths, smb support, ioctls). Continues
Nvidia Releases a Much Improved Video Driver
Nvidia announced on June 22nd the final and stable version of the 256.x proprietary driver for Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 256.35 incorporates lots of fixes and improvements, over previous releases. Unofficial GLX support was also added for a few OpenGL extensions, as well as Thermal Settings reporting improvements, Compiz fixes, many VDPAU improvements, and many more. Without further introduction, let’s take a look at some of the most important changes brought by the Nvidia 256.35 video driver (via)
FreeBSD Developer position
iXsystems is looking for a Senior Software Engineer:
SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER in San Jose, CA. FreeBSD driver & kernel dev; prog in C/C++, PHP, SQL/x86 assembly lang; eng group; tools/env & tech writing skills; Reqs: BSCS + 5 yrs. exp. (source)
iXsystems is the all-around FreeBSD company that builds FreeBSD certified servers and storage solutions, runs the FreeBSD Mall, and is the corporate sponsor of PC-BSD and FreeNAS.
New FreeBSD Committers
The following people have been awarded commit privileges in recent weeks:
BSD Can sponsored trip reports
The FreeBSD Foundation kindly sponsored a number of FreeBSD developers to attend BSDCan 2010 (videos here). These are links to some of the reports:
And one NetBSD link:
Testing NetBSD: Easy Does It
In a software project as large as NetBSD the interactions between different software components are not always immediately obvious to even the most skilled programmers. Tests help ensure that the system functions according to the desired criteria. Periodic automated runs of these tests with results visible on the web ensures both that tests are run in a regular fashion and that the results are available to all interested parties.
This short article explains the NetBSD test strategies and provides a brief overview of the enabling technologies. It also details how effortless it is to run the test suite and why doing so is in every developer’s, patch submitter’s and system administrator’s best interest. The intended audience is people with a keen interest in testing and quality assurance, and a desire to reduce personal headache. The article is written against NetBSD-current as of June 2010 and applies to what will eventually become NetBSD 6.
Read more: Automated Testing Framework (ATF)
In the last 7 days we’ve seen a new version released by each of the 4 major BSD operating systems: OpenBSD 4.5, NetBSD, FreeBSD 7.2 and a “minor” DragonFlyBSD release (2.2.1).
Who said BSD was dying? Video 1 – “BSD is dying” (2007) – Video 2 – “BSD is still dying” (2009).
NetBSD 5
NetBSD, well-known for its high portability has arrived at version 5, which has been worked on for about 2 year. This release seems pretty interesting from a performance point of view. It’s claimed that NetBSD 5.0 now outruns NetBSD 4, FreeBSD 7.1 and Fedora 10.
In addition to scalability and performance improvements, a significant number of major features have been added. Some highlights are: a preview of metadata journaling for FFS file systems (known as WAPBL, Write Ahead Physical Block Logging), the ‘jemalloc’ memory allocator, the X.Org X11 distribution instead of XFree86 on a number of ports, the Power Management Framework, ACPI suspend/resume support on many laptops, write support for UDF file systems, the Automated Testing Framework, the Runnable Userspace Meta Program framework, Xen 3.3 support for both i386 and amd64, POSIX message queues and asynchronous I/O, and many new hardware device drivers. [source]
Release Notes – NetBSD Website
OpenBSD 4.5
OpenBSD, renowned for its focus on security (incl OpenSSH), has released version 4.5. The latest version comes with improved hardware support, new tools and functionalities and upgraded ports.
Oh yeah, and there’s also a new release song.
Release Notes – OpenBSD website
DragonFlyBSD 2.2.1
The new 2.2 release includes Hammer, a file system that includes instant crash recovery, multi-volume file systems, data integrity checking, fine grained history retention, and the ability to mirror data to other volumes. It has undergone extensive stress-testing and is considered production-ready!
Release Notes – DragonFly website
FreeBSD 7.2
7.2 review: improved virtualisation (nixcraft)
Alan Bueno has begun a project translating FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD man pages into Brazilian Portuguese.
Information about the project can be found in the FAQ. [Google Translation – EN)
Translated MAN Pages:
This blog, FreeBSD – the unknown Giant, as the title suggests, covers only FreeBSD related stories and updates. However, over the last few months, I have received emails from my some readers asking why I don’t write about the “other BSDs”, such as OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonflyBSD.
Well, the answer is quite simple: “There’s no need to!” No, not because they’re not worth writing about, they certainly are, but because there are already some quality blogs dedicated to each of these BSD operating systems. Hence my reason for not, or only occasionally, writing about then. Since these blogs are regularly updated with news, howtos and information on made progress, I’ve decided not to just copy, paste and republish what’s on those blogs.
To find out more about OpenBSD, visit the OpenBSD Journal. The DragonflyBSD digest is updated regularly with news relating to DragonflyBSD, and lately a lot on the progress of the newly created and much promising Hammer File System (HammerFS), whilst Hubert’s NetBSD blog brings the latest and greatest with regards to NetBSD.
Of course there are more many blogs and websites tracking the “big four”, but these are the best as far as I’m aware.
I blogged before that there were plans of creating a FreeBSD Magazine. Just to let you know that the first issue can be expected around April 2008. It won’t be just about FreeBSD, but also about other BSD OSses, incl. OpenBSD and NetBSD, hence the name BSD Magazine. The website is now live at bsdmag.org. If you want to contribute or find out more about BSD Magazine, visit the website or contact Kate or Caroline.
Dru Lavige, Jan Stedehouder and myself will be writing something for the 1st issue.
The FFS File System driver for Windows enables you to read BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) FFS partitions from Windows 2000/XP/2003.
More info, downloads and source code on this SF site.
Trollaxor has written up an interesting piece about the history and future of the major BSD systems: FreeBSD, netBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD and Darwin.
In the new year the Berkeley Software Distribution family of Unix-like operating systems is growing at a phenomenal rate and excitement over the possibilities for this operating system family is in the air. After unprecedented development and adoption as well as major shifts in the marketplace, it’s time to take a look at what’s new with this demonic family of operating systems.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD 5 was the darkest period in this operating system’s history and morale and marketshare were at an all-time low. The problem originated from merging BSD/OS into FreeBSD; though the two systems shared a lot of code, the difference of just a couple years was staggering. FreeBSD’s virtual memory and multi-processing code was immature, while BSD/OS’s libraries were archaic. Mating the two was a mess that cost FreeBSD face and kept users on an older branch from the Nineties, 4.11.
…
Now, with FreeBSD 7.0b on the horizon promising to wrap it all up, FreeBSD is once again taking the free Unix world by storm. It’s a tight, efficient codebase leveraging the best of BSD/OS, Darwin, and FreeBSD that users have been clamoring for. FreeBSD users and sites now have a shining future ahead of them.
… [discusses NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD & Darwin]
With all of these great improvements to the Berkeley operating system family in the last few years, BSD is clearly where it’s at. Linux is a throwback to when Open Source was a hot buzzword and sharing code was a novel idea. Now, Apple and company use it as standard coding procedure to share and improve the tech they have and leverage their individual strengths.
Even when taking the few commercial Unices that still exist into account, like AIX and Solaris, BSD still owns the arena in its frantic steamroll to the top of the supercomputing mountain. Whether you want the general wholesomeness of FreeBSD, the KGB-like security of OpenBSD, the more experimental NetBSD or DragonFlyBSD, or the utter perfection of Mac OS X, BSD has your bases completely covered with room to grow in the future.
Read the whole article here