NetBSD 9.4 released!

It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons since the release of NetBSD 9.3 in August 2022, as well some enhancements backported from the development branch. It is fully compatible with NetBSD 9.0. Users running 9.3 or an earlier release are strongly recommended to upgrade...

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_9_4_released

#release #system

NetBSD 10.0 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the eighteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system NetBSD 10.0! See the release announcement for details...

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_10_0_available

#release #system

Finding NetBSD Kernel Bugs through LockDoc.

This post will be my attempt to package up my master’s thesis in a format that can be read comfortably. I’ve spent the last 15 months mostly on this topic, and if you’ve noticed that some of my past posts mostly revolved around NetBSD, this is why. I hope this also gives me the opportunity to shine a light on some implementation details, since the thesis itself had to be mostly focused on the academic stuff...

https://scholz.ruhr/blog/finding-netbsd-locking-bugs/

#kernel #system

NetBSD 10: Thirty years, still going strong!

In 2023, the NetBSD project celebrated 30 years since its first release, 0.8. Now, four years after NetBSD 9, NetBSD 10 brings a huge number of changes and improvements. This talk will dive into the most important new features of NetBSD 10, such as performance and security improvements, expanded CPU and GPU support, improved virtualization and more!

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3508-netbsd-10-thirty-years-still-going-strong-/

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZzaW9eI4wmMRGOnJ1uo-kGk5b_UvIOuU9Zgur4au_8s/edit#slide=id.p

#system #fosdem

Tinkering with Manjaro and NetBSD on the Pinebook Pro: a crumbs-in-the-forest tutorial & review.

I found a used Pinebook Pro on Craigslist for $100 CAD, invented some flimsy excuse, and bought it. Then I went much farther down the rabbit hole than I expected, trying to get it functional. Here are my first impressions of the journey to get (semi-) functional Linux and BSD systems installed on the Pinebook Pro...

https://www.autodidacts.io/pinebook-pro-linux-bsd-laptop-review-tutorial/#installing-netbsd

#install #arm #system

A NetBSD/amd64 guest can now boot in 40ms.

I've been working the past 3 months into catching up with Colin Percival's work on FreeBSD with the Firecracker hypervisor.

The result is that NetBSD/amd64 can now boot in PVH mode, i.e. directly into the kernel using qemu's -kernel flag or the PVH-enabled version of AWS's Firecracker.
I then added support for MMIO kernel command line parameters, so NetBSD now supports memory mapped backed devices like ld(4) or vioif(4). Last but not least, I've been tracking boot time until reaching 40ms from the assembly entry point to handling over to userland...

https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/197vfmq/a_netbsdamd64_guest_can_now_boot_in_40ms_details/

#virtualization #boot

NetBSD 10.0 RC2 available.

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the second (and probably last) release candidate of the upcoming 10.0 release, please help testing! See the release announcement for details...

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/netbsd_10_0_rc2_available

#system #release

Building a NetBSD ramdisk kernel.

When I used OpenBSD, I was a big fan of bsd.rd: a kernel that includes a root file system with an installer and a few tools. When I invariably did something bad to my root file system, I could use that to repair things. bsd.rd is also helpful for OS updates. And there is only a single file involved.

On NetBSD however, there is usually no netbsd.rd kernel installed, or even available by default. The facility is there, it’s just not standard. To be fair, there are a number of architectures that use kernels with a ramdisk for installation. Recently, I have been toying with NetBSD on an Orange Pi 5. This is a 64-bit ARM board, using the evbarm-aarch64 architecture. I am booting from an SD card (details in a followup post) but once booted, the kernel does not see the card any more, only the NVMe SSD. So my thoughts went back to bsd.rd and I decided that I want one...

https://bentsukun.ch/posts/ramdisk-kernel/

#system #ramdisk

NetBSD as a Kubernetes Pod.

So here’s how to run a NetBSD micro-vm as… a Kubernetes pod.

https://imil.net/blog/posts/2023/netbsd-as-a-k8s-pod/

#kubernetes