hubertf's NetBSD Blog
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[20161030] NetBSD 7.0.2 released
Why 7.0.2? Following NetBSD's release scheme, there are major releases (e.g. 7.0) with subsequent updates (e.g. 7.1). Those "major" release and their updates include both new features as well as bug fixes - the latter one again with and without security relevance. New code, new risks - as a result for getting updates, existing interfaces may change and lead to incompatibiltites. This may affect either binary compatibility between programs and their required shared libraries, as well - though rare - incompatible chances on the source code level.

NetBSD takes quite some effort to keep such incompatibilites low, yet they happen. The only real solutions is: no updates. "Never change a running system" is nice for availability, but it poses security risks. The time when a big server uptime was considered a sign of good system administration are gone. Today, a long update means the system (probably) runs outdated and as such vulnerable code.

So to solve the problem a compromise is needed: little updates, but crucial security updates do get done. Which is where NetBSD's "minor" release like NetBSD 7.0.2 come into play. With its set of changes, a number of external software packages got security-related updates (e.g. OpenSSL, NTP, BIND, X), and a smaller number of security related changes were also added, e.g. a race condition in mail.local(8), crashes in the Networking File System (NFS) and the native Fast File System (FFS) plus some platform-specific crashes on MIPS, PowerPC and SPARC64.

For more information on downloading and installation see the release announcement as well as the platform-specific install documentation, e.g. for NetBSD 7.0.2/arm64's INSTALL.html file.

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[20110126] NetBSD/emips port committed (Update #2)
I've mentioned this in the past, and it's in the official tree now - citing from Antti Kantee's posting: ``I have just committed support for the Extensible MIPS ("eMIPS") platform. The NetBSD/emips port runs on Xilinx and Beecube FPGA systems and the Giano system simulator.

eMIPS is a platform developed at Microsoft Research for researching reconfigurable computing. eMIPS allows dynamic loading and scheduling of application-specific circuits for the purpose of accelerating computations based on the current workload.

NetBSD eMIPS support for NetBSD 4.x was written at Microsoft Research by Alessandro Forin and Neil Pittman. Microsoft Corporation has donated full copyright to The NetBSD Foundation.

Platform support for eMIPS is the first part of Microsoft's contribution. The second part includes the hardware accelerator framework and will be proposed on tech-kern soon.''

Update: The NetBSD Blog has an entry with more details, including a screenshot with boot output. Oh, and there's a NetBSD/emips port page, too!

Update #2: Antti was so kind to point me at the paper published by the people behind NetBSD/emips, titled An online scheduler for hardware accelerators on general- purpose operating systems: ``This paper presents an online scheduling algorithm for hardware accelerators and its implementation on the NetBSD operating system. The scheduler uses the current performance characteristics of the accelerators to select which accelerators to load and unload. [...] The NetBSD modifications consist primarily in loadable kernel modules, with minimal changes to the operating system itself.''. Secion 7 goes into details WRT NetBSD and the (LKM based) kernel modules..

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[20101222] Microsoft offers download for NetBSD/eMIPS
NetBSD has quite a number of mirror sites, but I wasn't aware that Microsoft (yes, THE Microsoft) is also offering NetBSD for download: ``NetBSD for eMIPS - This download contains the ISO CD image for installing NetBSD 4.0.1 on an eMIPS processor system. The download works for the Xilinx XUP board and the Giano simulator.''

A bit dated, but hey! More information about the "extensible MIPS" project is also available on Microsoft's website.

Maybe it's time to update my 2005 research WRT NetBSD at Microsoft? (Thanks for the initial hint, Volkmar!)

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[20090205] First Release Candidat for NetBSD 5.0 released
NetBSD 5.0 is progressing towards a release, and a first release candidat was released this week.

Probably the two most significant improvements in NetBSD 5.0 will be journalling for UFS (nore more fsck, yai!) and the move from XFree to X.org. Download now, or have a look at the changes in 5.0 if you need more reasons to check it out.

While talking about NetBSD 5, Izumi Tsutsui has updated his Restore CD for MIPS based Cobalt machines, see his email to the port-cobalt@ list for more details.

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[20060223] Linux installer recommends NetBSD
Izumi Tsutsui posted about the OpenMicroServer(TM) by Plathome, which is a MIPS board that comes with Linux by default, but that apparently can also run NetBSD.

The funny part is: would you expect your Linux installer to ask you THESE questions?

# sysinst

SSD/Linux 0.4-20051205/2.6.12 Installer

  Why do you choose Linux ?
  We recommend you to use NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD instead.

Are you sure to install [y/N] ? y
Really [y/N] ? y 

:-)

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[20050726] NetBSD-ready hardware Made In China
Seems the "Dragon" or "Godson" chips made in China are MIPS clones, and of course they run NetBSD/mips. I guess the intellectual property questions involved in this (unlicensed) MIPS-clone are asking for some trouble...

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[20040504] Meshcube: 7cm^3 MIPS box
So, anyone want to port NetBSD/mips to this meshcube box? 200EUR for a MIPS box sounds pretty decent, and the size is ok too.

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[20040503] mips64emul
Krister's talk at pkgsrcCon reminded me to note the mips64emul emulator, which can simulate many platforms that MIPS-based NetBSD-ports work on - pmax, playstation2, sgimisp, arc, cobalt, hpcmips. Check out the really impressive screenshots.

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Disclaimer: All opinion expressed here is purely my own. No responsibility is taken for anything.

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