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[20131020] Quick bootstrap of NetBSD on Raspberry Pi and Cobalt machines
NetBSD is a fine operating system, but the installation sometimes leaves a lot of rope to hang yourself on non-PC platforms. To make things easier to get a recent NetBSD version on the Cobat Raq and Qube machines, Izumi Tsutsui has released a Restore CD/USB image based on NetBSD 5.2.1 that allows for a quick bootstrap. There is also a Restore CD HOWTO available with more information.

If you're into somewhat more recent machines, the Raspberry Pi is for you. For easy bootstrapping of NetBSD, Jun Ebihara offers a SD card image with -current NetBSD and pkgsrc from October 2013 preinstalled. This also includes support for hardware floating point and DMA. Instructions are available on line in Japanese language. The important commands still are readable, so have a look!

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[20120212] Cobalt RestoreCD/RestoreUSB based on NetBSD 5.1.2
Right after NetBSD 5.1.2 is out, Izumi Tsutsui has updated his NetBSD-based Restore CD/USB-image for the Cobalt machines.

The files are available at http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/cobalt/restore-cd/5.1.2/. Citing from the announcement: ``The only changes from 5.1.1 version are CHANGES file and 5.1.2 binaries, so the following instructions are same as 5.1.1 ones:

restorecd-5.1.2-20120205.iso.gz is a gzipped RestoreCD ISO9660 image as prior releases.

restoreusb-5.1.2-20120205.img.gz is a new "RestoreUSB" image which has almost identical functions with RestoreCD but is intended to be burned into USB memory sticks for USB bootable PCs.

You can write the image using gzip(1) + dd(1) on Unix like OSes, or you can also use "Rawrite32" utility on MS Windows: http://www.NetBSD.org/~martin/rawrite32/index.html

To use the RestoreUSB for cobalt installation, write the image into >=512MB USB memory stick (or USB HDD etc.) and boot your PC from it, then all other procedures are same as RestoreCD. You no longer have to burn a coaster for every installation ;-)

See also "Restore CD Howto" for actual installation procedures: http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/cobalt/restorecd-howto.html: (though RestoreUSB is not mentioned yet) and see files in .tar.gz archive for more details.''

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[20120125] Cobalt RestoreCD/RestoreUSB Beta based on NetBSD 5.1.1
Izumi Tsutsui writes on port-cobalt: ``It seems NetBSD 5.1.1 release is pending, but binaries are there and it also contains telnetd vulnerability fix (which is rather important for restorecd), so I'd announce 5.1.1 based NetBSD/cobalt RestoreCD and brandnew RestoreUSB as Beta test for future 5.1.x release:

http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/cobalt/restore-cd/5.1.1/

restorecd-5.1.1-20120112.iso.gz is a gzipped RestoreCD ISO9660 image as prior releases.

restoreusb-5.1.1-20120112.img.gz is a new "RestoreUSB" image which has almost identical functions with RestoreCD but is intended to be burned into USB memory sticks for USB bootable PCs.

You can write the image using gzip(1) + dd(1) on Unix like OSes, or you can also use "Rawrite32" utility on MS Windows: http://www.NetBSD.org/~martin/rawrite32/index.html

To use the RestoreUSB for cobalt installation, write the image into >=512MB USB memory stick (or USB HDD etc.) and boot your PC from it, then all other procedures are same as RestoreCD. You no longer have to burn a coaster for every installation ;-)

See also "Restore CD Howto" for actual installation procedures: http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/cobalt/restorecd-howto.html: (though RestoreUSB is not mentioned yet) and see files in .tar.gz archive for more details. ''

Time to get out the good old Cobalt cube :)

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[20100528] NetBSD ketchup - news from my mailbox
Here's another bunch of NetBSD-related news that has been lingering in my inbox for far too long:
  • Izumi Tsutsui's NetBSD/cobalt restore CD is available based on NetBSD versions 5.0.2 5.1_RC2. See the for information on what it is and how to use it.

  • A negative symbol lookup cache was added to NetBSD's loader for shared libraries and shared objects, ld.so_elf, by Roy Marples: ``I've been researching why Evolution from GNOME takes over 5 minutes to load on my quad core amd64 beast. It boils down to dlsym looking for a symbol that does not exist directly and as such examining every needed library. However, the current implementation does not remember what libraries it as already checked. Normally this isn't a problem, but with the way Evolution is built the search chain is massive. [...]

    With this patch, Evolution (without the patches to and a glib I added to pkgsrc a few days ago) loads in under 2 seconds (5 seconds with initial disk thrashing). ''

  • The NetBSD Logo is available in many variants, but a new variant was submitted via www@ these days by "Tim" - which is actually plain HTML, no image:

    NetBSD Powered!

  • SafeNet's ProtectDrive is ``a full disk encryption solution that encrypts the entire hard drive of laptops, workstations and servers, as well as USB flash drives, to protect data in the case of the theft or loss of a hardware device.''

    How do you implement such preboot authentication and harddisk encryption software, esp. if you want to provide thinks like LDAP integration for the user/key handling and two-factor authentication? Little is known, but rumors say the 32bit version of the software is based on NetBSD, as is backed by this worker bio info: ``Duties: Working on pre-boot restricted environment with loads before operation system and implemented on NetBSD. Ported and optimized the KDrive X server to NetBSD. Developed and implemented user secure authentication interface with smart card support.

    Environment and tools : NetBSD (3.0), C/C++, FLTK''

  • A german-language introduction of pkgsrc on OpenSolaris was given by Michael 'kvedulv' Moll at the Munich OpenSolaris User Group back in march. Slides and a video are available.

  • Running NetBSD on an Oracle Sun Fire X4140 Server? Check out this posting by Ignatios Souvatzis for the full dmesg pr0n of this machine with 12 CPU cores and 32GB RAM!

  • Are you still looking for a nice small ARM-based board to start hacking on NetBSD/arm? The http://www.friendlyarm.net/products/mini2440 may be a good start, esp. after Paul Fleischer is reaching completion of NetBSD support for the board. Citing from his mail to port-arm:

    ``I have now fairly good (i.e., it works for me) support for the MINI2440 on NetBSD with support for the following:
    - S3C2440 UART
    - DM9000 (MAC+PHY)
    - S3C2440 SD Controller
    - S3C2440 DMA Controller
    - S3C2440 IIS Controller
    - FriendlyArm 3,5" LCD Display
    - S3C2440 USB Host Controller (OHCI)
    - S3C2440 Touch Screen
    - UDA1341TS audio codec

    Currently, support for three things on the S3C2440 are missing:
    - S3C2440 NAND Controller
    - S3C2440 USB Device Controller
    - S3C2440 RTC

    I've also created a stage2 bootloader for use with u-boot, which ensures that the value of bootargs is passed to the NetBSD kernel. At this point I have only tested the code with the 64Mb version of the FriendlyArm MINI2440.

    All the code is available in a Git repository[1] and is based on the netbsd-5 code base. Progress can be followed on my webpage[2]. ''

  • While talking about NetBSD on cool hardware: How about NetBSD/hpcarm on WILLCOM | W-ZERO3 (WS004SH) mobile devices? Here is a screenshot of Ebihara-san's WS011SH with CCW screen, and there is also a video "booting NetBSD/hpcarm on WILLCOM | W-ZERO3(WS004SH)" posted on YouTube:

    For more details, see Izumi Tsutsui's posting on port-hpcarm.



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[20090501] NetBSD 5.0 based Cobalt/Raq restore CD available
Izumi Tsutsui has released a version of his Cobalt restore/install CD based on NetBSD 5.0.

What is it? Citing from the Restore CD HowTo: `` The Cobalt Qube/Raq is a server appliance. To put it simply, they are just computers without keyboard and monitor and without the ability to attach one. There are several versions of Qubes and Raqs in existence, older MIPS based and newer AMD-K6 based. [...]

Because the Qube does not have an easy way to attach a monitor, a keyboard and most importantly a CDROM drive, there is no easy way to install a new operating system on it. This is where the Restore CD comes in. The Qube has the ability to boot an operating system over the network. A Restore CD provides the environment allowing the Qube to boot an operating system and perform an unattended install of the operating system onto hard drive. ''

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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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[20080302] Cobalt Qube 2700 progress
Izumi Tsutsui has made progress on getting NetBSD/cobalt going on the Cobalt Qube 2700, the "original" cube and first product released by Cobalt Networks back then. Interesting nit from the wikipedia page: apparently the "2700" model number came from the atonic number of cobalt: 27. The company was later on purchased by Sun Microsystems, which still has things like the Qube 2700 manual online.

Izumi got the machine going to a point where it can be booted from network and the internal IDE disk, show the dmesg output, and talk to the built-in LCS display. See Izumi's messages here and here for more information.

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[20080123] NetBSD 4.0/cobalt restore CD (Updated)
NetBSD's 4.0-release is out now, and products and pieces based on it are starting to pop up. In that line, Sevan / Venture37 has built a restore CD for Cobalt (Cube, Raq) machines based on Izumi Tsutsui's scripts. A copy is available here, and while there, Izumi has updates his scripts for the NetBSD 4.0 release, too. Major new features are NetBSD 4.0 release kernel and userland, and a newfs_ext2fs(8) binary that was backported from NetBSD-current. It also fixes a number of issues, see Izumi's mail.

Update: Sevan / Venture37 let me know that he has updated his restore CD based on Izumi's latest scripts, check his blog page.

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[20070814] Catching up: netbsd.se web design contest, CuWIN, cobalt restore CD, ...
Ok, some more busy days have passed, and I feel like I should post about things that have happened. Sorry for not being more upto date. So, what happened in NetBSD land?

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[20060403] Cobalt: New restore CD ISO and build script
Dennis Chernoivanov has worked on more automation for updating the Cobalt Restore CD, and produced an improved build script that downloads a NetBSD release and assembles the restore CD that can then be booted on a PC, and which will then offer DHCP and all the services to boot and install a Cobalt machine.

See Dennis' mail for all the details, download the build scripts directly for fun and playing, or download a ready-made Cobalt Restore CD image based on NetBSD-current.

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