NetBSD 2.0 Status Report

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Posted by michael on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:29AM from the not-dying dept.

Daniel de Kok writes "James Chacon of the NetBSD release engineering team has sent a report covering the status of the NetBSD 2.0 branch to the netbsd-announce mailinglist. The report contains a schedule for the release cycle, and a list of 2.0-specific bugs that need to be closed. This is still a good time to help us making this the best NetBSD release ever, by trying out the latest snapshots, and reporting bugs."

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Trolls by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 11:20 · Score: 1, Funny

Wow, so far all posts here were trolls. Where's the mods now ? Can't Slashdot create a special filter for the BSD section ?
1. Re:Trolls by MrHanky · 2004-07-27 23:29 · Score: 1
  
  It shouldn't be too hard. Just filter out all posts containing the acronym BSD, give them an automatic -1 and ban the poster's subnet for a couple of days.
  
  Then the BSD section would be left for us to discuss what we were meant to discuss here: Beowulf clusters of hot grits.
  
  To summarize:
  1) Ban BSD
  2) ???
  3) Hot grits!
2. Re:Trolls by Chris+Scott · 2004-07-28 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  Why not eliminate anonymous posting, then ban the account of those who continue?
3. Re:Trolls by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-28 09:58 · Score: 0
  
  Better yet, get rid of anonymous posting (he says while anonymous ;), and use moderation to our advantage - if your score drops to zero, you lose your sign in name (as in it is up for grabs, once again ;).
IP Filter bugs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 11:56 · Score: 1, Interesting

I found it interesting that most of the bugs in the 2.0 branch were with IP Filter.
1. Re:IP Filter bugs by debilo · 2004-07-27 13:10 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Not most, but quite a few. I wonder why they don't start working on importing pf from OpenBSD, FreeBSD started working on that a long time ago. Maybe it's a NetBSD vs. Theo thing, which would be a shame. I'm looking quite forward to pf on FreeBSD, which should be quite stable on 5.3 (and it's only around the corner! Code freeze is scheduled for Aug. 15th, as far as I know).
  
  Anyway, I've used OpenBSD and FreeBSD for quite some time now, and only recently tried out NetBSD. What can I say? Their hardware support is amazing, it pretty much recognized everything on my Samsung X10, and it's been very, very stable this far. I'm quite in love with it. :) The only thing I don't like is the bloated GENERIC kernel, it takes way longer to boot that with OpenBSD or FreeBSD but that's probably the price you pay for good hardware support on installation, and you can always roll your own kernel. I'm pretty excited about NetBSD 2.0. Hurry up, guys!
2. Re:IP Filter bugs by alan_d_post · 2004-07-27 15:57 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  PF is already in -current. It won't be in 2.0, though.
Re:NetBSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 12:36 · Score: 0, Troll

Good News Everyone!
Turns out that *BSD is stronger than ever!
According to an Inernetnews article, Netcraft has confirmed that *BSD has "dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
There has been a steady increase in *BSD developers over the past decade.
There are currently 307 FreeBSD developers as of the 2004 core team election.
You can read more about FreeBSD here

If you would like to try out a BSD, you can download: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD
Enjoy!
It's time for the Daily Puzzler by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 13:33 · Score: 0
Today's Puzzler asks you to discover what the following four items have in common:
1. Laci Peterson
2. Lori Hacking
3. Nicole Simpson
4. NetBSD
Submit your response along with a stamped self-addressed envelope.
See contest rules for further details. Void where prohibited.
Absolutely fascinating for people following NetBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 14:03 · Score: 0

...but for the uninitiated, what does the upcoming
2.0 offer?
Re:Absolutely fascinating for people following Net by vesamies · 2004-07-27 15:41 · Score: 1

I think it's mainly that the 1.6 branch is so old, about two years.
2.0 has many new stuff, like newer compiler GCC3 (1.6 had GCC2), native threads library, SMP, this is just new stuff, what everybody else has too
I was also hoping to get OpenBSD's packet filter but it's not there :(
Of course, one should not wait but download 2.0_BETA immediately from releng.netbsd.org ;)
Re:Absolutely fascinating for people following Net by bccomm · 2004-07-27 18:46 · Score: 1

That poor, poor, server...it's already sluggish. But then again, CVS isn't much better.
The way to try NetBSD 2 by dimss · 2004-07-27 21:08 · Score: 1

Two days ago I compiled NetBSD 2 on Slackware Linux and created bootable release CD (no X, ~112MB). Then I sucessfully installed it at home on qemu.

Is there any other OS with mobility like this?
1. Re:The way to try NetBSD 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-27 23:29 · Score: 0
  
  I cross-built FreeBSD for my amd64 laptop on my pIII system.
Bloated GENERIC kernel by LizardKing · 2004-07-28 00:27 · Score: 2, Informative

If you're finding that the GENERIC kernel is too bloated, then the quick fix is to create a custom kernel usung the adjustkernel script. This parses the output of dmesg, and creates a custom kernel config file with only the devices found on your machine enabled.
On my laptop, I was able to pare the kernel down to 1.8Mb. Not such a big deal on a machine with 512Mb of RAM, but it's useful on something like my Vax which only has 24Mb.
Hardware support by torstenvl · 2004-07-28 08:55 · Score: 0

I've always heard that NetBSD has excellent hardware support in addition to running on multiple architectures. However, I think I have to disagree with this out of personal experience.

I tried installing NetBSD on my HP Pavilion XF315 laptop (the Walmart.com xf315, which was actually ze1000 or something) last summer... 1.6.1 I think it was. The installation program froze while making devices, and the partition tool destroyed my partition table. Apparently I'm not the only one to have trouble with MAKEDEV on an hp (see here). I realize now that this was a combination of Mandrakes weird partitioning quirks and NetBSD's inability to understand them, but it *should have just left well enough alone*. I never told it to touch my data partition (FAT32) but I nevertheless had to install RedHat and grep -f /dev/hda to manually search for important data (like some source code and a list of contact info) that wasn't backed up. This was enough to turn me off to NetBSD for good -- or at least until 2.x comes out <grin>.

FreeBSD makes all devices without a hitch. I even have sound working on it! Something I can't say about RedHat or any of the other 'user-friendly' Linux distros.
1. Re:Hardware support by Anime_Fan · 2004-07-28 19:33 · Score: 1
  
  FreeBSD makes all devices without a hitch. I even have sound working on it! Something I can't say about RedHat or any of the other 'user-friendly' Linux distros.
  
  I could say the same of OpenBSD. Granted, it is an old (AMD K5) machine. I would expect NetBSD and FreeBSD to do the same.
2. Re:Hardware support by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-01 02:54 · Score: 0
  
  Apparently I'm not the only one to have trouble with MAKEDEV on an hp (see here).
  Your link is to a 1995 mail sent to the port-hp300 list (used to discuss the NetBSD port to the 68k-based HP 300/400 workstations), so I don't think it's related. :)
  I don't think I've ever had NetBSD hang during the install (I can't say the same about FreeBSD or Linux), but nothing's perfect. The installation kernel may have had some compatibility issues with your hardware. Hopefully you'll have better luck with 2.0, if you're willing to give it a try. :/
3. Re:Hardware support by torstenvl · 2004-08-05 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  Oops *blush*
  
  Yeah I'm willing to give it a try. I've always liked NetBSD's philosophy better than FreeBSD's.
  
  Besides...
  "Congratulations, NetBSD! NetBSD now has better scalability than FreeBSD." http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/#netbsd2
  
  We'll see. I may like it better. Or not. Never know.
Is the site down? by evilviper · 2004-07-28 15:27 · Score: 0

Is it just my corner of the internet that can't get packets routed through? Or has NetBSD.org been down for over a week now?

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
1. Re:Is the site down? by Neil · 2004-07-30 01:07 · Score: 1
  
  www.netbsd.org has been working fine for me recently. I've been consulting the pkgsrc pages frequently this week, and the last, and have not noticed any problems.
  Do you perhaps have a browser with (possibly broken) IPv6 support, but no connection to the 6-bone?
  www.netbsd.org is slightly unusual in that it has a AAAA DNS record (IPv6 address) as well as a A record (IPv4 address). I recall seeing some older Mozilla builds that tried to contact www.netbsd.org over IPv6 and failed to fall back to using IPv4. When I looked into it it seemed to be a "known problem" in the Mozilla bug tracking database and I haven't seen this behaviour recently, so I assumed that it was fixed.
  Does a numeric IPv4 address work for you?
  http://204.152.184.116/
2. Re:Is the site down? by evilviper · 2004-07-30 20:10 · Score: 1
  
  Does a numeric IPv4 address work for you?
  
  http://204.152.184.116/
  
  No, I'm afraid not.
  
  I've tried with Firefox 0.8, as well as links and lynx, but no luck. I've tried from this, and 3 other boxes on my home network, including the firewall itself.
  
  I'm able to ping them, as well as nmap and see the open ports.
  
  nmap www.netbsd.org Starting nmap 3.50 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-07-31 01:03 PDT Interesting ports on www.netbsd.org (204.152.184.116): (The 1651 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed) PORT STATE SERVICE 22/tcp open ssh 25/tcp open smtp 80/tcp open http 165/tcp open xns-courier 871/tcp open supfilesrv 1984/tcp open bigbrother 2022/tcp open down 3306/tcp open mysql Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 17.843 seconds
  
  In fact, I'm able to SSH there (although I get rejected immediately after accepting their key, as it requires a valid public-key, no passwords).
  
  Alas, everything but HTTP works. Perhaps their load-balancing system may be continually directing me to a backend server that's down?
  
  --
  Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Relatively slow pace... by eeg3 · 2004-07-28 17:54 · Score: 0

First off, i'd like to say i'm not alluding to NetBSD, or BSD, dying. However, it seems NetBSD's pace is awfully slow compared to OpenBSD and FreeBSD, or even DragonFly. NetBSD 1.6 came out September 14, 2002. Versions 1.6.1 and 1.6.2 were pretty much just security fixes.

Seems like they're being pretty stagnant. PF still won't be in 2.0, that's a shame, imho. They've managed to do a lot of superfluous activities, though; for example, they've achieved Trademark status on NetBSD, and attained 501(c)(3) tax-exemption status.

Although I like NetBSD, and think it's a wonderful project that has superb, portable code... i'd, personally, like to see more development and less superfluous activities, especially considering how expensive activities such as trademark status are. Who do they think is going to steal their title anyway? Although, if I remember correctly from a debian mailing list thread, their trademark status _did_ hinder Debian/NetBSD being released.
1. Re:Relatively slow pace... by LizardKing · 2004-07-29 00:37 · Score: 1
  
  The slow pace of recent releases is down to the amount of work going into NetBSD 2.0. This will feature decent SMP support and high performance threading using Scheduler Activations. The improvements in performance compared to the 1.6 branch are extraordinary, and unlike Linux, where reecnt work has been aimed at improved performance on high end hardware, the NetBSD improvements are generally applicable to all classes of machines.
  It's actually quite amusing to see NetBSD development labelled as "slow" compared to OpenBSD. The reverse is very much true, as Open takes from Net far more than Net takes in return. For example, the rapid implementation of SMP support in Open was due to Net having done most of the work already.
  The NetBSD developers are also not very vocal about what they're working on. In the Linux world, we have things like Kernel Traffic picking over the minutiae of mailing list activity. There's also the massive preponderance of "Linux branded" press coverage, which gives an emphasis to goings on that are fairly peripheral to the Linux kernel (GNOME and KDE for example). The only real way to get a feel for what's going on in the NetBSD world is to study the CVS logs - not something that many people aside from the developers would do.
2. Re:Relatively slow pace... by eeg3 · 2004-07-29 11:33 · Score: 1
  
  "[...] the NetBSD improvements are generally applicable to all classes of machines."
  
  It's good to see people still caring about older hardware; DragonFlyBSD developers (Note: not Matt Dillon or anyone incredibly highup) basically wrote off the idea of supporting anything other than new hardware when I was talking to them. That's silly practice, in my opinion, and I hope that's not the mantra of the higher up developers, but I digress.
  
  "It's actually quite amusing to see NetBSD development labelled as "slow" compared to OpenBSD."
  
  OpenBSD seems to be making a lot of non-kernel additions, such as OpenNTPd/OpenSSH/implementing X.org/and the such. It's too bad these two groups can't see eye-to-eye, or we'd have one heck of an OS... portable, secure, innovative, etc. Although, OpenBSD code is portable due to it's heritage, it doesn't take advantage of it like NetBSD.
  
  I've always been a fan of NetBSD, and thought it was a lot cleaner and better developed OS, imho. Theo's antics are, personally, enough to shy me away from using it.
3. Re:Relatively slow pace... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-29 19:15 · Score: 0
  
  > NetBSD's pace is awfully slow compared to OpenBSD
  
  I have opposite impression. It seems OpenBSD is awfully slow compared to FreeBSD and NetBSD.
  
  For example, FreeBSD has UBC (unified VM and buffer cache) since FreeBSD-2.0.5, NetBSD has UBC since 1.6, Linux has it since 2.4. But OpenBSD doesn't have it yet.
  FreeBSD supports kernel supported pthread since 5.0, NetBSD will support it since 2.0, Linux of course supports it, too. But OpenBSD doesn't have it yet.
  FreeBSD supports SMP since 4.0, NetBSD supports SMP since 1.6 (although 1.6 doesn't have i386 SMP, 2.0 will have it, though), Linux supports it since 2.0, but OpenBSD incorporated it very recently in -current.
  
  It seems OpenBSD is always slowest at things that need major kernel changes.
The status of NetBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-29 02:41 · Score: 0

Isn't the obituaries page a more appropriate place for this sort of story?