NetBSD 4.0 Has Been Released

ci4 writes to tell us that NetBSD 4.0 has been released and has been dedicated to the memory of Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino. "Itojun was a member of the KAME project, which provided IPv6 and IPsec support; he was also a member of the NetBSD core team (the technical management for the project), and one of the Security Officers. Due to Itojun's efforts, NetBSD was the first open source operating system with a production ready IPv6 networking stack, which was included in the base system before many people knew what IPv6 was. We are grateful to have known and worked with Itojun, and we know that he will be missed. This release is therefore dedicated, with thanks, to his memory."

Comments

Yes!

[angryfirelord]

Time to upgrade my toaster!

Re:Yes!

[TheRaven64]

FreeBSD lost 93% of its core developers Do you have any kind of source for that? The FreeBSD core team consists of 9 people, so losing 92% of them would mean losing 8.37 of them, which doesn't really make sense.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

or it once had 128 or 129 devs...

*shrug* Given the way the last two releases have progressed, and the fact that it's been a while since the releases have been anywhere remotely on schedule, it wouldn't surprise me if they took a huge dev hit.

Personally, I don't care how popular my OS is, as long as it gets the job done, and does it well. So for for me, FreeBSD does that.

Re:Yes!

[Dr. Cody]

You don't want to see the ninth guy...

Re:Yes!

[timeOday]

Well, since the issue of popularity (and probably an ensuing flame war) are inevitable, I might as well ask what advantages NetBSD kernel has over the Linux kernel (meaning the Linus tree)?

Re:Yes!

[TheRaven64]

If you're only counting Linus' tree then the most obvious benefit NetBSD has over Linux is Xen support (domU and dom0). That's not really a fair comparison though; comparing NetBSD to something like Fedora would make more sense.

Re:Yes!

[syntaxeater]

This might be slightly OT, but since you seem to be the only one on this article not posting flamebait/troll responses and are experienced with FreeBSD - do you have any good resources/links you can share? Maybe recommend a book or two? I downloaded the iso's from FreeBSD.org a few weeks ago. I also read through the beginner's guide and some of the doc. Everything sounds good so far, and I plan on continuing to move to FreeBSD despite what's been said.

Re:Yes!

[sremick]

The 2nd edition of Michael Lucas' "Absolute FreeBSD" just came out. I haven't had a chance to go through the 2nd edition though, but the 1st ed was very good. This would make it the most-up-to-date FreeBSD book currently available. Other older ones I can recommend are FreeBSD Unleashed, The Complete FreeBSD, and FreeBSD: The Complete Reference.

Re:Yes!

[arivanov]

Easier to port onto a toaster :-)

On a more serious note it tends to be more stable on the more obscure architectures. Its internal guts are also considerably cleaner so it is easier to get going on various specialised platforms.

It is more of "it ain't fancy, but it works and does exactly what it says on the tin" philosophy compared to Linux.

I always keep a tree around (and a freebsd one) for a reference so I can look up how some things are implemented at the low level. You cannot do that with linux (or god forbid Slowarez) without arming yourself with a couple of aspirins and a bottle of vodka.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

I was nervous to - I had so many Linux users tell me how bad it was, that it was harder to use and learn than Linux, etc.

I found it wasn't the case. The more you have experience coding and building from source in Linux, the better off you'll be, but here goes:

(1) I didn't buy any books or anything, I had a friend who was into FreeBSD tell me about it. She gave me a few hints and tips on how to start and what to avoid. She said I should try it since I'd rather use Windows than Linux, and it'd be nicer for me to use a FOSS OS if I could. I listened, and tried, and was hooked on the OS within a day of installing it.

So the best resource you can have is a friend who knows what he or she is doing (or at least has a bit more of a clue than you).

(2) The handbook is your friend. under /usr/share/doc/en/books/handbook/index.html is the system documentation. You can look at it on the freebsd website under the handbook section. It is actually EXTREMELY useful, and fairly well written/comprehensive. Unless you are looking for VPN stuff, they you're sporked.

(3) The Mailing list and it's archives are invaluable. Don't worry, the people there don't eat babies or penguins (if they did, I wouldn't use the OS, I have a friend who I love to hang out with who'd never speak to me again if I talked to people who ate penguins!). Actually they are a friendly and easy going bunch. They don't like people picking on them for their OS choice, but they don't mind people preferring different OSes. If you have a question, let them know your background when you ask, so they can better tailor the advice. You'll be asked to read some stuff, but they'll tell you what you need to read, and not just give you a blind RTFM. Heck, one user recently said he wanted to migrate to Linux, and asked which distro would be easiest for a FreeBSD user, no flames came.

(4) The errors are typically useful, and if you read them, they'll point you to a file or directory that's a problem. Using that you can figure out if something needs to be edited, deleted, etc. When making packages, if something is described as "marked" (ex. "Marked as broken on AMD64", or described as "conflicts", it is the packages make file, and you may need to modify that (or find another package that does the same thing, usually there are hints, but not always). You can sometimes find documentation related to these files either in the man pages for the program that uses them, or with the file name itself. Sometimes the error messages will actually tell you what to type or give you options on what to do to fix the problem - they don't fix it automatically because they'd assume you'd rather chose the fix option rather than have the choice made for you.

More practical (basically the advice my friend gave me, aside from the location of the handbook):

1. Until you are confident in your ability to get your system up to the poing of getting a web browser out to the internet from a fresh install (read: have done it at least once), only install freebsd if you have a system you can access the internet from, preferrably while running freebsd (i.e. install FreeBSD to a virtual machine, or on a spare computer).

2. I've found that the non-minimal installs tend to be a bit confused in their setup. I just do a minimal install, and install everything else manually. Read up on the section about partitioning your disk, FreeBSD does this in an odd manner, and you'll want to be familiar with it.
2.1. Ports - Compiling your own stuff
2.1.1. Familiarize with "csup", under /usr/share/examples you'll not run this often, but it updates your ports tree. typically you just type "csup -g -L 2 [path to supfile]", there's a sample supfile in the /usr/doc/examples directory somewhere, probably in a csup or cvsup directory, and the man page is fairly useful. In fact, most BSD man pages are (weird). They usually have good examples.
2.1.2. to build a package, go to /usr/ports, find the pac

Re:Yes!

[syntaxeater]

Good info - thanks.

A friend would have been helpful. Unfortunately, everyone I know (work with) now-a-days is Windows/Mac. I'm venturing into this one alone I'm afraid.

One last quick question. How complicated is it to get into port development? One of the driving factors for reaching out is hobby development. I've been stuck doing vb.net for 4 years now (pays the bills...) and miss my days with C. If I were to shoot myself in the lower body; am I more likely to lose a toe, foot or leg?

Re:Yes!

[CleverDan]

The Complete FreeBSD is available from the author, Greg Lehey, online here: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/CFBSD/ Greg's site itself is pretty interesting, too.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

I've not done much ports development (read any), but with the helpfulness of the mailing lists (and they are nice, even I'll admit I ask some pretty inane questions, and they are never rude), and what I've seen in the documentation, developing ports (applications) is not hard unless the original application (if you are porting and not writing from scratch) isn't well written.

Porting the entire OS, if that's what you mean, I dunno, I've never done that :-)
I stick with i386 and AMD64.

Re:Yes!

[syntaxeater]

Oh no, that's not what I mean. I just meant basic application development (ie. Hello World, Snake Game, etc.) from scratch. I'll check out the mailing list and look into a couple of the books that have been suggested by others here.

Thanks all.

Re:Yes!

[dextromulous]

The new version of Absolute FreeBSD just came out. I picked up a copy and thought: "I wish I read something like this when I was learning FreeBSD... it would have saved a lot of headaches" http://www.absolutefreebsd.com/

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

Oh, you can access any language.

Once that is done, there's a fairly simple process to get it into the ports tree (if it's distribution worthy), someone usually makes sure it isn't obscenely bug ridden and will compile, at which point it is out to the public.

Though the ability to compile may eventually be lost over time (see: boson)

Re:Yes!

[TheRaven64]

I always keep a tree around (and a freebsd one) for a reference so I can look up how some things are implemented at the low level. You cannot do that with linux (or god forbid Slowarez) without arming yourself with a couple of aspirins and a bottle of vodka. I'd agree with Linux, but the Solaris code is often very, very clean. The parts I've looked at have been close to OpenBSD standard, which is the most readable kernel I've come across.

Re:Yes!

[eclectro]

so losing 92% of them would mean losing 8.37 of them, which doesn't really make sense. It does if you make him get a haircut and shave.

Re:Yes!

[Brandybuck]

I'm not sure what you mean by "port development", but in terms of learning programming, Unix is the way to go.

All the tools you need are included in FreeBSD. Get some familiarity with the command line and shell, and learn a good non-GUI text editor like vi or emacs. GUI editors are great, but being able to edit a file over an ssh connection is an invaluable skill. The other tools you need, like make, gcc, etc., are included in the basic install.

FreeBSD has a programming book included. Really! It's called "FreeBSD Developers' Handbook", and it's online at . It's also installed along with FreeBSD. Some of the stuff is specific to FreeBSD, but there's a lot in it that's general to C programming on any Unix platform. Once you are comfortable with the command line and a good text editor, start going through this handbook.

Re:Yes!

[TheRaven64]

A few things I'd add:

• You say 'Read up on the section about partitioning your disk, FreeBSD does this in an odd manner, and you'll want to be familiar with it.' This highlights an important difference between BSD and Linux. Linux tries to look like the most common operating system on the platform in question. On x86, this means that it uses the DOS partition scheme and system call convention. BSDs tend to try to make every machine look the same. Understanding this difference in philosophy will help a lot of things make sense.
• The recommended way of updating the ports tree is now portsnap, not csup (actually, it was never csup; csup was written after portsnap). Doing 'portsnap fetch update' will grab the latest version of the ports tree without any configuration files being needed.
• Install portupgrade. It is much, much easier to use for installing and updating packages than doing everything with the ports tree manually. I'd also recommend portaudit if the machine is Internet-facing or multiuser.

Re:Yes!

[eronysis]

Hmmmm

You claim to knwo a female into BSD?
This is not a fan fiction thread man.

Re:Yes!

[coryking]

Allow me to state that all of the port maintainers I've interacted with are very friendly and helpful. I've had some of my ports and port patches sucked into the mainline ports tree in under 24 hours.

I love FreeBSD. It is a great community that values stability over flashiness and features. Everything is documented as a man page, and if you get lost, FreeBSD.org is your portal (as apposed to linux, where the question "where do I even start" is a big one).

My only fear is that people try to turn FreeBSD into something that competes with linux "for the desktop". As far as I'm concerned, FreeBSD is the perfect OS for a server and trying to "go for the desktop" can only load it up with baggage for graphics, sound and other things that doesn't matter for servers.

So, my ebay rating for FreeBSD?
A+++++++++++++++ Would use Again!

Re:Yes!

[coryking]

I see what you are asking. Okay... think like this:

1) You are writing an application that will run on unix. This means make; ./configure; make install. This means writing code that doesn't assume a specific compiler (people targeting linux are notorious for assuming gcc exists). This means you are distributing a source code tarball that looks and works just like all the other source code tarballs you are used to working with.
2) You happen to be offering it to FreeBSD users with a port. Ports are nothing but scripts that know how to interact with your make file. They are makefiles that script how to interact with a package's makefiles. The port makefile says "here is where to download the source code, here is how to unpack it, here is a list of everything that gets installed, here is how to call ./configure, here are the arguments for ./configure, here are some patches, and here is where I want you to install it"

Take a look at the ports tree. There are some doozies in there like apache, perl or php so avoid them at first. Look at how some silly app is installed via a port and copy it for now. If you are writing a language library (like a CPAN module) make sure to see how others install CPAN modules, same with PEAR modules.

Make sure to read the porters handbook too! On FreeBSD, there is actually good documentation to work with so enjoy your new OS :-)

Remember, you aren't writing a program for freebsd. You are writing a program for unix, and you are writing a wrapper to install it on freebsd.

Good luck!

Re:Yes!

[coryking]

You'll love it here. We are chill.

The folk behind FreeBSD are all just professional people trying to get real work done. You will not find your next religion when you use FreeBSD. Nor will you find saints who preach to you about how you should and should not use your computer. Nor will you find people telling you how you should and should not value your labor.

We dont give a shit if you like Vista. We dont care make FreeBSD work with your Windows Server. We dont care if you embed FreeBSD in your Tivo or Playstation. We are more than happy if you take our code and use it in your TCP/IP stack. Seriously. Take our code! No strings attached!

And hey, we all have to eat here in FreeBSD-land and so do you! We don't care if you make money from what comes out of your brain. Many of us are programmers whose livelihood depends on selling the value of our brain. We dont preach to you about the evils of intellectual property. If you sell software, the more power to you! If you become the next Microsoft, sweet!

And at the end of the day, FreeBSD works. It is the most boring OS you'll ever find. It is about as exciting as your water heater. And that is the best part about it.

Re:Yes!

[onefriedrice]

Thankyou. You've just reminded my why I like BSD so much. Really, thanks. I'd almost forgotten.

Re:Yes!

[Liquid Len]

Thanks for the info. Just out of sheer curiosity, what sparked your decision to migrate from Linux to BSD ?

Re:Yes!

[mi]

I'd agree with Linux, but the Solaris code is often very, very clean.

Solaris kernel may be clean. Solaris' user-space programs, however, are a disaster. For example, even in the most-modern Solaris 10:

• awk could still complain about "input line too long"
• vi which would allow multiple editing sessions of the same file and, also, complain about "screen too wide"
• the castrated /bin/sh (no wonder, Sun's own scripts use /bin/ksh!)
• find, which does not have the -print0
• make that can't parallelize jobs
• no out-of-the-box locate
• ftp-client has no line-history/editing
• etc., etc., etc.

Maybe, all of these utilities have a really clean source, of course. Cleanliness is not sufficient, however — it is merely required. The common solution to the above-listed problems is to install GNU versions of the utilities — which brings in all that ugly-but-functional code we are complaining about... It is also done differently by every sysadmin, so portable scripts can't rely on it...

If you want out-of-the-box functionality and clean source code, you want a BSD operating system. Be that Net, Open, Free, or DragonFlyBSD. Or even MacOS.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

Actually, it was from Windows to BSD. Linux never made me feel it was worth migrating to. It always took more time to install applications not set up with the base system, and administrate it than to actually get stuff done. With FreeBSD, I got into the hang of things quickly, and found that in a week, with the documentation and useful error messages it gave, I could do more with FreeBSD than I could with my previous years on Linux when I had to use it.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

Except the ports tree makes it a perfectly acceptable desktop.

x11/kde*, x11/gnome*, x11-wm/xfce4, editors/open-office*, emulators/wine*, www/firefox*, audio/*xmms*, multimedia/*(xmms|ogle|mplayer|vlc)*

That pretty much covers a nice desktop right there

Re:Yes!

[0x000000]

Fanfic would include this aforementioned female making out with Beastie.

Re:Yes!

[cbart387]

Thanks for your comment. I've been running Ubuntu's Dapper for a while and I'd like to update my system because some of the tools are outdated, like gcc From what I've read, FreeBSD makes it easy to upgrade between versions where Ubuntu, I've found, makes it hard to jump between versions. At least that's the case with long term support (LTS) Ubuntu version.

From your experience, does FreeBSD keep fairly close to the latest stable version of typical unix/linux programs in their packages (if that's the term FreeBSD uses)? I'm thinking of gcc, and others of that ilk. I figure it'll be up to me to keep up with my favorite IDE, and programs of that sort, but it'd be nice for the system to keep track of the typical 'standards'.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

Well, GCC is typically more outdated in FreeBSD than in /any/ Linux.

FreeBSD 7.0 I think *may* be the first to use GCC4, but it might still be on 3. Anything core is typically focused on stable and well tested more than new and shiny.

The ports tree (non core stuff, editors, IDEs, shells, etc) tends to be more fresh, usually having two versions of many software packages - the recent/current version and an older known-good version. Example: With bash, you have bash and bash3. With python you have python (I don't know if it points to 2.4 or 2.5) and then an entry for python2.3 python2.4 and python2.5

etc. etc.

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

addendum: you can still install/use GCC4 (it is in the ports tree), however you have to make it explicit that you are using it (i.e. set the compiler, or CC command variable to gcc-4.1), and you can't just replace the exiting gcc with the latest and greatest, certifiably bad things will happen.

Re:Yes!

[cbart387]

Thanks for you reply! I'd much rather know it's reasonably stable then be on the cutting edge anyways. Dapper's 'non core' stuff is not very fresh. For example, Firefox is currently at 1.5 (at least through the packages). If FreeBSD would save me time in checking that stuff for updates then it sounds worth it...

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

Ahh, the firefox ports in the freebsd ports tree (viewable from the freebsd website on the ports section to the right), I updated my ports a couple of days ago, so this is farly recent:

[sjss@elrond ~]$ ls /usr/ports/www | grep firefox
firefox
firefox-devel
firefox-i18n
firefox-remote
firefox15
linux-firefox
linux-firefox-devel
xpi-firefox-showcase

The makefiles suggest:
firefox - 2.0
firefox-devel - 3.0 alpha 2
firefox15 - 1.5
linux-firefox - 2.0
linux-firefox-devel - 3.0 alpha ?

in my expierience, installing them is fairly easy, either:
cd /usr/ports/www/[firefox version]/; make install clean
or
portupgrade www/[firefox version]

adjust your flags as appropriate
set BATCH=yes for default configuration makes, FORCE_PKG_UPDATE=yes if you don't want it to complain about overwriting older versions with a make
use the -N flag for a new install with portupgrade, use --batch if you don't want it to bug you about configuration options.

Re:Yes!

[Just Some Guy]

FreeBSD 7.0 I think *may* be the first to use GCC4, but it might still be on 3.

For the record:

$ uname -r
7.0-BETA1
$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 4.2.1 20070719 [FreeBSD]
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Re:Yes!

[Just Some Guy]

And at the end of the day, FreeBSD works. It is the most boring OS you'll ever find. It is about as exciting as your water heater.

Speak for yourself! FreeBSD 7 is bringing things like SMPng with vastly improved multiprocessor support and other spiffy features. It's not boring in the slightest if you have an appreciation for rock-solid engineering and elegant design.

Re:Yes!

[vga_init]

We dont give a shit if you like Vista.

Yeah, but mention Linux and all of the sudden there is something wrong with you. I used to spend a lot of time on the FreeBSD channel on Freenode (technically "unofficial", but the developers use it), and it's a joke. There is so much operator-sanctioned abuse of GNU/Linux users, and I've seen people who stand up to the abuse get banned.

In fact, your entire post is basically a targeted smear against GNU/FSF. If FreeBSD isn't your religion, then why are you bitching so much about specific clauses in GPLv3 and pandering to common misconceptions about GPL? Why do you extol the virtues of your own religion (aka software philosophy) while lying about it and saying the code is "no strings attached"? The BSD license is more lax than the GPL, but they're similar in spirit. There are some strings (namely, the attribution requirement).

FreeBSD is not boring. It's excellent--a complete operating system that is so well organized and documented that it is truly exciting. I've been a dedicated BSD user since I first discovered unix, and it's people like you that are poisoning our community by feeding this grudge match between us and one of our greatest supporters and allies (do you have any idea how much GPL code is distributed as a part of FreeBSD?). You're not insightful; you're a troll.

Re:Yes!

[coryking]

Wow... late to the party?

The BSD license is more lax than the GPL, but they're similar in spirit Not even close. Not even in the same ballpark or even state.

FreeBSD is not boring Of course not my friend. It is very well organized and extremely well documented. All kinds of cool stuff come out and all of it is very exciting. But when it actually is running on a production server doing useful things, it should be boring. You don't want "excitement" on production servers, do you?

Re:Yes!

[vga_init]

Proof that the GPL and BSD licenses are similar in spirit is that they both create a foundation for Free software; both are OSI approved. BSD and GPL lovers differ over how best to deliver the freedoms they are seeking, but that means the difference comes through implementation, not spirit.

Re:Yes!

[that this is not und]

Also, when addressing userland issues on Solaris, you can't download sourcecd-4.0.iso and get the entire source trees of the userland _and_ kernel. Well, maybe you can download something like that from OpenSolaris (haven't looked in awhile,) but it's not a production release. I just spent part of the New Years holiday fighting with Solaris on some Sparc hardware. Right now I'm installing NetBSD 4.0 on some of it instead.

What I like a LOT about NetBSD is that that same source tarball set will build and run on all my various systems, from modern Pentium 4+ systems, Sparcs, my old MicroVAX, and my Macintosh SE/30 (well, don't build kernel and userland on an SE/30, a 16 MHz 68030 box, because there will probably be a new release before your build is completed.)

That means a lot more than 'well, someone has cobbled together a 'distro' that runs on this arch and another on that arch, etc. etc.' which is all most Linux people claim. Cross-platform just isn't important to other systems, but it keeps the whole thing honest and robust for it to be continuously buildable across a wide array of hardware.

Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Saint Aardvark]

...and replaced it with Postfix. Sendmail's still available from pkgsrc, but it's no longer the default. Man, never thought I'd see the day when one of the BSDs finally did this...

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[morgan_greywolf]

'bout frickin' time!

Look, the rest of the world has moved on to Postfix, which is much smaller and less bloated than sendmail, easier to configure, and, most importantly, a ton more secure.

Why have the BSDs taken so long to realize this simple fact of life?

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and replaced it with Postfix. Sendmail's still available from pkgsrc, but it's no longer the default. Man, never thought I'd see the day when one of the BSDs finally did this...

As a reference, sendmail is still good. But given the lack of desire of the maintainers of sendmail to be more proactive in anti-spam and further development of SMTP, many people have switched to Postfix. I view this as a highly progressive move.

I switched my systems to postfix last year. Love it. Even though I mastered the sendmail.cf/mc so my understanding of sendmail, above average even in complex routing and multiple domains/rewriting. I am not looking back, postini is superior.

Leave it to where the intelligence is, BSD is far from dead because of contributions that "itojun" Hagino and others make. It is why other OSes follow and do not lead.

----
MS: You say you run Windows?
Tech: Yep, sure do, X-Windows.

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Just Some Guy]

Why have the BSDs taken so long to realize this simple fact of life?

Well, in the case of OpenBSD, it's because they've gone over the Sendmail code with a fine-toothed comb and patched up any problems they found along the way. It's pretty well vetted by people who care intensely about such things. Therefore, replacing Sendmail with anything else would be a case of the devil you know being better than the devil you don't.

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't quite look like the rest of the world got your memo.

http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200711/mxsurvey.html

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Fweeky]

Why have the BSDs taken so long to realize this simple fact of life? Well, *I* think the colour of the bikeshed should be exim^Wblue!

Or maybe the base system should just not come with an MTA. Keep that stuff in ports where it belongs.

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[MavEtJu]

Or maybe the base system should just not come with an MTA. Keep that stuff in ports where it belongs.

You need something to deliver your daily/weekly/monthly run logs, cron output, alerts etc to the right person.

But as you know, installing GREEN!^Wpostfix from the ports collection is hardly rocket science if you take all the default settings, plus that it can be updated without having to worry that an system upgrade will put everything back to an ancient version.

Some actual information

[Anonymous Coward]

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks.

Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[NeoManyon]

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks. Please read below for a list of changes in NetBSD 4.0.

http://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-4/NetBSD-4.0.html

Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES and CHANGES-4.0 files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 4.0 release tree. Some highlights include:
Networking

* agr(4): new pseudo-device driver for link level aggregation.
* IPv6 support was extended with an RFC 3542-compliant API and added for gre(4) tunnels and the tun(4) device.
* An NDIS-wrapper was added to use Windows binary drivers on the i386 platform, see ndiscvt(8).
* The IPv4 source-address selection policy can be set from a number of algorithms. See "IPSRCSEL" in options(4) and in_getifa(9).
* Imported wpa_supplicant(8) and wpa_cli(8). Utilities to connect and handle aspects of 802.11 WPA networks.
* Imported hostapd(8). An authenticator for IEEE 802.11 networks.
* carp(4): imported Common Address Redundancy Protocol to allow multiple hosts to share a set of IP addresses for high availability / redundancy, from OpenBSD.
* ALTQ support for the PF packet filter.
* etherip(4): new EtherIP tunneling device. It's able to tunnel Ethernet traffic over IPv4 and IPv6 using the EtherIP protocol specified in RFC 3378.
* ftpd(8) can now run in standalone mode, instead of from inetd(8).
* tftp(1) now has support for multicast TFTP operation in open-loop mode, server is in progress.
* tcp(4): added support for RFC 3465 Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) and Explicit Congestion Notification as defined in RFC 3168.

File systems

* scan_ffs(8), scan_lfs(8): utilities to find FFSv1/v2 and LFS partitions to recover lost disklabels on disks and image files.
* tmpfs: added a new memory-based file system aimed at replacing mfs. Contrary to mfs, it is not based on a disk file system, so it is more efficient both in overall memory consumption and speed. See mount_tmpfs(8).
* Added UDF support for optical media and block devices, see mount_udf(8). Read-only for now.
* NFS export list handling was changed to be filesystem independent.
* LFS: lots of stability improvements and new cleaner daemon. It is now also possible to use LFS as root filesystem.
* vnd(4): the vnode disk driver can be used on filesystems such as smbfs and tmpfs.
* Support for System V Boot File System was added, see newfs_sysvbfs(8) and mount_sysvbfs(8).

Drivers

*

Audio:
o Support for new models on drivers such as Intel ICH8/6300ESB, NVIDIA nForce 3/4, etc.
o Added support for AC'97 modems.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor...

Ah, so it does run Linux. I was going to ask.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[TheRaven64]

The new bluetooth stack from NetBSD has now been ported to DragonFly BSD and OpenBSD, so others benefit from this work, not just those running NetBSD. Looking through the new features list, I see a lot of things that I recognise from both OpenBSD and FreeBSD, so the sharing goes both ways.

NetBSD is, I believe, the second kernel to officially support running as a Xen 3 Domain 0 guest. Both Solaris and NetBSD have been able to do this in prerelease versions for quite a few months, but I believe NetBSD is the first to release it officially. (The first kernel overall was Linux, although the Xen patches are still not in the main kernel.org tree).

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[dgatwood]

...many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs.

Translation: now it really does run on your toaster... and your refrigerator.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[demon]

Does it support PAE this time? I'm not seeing anything in the release notes, so I'm guessing the answer is "no"; unfortunately if it doesn't, that makes it (still) useless to me. I'd love to run NetBSD in a Xen domU, but all my production Xen hosts use PAE - 4 GB on a VM host box is just not enough, and NetBSD's continued dogged insistence that PAE is an ugly hack (yes, it is, but that's *beside* the point) is getting really obnoxious. I'd just go with the x86_64 Xen kernel, except that they don't even have an x86_64 Xen-enabled kernel yet...

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[lithiumuk]

Kip Macy's working on it.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that read this and thought, "hmmm, should have just said, 'imported OpenBSD.' Since really, a huge number of the items are from OpenBSD." It really caught me off guard that so much of what is listed here is just imported from OpenBSD, did an OpenBSD developer write the list, and just downplay the in-NetBSD developed stuff? And if you're going to import OpenBSD stuff, why not get a recent PF version, 3.7 is what, two releases a year, we're on 4.2 now, so two and a half years old. A two and a half year old version of PF? I mean, every release should see an update to PF to keep it on par with OpenBSD's version.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[GaryOlson]

Works well in VMware; and some thoughtful soul created a pre-built VM. Now my testing VM menagerie is complete.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[LizardKing]

While the sharing is great and goes both ways, it's a little unfair to imply that all the new features in NetBSD 4.0 came from OpenBSD. The bluetooth stack was written specifically for NetBSD, for example. As for pf, the version in the NetBSD tree has been considerably modified from the 3.7 version, so merges from OpenBSD are made on a fix or per-feature basis as the porting is quite hard to do. Not unexpected, seeing as pf touches some quite low level aspects of the kernel. As for the release, I'll be upgrading my main machine from RC3 as soon as possible, but I'm really looking forward to 5.0 - which will include a new threading implementation along with massive improvements to kernel locking granularity and SMP support.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[LizardKing]

In a sense NetBSD event ran Linux before the Xen support - well, Linux applications at least. There's Linux emulation built into the kernel that allows it to trap system calls from Linux binaries and translate them to NetBSD equivalents. Before the availability of a native Sun JDK, this was the way to run Java on NetBSD.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[LizardKing]

You make it sound like FreeBSD, which scares the shit out of me.

Yeah, it's a bit of a coincidence that Net will be following in the footsteps of Free by releasing a whole load of locking changes as prt of version 5.0. However, NetBSD -current already has the main pieces in place, and is shaping up to be a massive improvement in terms of SMP performance. Check Andre Doran's posts to the tech-kern mailing list over the last few months for the details.

Oh Boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

An OS that supports more platforms than it has users.

Re:Oh Boy!

[filterban]

NetBSD is a great OS. I've used it since version 2 and it really has improved dramatically. I've found it to be very, very useful in resurrecting old hardware, and it also runs great on current platforms, too.

NetBSD's support of so many hardware architectures speaks something about how it's designed, if you ask me. No other OS I know of supports even 1/2 as many architectures as NetBSD.

Re:Oh Boy!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Oh Boy! An OS that supports more platforms than it has users.

Oh Boy! Another user that doesn't know what OS's he's using. If your firewall isn't running NetBSD, and your gateway router isn't, and you don't own any appliances that run NetBSD, the chances are your internet packets, at least are making their way through one or more NetBSD boxes. NetBSD has plenty of users, it's just most of them don't know they are users because they use NetBSD systems as black boxes.

Re:Oh Boy!

[MrWeelson]

Viewing websites that use Apache doesn't mean I'm an Apache user. The only soft/hardware I use are those directly under my control, my XP PC, my Linux PC, my router and so on.

Re:Oh Boy!

[shnizep]

On top of that I've noticed NetBSD running on iSCSI SAN hardware :) *cough* EqualLogic, which is damn reliable, and who knows else what hardware.

Re:Oh Boy!

[codemachine]

Reminds me of this satirewire story: http://satirewire.com/briefs/netscape6.shtml

Re:Oh Boy!

[onefriedrice]

I think it's quite apparent from the context he was using that he meant user in the sense that you are using the OS, which is accurate whether you made the black box or not. If you're using the router (or whatever), you are using NetBSD in the sense of the word that he used. Either way, it also becomes quite obvious that _somebody_ is using NetBSD, and as it turns out (like the GP pointed out), many people are using NetBSD, in the traditional sense.

Re:Holy Shit.

[trybywrench]

Sad to hear about itojun. This is the first time i've heard of this news. Anyone know how he passed away?

yeah you'd think that would be in the summary.

I knew nothing of him but rest in peace and thanks for all the hard work

Re:Holy Shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Responding to my own post, apparently he was fighting a long illness and did not make it. Gathered from comments at undeadly.
See also http://www.wide.ad.jp/news/press/20071031-itojun-e.html

Jeez. The guy was a good guy. Very upset that he is no longer with the community. RIP.

Netcraft is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

this new release of NetBSD confirms it.

Re:Holy Shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.itojun.org/resume.html ... too many activies to summarize from my limited head.

Since wide user base seems to be your preferred

[ByOhTek]

metric in OS worth...

How are you liking your Windows install? Just curious.

Re:Since wide user base seems to be your preferred

[Monsuco]

How are you liking your Windows install? Just curious.

Ugh, mines horrible, it lets in a draft and the screen fell out. Next time I will just get a contractor.

Re:Since wide user base seems to be your preferred

[Kadin2048]

Well, I don't know why you'd want one in the first place; it's not like you get much of a view in that mine.

Re:Holy Shit.

[argiedot]

I remember someone on Planet Debian mentioning it, it's really sad.

Re:1. I've used Postfix on NetBSD since 2000 or so

[morgan_greywolf]

1. Good for you. I'm talking about what comes installed by default, not what you can install yourself after the fact. And, yes, it matters, because people, even experienced, seasoned, veteran administrators are likely to use what's installed by default rather than install something extra manually. It's usually the path of least resistance.

2. I'm sorry you don't like my posts. I tend to make a lot of jokes with heavy, sarcastic humor and it's one of those things that either people love or they hate. Most of my funny posts get moderated either up to +5, Funny, or down to -1, Troll or Flamebait. One man's humour is another man's troll. Go figure. *shrug* On my more serious posts, I say exactly what I think. You don't like it? Disagree with me? Okay, I don't care. I think it's more important to say you what you really think than it is to say something that's popular and/or likely to be modded up.

OpenBSD

[cachimaster]

If i'm not mistaken, the OpenBSD 4.2 release was also dedicated to Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino, it was a big loss for the BSDs.

Released?

[Huntr]

Does that mean they spread its ashes around somewhere or what? ;)

Re:Holy Shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be that that nobody outside his family knows, but more likely I think the cause of death is being kept quiet. People have been asking since he died ... alway met with curious silence on the issue. I think at the point, the respectful thing to do is not to ask.

Re:Walmart

[Brandybuck]

If you're on the grid, people who you don't like are getting your money.

Why should I care? As long as I give my money to them voluntarily through uncoerced economic transactions, it's not longer my money, it's theirs. I gave it to them. On the other hand, if I dislike them so much that I have to rant on Slashdot about it, then I shouldn't be doing business with them to begin with. As the doctor says, if it hurts to do that then don't do that!

Re:Walmart

[ericrost]

Yes, but is it uncoerced if the item you're buying is a necessity and you have no other choice because of a government protected monopoly?

Google Cache Reveals Cause of Death

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I did a little digging and determined that it was almost certainly suicide. I found two blog posts from a google search on Itojun and noticed that the Google cache version was dated one day prior to the date listed on the blog posts. I then discovered that you can actually retrieve old text from the Google cache version of a page by tweaking your search query over and over. I determined that the two bloggers had deleted paragraphs from each of their posts talking about the cause of death, Itojun's mental health problems and his recent decent into depression.

To see what I'm talking about, check these search results and then compare the page that's being linked. You'll notice it's dated the 31st and the paragraph from the search results has been deleted. If you then perform queries using text from the search result snippet you can reveal more and more of the deleted text. For example, like this.

I'm a bit conflicted about posting the cause of death since multiple people took the trouble to attempt to delete that information from public view, but I figure that people will find this technique at recovering deleted information quite useful. I have recovered the complete text from each blog post, but am not going to post that information. If you care that much, you can figure it out for yourself.

Re:Google Cache Reveals Cause of Death

[Anonymuous Coward]

It may not be that simple.

Many people that are treated for depression have the bad habit of mixing booze and medicine. And sometimes shit happens.

I did that too. I've almost killed myself. Nobody believed it was simply an accident, despite this being the pure truth.

My advice wrt itojun would be to let him RIP. He was an IPv6 and BSD hacker, not Britney Spears.

Re:Walmart

[Brandybuck]

I am against all government protected monopolies. I am also against any government privileges given to businesses. In such situation the economic transaction itself may not be coerced, but others in the economy definitely are. If a business can't compete without the heavy handed fist of government helping them, then they need to get out and make room for someone else who can.

Quality vs. quantity

[mi]

The FreeBSD core team consists of 9 people, so losing 92% of them would mean losing 8.37 of them, which doesn't really make sense.

The loss of a single man — Matt Dillon, who went on to found DragonFlyBSD — was devastating. He is not only quite bright, but also energetic and somehow able to devote a lot of time to the open-source software development.

His being expelled — over an exasperated comment in a cvs-commit — was highly unfortunate in my not-so-humble opinion...

4.0 is out..

[afen]

And still no ia64 build. Myself and the other two ia64 users in the world are outraged!

Re:Walmart

[ericrost]

The point of my OP was that complaining about walmart is pretty shallow given the state of the retail economy, anywhere you go is just as bad, so if you're not comfortable giving your money to walmart, you may as well try to live off the grid.

I have simply accepted that I can only make the best of it. I DON'T shop at walmart because of their overtly anti-union activities and their bait and switch with American labor (remember the early 90's commercials? I do). But I also don't shop @ Target if I can help it. I go to local joints where a small business owner benefits from me paying a few dollars more, but treats his employees like human beings instead of commodities.

Not to say that SB's are all that is holy, but at least I have less of a behemoth to judge how they're behaving. I buy from my farmer's market when I can because I find it morally reprehensible to shop at supermarkets that throw away 80% of the produce they buy just so we can feel like there's not a food shortage.

If everyone lived like the average citizen of the US, the world would be a shitty place REALLY quickly, so I try to do my part. I drive a 10 year old car. I live in a house that was built right, in 1934. I take my motorcycle when the weather in my part of the country allows. I recycle, I cook from scratch.

But even with all this, I need bathtowels, etc and the thrift stores in my city are terrible (I could drive an hour, but doesn't that really defeat the purpose?). So I'm forced to deal with big chains now and again, its just distasteful to me.