NetBSD 7.0 Released (netbsd.org)

An anonymous reader writes: After three years of development and over a year in release engineering, NetBSD 7.0 has been released. Its improvements include added support for many new ARM boards including the Raspberry Pi 2, major improvements to its multiprocessor-compatible firewall NPF, kernel scripting in Lua, kernel mode-setting for Intel and Radeon graphics chips, and a daemon called blacklistd(8) which integrates with numerous network daemons and shields them from flood attempts.

Comments

Things go better with FreeBSD

[chaosmind]

Nice analogy. Thanks for equating FreeBSD with Coke!

Re:Things go better with FreeBSD

[davester666]

Yeah. Unfortunately, it's New Coke. Not the good stuff made with cocaine.

My favorite OS for 'just getting it done'

[BaronM]

When I have a headless server/networking task to do, and don't want a side order of drama with my OS, NetBSD is my favorite way to just get it done.

Re:My favorite OS for 'just getting it done'

[ArchieBunker]

Yep, ran NetBSD for about a *decade* on an Alpha 21164 acting as my personal server and firewall. Totally solid.

And all three users cheered...

[msobkow]

:P

Re:And all three users cheered...

[fisted]

*cheer*

Re:Ooooold hardware too.

[sound vision]

"what happened to the 'no desktop/server' installs?"

Nothing happened? Have you tried Debian? I imagine Gentoo also won't make you install anything you don't want, but I haven't used it in years.

Re:NetWho?

[MacTO]

I haven't used NetBSD in years, but one of its selling points was portability. Perhaps portability is less relevant in our more homogenous world, but it still has a place.

Now with systemD

[Billly Gates]

Just kidding

Re:Now with systemD

[gweihir]

Good. Otherwise we would have to burn it and start over....

Re:NetWho?

[fisted]

I use OpenBSD because it's simple, and they continually improve the _existing_ software.

Existing software like LibreSSL? (OpenBSD rewrite of OpenSSL)
Or OpenSMTPD? (OpenBSD rewrite of an MTA)
Or maybe something simpler, like doas(1)? (OpenBSD rewrite of sudo)

Lots of newly-written software in OpenBSD. These are only three examples i could readily think of, and they're all fairly recent.

I guess your notion that NetBSD is bleeding edge is based on similar bizarre views.

Re:NetWho?

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking of opensmtpd...

Re: NetWho?

[fisted]

However, I simply couldn't get [FreeBSD] to run on my Raspberry Pi. Apparently there's some compatibility problem with my SD card. Oh well...

Yes, try a different SD card. I'm running FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE on a Model B, it's exceptionally stable:

$ uname -a
FreeBSD dbgpi.localdomain 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE #0 82c1d26(freebsdpi): Tue Dec 2 04:13:10 CET 2014 root@pi.localdomain:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/RPI-B arm

$ uptime
12:00AM up 187 days, 15:26, 2 users, load averages: 0.33, 0.15, 0.07

so I'm hoping that I'll get [NetBSD] to run on my Raspberry Pi soon.

Works equally well (this is my wifi AP and kitchen sink):

$ uname -a
NetBSD pi.localdomain 7.99.20 NetBSD 7.99.20 (PIKERN) #0: Wed Aug 5 04:37:30 CEST 2015 build@frozen.localdomain:/usr/build/obj-pi-earmv6hf-evbarm/sys/arch/evbarm/compile/PIKERN evbarm

$ uptime
12:01AM up 61 days, 10:52, 14 users, load averages: 0.50, 0.41, 0.44

One thing that I liked about the BSDs I've tried so far is the documentation. The FreeBSD handbook is pure gold compared to, say, the Debian documentation. The NetBSD documentation is pretty good too.

Yep.

Re:NetWho?

[sexconker]

I am a known troll, but I'm also correct.

Re:NetWho?

[KGIII]

I'm actually getting to like GhostBSD and would like it even more if I could get Opera working on it. It's really stable seemingly and I've found it to be quite zippy. Right now I am still just using it in a VM but I really want to install it and start using it as my main OS on a regular basis, at least for a while. I just seem too attached to Opera to make the switch. I know... I know...

blacklistd.conf?

[thogard]

Blacklistd looks like a great idea but I checked out the syntax in blacklistd.conf and I think it could use some work.

I could see lots of admins getting bitten by "nfail=*" meaning never. To me, that name or a '*' isn't the right choice. Security config files absolutely must be unambiguous to people aren't going to read the manual. Cron has a similar syntax and I've seen several cases were a simple change to a crontab resulted in a 5 star screwup that ran something 1440 times a day.

Re:blacklistd.conf?

[fisted]

Security config files absolutely must be unambiguous to people aren't going to read the manual.

People who aren't going to read the manual are unlikely to get their security right, blacklistd or not.
Security-aware admins do read the manual.

Cron [...] 5 star screwup

Well put

Re:NetWho?

[rubycodez]

author of that is behind the times, major cleanup and consolidation of smtpd just done, for those that use it. Or course, OpenBSD runs the other heavyweights

What does FBSD & OBSD not have...

[unixisc]

...that NetBSD offers? Not trying to troll here or start a war, but was genuinely interested. If I wanted a bullet proof firewall, I'd pick b/w OpenBSD and pFsense, and for a more generic OS, I'd go w/ FreeBSD, since I already run PC-BSD. Does NetBSD bring anything to the party? Particularly since both FreeBSD and OpenBSD support most of the CPUs that NetBSD supports (although FreeBSD has dropped Alpha & PA-RISC, while neither NetBSD nor OpenBSD support Itanic)

Re: What does FBSD & OBSD not have...

[fisted]

Openbsd uses PF.

Yes.

(NetBSD uses npf as of late, formerly ipfilter)

FreeBSD uses pfSense.

No.
FreeBSD has both ipfilter and pf available.
pfSense is FreeBSD, and probably uses pf

Re:What does FBSD & OBSD not have...

[Noryungi]

Let's see... NetBSD offers much better performances than OpenBSD, and performances that are sometimes even better than FreeBSD. It's also a smaller installation than either FreeBSD or OpenBSD: the base installation of NetBSD is simply ridiculously small.

It offers npf (the NetBSD packet filter), which is a fully-SMP capable version of pf, with a much more modern syntax than pfSense (which runs an oooooold version of OpenBSD pf). And, in general, its SMP support seems to be much better than OpenBSD and on a par with FreeBSD at the very least (including USB!).

Its Hardware Abstraction Layer seems, at least to my untrained eyes, much better than either FreeBSD and OpenBSD's HAL. And it does include support for Itanium, but only in source code form -- it's right there in the 7.0 announcement.

Other stuff I am not so sure about include kernel programming using Lua and the new blacklistd, which sounds like an interesting idea. Oh, and pkgsrc, its packaging system, just rocks.

congratulations

[jmccue]

Congratulations to the NetBSD team, I installed 7.0 replacing 6.1 on my my B/U system without a hitch. So far all working very well.

Re:NetWho?

[rubycodez]

The project now is fine, end of story

Re:NetWho?

[fisted]

continually improve the _existing_ software.

I'll just leave this slide of a presentation by Theo here
"Disruptive innovation is encouraged"