Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment

Did you know that #NetBSD comes with a number of historical Unix research papers and supplementary documentation? Here, we find papers by Marshall Kirk McKusick on the Fast File System, by Robert Morris and Ken Thompson on Password Security, a shell tutorial by Stephen R. Bourne, a guide to using vi(1) by Bill Joy, and the well known BSD IPC Tutorials! Take a tour through /usr/share/doc...

https://youtu.be/XqhOUqi4fc0

#apue #unix #programming

I dearly love #Slackware, don't get me wrong, but I have to say that, compared to #NetBSD it feels a bit on the heavier side, if you see what I mean...

Then again, I am doing a "slackpkg update" on a freshly installed VM, so there is that... 🤓

By the way, NetBSD is still looking for money to complete their 2025 fundraiser, so donate here: https://www.netbsd.org/donations/#how-to-donate

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟭𝟭/𝟬𝟯 (Valuable News - 2025/11/03) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/valuable-news-2025-11-03/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟭𝟭/𝟬𝟯 (Valuable News - 2025/11/03) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/valuable-news-2025-11-03/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟭𝟭/𝟬𝟯 (Valuable News - 2025/11/03) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/valuable-news-2025-11-03/

Past releases: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/news/

#verblog #vernews #news #bsd #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #linux #unix #zfs #opnsense #ghostbsd #solaris #vermadenday

This is part of my weekend fun. Coffee stains included.
The two Raspberry Pis are powered by NetBSD, the mini PC by illumos/SmartOS, and the two APU boards by FreeBSD.

#NetBSD #FreeBSD #illumos #SmartOS #IT #SysAdmin #HomeLab #RaspberryPI

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A top-down shot of a small computer setup on a tan surface with some visible coffee stains. In the upper left, a silver mini-PC is partially visible, with a black USB stick plugged into its side. Below the mini-PC, a black USB to TTL serial adapter is connected to and powering a Raspberry Pi A+. The Raspberry Pi Zero W is connected to and driving a 2-relay module. The Raspberry Pis are running NetBSD, the mini-PC is running llumos/SmartOS, and the two, slightly visible APU devices are running FreeBSD.

@tg9541 @stuartl
https://twitter.com/oshimyja

Uses touchscreen with #NetBSD https://www.netbsd.org/gallery/screenshots/oshimaya-drawing.jpg

But I guess if hardware is not supported it will be harder to get it working.

Thanks to suggestions from @stuartl I learned a bit about *BSD and PC hardware by tracing my touchpad and keyboard problem in #NetBSD:

1. I found a forum thread about touchpad issues with a hint that #OpenBSD is known to have better touchpad support than NetBSD

2. the blog of Joshua Stein who works on notebook hardware compatibility in OpenBSD

To understand how hardware support works, the following is a great source!

https://jcs.org/2019/07/28/ihidev

Thinking about a #Pine64 Quartz "A" running #NetBSD as a ZFS send remote backup destination. What other decent hardware options for a mirrored pair of 3.5" drives?

I really wish it was easier to know how #NetBSD works on an OrangePi 5 (or 5+) or a BananaPi M7, or similar board I could get that has SATA or an M2 I could add a SATA riser to. ​

I've finally given up on #NetBSD on the Odroid HC4 since, of course it doesn't run NetBSD. Instead, armbian linux just worked and has ZFS. That's disappointing, but not quite as disappointing as one of the two hard disks making a sad beeping noise instead of spinning up so the project still can't continue.

@stefano #NetBSD is the best OS for the 1st Gen Pis!

It ran better than Alpine Linux in my Old Computer challenge:

https://kzimmermann.0x.no/articles/old_computer_challenge_2025.html

@stuartl I tried to watch Xorg.*.log with an ssh session.

What happens is interesting: for the 45s that it takes startx to do its thing all ssh console communication is blocked. When terminating X11 the console through ssh is unresponsive for a few seconds, too.

Needless to say that I didn't learn much more ;-)

Maybe I should try using a different machine to install #NetBSD on, and if only to learn what's normal and what's not.

Ce soir, on décide qui rentre et qui rentre pas sur le réseau ! #virtualisation avec #NetBSD et #NVMM, tout de suite sur https://twitch.tv/ahp_nils ! #sysadmin #devops #twitchfr #twitchstreamer #TwitchStreamers #BSD #qemu

When asking around what's a dependable OS for old hardware (e.g., my ASUS Eee PC 900A with a 32bit Atom N270) #NetBSD was recommended.

I'm now giving NetBSD 10.1 a try. The user experience is what people believe Linux is (which it is not): a complicated affair for tech-savvy people. Getting a GUI to work feels a bit like Linux in the late 1990s. Bummer that I forgot how to do that 😅

I could need some help: how can I use the built-in keyboard and touchpad of my laptop in X11? Anyone?

@oxyhyxo @jbz first problem solved... surprisingly pkgin isn't in the default installation. Another session with sysinst fixes that (config / allow binary packages).

Getting X11 to work remains. Most likely people using NetBSD would know how to enable keyboard and touchpad.

#netbsd

💰 NetBSD Foundation Appeals for $50K Donations Amid Funding Crisis

｢ NetBSD faces a funding crisis in late 2025, with its foundation urging donations to reach a $50,000 goal after raising $10,738. The portable OS, powering servers and embedded devices since 1993, plans modernizations like Git migration. Community support is vital to sustain its evolution and cross-platform legacy ｣

#netbsd #opensource #funding
https://www.webpronews.com/netbsd-foundation-appeals-for-50k-donations-amid-funding-crisis/

oksh-7.8 is out! Sorry for the delay; was away at conferences.

https://github.com/ibara/oksh/releases/tag/oksh-7.8

#openbsd #netbsd #freebsd #dragonflybsd #bsd #linux #unix #solaris #illumos #macos #macosx #osx #aix #haiku #shell #ksh #oksh #sh #freesoftware #opensource #opensourcesoftware #oss

BSDCan 2026 is now accepting submissions for the June 2026 conference, see https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html and links therein for instructions.

Submissions deadline is January 17, 2026, the conference runs tutorials June 17-18, talks June 19-20.

#bsdcan #conference #freebsd #netbsd #openbsd #bsd #development #networking #freesoftware #libresoftware

🍎 Game Dev On IBook G4 With NetBSD / Hackaday

#netbsd #bsd #ibook64 #gamedev
https://hackaday.com/2025/07/23/game-dev-on-ibook-g4-with-netbsd/

♻️ Alex Haydock Saves a Nintendo Wii From the Scrapheap — and Turns It Into a NetBSD Web Server

｢ Inside the compact housing was an IBM Broadway, a PowerPC G3-based processor running at 729MHz, plus 24MB of high-speed 1T static RAM (SRAM) and 64MB of GDDR4 memory for a total of 88MB ｣

#netbsd #bsd #wii #retro
https://www.hackster.io/news/alex-haydock-saves-a-nintendo-wii-from-the-scrapheap-and-turns-it-into-a-netbsd-web-server-aebbf2c6492e

A couple of years ago, I posted a bit about "Dexter", my little project to run a Raspberry Pi 1 as a little general purpose, old-school Unix system - as even its extremely low specs were pretty high by, say, 1980s standards.

I decided to pause that until NetBSD 10 released, a thing that I expected would be a lot sooner than it actually was!

Anyway, Dexter is back in the box, and now has a real enough serial port to run with a VT220 terminal as the primary console, no more USB keyboard or HDMI cables hanging off it!

#retrocomputing #NetBSD

Decided to install #NetBSD 10.1 on my 8th gen Intel laptop. I had FreeBSD 14.3 on there and tried upgrading to 15.0-BETA3 only to run into loads of package conflicts and it seems pkg decided to talk to the 2 same repos. Not sure what went wrong there. Anyway the NetBSD install went OK. Just need to have a good play around with it.

I haven't used NetBSD since the early 2000's when I installed it on a SparcStation IPX.

I'm running some tests on my old and trusted Raspberry Pi A+.
I've installed Raspbian - latest release, lite version. At the prompt, it's using 92 MB of RAM, mainly due to systemd and NetworkManager. As soon as you use it (even just for apt), it starts swapping and becomes almost unusable. It took 5 minutes just to install Python.

I tried NetBSD (on the same memory card): 35 MB of RAM used (including Postfix!) and it's totally usable.

#RunBSD #NetBSD #Raspbian #Linux #Debian

NetBSD GSOC 2025 Mentor Summit in Munich, Germany: travel notes https://lobste.rs/s/rps93t #netbsd
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2025_mentor_summit

NetBSD GSOC 2025 Mentor Summit đã diễn ra tại Munich, Đức, với các ghi chép du lịch từ các mentor, chia sẻ kinh nghiệm và thảo luận các dự án mã nguồn mở. #NetBSD #GSOC2025 #Munich #Đức #MentorSummit #TravelNotes #GSOC #OpenSource

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2025_mentor_summit

Last weekend I have been to Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit as an org mentor for The NetBSD Foundation!

It has been a fantastic experience and I have just shared some travel notes: https://blog.NetBSD.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2025_mentor_summit

#netbsd #pkgsrc

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Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2025 Leonardo Taccari (The NetBSD Foundation), Mentor badge with several swag and stickers from the event.

Here's a short video about my cloudless, portable, small, low-resource "smart thermostat". It doesn't need an internet connection and uses MQTT. Here, it's directly driving a relay.
It's running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, powered by NetBSD, in read-only mode.
I used it for years and it's time to go back to it, cloudless and local.

#RunBSD #NetBSD #IoT #OwnYourDevices #OwnYourData #Cloudless

EDIT: here's a video: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@stefano/115468560621831960

Yes, my old python program to control my heaters is still working. I just had to adapt it to python 3 and modify the code so the old ds1820 sensors aren't needed anymore, I can connect it to my mqtt server. And get the temp from the esp8266 I placed many years ago, all around the house. I've also put a relay on one of them and it works fine.

Oh, and all is running on a Raspberry PI Zero W, powered by NetBSD.

#RunBSD #NetBSD

Woke up at 04:30 with The Cough. Rather than let that go to waste I checked on a VAXperiment that I kicked off yesterday. #NetBSD (without the optional X11) fit nicely on one disk at about 642 MB. Later today I'll add another disk, add a user and check out syssrc. #decvax

I fell down a rabbit hole into a virtual memory layout landscape, trying to better understand how thread stacks are placed under Address Space Layout Randomization. Turns out, there's quite a bit of variability across different Unix flavors.

https://www.netmeister.org/blog/thread-stacks.html

#unix #linux #netbsd #freebsd #openbsd #omnios

Think NetBSD is just some spooky, complicated thing for old-school hackers? Nah.
But all that legendary portability and rock-solid reliability? That doesn't happen by magic.
Every stable update, cool new feature, and wild new platform it supports (yes, even your toaster) comes from the hard work of the NetBSD community. And honestly, they're powered by support from people just like you.
When you donate to the NetBSD Foundation, you're directly helping to:
Keep NetBSD's code clean, secure, and ready for whatever's next.
Supercharge the build systems and infrastructure that our devs live on.
Cook up more docs, guides, and resources for new users and seasoned pros.
Make sure "Of course it runs NetBSD" stays a free-for-everyone reality.
Your contribution is what keeps NetBSD stable, modern, and running on (almost) everything. Pitch in to support the work that keeps #NetBSD awesome!

#OpenSource #Halloween #donate #runbsd #linux #retro #ewaste

@ljrk @lanodan @ska

In this case, it apparently goes back to the original AT&T Unix concept of sessions, when BSD process groups were added to them.

I pulled my copy of Pate down from the shelf and this restriction was in either XENIX or System 5 (Pate is not completely clear) and hence why it was standardized.

Quite why #OpenBSD later gained this restriction is a mystery from the commit log. It wasn't in #NetBSD but added by @millert in 2000.

https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/b3fe5974ccb2d4b668d93844f3e74d0a4e3306b8

#FreeBSD #Illumos

The updated control panel at @BoxyBSD by @gyptazy

@gyptazy #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #FreeVPS #Hosting #IPV6 #BGP #DN42 #smolBSD #RUNBSD #BSD #BSDHosting #Hosting #FreeHosting #community #opensource