Congratulations 🎉 to #OpenBSD team from #NetBSD community for 7.7

i486SX_soft_FPU: Bring back FPU emulation for i486SX CPU on NetBSD via @jmmv https://lobste.rs/s/lllomq #netbsd
https://github.com/mezantrop/i486SX_soft_FPU

Revisiting #async / #await in #POSIX C, trying to "add some #security" 🙈

Recap: Consider a classic #reactor-style service in C with a #threadpool attached to run the individual request handlers. When such a handler needs to do some I/O, it'll have to wait for its completion, and doing so is kind of straight forward by just blocking the worker thread executing the job until whatever I/O was needed completes.

Now, blocking a thread is never a great thing to do and I recently tooted about an interesting alternative I found: Make use of the (unfortunately deprecated) POSIX user context switching to enable releasing the worker thread while waiting. In a nutshell, you create a context with #makecontext that has its own private #stack, and then you can use #swapcontext to get off the thread, and later again to get back on the thread. A minor issue is: It must be the *same* thread ... so you might have to wait until it completes something else before you can resume your job. But then, that's probably okayish, you can make sure in your job scheduling to only use worker threads with awaited tasks attached when no other thread is available.

In my first implementation, I just used #malloc to create a 64kiB private stack for each thread job. That's perfectly fine if you can guarantee your job will never consume more stack space, AND it won't have any vulnerabilities allowing some attacker to mess with the stack. But in practice, especially for a library offering this async/await implementation, it's nothing but a wild #CVE generator.

So, I now improved on that:

* Allocate a much larger stack of now 2MiB. That alone makes issues at least less likely. And on a sane modern OS, we can still assume pages will only be mapped "on demand".
* Only allocate the stack directly before running the thread job, and delegate allocation to some internal "stack manager" that keeps track of all allocated stacks and reuses them, only freeing them on exit. This should avoid most of the allocation overhead.
* If MAP_ANON / MAP_ANONYMOUS is available, use #mmap for allocating the stack. That at least gives a chance to stay away from other allocations ....
* But finally, if MAP_STACK is available, use this flag! From my research, #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD and #NetBSD will for example make sure there's at least one "guard page" below a stack mapped with this flag, so a stack overflow consistently takes the SIGSEGV emergency exit 😆. #Linux knows this flag as well, but doesn't seem to implement such protection at this time ... 🤔

#C #coding

This retro-computing project restores support for x87 floating-point unit (FPU) emulation in the NetBSD kernel, targeting legacy 486SX-class processors without hardware FPUs https://github.com/mezantrop/i486SX_soft_FPU?tab=readme-ov-file

#unix #netbsd #opensource

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟰/𝟮𝟴 (Valuable News - 2025/04/28) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/valuable-news-2025-04-28/

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

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

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟰/𝟮𝟴 (Valuable News - 2025/04/28) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/valuable-news-2025-04-28/

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

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

I needed to run an annoying Electron app for something, so I installed Linux on a USB stick and shoved it in an old laptop.

I noticed that it defaults to suspending when the lid is closed... which is fine, except it never wakes up. #NetBSD has no problem waking up from sleep on this ThinkPad X260 hardware...

@eloy @weirdtreething @famfo @wii #NetBSD is the #Doom of operating systems...

• I'd not be surprised if someone ported @netbsd down to #i286 & #i186 and #PiPico...

Please boost for a larger each and thank you. xoxo
#FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #RunBSD

BSDCan is in Ottawa, with tutorials June 11-12, 2025, talks & BOFs June 13-14, 2025

Registration is open - https://www.bsdcan.org/2025/registration.html

Also see https://blog.bsdcan.org/2025/03/18/bsdcan-2025-talks-tutorials-and-registration/ for descriptions and tips, contributions: https://indico.bsdcan.org/event/5/contributions/

#bsdcan #conference #bsd #unix #development #freebsd #netbsd #openbsd #sysadmin #devops #freesoftware #libresoftware

EuroBSDCon 2025, Zagreb, September 2025 -

The Call for Talk and Presentation proposals for EuroBSDCon 2025 is open.

Submit yours at https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/

Please also visit the main website https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/ for information about the conference.

See you in Zagreb!

#eurobsdcon #bsd #conference #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #unix #development #devops #freesoftware #libresoftware @eurobsdcon

BSDCan is in Ottawa, with tutorials June 11-12, 2025, talks & BOFs June 13-14, 2025

Registration is open - https://www.bsdcan.org/2025/registration.html

Also see https://blog.bsdcan.org/2025/03/18/bsdcan-2025-talks-tutorials-and-registration/ for descriptions and tips

#bsdcan #conference #bsd #unix #development #freebsd #netbsd #openbsd #sysadmin #devops #freesoftware #libresoftware

@BoxyBSD was always for BSD based systems only. I focussed to push the whole BSD community and to encourage people to try BSD based systems (such like #FreeBSD. #NetBSD, #OpenBSD, etc.) but I'm not sure if it might provide more value to the whole #opensource community by also supporting #Linux systems (such like #Debian, #Ubuntu, #RockyLinux, #SuSe and more).

I'm not sure if the #BoxyBSD project still provides a value for the community right, now.

What do you think?

As it approaches, the excitement for the upcoming #BSDCan keeps growing. It'll be my first time in Canada, and therefore my first time at BSDCan, and it will be a great opportunity to meet people I couldn't meet at #EuroBSDCon in Dublin. In the meantime, the next EuroBSDCon is also getting closer. All in all, when I look at the coming months, I feel an overwhelming sense of positivity and enthusiasm!

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonFlyBSD #BSD

I took the opportunity of the #GoToSocial upgrade to 0.19.0 to also start polling the #prometheus endpoint using the #VictoriaMetrics vmagent. This lead to identifying a bug (I think) so the gentle devs now have another PR to deal with 🥺
Regarding OSes, this is #OpenBSD polling and storing metrics from #NetBSD and rendering them using #OmniOS and #pkgsrc.
Who said I was a sane person 🤭

This is a collection of solutions to OpenFirmware and hardware issues for which I had difficulty finding answers as a first-time user of #Sun #sparc hardware.

https://netbsd.org/~nia/sun-blade-150.html

#netbsd #solaris

25 years ago today I registered my domain:

$ whois netmeister.org | grep Creation
Creation Date: 2000-04-24T02:15:22Z

One of my best decisions tech-wise was to run my own stack on my own domain (HTTP, SMTP, DNS, and whatever else). It forces me to keep up to date with developing standards and protocols, lets me troubleshoot and debug on a level otherwise impossible and is well worth the occasional "ugh, wtf now?" headaches you inevitably run into.

(And of course it runs #NetBSD. :-)

Does anyone know if there's any reasons why a #Sun Blade 150 might hang on "boot cdrom", other than a broken DVD drive? :-/ #sparc #solaris #netbsd

🌟 Introducing BSD.cafe 🌟

Excited to present the first building block of the BSD Cafe project! When I registered this domain months ago, I envisioned a themed bar where we can casually chat about *BSD systems, Linux, and Open-Source technology among friends, acquaintances, and patrons. But like any bar, discussions can cover a wide range of topics while respecting everyone.

BSD.cafe will be a hub for various tools and services, powered by *BSD.

The first brick is a new Mastodon instance, a gateway to the Fediverse. Registration is open, and the server will be moderated under clear guidelines promoting good behavior and zero tolerance for hate towards anyone. Inclusivity, respect, and constructive dialogue are the key values of this new instance.

The main server is currently hosted in Finland on a small VM, based on #FreeBSD. Services are divided into VNET jails, connected in a LAN via a local bridge. A VPN system is also present and have been able to move individual jails to different, more powerful, machines.

Multimedia data and cache are hosted on another physical server (FreeBSD, within a jail), with Cloudflare in front. The aim is to cache and geodistribute data, reducing network traffic on the main VPS.

Reverse proxy (frontend), mail server, media server, and the instance itself are reachable via #ipv6.

The instance started empty. No unnecessary content was pre-loaded; I want it to grow organically based on users' interests and following. There won't be any preemptive blocks at this stage. Users are encouraged to promptly report anything they find worth flagging.

Join us at https://mastodon.bsd.cafe to build a constructive and inclusive community—a safe and relaxing space for everyone.

Our wiki, located at https://wiki.bsd.cafe, features essential links and articles related to the BSD world. It provides an overview of the tools, services, rules, uptime, and more information about the BSD Cafe Services.

A Matrix server, a Miniflux RSS Reader, the Wiki itself, and the BlendIT Lemmy instance are all part of the BSD Cafe services, with more to come.

#BSD #OpenSource #Fediverse #Community #Tech #Networking #Mastodon #Inclusivity #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD #Linux #OSS #SysAdmin #Miniflux #RSS #Matrix

Testing #nginx on #NetBSD on my Raspberry Pi Zero W, connected via wifi:

http:
wrk -t4 -c50 -d10s http://192.168.111.143
Running 10s test @ http://192.168.111.143
4 threads and 50 connections
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 70.52ms 18.01ms 133.58ms 73.66%
Req/Sec 170.04 38.91 280.00 65.00%
6816 requests in 10.07s, 5.54MB read
Requests/sec: 677.05
Transfer/sec: 563.99KB

Not huge, but stil 677 requests per second.

In https:
wrk -t4 -c50 -d10s https://192.168.111.143
Running 10s test @ https://192.168.111.143
4 threads and 50 connections
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 764.43ms 397.17ms 1.99s 75.79%
Req/Sec 14.31 10.93 69.00 78.64%
418 requests in 10.07s, 17.66MB read
Socket errors: connect 0, read 0, write 0, timeout 38
Requests/sec: 41.51
Transfer/sec: 1.75MB

Much worse - but I expected it. Still, 41 requests per second in https is more than I expected.

@justine

[Insert arguments about how #Wayland's non-portability is somehow #NetBSD/#OpenBSD's fault and other such drivel here] 🤣

#SorryNotSorry
#WaylandBros
#iLikeWaylandButCouldYouLotBeAlittleLessPetaqPleaseKTHXBAI

I'm going to compile the NetBSD kernel directly on the Raspberry Pi Zero W, which is running NetBSD.

Let's wait and see 🙂

#NetBSD #RunBSD

The default user login on NetBSD can be a wee bit busy. I like to customize it with a different "last login" notification and a "Daily Dose of Wisdom" delivered courtesy of `fortune` and `cowsay`:

https://www.dwarmstrong.org/customize-login-netbsd/

#NetBSD #RunBSD #Shell

Make Your Own Internet Presence with NetBSD and a 1 euro VPS – Part 1: Your Blog https://lobste.rs/s/tlbyzv #netbsd
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/04/22/make-your-own-internet-presence-with-netbsd-and-a-1-euro-vps-part-1-your-blog/