As implied, the #NetBSD port of #nosh, #redo, and #djbwares is pretty much done.

NetBSD doesn't make it as easy to switch between process 1 programs as FreeBSD does, so the system manager is not tested. But many of the other tools from tai64nlocal, cyclog, and setterm; through login-envuidgid and envdir; to the service manager and console-tty37-viewer; have now been used in earnest.

There are known missing bits in #ifconfig and list-process-table. And UVT realizers are not tested at all yet.

I caused myself to waste several days with the #NetBSD port of #nosh by uncommenting NetBSD's supplied /etc/login.conf settings, to check that the code to use login.conf worked, without checking in too much detail what they were.

Someone had set the open file descriptor limit, in a vanilla installation the same as kern.maxfiles since NetBSD 10 ships with login.conf all commented out, down to just 128.

Very funny joke, Indy. (-:

https://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/etc/login.conf#rev1.4

The not-very-secret GOPHER server is well on its way to being back up; and those of you who know GOPHER will soon be able to get the latest development source snapshots of #nosh 1.41 and #djbwares 10 again.

*Of course* it is a machine running those self-same nosh and djbwares to serve up GOPHER et al.. The last one ran #OpenBSD. This one is running #NetBSD, hence the recent porting work.

It's not in its intended location yet. But it is facing the Internet now.

#redo

#NetBSD Bans #AI-Generated Code From Commits

https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/netbsd-bans-ai-generated-code-from-commits/

I am happy to announce that my @FrOSCon talk proposal has been accepted! I will speak about #NetBSD, hope to see you there!

A critical look at NetBSD’s installer

NetBSD is an OS that I installed only a couple of times over the years, so I’m not very familiar with its installer, sysinst. This fact was actually what led to this article (or the whole series rather): Talking to a NetBSD developer at EuroBSDcon 2023, I mentioned my impression that NetBSD was harder to install than it needed to be. He was interested in my pe

https://www.osnews.com/story/142507/a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

#NetBSD

@toomanysecrets

It's probably a rite of passage in becoming a software engineer to understand this.

I have a vague recollection of an explainer for this that comes up on #HackerNews every few years.

Interestingly, only #OpenBSD retains the full flaws of the original. #NetBSD and #DragonFlyBSD both add error checking, and #FreeBSD and #GhostBSD do the modern avoiding stdio and its rampant buffer rewriting thing.

#yes @WindOfChange

If you haven't already, register now for #BSDCan at https://www.bsdcan.org/2025/registration.html

The main North American BSD conference, in #Ottawa

#freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #freesoftware #libresoftware #unixlike #conference #hacking #development

Want to speak at EuroBSDcon 2025? Submit via https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/ (until 2025-06-21)

Main conferfence site: https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/, Sponsoring: https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/sponsorship.html

See you in Zagreb!

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

Happy #WorldEnvironmentDay ! NetBSD's efficiency and long-term support for diverse hardware help reduce e-waste. Let's all build sustainable solutions, in code and in the world, to #SustainableTech
#NetBSD 🚩🧡 @netbsd

I saw #NetBSD on Nintendo Wii at the NBUG booth at OSC Nagoya, so I tried it out at home. Finally NetBSD/evbppc -current (10.99.14) successfully booted. Yay!

Installing *BSD in 2025 part 3 – A critical look at NetBSD’s installer https://lobste.rs/s/kngyln #netbsd
https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

@hn50

To me, seems a fair review. One thing to note, if putting /usr and/or /var on a separate partition you should add something like this to /etc/rc.local

critical_filesystems_local="/var /usr"

#NetBSD

A critical look at NetBSD’s installer

Link: https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44176919

#netbsd

@jaypatelani

It's wrong in a couple of places. For starters, systems with EFI firmware do not require EFI partition tables. In fact it has things backwards. It's the older firmwares that place the requirement on what partitioning scheme is used; not the newer ones.

And as far as I know @emaste does not reject German keyboard layouts for #FreeBSD. (-:

It's on point about "What the Hell is enable cgd?" though.

#NetBSD #EFI

Installing *BSD in 2025 part 3 – A critical look at NetBSD's installer

https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

#HackerNews #Installing #BSD #in #2025 #part #3 #NetBSD #installer #critical #look

#NetBSD #runbsd
Installing *BSD in 2025 part 3 – A critical look at NetBSD’s installer

https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

Schon wieder 2 Monate rum, am nächsten Dienstag, 10.06.2025 um 19:00h treffen wir uns im Fuchs im Hofmanns in #Düsseldorf Bilk https://www.meetup.com/bsd-user-group-dusseldorf-bsd-nrw/events/305478300/ #runbsd #bsdnrw #bug #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd

@codemonkeymike

@ActionRetro has several videos demonstrating modern Linux on late-PowerPC-era Macs. I think #adelielinux is the best bet, currently.

Otherwise, #OpenBSD and #NetBSD will certainly run on it. (:

While tidying up the cabinet in my studio, I found this box with 3 CDs. Alpha, of course, refers to the architecture. And there's a long story behind it that made me smile - which I'll publish on one of my blogs soon.

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #Debian #Alpha

Alt...

A CD jewel case labeled by hand with several operating system names and versions: "FreeBSD 5.3", "NetBSD 2.0", "Debian 'Testing' Sarge", and "ALPHA". The case insert contains 3 TDK CD-R Speed-X discs. The handwriting suggests the CD contains installation or boot media for Alpha architecture systems.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟲/𝟬𝟮 (Valuable News - 2025/06/02) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/06/02/valuable-news-2025-06-02/

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

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

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟲/𝟬𝟮 (Valuable News - 2025/06/02) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/06/02/valuable-news-2025-06-02/

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

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

@disser @ed1conf @paul_ipv6 @robpike In 1983 when Siemens introduced Unix (SINIX) on a mini computer series I was picked for training. We were taught that vi is ALWAYS there. Still use it ;) vi, on #OpenBSD, #NetBSD and #Alpine Linux.
Back then I also read a German translation of K&R’s “Programmieren in C”. I don’t do C any more, but I’m learning Go.

#NetBSD #m68k now has binary packages for clang and llvm.

https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/m68k/10.0_2025Q1/All/

Does anyone want to give them a try?

Épisode 3 de la saga #NetBSD et #virtualisation avec #NVMM! À très vite sur https://twitch.tv/ahp_nils ! #sysadmin #devops #twitchfr #twitchstreamer #TwitchStreamers #BSD #qemu

Come September, there will be a gathering of #BSD developers and users in Zagreb, Croatia -- #eurobsdcon 2025.

See https://2025.eurobsdcon.org/ for details, and you can submit your talk or tutorial at https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2025/cfp until 2025-06-21.

See you in Zagreb!

#conference #freebsd #openbsd #netbsd #unix #development #devops #freesoftware #libresoftware @EuroBSDCon

The #RaspberryPi hurdle that #OpenBSD fell at was its installer.

Despite it presenting two different partition table editors, I couldn't persuade it to just simply use the already existing single UFS volume that was already there. It just does not seem to cater for the idea that one might want to install to the same removable DASD that one is using, with boot, system, and swap as already defined. It either led me down a path where it zapped the existing partition table, and all of the install files, or demanded that there be another solid-state medium to install to.

Which is sad, because a Pi with just a TF card and a single purpose is still a significant use case.

Whereas in NetBSD's sysinst, choosing to install to the same system is the first option on its third menu, after picking the installer language and choosing to install.

This is a 2 horse race being comfortably won by #NetBSD, currently. I've not tried #FreeBSD yet.

#PartitionTables

This was not supposed to be when I was doing #NetBSD adjustments to #redo, #nosh, and #djbwares at all. That was supposed to be on the *next* #RaspberryPi.

This was *supposed* to be the point at which I checked that the #OpenBSD parts of the code, untested since before COVID Lockdown, still worked.

(There are a lot of changes in 1.41.)

This was *supposed* to be getting me a vanilla Pi in a non-fancy case running #OpenBSD, nosh, and djbwares; sitting in a corner quietly.

NetBSD, now.

The second attempt — coming soon — thus has promise. The errors were mainly the holes in the code that I'd left ready inside if defined(__NetBSD__) blocks, and hadn't coded for how NetBSD does things. I am from that experience expecting few problems with building #djbwares .

I'm doing half-hour-long backups at stages during the installation process, this time.

#nosh #redo #RaspberryPi #NetBSD

As an aside here, I note that I got #redo compiled for arm64 with no changes, apart from disabling pod2man for the manual pages because I forgot to install it, and was partway through compiling #nosh for arm64 when I lost everything due to a crash that put #NetBSD's UFS1 partition into an unrecoverable state.

There are some errors that even after all these years #fsck cannot fix.

#RaspberryPi

The firmware on a #RaspberryPi 4 does not mind if one changes the partition types of the #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD FAT volumes to EFI system, matching #NetBSD in spirit if not in modern partitioning scheme.

OpenBSD again almost fell at the hurdle here. It is extraordinarily sensitive to the status of its UFS1 partition. Touch it, or attempt to use a fresh one made from scratch, and its booloader thinks that it is talking to an esp device instead of to an sd device, and fails. This is a very strange dependency.

NetBSD, in contrast, did not bat an eyelid when I splatted about 5GiB of home directory, dotfiles, and tooling onto its UFS1 volume, using pax on another machine which had the TF card in a card reader.

NetBSD also auto-fixes the backup copy of the EFI partition table after its device re-sizing step. It didn't bat an eyelid, again, when I adjusted the initial card myself ahead of time using FreeBSD's #gpart recover.

#UEFI #PartitionTables #pax

This is good, because installing and using #TianoCore #UEFI firmware in place of u-boot seems to be the only way to get the #OpenBSD boot loader to recognize the #RaspberryPi's on-board display and a USB keyboard.

It is otherwise insistent on using the UART, which makes it impossible to press that "any" key to get the boot loader to stop so that one can type the magic incantation to get the kernel proper — in its turn — to use the display and keyboard. It too defaults to using the UART.

This is a Pi 4 in a PiHut "modular" case, still resembling that #Blakes7 prop. It's not designed for DB9 sockets, but it has HDMI and USB holes, plus optional plastic shields for covering them to just let power and Ethernet in when the Pi is in production.

Maintenance with just a keyboard and monitor is the goal. OpenBSD barely cleared this first hurdle of controlling its boot loader.

(It fell at a subsequent hurdle, which is why I'm now trying #NetBSD and #FreeBSD.)

#DASD #PartitionTables

#FreeBSD's FAT16 partition is 50MiB, and #NetBSD's FAT32 partition is 80MiB. These comfortably take additional files.

FAT32 is technically superior, with the variable-length root directory, but for DASD volumes whose whole purpose is to contain a couple of tens of boot loader files it's not much of a practical advantage here. And indeed on the downside, the FATs are an order of magnitude bigger.

#OpenBSD's FAT16 partition in contrast is a tiny 8MiB. #TianoCore UEFI firmware, approximately 4MiB, does not fit on it without deleting stuff.

Ironically, it is preceded by twice that amount, 16MiB, in free space not allocated to any partition. It's possible to delete the 8MiB Microsoft partition and re-create a 23MiB one, as long as one saves and restores the contents.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables #RaspberryPi

It's interesting to see who the early adopters in the BSD world are when it comes to various things. Such as the partitioning on their #RaspberryPi installer images.

#OpenBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. No container partitions, just a UFS1 volume in an OpenBSD primary partition and a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft primary partition.

#FreeBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. It too has a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft partition. It has container partitions, though, with an even older BSD disklabel in a FreeBSD primary partition and a UFS2 volume contained inside that.

Waving hello from the 21st century, #NetBSD has an EFI partition table. No container partitions, of course. There is a FAT32 volume in an EFI System partition, and a UFS1 volume in a NetBSD partition.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables