Quite impressive that, even under a relatively large workload, #NetBSD's memory usage has never exceeded 240MB in the console environment. Most times, it's around 220MB or so.

And I'm talking a complex workload despite no X11, with tmux, multiple windows with lots of panes each running TUI applications, some as Python apps with a lot of overhead, browser with many tabs open, and even an ebook open to be read.

Yet, I'm not even close to the 512MB limit offered by this Pi1 Model B. This *is* impressive.

#oldcomputerchallenge2025

And now I can also do it from the #toot client!

#netbsd #raspberrypi

@JohnMashey @maxleibman
I love that so much! Does it run #NetBSD?

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟳/𝟭𝟰 (Valuable News - 2025/07/14) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/07/14/valuable-news-2025-07-14/

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

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

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟳/𝟭𝟰 (Valuable News - 2025/07/14) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/07/14/valuable-news-2025-07-14/

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

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

Dear friends of the BSD Cafe,

This idea has been in my mind since the very beginning of this adventure, almost two years ago. Over time, several people have suggested it. But until recently, I felt the timing just wasn’t right - for many reasons. Today, I believe it finally is.

So I’m happy to announce a new service:
The BSD Cafe Journal - https://journal.bsd.cafe

At first, I thought I’d use BSSG for it (I even added multi-author support with this in mind), but in the end, it didn’t feel like the right tool for the job.

The idea is to create a multi-author space, with content published on a fairly regular basis. A reference point for news, updates, tutorials, technical articles - a place to inform and connect.
Just like people in Italy used to stop by cafes to read the newspaper and chat about the day’s news, the BSD Cafe Journal aims to be a space for reading, sharing, and staying informed - all in the spirit of the BSD Cafe.

What it’s not:
It’s not here to replace personal blogs, or excellent newsletters like @vermaden 's. And it’s not an aggregator.

What it is:
A place where authors can write original content, share links to posts on their own blogs or elsewhere, publish guides, offer insights, or dive into technical explanations.

The guiding principles are the same as always: positivity, constructive discussion, promoting BSDs and open source in general. No hype (sharing a cool new service is fine, posting non-stop about the latest trend is not), no drama, no politics. The goal is to bring people together, not divide them. To inform, not inflame.
Respect, tolerance, and inclusivity are key. Everyone should feel welcome reading the BSD Cafe Journal - never judged, offended, or excluded.

The platform I’ve chosen is WordPress, for several reasons: it’s portable (runs well on all BSDs), has great built-in role management (contributors, authors, etc.), and - last but not least - supports ActivityPub.
This means every author will have their own identity in the Fediverse (like: @stefano@journal.bsd.cafe ) and can be followed directly, and it’ll also be possible to follow the whole Journal.

Original and educational content is encouraged, but it’s also perfectly fine to link to existing articles elsewhere. Personally, I’ll link my technical posts from ITNotes whenever I publish them there.

The goal is simple: a news-oriented site, rich in content, ad-free, respectful of privacy - all under the BSD Cafe umbrella.

Content coordination will happen in a dedicated Matrix room for authors. There’ll also be a public room for discussing ideas, giving feedback, and sharing suggestions.

Of course, I can’t do this alone. A journal with no content is just an empty shell.
So here’s my call for action:
Who’s ready to lend a hand? If you enjoy writing, explaining, sharing your knowledge - the Journal is waiting for you.

#BSDCafe #BSDCafeServices #BSDCafeUpdates #BSDCafeAnnouncements #RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #Linux #OSS #OpenSource #BCJournal #BSDCafeJournal

I dunno who can read this, but here's me saying hello from my dandy RPi Model B with #NETBSD with the #nanotodon minimalist client!

Resurrecting a Sun SPARC station for day to day computing.
#oldcomputerchallenge #sparc #netbsd
https://retrobsd.ddns.net/nvdh7j.htm

@ptribble

That's why it's sad for #NetBSD. Much of the rest of the world has been at 32, larger still on Linux-based operating systems, for a long time.

#OpenBSD switched to 32, after briefly flirting with 33, a quarter of a century ago. GNU libc on Linux first defined the relevant constant a couple of years later but went for 256.

@ptribble

What's the effective limit on usernames, now?

#NetBSD, quite sadly, has a limit of 16 characters in its useradd, which bears no relation to either its utmp or its utmpx.

#Illumos #Tribblix

On repart de 0 ? #virtualisation avec #NetBSD et #NVMM, épqide 7, tout de suite sur https://twitch.tv/ahp_nils ! #sysadmin #devops #twitchfr #twitchstreamer #TwitchStreamers #BSD #qemu

Yesterday, I experienced two disappointments, and in such cases, a bit of my enthusiasm tends to wane. It's been a long and winding week.
The fortunate thing, though, is that these very disappointments cause me to "withdraw" a bit into my own world. And this often means some cool "nerd" experiments. Plus, in the afternoon, some relaxation. And my wife is happy because she sees me doing my "nerd" things with a smile, and afterward, I have that sense of well-being to dedicate to doing some nice activities with her.

Currently, I have two PCEngines APUs (retired from client workloads but still in full form and energy). One with OpenBSD, the other with NetBSD, added to the FreeBSD one that's already been running since yesterday evening.

#RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD

My local change for pkgsrc/lang/gcc14 under NetBSD/i386 9 works fine. #pkgsrc #NetBSD

@ajn142 @nuintari @dan

I think that we need to start the Internet rumour that BSD was invented by Arthur C. Clarke and xe explicitly denied that you take "A", "I", "X" and add 1 to each letter.

And for those that believe it, there's then "z/OS" turning into "apt".

(-:

#IBM #HAL #2001ASpaceOdyssey #ArthurCClarke #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #dadjokes #Debian #SciFi

@kzimmermann

What does "control chars get printed" mean?

Because it could be two different things with two very different adjustments to make.

If it means control characters actually being printed as glyphs on the screen, taking it at face value, that's a /etc/wscons.conf and screen emulation settings thing; but if it is line editing not working then that's a TERM=netbsd6 and /etc/ttys affair.

#NetBSD #wscons #terminfo

In my warmup for #OldComputerChallenge 25, I dusted off ol' pal #RaspberryPi model B and burned #NetBSD 10 on an SD card to set it up.

It all went well (slow, but hey) but one thing that I still can't get around (that I didn't experience so much last time I tried it) is the console. Control chars get printed instead of arrow and home/end keys, no colors, etc. Hate to say it, but all in all, it feels backwards compared to a modern, full-fledged console environment of #FreeBSD or Linux. And it's starting to wear me out.

But I have a feeling that this is somehow my fault for not configuring the console properly or using the right output or something. I never had to deal with this before, so anybody knows how I can configure this so I can have a modern env in NetBSD?

#unix #askunix

When I complain that some software (or its dependencies) doesn't work on *BSD but requires Linux, I'm not criticizing Linux. For me, it's not an OS battle, but a matter of freedom and avoiding a dangerous and rampant computing monoculture. And when people reply to me with "well, just use it on Linux" - while they're giving me sensible advice - they're missing the crucial point: if it ONLY runs on Linux, it's not Linux's fault, but we are, precisely, creating a dangerous monoculture.

#Linux #SysAdmin #OSS #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟳/𝟬𝟳 (Valuable News - 2025/07/07) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/07/07/valuable-news-2025-07-07/

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

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

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟳/𝟬𝟳 (Valuable News - 2025/07/07) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/07/07/valuable-news-2025-07-07/

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

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

My little login.conf(5) shim is working nicely on Debian Linux.

login.conf(5) is one of the things that #FreeBSD (and to a lesser extent #NetBSD) does better than Debian.

I'm testing the stuff on #Debian as I mentioned a few days ago. It is going fairly well so far. I'm now at the point of setting up some #djbwares services.

#nosh #redo

Sometimes I should stop trying to use Linux and just use #NetBSD.

Tried multiple Linux distributions to get a running xorg on a first generation Raspberry Pi. Failed. 👎
On NetBSD it was done in 1 minute. 👍

I hope that no-one is too inconvenienced, but to scratch my own itch I've made #taiclockd, in the upcoming new version of #djbwares, combined-stack capable.

i.e. one server listening on a single UDP/IPv6 socket should serve both IPv4 and IPv6 clients.

The original UDP/IPv4 flavour is retained as taiclock4d. But you shouldn't need it on #FreeBSD, #Debian Linux, #NetBSD and the like.

There is now ip[20] in several parts of the code, paralleling Bernstein's ip[4]. (-:

#TAI

My latest My-Notes blog post hit Hacker News - more than 300 visits per minute.
The 1 euro per month NetBSD VPS load:
load averages: 0.05, 0.04, 0.03; up 73+14:12:57

#RunBSD #NetBSD

dear #NetBSD
add https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI please. Would be nice to be able to TRIM/UNMAP USB attached storages.

Here’s a little writeup about fun times at BSDCan 2025

https://blog.zia.io/2025/07/02/a-first-look-at-bsdcan-2025/

Yes, I’m using Stefano’s BSSG :)

#NetBSD #OpenBSD #FreeBSD #BSDCan

It is interesting how deeply entrenched the idea is that all Unix and Unix-alike systems must run full e-mail systems, batch and scheduled job systems, and print spoolers.

To the extent that the Debian 10 "live" system runs Exim and CUPS, out of the box.

But said box is a DVD jewel case. Debian 10 "live" comes as a read-only 9660 filesystem.

It's unreasonable to expect that a system bootstrapped and running from read-only media should support a viable mail queue and printer spool.

(And indeed, it doesn't, really. The Debian people have pulled some slight of hand with memory filesystems.)

In contrast, NetBSD and OpenBSD are available (on some architectures) as an ESP containing loaders plus a UFS1 volume, to be plopped onto read-write DASD.

#Debian #Unix #email #spool #NetBSD #OpenBSD

YOU!

The @bsdtv BSD A/V Team in conjunction with @bsdcan and @EuroBSDCon could use YOUR HELP with:

1. Locating official project slide templates
2. Validating them for readability on a projector and for the visually limited (I hear there are fonts that are dyslexia-friendy)
3. Integrating best practices into semi-official event slides for those presenters who simply want "insert content here"
No, I did not say required.

Thank you!

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #BSDCan #EuroBSDcon

For those who missed last night’s updates, I’m thrilled to announce that @h3artbl33d and I will be co-presenting a talk at #EuroBSDCon: Liberating the Social Web Using #BSD.

We’ll be sharing our experiences and technical decisions along the way.

I’ll be focusing on the BSD Cafe - its services, the story behind it, and most importantly, the human and motivational factors that make this community so special.

Always remember: #OwnYourData !

Stay tuned for more updates!

#BSDCafe #EuroBSDCon25 #EuroBSDCon2025 #EBC25 #RunBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD

Darned snobs with their fancy, modern hardware didn't pick up on this. But, like so few times before: Larry to the rescue!

.. Well actually, the NetBSD crew on IRC to the rescue. Within no time at all I had a patched kernel running. Awesome. The 486 ain't dead!

NetBSD larry.weirdr.net 10.99.14 NetBSD 10.99.14 (486BEAST) #1: Sun Jun 29 15:16:37 CEST 2025 ltning@motherfucker:/usr/home/ltning/github/NetBSD_clean/obj_i386/sys/arch/i386/compile/486BEAST i386

I just received an email with wonderful news, and I already have an unmistakable smile on my face.
EDIT: More about this here: https://exquisite.social/@h3artbl33d/114774022377520335

#RunBSD #BSDCafe #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD

Delighted to report that my talk on Building products with @netbsd has been accepted for @EuroBSDCon #NetBSD #RunBSD #EuroBSDCon2025

The partition that wouldn't clone contained the compiler and operating system, so alas there's going to be a jump in operating system support.

Fortunately, I already did the work of fixing old DJB K&R code to eliminate all of the warnings (from a 2024 compiler) that K&R C syntax will be going away when 2023 rolls around, when porting to #NetBSD. So using an updated compiler should not be too much of a problem.

#nosh #djbwares #redo