Improving and Stabilizing the Racoon2 IKE Daemon in NetBSD

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2026_racoon2

#netbsd

Huge news for the NetBSD community today! 🎉

The yearly funding campaign just wrapped up with a massive $120,282 raised against a $50,000 goal.

Great job to everyone who chipped in! 🚩

#NetBSD #Linux #runbsd #noai #nollm #noslop

@netbsd congratulations 🎉 #NetBSD #noai #nollm #noslop #runbsd

Decided to do that hardware probe thing and see just how bad things will be overall for #NetBSD, and https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=4e274ddb05 uhh... am I boned

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/117371609620019178

I don't know what shipment group I'm in, but I'm so excited to be getting closer to getting my hands on one and making sure NetBSD runs on it!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next/updates/shipping-news

#mnt_reform #netbsd #open_hardware

Parade du Grotesque 💀 boosted

Lucie / minute [they/she/sie] » 🌐 2026-10-02
@mntmn@mastodon.social

the 14 MNT Hyper Reform Nexts in their cactus leather sleeves, now being packed into boxes for the monday shipment!

Alt...

14 MNT Hyper Reform Next laptops in their black vegan leather sleeves on the table in front of me. Tina is looking on from the couch

I can't assume that I'll be able to get a new video card any time soon. I don't suppose there's much hope of #NetBSD getting better #Nvidia drivers? Even just a newer version of nouveau would be better than struggling along with antialiased low-res framebuffer display

FreeLinX is an independent Linux distribution built around the Linux kernel, a NetBSD-derived userland, the musl C library, and the LLVM toolchain.

• github.com/FreeLinX/FreeLinX

@dotpk Indeed it is. Android switched to cdc-ncm - network control mode since the Pixel 6. I'm still looking into the details but I want to get it working on #OpenBSD. #NetBSD has a driver since their newest 11 release, so thats probably a good think to relate to.

@jaypatelani

An external USB keyboard should work. Everything that I can find indicates that on Thinkpad E14s the keyboard is actually a PS/2 keyboard (sic!). So look at the part of dmesg that scrolled off your screen that deals with PS/2 device enumeration.

There's also some bizarre extra PS/2 stuff related to that Elan USB device, but that's to do with your fingerprint reader/trackpad.

@bpl
#NetBSD #PS2 #USB #ElanTech #HumanInputDevices

@jaypatelani

As @bpl said, check the kernel messages. The messages that you show in that photograph indicate that although nine root USB hubs have been found, no USB keyboard or even mouse devices have been enumerated.

You have a mass storage device on hub 3, an ELAN device on hub 3, a camera on hub 4, a BlueTooth node on hub 4, and nothing else. No keyboard/mouse HIDs at all.

The ELAN device is a fingerprint reader.

#NetBSD #USB

@bpl even in single user mode it is not working. I should try a usb external keyboard with an installer. #NetBSD

Many years later, as she faced the firing squad, Christina remembered that distant afternoon when she used her calculator to log into her laptop.

#NetBSD #HP48 #ThinkpadT21 #IrDA

@c64whiz

I voted #NetBSD, because they're the most anti-Slop, but my official answer is "YES."

FreeBSD:
Pros:

• Most Linuxy
• insanely featureful
• zfs is a first-class fs and is the default
• Amazing handbook
• Bonus: fs encryption GELI is rock solid, and... nobody know what the "ELI" stands for. I emailed the author. He was as tight-lipped as a CIA agent stationed in Moscow in the 1960s. 😄

Cons:

• No GUI in base (yet)
• requires more manual set-up
• not the very best hardware support

OpenBSD:
Pros:

• Security focus
• Best hardware support of the BSDs
• Usable X11 setup right out of the gate, minimal manual config
• Great manpages

Cons:

• Fairly primitive filesystem options (read: minimalist, discerning). Berkeley FFS only (at least for booting), no journaling, no softdeps, no zfs. FUSE is an option
• No pretty handbook, but there are guides online to get you going, and the manpages are good
• No Bluetooth, whatsoever
• Possibly the most primitive vmm of the three, but still quite usable, from what I've heard
• Slow/basic package manager, but usable
• The devs do not suffer fools 😄

NetBSD:
Pros:

• Supports more architectures than you've heard of
• Stridently anti-slop
• Also has a very usable X11 setup right out of the gate, a little prettier than OpenBSD's default setup, IMHO
• Has FFS with journaling, zfs optional

Cons:

• Possibly the weakest hardware support of the three
• No full-disk-encryption out of the gate. There's a good HOWTO [out there] (thanks @dwarmstrong!) for setting up encrypted /home and /usr, but I haven't figured out encrypted /

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟭𝟬/𝟬𝟱 (Valuable News - 2026/10/05) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/valuable-news-2026-10-05/

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

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

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟭𝟬/𝟬𝟱 (Valuable News - 2026/10/05) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/valuable-news-2026-10-05/

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

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

HFIW

amdgpufb0 at amdgpu0
wsdisplay0 at amdgpufb0 kbdmux 1: console (default, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0

#netbsd #radeon780m

Been thinking about what to do re: that #NetBSD installation attempt. The big thing that caught me off-guard was the apparently abysmal WiFi support. So unless someone is willing to port https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/sys/dev/pci/if_iwx.c from OpenBSD to NetBSD, I need to know an ***EXACT*** wireless adapter that I can use on a desktop PC to connect to my wireless network, because the landlord won't let me punch holes in the wall to run ethernet. Even an Ethernet-to-WiFi adapter would work, but it looks like the only ones available from my web searching are from one company and they are kind of shitty? Like, poor connectivity and constantly needing to reconnect bad. And I am asking here because trying to use the pci(4) man page is giving me only really old adapters that will give me shit speeds (if ANY) on my modern network, or stuff that won't work on a *desktop* PC... that are also really old.

An old Vax from my NetBSD days. I had some cool old hardware.

#netbsd #vax

Alt...

Some variety of old Vax - a small cabinet-sized floorstanding computer with one side exposed.. Didn't have disks. I don't remember where it came from or where it went.

@alephoto85 always keep #NetBSD snapshots

#runbsd

https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/how_to_use_snapshots/

Autumn has arrived, the leaves colour & fall, and still I quest to find gainful employment as a Software Programmer / Developer with adept understand of C (but not C++ that's cruel); also comfortable Erlang, NodeJS, Java, C#, Forth, shell scripting, #NetBSD, #FreeBSD, #RockyLinux, and similar POSIX / SUS systems.

http://www.snert.com/resume/

#GetFediHired #JobSeeker #NoAI

Day 25

There are multiple versions of Python packaged for NetBSD. For packages with Python as a requirement, they use `py313-*` packages to satisfy it. But there is no default system `python` or `python3`, so I created those links in my `~/bin` to `/usr/pkg/bin/python3.13`. I'm not sure if that's correct procedure, but it works OK.

#40DaysOfNetBSD #NetBSD #RunBSD

Never use ‘rm’ when you’re distracted 🤬

Mai usare "rm" mentre si è distratti 🤬

🤣

#netbsd #unix #rm #rmdamage

Researching a cool #DICOM viewer to compile in #NetBSD.
#OpenScience #DiagnosticImaging

At the airport on my way to Italy. Looking forward to the GNU Health training-the-trainers session to our colleagues physicians and nurses from Ukraine, Georgia and Latvia.
BTW, enjoying my new companion and travel partner NetBSD 11. ❤️
#OpenScience #noAI #GNUHealth #NetBSD

Alt...

XFCE desktop with a terminal emulator window and the application menu open at the accessories group. There is also an application dock bar. In the background, a NetBSD wallpaper, with the flag and daemons on top of monitors (CRTs) The taskbar has different applets (wlan, calculator, weather, disk IO, mail, cpu load and notes)

Hey there #NetBSD people,

I am thinking about installing NetBSD on a Linux-only VPS provider, which I have done a lot already with FreeBSD, thanks to the mfsBSD project, which lets you install FreeBSD from a RAM disk.

Does something like that also exist for NetBSD as well? I would love it if I could just attach a custom ISO, but a lot of cheap VPS providers only give you a list of 5-6 Linux distros instead.

My installation screen hangs at this screen. ThinkPad E14 AMD what could be the reason for this ? No keys are working at this step. #netbsd should I disable drm before install ?

@jspath55

The most likely causes were the calls to ctype functions in xft_word_wrap(), but those were changed to use unsigned char in 6.15. So if this really is 6.15 as claimed, the ctype negative character bug is no longer there to be hit, from a cursory inspection.

The sensible first step would be to get a core dump.

#xscreensaver #pkgsrc #NetBSD

Wrote a python script for #NetBSD to allow manipulating audio setups where one percieved audio output is a mess of a half-dozen mutes and volume levels behind the scenes and according to mixerctl: https://codeberg.org/gourd753/mixermetactl

Hopefully other people will find it useful. I recognize coding this in C/Rust or such and calling the OS function calls used by mixerctl directly would have been a cleaner solution, but I code a lot of C in my day job and I just wasn't feeling up to it.

@netbsd Hey. Would ebook readers such as #Kobo and #Pocketbook which permit custom OS be good hardware donations?

#BSD #RunBSD #NetBSD #ebook_reader #ereader

WELP, I attempted to install #NetBSD today, but I ran into some serious problems. Namely, after following the instructions on the official website to write the installer image to my USB thumbdrive (which keep changing what the block size should be!), the resulting drive fails to find the kernel and won't go further than the boot prompt. I'm trying some other dd flags and am about to try again, but if this doesn't work SOMEBODY is going to need to step up. Tagging @netbsd because you're the most obvious person here to ask for help with installing NetBSD

Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Improving and Stabilizing the racoon2 IKE Daemon in #NetBSD
#runbsd
https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2026_racoon2

racoon2 is a system to exchange and install security parameters for IPsec. It consists of an IKEv1/IKEv2 key exchange daemon, a security policy management daemon, and a Kerberos-based key exchange daemon. The project lives at zoulasc/racoon2 and is being modernized so that it can serve as a reliable L2TP/IPsec or IKEv2 VPN server on NetBSD and Linux for built-in Windows, iOS and Android VPN clients.

Someone mentioned @jwz on a #NetBSD mailing list, about xscreensaver:
"I am thinking that perhaps the author is the
only person that may understand it better, but in his WEB page he tells that" (to upgrade).

A bug that happens only once a week.

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-users/2026/10/04/msg043564.html

> It appears than xscreensaver calls xscreensaver-auth to unlock the screen and it crashes there...

Someone may file a bug report, methinks.