Announcing Google Summer of Code 2018 projects

We are very happy to announce The NetBSD Foundation Google Summer of Code 2018 projects:

• Harsh Khatore - Modern cryptographic algorithms to netpgp, netpgpverify
• Nizar Benshaqi - SQL Database for ATF tests results with online query and statistics page
• Marwa Desouky - Tickless Kernel with high-resolution timers
• Harry Pantazis - Kernel Undefined Behavior SANitizer
• Does025 - Porting FreeBSD Atheros driver to NetBSD
• Saad Mahmood - Machine-independent EFI bootloader
• Yang Zheng - Integrate libFuzzer With the Basesystem
• Keivan Motavalli - configuration files versioning in pkgsrc
• R3x - Implementing Kernel Address Sanitizer (KASan) in the NetBSD kernel

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NetBSD 8.0 Release Candidate 1

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 8.0 RC 1, the first release candidate for the upcoming NetBSD 8.0 release.

25 years and a few days after the first official NetBSD release (NetBSD 0.8 on April 19, 1993) we are now quickly approaching the first final release from the netbsd-8 branch that has been in the work for more most of a year now.

The official RC1 announcement list these major changes compared to older releases:

• USB stack rework, USB3 support added
• In-kernel audio mixer
• Reproducible builds
• PaX MPROTECT (W^X) memory protection enforced by default on some architectures with fine-grained memory protection and suitable ELF formats: i386, amd64, evbarm, landisk, pmax
• PaX ASLR enabled by default on:
  i386, amd64, evbarm, landisk, pmax, sparc64
• MKPIE (position independent executables) by default for userland on: i386, amd64, arm, m68k, mips, sh3, sparc64
• added can(4), a socket layer for CAN busses
• added ipsecif(4) for route-based VPNs
• made part of the network stack MP-safe
NET_MPSAFE kernel option is required to try
• WAPBL stability and performance improvements

Specific to i386 and amd64 CPUs:

• Meltdown mitigation: SVS (separate virtual address spaces)
• Spectre mitigation (support in gcc, used by default for kernels)
• SMAP support
• (U)EFI bootloader

Various new drivers:

• nvme(4) for modern solid state disks
• iwm(4), a driver for Intel Wireless devices (AC7260, AC7265, AC3160...)
• ixg(4): X540, X550 and newer device support.
• ixv(4): Intel 10G Ethernet virtual function driver.
• bta2dpd - new Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile daemon

Many evbarm kernels now use FDT (flat device tree) information (loadable at boot time from an external file) for device configuration, the number of kernels has decreased but the numer of boards has vastly increased.

Lots of updates to 3rd party software included:

• GCC 5.5 with support for Address Sanitizer and Undefined Behavior Sanitizer
• GDB 7.12
• GNU binutils 2.27
• Clang/LLVM 3.8.1
• OpenSSH 7.6
• OpenSSL 1.0.2k
• mdocml 1.14.1
• acpica 20170303
• ntp 4.2.8p11-o
• dhcpcd 7.0.3
• Lua 5.3.4

The NetBSD developers and the release engineering team have spent a lot of effort to make sure NetBSD 8.0 will be a superb release, but we have not yet fixed most of the accompanying documentation. So the included release notes and install documents will be updated before the final release, and also the above list of major items may lack important things.

Get NetBSD 8.0 RC1 from our CDN (provided by fastly) or one of the ftp mirrors.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

Please test RC1, so we can make the final release the best one ever so far. We are looking forward to your feedback. Please send-pr any bugs or mail us at releng at NetBSD.org for more general comments.

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Struggling to fix a bohrbug in X86 Debug Registers

I've spent a month on fixes and debugging issues around the tracing facilities in the kernel.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

Boosting the NetBSD release handling

Trying to make the NetBSD release process quicker and smoother...
[Read More] [1 comment]

 

NetBSD 7.1.2 released

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.1.2, the second security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 7.1 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons. If you are running an earlier release of NetBSD, we strongly suggest updating to 7.1.2.

For more details, please see the release notes.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

[1 comment]

 

LLDB restoration and return to ptrace(2)

I've managed to unbreak the LLDB debugger as much as possible with the current kernel and hit problems with ptrace(2) that are causing issues with further work on proper NetBSD support. Meanwhile, I've upstreamed all the planned NetBSD patches to sanitizers and helped other BSDs to gain better or initial support.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

Recent Security Affairs

An update on the recent security affairs and how they are, or were, handled on NetBSD[Read More] [1 comment]

 

The LLVM Sanitizers stage accomplished

I've managed to get the Memory Sanitizer to work for the elementary base system utilities, like ps(1), awk(1) and ksh(1). This means that the toolchain is ready for tests and improvements. I've iterated over the base system utilities and I looked for bugs, both in programs and in sanitizers. The number of detected bugs in the userland programs was low, there merely was one reading of an uninitialized variable in ps(1).[Read More] [0 comments]

 

The LLVM Memory Sanitizer support work in progress

In the past 31 days, I've managed to get the core functionality of MSan to work. This is an uninitialized memory usage detector. MSan is a special sanitizer because it requires knowledge of every entry to the basesystem library and every entry to the kernel through public interfaces. This is mandatory in order to mark memory regions as initialized.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

NetBSD 7.1.1 released

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.1.1, the first security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 7.1 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons. If you are running an earlier release of NetBSD, we strongly suggest updating to 7.1.1.

For more details, please see the release notes.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

[1 comment]

 

The LLVM Thread Sanitizer has been ported to NetBSD

During the past month I've finished my work on TSan for NetBSD/amd64. There are still few minor issues, although the Sanitizer is already suitable for real applications and is stable. I was able to build real applications like LLDB against TSan and get it to work to find real threading problems.

The process of stabilization and fixing TSan was challenging as there are intermixed types of issues that resulted in one big random breakage bug that is difficult to analyze. Software debuggers need more work with threaded programs, so this was like a chicken-egg problem, to debug debugging utilities.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

The strongest KASLR, ever?

latest developments in the Kernel ASLR district[Read More] [3 comments]