NetBSD 5.1.2 released

On behalf of the NetBSD developers, I am pleased to announce that NetBSD 5.1.2 is now available for download. NetBSD 5.1.2 is the second critical/security update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons. All users are encouraged to upgrade.

For full details, please see the 5.1.2 release notes.

To download 5.1.2, see http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

NetBSD 5.1.2 is dedicated to the memory of Yoshihiro Masuda, who passed away in May 2011. He was a spiritual pillar of the BSD community in Japan. Through an impressive number of books and articles on BSD, he gave courage to BSD developers. We remember his passion and deep love for BSD.

[4 comments]

 

Plan and funding of SMP Networking projects

On September 13th, 2011, the Board of Directors posted a news item requesting project specifications to get rid of the big kernel lock surrounding the networking code. Unfortunately, nobody has taken advantage of the offer and, therefore, the Board has not received any applications to this date.

In order to lower the entry barrier, the Board has prepared a set of smaller project proposals that, in aggregate, help in achieving the goal of making the networking stack suitable for SMP systems. Please note that these projects cover a very wide range of topics: there are projects whose only purpose is to add new data structures to the kernel, while others involve refactoring parts of the existing code to make adding locking easier.

The list of projects for funding and the tentative plan can be found in the new SMP Networking project page.

All of the individual projects that can help in achieving the goal of SMP Networking are suitable for funding. If you are interested in applying for any of them, please contact board@ and core@ directly. The project application how-to may be of help.

Thank you.

Julio Merino,
On behalf of the Board of Directors

[0 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.1

NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download. NetBSD 5.1 is the first feature update of the NetBSD 5.0 release branch. It includes security and bug fixes, as well as improved hardware support and new features.

Some highlights include:

• RAIDframe parity maps, which greatly improve parity rewrite times after unclean shutdown
• X.Org updates
• Support for many more network devices
• Xen PAE dom0 support
• Xen PCI pass-through support

For more details, please see the release notes at http://www.NetBSD.org/releases/formal-5/NetBSD-5.1.html.

Grab NetBSD 5.1 from your local mirror, or grab a torrent.

Have fun!

[11 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.1_RC4

The fourth (failing further faults, final) release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download at:

http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1_RC4/

Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC4 tag is available as well.

See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the list of changes from RC3 to RC4.

Please help us test this release candidate as much as possible. Remember, any feedback is good feedback. We'd love to hear from you, whether you've got a complaint or a compliment. That said, we hope your feedback is positive, as we would like this to be the final release candidate before 5.1.

Enjoy!

[5 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.1_RC3

The third (and hopefully final) release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download at:

http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1_RC3/

Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC3 tag is available as well.

See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the list of changes from RC2 to RC3.

Please help us test this release candidate as much as possible. Remember, any feedback is good feedback. We'd love to hear from you, whether you've got a complaint or a compliment. That said, we hope your feedback is positive, as we would like this to be the final release candidate before 5.1.

Enjoy!

[7 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.1_RC2

The second release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download at:

http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1_RC2/

Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC2 tag is available as well.

See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the list of changes from RC1 to RC2.

Please help us test this and any upcoming release candidates as much as possible. Remember, any feedback is good feedback. We'd love to hear from you, whether you've got a complaint or a compliment.

Enjoy!

[3 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.1_RC1 available

The first release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download at:

http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1_RC1/

Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC1 tag is available as well.

There have been quite a lot of changes since 5.0. See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the full list, or your platform's INSTALL notes for a summary.

Please help us test this and any upcoming release candidates as much as possible. Remember, any feedback is good feedback. We'd love to hear from you, whether you've got a complaint or a compliment.

Enjoy!

[4 comments]

 

NetBSD 5.0.2 released

On behalf of the NetBSD developers, I am pleased to announce that NetBSD 5.0.2 is now available for download. NetBSD 5.0.2 is the second critical/security update of the NetBSD 5.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons. All users are encouraged to upgrade.

For full details, please see the 5.0.2 release notes.

To download 5.0.2, see http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

[2 comments]

 

Announcing NetBSD 5.0.1

On behalf of the NetBSD developers, I am pleased to announce that NetBSD 5.0.1 is now available for download. NetBSD 5.0.1 is the first security/critical update of the NetBSD 5.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical in nature for security or stability reasons. All users are encouraged to upgrade.

Please note that due to changes in pkg_install, users upgrading from previous releases are strongly encouraged to run "pkg_admin rebuild" after the upgrade is complete.

For full details, please see the 5.0.1 release notes.

To download 5.0.1, head over to http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.

[0 comments]

 

Interview with Soren Jacobsen

A couple of weeks ago, Guillaume Lasmayous and I threw the idea of interviewing NetBSD developers through our website, NetBSDfr, to promote the NetBSD Project, and to make their work known to the widest possible audience.

Today, we are discussing with Soren Jacobsen, snj@, NetBSD 5.0 release engineer.

[Read More] [0 comments]

 

pkg_install update

The current version of pkg_install has been included in the latest NetBSD release branch. This post highlights some of the many changes and improvements made to pkg_install.

[Read More] [0 comments]

 

End of life for 3.x

In keeping with NetBSD's policy of supporting only the current (5.x) and next most recent (4.x) release branches, the release of 5.0 marks the end of life for the 3.x branches. We have provided an extra month of support for 3.x in order to give people time to migrate their machines to a newer release, and this one month period will be part of our support policy in the future.

The following branches will no longer be maintained:

• netbsd-3-0
• netbsd-3-1
• netbsd-3

This means:

• There will be no more pullups to the branches (even for security issues)
• There will be no security advisories made for any of the 3.x releases
• The existing 3.x releases on ftp.NetBSD.org will be moved into /pub/NetBSD-archive/

Here's hoping 5.0 serves you all as well (but preferably much better) as 3.0 did!

[0 comments]