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NetBSD: Recent Changes and News
On this page you will find a summary of significant changes to NetBSD. For those interested in every change to the source tree, there is no substitute for subscribing to the source-changes mailing list. Significant news related to the NetBSD Project is also included here. The contents of this file and the package changes are also available in rss/xml format.
- Significant Source changes from NetBSD 4.0 to 5.0 (Updated nightly)
- Significant Source changes from NetBSD 3.0 to 4.0 (Updated nightly)
- Significant Source changes from NetBSD 2.0 to 3.0 (Updated nightly)
- Significant Source changes from NetBSD 1.6 to 2.0 (Updated nightly)
- Recent packages changes (Updated nightly)
- Security patches
May 2008
April 2008
- 21 Apr 2008 - Summer of Code projects selected
- 21 Apr 2008 - Three new security advisories
- 13 Apr 2008 - pkgsrc-2008Q1 released
- 02 Apr 2008 - Summer of Code student applications period extended
- 01 Apr 2008 - New Developers
March 2008
- 20 Mar 2008 - NetBSD celebrates its fifteenth birthday!
- 17 Mar 2008 - NetBSD is part of Google Summer of Code 2008, again
- 14 Mar 2008 - More interviews about packaging systems
- 01 Mar 2008 - New Developer
February 2008
- 28 Feb 2008 - Three new security advisories
- 28 Feb 2008 - Results of NetBSD's 2007 Fundraising Campaign
- 18 Feb 2008 - Web-mail-archive revamped
- 13 Feb 2008 - Changes and updates from the Ports
- 01 Feb 2008 - New Developers
January 2008
- 31 Jan 2008 - Waving the flag: NetBSD developers speak about NetBSD 4.0
- 24 Jan 2008 - Joachim Schueth: beating the Colossus code breaking machine
- 05 Jan 2008 - pkgsrc-2007Q4 released
- 04 Jan 2008 - Hackathon 9 focussed on closing PRs
- 01 Jan 2008 - New Developers
May 2008
13 May 2008 - One updated security advisory (top)
One updated security advisory was published:
- NetBSD-SA2008-008 OpenSSL Montgomery multiplication
You can find more information about them on the Security and NetBSD page.
08 May 2008 - Two new security advisories (top)
Two new security advisories were published:
- NetBSD-SA2008-008 OpenSSL Montgomery multiplication
- NetBSD-SA2008-007 OpenSSL Multiple issues
You can find more information about them on the Security and NetBSD page.
April 2008
21 Apr 2008 - Summer of Code projects selected (top)
For the fourth consecutive year, the NetBSD Project is proud to participate in Google's “Summer of Code” program as a mentoring organization and is pleased to announce the list of projects that have been accepted for this summer. The 14 accepted proposals cover a wide range of topics (“something for everyone!”) and we're looking forward to an exciting summer!
The full list of all projects together with some additional details can be found in the press release.
21 Apr 2008 - Three new security advisories (top)
Three new security advisories were published:
- NetBSD-SA2008-006 Integer overflow in strfmon(3) function
- NetBSD-SA2008-005 OpenSSH Multiple issues
- NetBSD-SA2008-004 bzip2(1) Multiple issues
You can find more information about them on the Security and NetBSD page.
13 Apr 2008 - pkgsrc-2008Q1 released (top)
The new pkgsrc-2008Q1 branch has been released. Many packages have been updated to newer versions and more packages than in previous branches are supported. Furthermore, the infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has been improved for better platform and compiler support. See the release announcement for more information.
02 Apr 2008 - Summer of Code student applications period extended (top)
Google has extended the student applications period for this year's Summer of Code until April 7th, 2008. This means, it's not too late to submit your proposal. With the extra days, students have more time to get in touch with a mentor, to discuss their proposal on one of our mailing lists and to solicit feedback before refining and submitting it.
The NetBSD Project would also like to take this as an occasion to remind everybody that students' own proposals not explicitly listed on the projects page are equally welcome. If you have a great idea on how to make NetBSD better, just flesh out your thoughts and hand in your application.
Due to the strong competition in the Summer of Code program, you may even wish to submit a second proposal; often we receive multiple proposals for the same project and have a hard time choosing one student over the other -- a second proposal of equal quality might increase your chances to be accepted.
If you have any questions, please contact the appropriate mailing list or see if some of your possible mentors are available on #netbsd-code on IRC (freenode.net).
01 Apr 2008 - New Developers (top)
The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developers:
- Tonnerre Lombard (login: tonnerre), who will be working on kernel and pkgsrc.
- Christoph Egger (login: cegger), who will be working on kernel and the xen port.
March 2008
20 Mar 2008 - NetBSD celebrates its fifteenth birthday! (top)
This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of development of the NetBSD Operating System, one of the oldest actively maintained, freely-available operating systems. The first commits were made to the NetBSD source code repository on March 21, 1993. See this announcement for more details about NetBSD celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Birthday celebrations will be listed at the Events Gallery.
17 Mar 2008 - NetBSD is part of Google Summer of Code 2008, again (top)
Google is doing another round of their Summer of Code project, where the idea is to attract students to write code for Open Source projects during the summer, instead of having them flip burgers. For the fourth time, the NetBSD project has been selected as mentoring organization in the Summer of Code project!
Prospective students that are interested in pursuing projects for NetBSD are welcome to start thinking about what projects they'd like to do, and discuss things on our public mailing lists. We have lists of suggested GSoC projects and (harder!) general projects which can serve as inspiration. Also, please see our NetBSD Project Application/Proposal HowTo for information that we'd like to see answered in the eventual project proposals sent to Google -- this information helps us to rank the project proposals we'll get, and to put your project on the best spot!
14 Mar 2008 - More interviews about packaging systems (top)
The second and finishing article with interviews about pkgsrc and alternative packaging systems is available. This issue also provides talks about MidnightBSD mports, GoboLinux and Zero Install.
01 Mar 2008 - New Developer (top)
The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developer:
- Yojiro UO (login: yuo) will be working on wireless support, embedded platforms and device drivers.
February 2008
28 Feb 2008 - Three new security advisories (top)
Three new security advisories were published:
- NetBSD-SA2008-003 IPsec in IPv6 Denial of Service
- NetBSD-SA2008-002 Endianness issue in fast_ipsec(4)
- NetBSD-SA2008-001 file(1) Integer overflow
You can find more information about them on the Security and NetBSD page.
28 Feb 2008 - Results of NetBSD's 2007 Fundraising Campaign (top)
NetBSD is an open source operating system project that depends on funding for its operation. A generous donation by Google has enabled us to fund development in the area of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and a fundraising drive was started to extend this activity. The goal of $50,000US of the 2007 fundraising campaign was met thanks to a lot of support from companies, users, and our community as a whole. Read more about what supporting companies have to say about NetBSD, what has been achieved recently, and what changes to expect thanks to the donations in the press release about the Results of NetBSD's 2007 Fundraising Campaign.
18 Feb 2008 - Web-mail-archive revamped (top)
As announced by S.P. Zeidler a few days ago, the NetBSD Web-mail archive was updated with improved functionality (email address obfuscation and threaded display of messages) and a new look&feel. (Announcement)
13 Feb 2008 - Changes and updates from the Ports (top)
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Tim Rightnour has announced the rebirth of the ofppc port: "The port has been completely rewritten from the ground up, and is essentially a brand new port of NetBSD." (Announcement)
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Tim is now the new portmaster for NetBSD/ofppc: "I would like to thank the previous portmaster, Wolfgang Solfrank for his excellent work in what was the original port of NetBSD to the PowerPC." (Announcement)
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Support for IBM 7044-270 (POWER3-II cpu) machines was added. (Announcement)
Tim Rightnour has reworked NetBSD's powerpc-ports recently. With support from Kevin Bowling he has ported NetBSD to the IBM MCA RS/6000 model 7006. This makes NetBSD the first free operating system to run on this class of machines. (Announcement)
Manuel Bouyer has implemented support for Xen/i386 DomUs with PAE extensions and and full support for Xen/amd64 (Dom0 and DomU) to NetBSD-current. NetBSD/i386 has still no general PAE support yet, but the NetBSD i386-PAE DomUs can now be used on top of recent Linux x86_32 and x86_64 Xen Hypervisors out of the box. (Announcements: 1, 2)
Hubert Feyrer has announced an install CD for NetBSD/i386 that already contains a collection of essential precompiled binary packages. (More details)
The NetBSD support for the PC532 platform is history: Simon Burge has announced the termination of the port. (Announcement)
Donald T. Hayford has posted instructions for building and installing NetBSD on the NSLU2. (Instructions: 1, 2)
Nick Hudson has posted a status update about the progress of NetBSD's port to the HPPA architecture, NetBSD/hp700. (Status report)
01 Feb 2008 - New Developers (top)
The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developers:
- Stefan Schumacher (login: stefan), who will be working on Documentation, advocacy and website documentation.
January 2008
31 Jan 2008 - Waving the flag: NetBSD developers speak about NetBSD 4.0 (top)
Federico Biancuzzi has done an comprehensive interview with more than twenty NetBSD developers speaking with them about what is new in NetBSD 4.0. The full article is available at ars technica, together with a page for comments and discussions.
24 Jan 2008 - Joachim Schueth: beating the Colossus code breaking machine (top)
Joachim Schueth has beaten a reconstruction of the famous Colossus Mark II code breaking machine in November 2007. The Colossus computers were used in World War II to break the German encrypted messages. Equipped with a NetBSD-powered laptop and profound knowledge of cryptography and the Ada programming language, Schueth has won the code breaking challenge. We talked with him about the historical and technical backgrounds of the Cipher Event and the tools he has used - Read the interview.
05 Jan 2008 - pkgsrc-2007Q4 released (top)
The new pkgsrc-2007Q4 branch has been released. Many packages have been updated to newer versions and more packages than in previous branches are supported. Furthermore, the infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has been improved for better platform and compiler support. See the release announcement for more information.
04 Jan 2008 - Hackathon 9 focussed on closing PRs (top)
The next hackathon will be held January 19th and 20th, 2008. The focus will be on closing PR's that are not relevant anymore after the release of 4.0. I.e. 2.0 becomes unsupported. Participation is open to everyone. Check out the Hackathon community page for more details.
01 Jan 2008 - New Developers (top)
The NetBSD project is pleased to welcome the following new developers:
- Frank Wille (login: phx), who will be working on the ofppc port and the amigappc port.