Cleared the bench to attempt open brain surgery on a very relic VA Technologies Pentium II Linux box, er, suitcase. Huzzah, #NetBSD 10 CD boots (thanks for making the installation image fit in 700 MB).
Needs an old drive, even has a SCSI card.

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Intel Pentium 2 based motherboard. Cards and wires.

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NetBSD 10.1 install menu. Utility item highlighted.

Dear friends of BSD Cafe, I've just approved the 500th user for this instance.
That's right, the 500th friend has just joined the BSD Cafe's Mastodon instance.
This calls for a celebration!

EDIT: 500 users are currently registered, not counting those who moved, left, or started self-hosting.

#BSDCafe #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD #RunBSD

If you run NetBSD in a qemu VM, you can share a directory via VirtFS.

qemu-system-aarch64 -virtfs local,path=/wherever,security_model=mapped-xattr [...]

You need vio9p(4) in your kernel, and then mount it via

mount_9p -cu /dev/vio9p0 /mnt

What tickles me about this is that this uses 9p, the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol. :-)

Quick write-up for my students:
https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/vm-shared-dir.html

#NetBSD #qemu #plan9

@kzimmermann I would like a #RaspberryPi 4B or 5B but I have doubts about #NetBSD on them.

Telescope is now available on pkgsrc (below you can see it running on SPARC). With a few patches [1], it builds and runs fine on Solaris too.

Thanks @op@bsd.network, @thomasadam@bsd.network, and others for contributing to this project.

[0] https://telescope-browser.org/
[1] https://github.com/NetBSD/pkgsrc/tree/trunk/net/telescope/patches

#gemini #smolweb #pkgsrc #solaris #netbsd #sparc

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4:3 screenshot of emwm desktop on NetBSD/sparc64, showing a telescope gemini browser window (connected gemi.dev capsule's homepage), alongside a xnedit window showing the pkgsrc package Makefile, and a fastfetch output on a separate window.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟵/𝟬𝟴 (Valuable News - 2025/09/08) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/valuable-news-2025-09-08/

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

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

The last BSDCan 2025 video has been posted!
Adventures in porting a Wayland Compositor to NetBSD and OpenBSD by Jeff Frasca

https://youtu.be/oo_8gnWQ4xo

I'm typing this in my Xuake Wayland Compositor on OpenBSD.

I started this journey on the NetBSD 9.99.x branch and ended up having to dig into the guts of wscons, mesa, libdrm, the kernel drm subsystem, the AMDGPU driver and more. I have a couple of very small, but hard fought patches in the NetBSD kernel. It's not over yet, either. I still have a few bugs around the compositor shutdown process and a lot of integration work to be able to hope to have other people try this out.

Topics to cover in the talk include (but are not limited to):

History of Wayland and other background info

How your graphics stack and driver is organized and actually works

The actual porting journey on both NetBSD and OpenBSD

A Demo! I should be able to show it running

Current status, future work

For more information, please visit:
https://www.bsdcan.org/2025/
- and -
https://www.bsdcan.org/2025/timetable/timetable-Adventures-in-porting.html

#wayland #runbsd #openbsd #netbsd

Advanced Programming the UNIX Environment

Week 1: UNIX History

We cover the early days at Bell Labs, USL vs BSDi, the birth of the BSDs and Linux, and how we got from Ken Thompson playing "Space Travel" on a PDP-7 to Unix running on your phone, fridge, and TV.

https://youtu.be/3H7SQWTR6Dw

Scroll along through it all here: https://www.levenez.com/unix/unix.pdf

#apue #unix #linux #netbsd #freebsd

Advanced Programming the UNIX Environment

Our reference platform for this class is NetBSD. Some ways to get set up are:

Use an AWS image:
https://stevens.netmeister.org/615/netbsd-amis.html

Create your own AWS image:
https://www.netmeister.org/blog/creating-netbsd-ec2-amis.html
https://www.netmeister.org/blog/netbsd-amd64-ami.html

Install NetBSD on a Linode:
https://www.netmeister.org/blog/netbsd-on-linode.html

Use UTM / qemu:
https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/utm/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCqfmuG5Acc

#NetBSD #apue #AWS #Linode

Has anyone tried #NetBSD/amd64 on an Intel N95 or N100 box? #bsd

@AnachronistJohn I missed out on AM1 when that was available. Had good luck with Atom 330 and #NetBSD/amd64. I wonder whether Intel UHD on the J4125 might work better than the new thing (Intel Xe?). #Xorg

An embedded dev kit for EndBASIC with #NetBSD by Julio Merino @jmmv

https://youtu.be/WZFYTInWAqc

22 days to go!
Why BSDs in 2025?

My perspective and why we moved many services from Linux to the BSDs.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/03/23/osday-2025-why-choose-bsd-in-2025/

#EuroBSDConAdvent #EuroBSDCon #BSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #DragonFlyBSD #ZFS #PF #RunBSD

Today is Monday, 1st September. And September means one thing: EuroBSDCon!

23 days to go until EuroBSDCon 2025 in Zagreb!

I’m doing a little “advent calendar” for BSD fans: each day until the conference I’ll share one article from it-notes.dragas.net about FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, ZFS, PF and more. The dedicated hashtag will be #EuroBSDConAdvent

Let’s start right away with "I Solve Problems" - my EuroBSDCon 2024 (and #BSDCan 2025) talk about migrating from Linux to BSDs:

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2024/10/03/i-solve-problems-eurobsdcon/

If you’re coming to Zagreb, reply to this post - it would be nice to meet up with fellow BSD users!

#EuroBSDCon #BSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #DragonFlyBSD #ZFS #PF #RunBSD #EuroBSDConAdvent

Google summer of code 2025 for #NetBSD asynchronous I/O framework:

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2025_asynchronous_i_o_framework?utm_source=discoverbsd

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟵/𝟬𝟭 (Valuable News - 2025/09/01) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/09/01/valuable-news-2025-09-01/

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

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

I don’t usually promote personal projects here, but I’ll give it a try.
Meet Tocaia, a minimalist, cross-platform TUI Gopher client written in C89 for POSIX systems.
It even supports Haiku.
Pull requests and bug reports are welcome! =)
https://github.com/manipuladordedados/tocaia

#gopher #TUI #haikuos #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #smolweb #retrocomputing #programming

More hacking action at the #FreeBSD #Hackathon here in Oslo! Bugs are found, and then more "bugs" are found.

Having Level 3 support in our offices is something we could certainly get used to! ;-D

There's been documentation work, installer work, chasing down pf issues, trying to add architecture number 58 and 59 to #NetBSD (the #486DLC and #NexGen 5x86), discussions about FreeBSD pkgbase, preparing of release notes, and much else.

After a long day, restitution is again offered in the form of #Retrogaming, #beer and food. Today seems to be #MonkeyIsland day.

Alt...

"Look, we found a bug!" Two developers seem to have just discovered a bug in some code. A table with several laptops and charging cables, two persons sitting on far side, and three pictures on the wall depicting credit card-themed satire.

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Four people sitting in front of a screen showing a scene from Monkey Island 1 (for DOS). Two of the people being the same ones as in the other picture. One developer pointing at the screen as if to point out a bug.

I haven't blogged in a while. Mostly because my last post was about AI and I wanted to write a followup but found the whole AI discourse so extremely exhausting.

So anyways, back to the world of little hacks with this post about booting #NetBSD from a GPT wedge, the hard way:

https://bentsukun.ch/posts/netbsd-wedge-boot/

⚠️ News/Changes:

BoxyBSD will bring in a feature for more advanced users for our free boxes. Instead of only selecting a set of pre-defined BSD based images, you'll soon also be able to create your install simply from scratch with full remote access to your box. This lets you perform custom installations of #FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #OpenBSD, #DragonflyBSD, #MidnightBSD but also of some other niche systems like #illumos

Unfortunately, this might still take some time and fully relies on the spare time of @gyptazy.

#freeVPS #VPS #BSD #Box #BoxyBSD #gyptazy #opensource #education #community #foss #runbsd #hosting #freehosting #learning #ipv6

It'd be interesting to test the availability, response times and how many RPS a few #netbsd nodes using the built-in httpd, statically-compiled CGI binaries, a load balancer and cloudflare.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱/𝟬𝟴/𝟮𝟱 (Valuable News - 2025/08/25) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2025/08/25/valuable-news-2025-08-25/

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

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

My future NetBSD server finally arrived MWA-HA-HA !

Basically, it is just a part of POS terminal, so I can say that I run my services on the cash register.

But inside of it there is a fanless PC with a little motherboard and the top board with a 6 RS232 connectors, two USB connectors and a SATA for 2.5' hard drive.

4 Gb memory, Intel Atom N2800, 64 Gb SSD and free space for (another SSD?) WiFi card, integrated TWO (!) 1 Gbit Ethernet and much more USB, RS232 and VGA + HDMI connectors.

It works completely quiet, and just a slightly warming up when Window 7 is working.

After I change the CR2032 battery and find a M3x17 brass stand for PCB (one is missing ) — I'll install #NetBSD on it and will enjoy #selfhosting , finally

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Front view of AviPos 320 Duo Mini PC. It has a black extruded aluminum profile in the form of a radiator, "PRW" and "RST" buttons, two leds (red "PWD" led and the green "HDD" led), two RS232 ports (COM5, COM6) and two USBs (USB1 and USB2)

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Back view of AviPos 320 Duo Mini PC. It has a black extruded aluminum profile in the form of a radiator, plastic plug in place for antenna connector, jack 3.5 mm for audio output, two LAN ports, VGA, HDMI, power connector ("DC 12V") and the four RS232 ports (COM1-COM4).

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Disassembled fanless PC. The top board was unmounted and the motherboard is visible. Also the memory is removed too, so the CR2032 battery is visible. There is a BiWin 64 Gb SSD on the left.

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The disassembled fanless PC with motherboard connected to the power source, to the display through the VGA and to the keyboard via the USB. The DDR3 memory is connected to the motherboard. The red LED, indicating that system is powered, is lighting.