Happy #WorldEnvironmentDay ! NetBSD's efficiency and long-term support for diverse hardware help reduce e-waste. Let's all build sustainable solutions, in code and in the world, to #SustainableTech
#NetBSD 🚩🧡 @netbsd

A critical look at NetBSD’s installer

Link: https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44176919

#netbsd

@hn50

Re: https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

To me, seems a fair review. One thing to note, if putting /usr and/or /var on a separate partition you should add something like this to /etc/rc.local

critical_filesystems_local="/var /usr"

#NetBSD

I saw #NetBSD on Nintendo Wii at the NBUG booth at OSC Nagoya, so I tried it out at home. Finally NetBSD/evbppc -current (10.99.14) successfully booted. Yay!

@jaypatelani

It's wrong in a couple of places. For starters, systems with EFI firmware do not require EFI partition tables. In fact it has things backwards. It's the older firmwares that place the requirement on what partitioning scheme is used; not the newer ones.

And as far as I know @emaste does not reject German keyboard layouts for #FreeBSD. (-:

It's on point about "What the Hell is enable cgd?" though.

#NetBSD #EFI

#NetBSD #runbsd
Installing *BSD in 2025 part 3 – A critical look at NetBSD’s installer

https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2025/05/31/installing-bsd-in-2025-part-3-a-critical-look-at-netbsds-installer/

#NetBSD #m68k now has binary packages for clang and llvm.

https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/m68k/10.0_2025Q1/All/

Does anyone want to give them a try?

@disser @ed1conf @paul_ipv6 @robpike In 1983 when Siemens introduced Unix (SINIX) on a mini computer series I was picked for training. We were taught that vi is ALWAYS there. Still use it ;) vi, on #OpenBSD, #NetBSD and #Alpine Linux.
Back then I also read a German translation of K&R’s “Programmieren in C”. I don’t do C any more, but I’m learning Go.

I think I need more reasons to use #OpenBSD. I used to be a heavy user, even used to run it on my laptop, but currently manage zero installations.

I also think I should give #NetBSD a fair shake, I've only ever installed it twice, and never really given it a chance.

Using OpenBSD is easy, I'll probably convert my wireguard router over to it.

But any suggestions on NetBSD use cases? I mean this from the context of a heavy #FreeBSD user with a massive emphasis on jails.

#BSD #UNIX

While tidying up the cabinet in my studio, I found this box with 3 CDs. Alpha, of course, refers to the architecture. And there's a long story behind it that made me smile - which I'll publish on one of my blogs soon.

#FreeBSD #NetBSD #Debian #Alpha

Alt...

A CD jewel case labeled by hand with several operating system names and versions: "FreeBSD 5.3", "NetBSD 2.0", "Debian 'Testing' Sarge", and "ALPHA". The case insert contains 3 TDK CD-R Speed-X discs. The handwriting suggests the CD contains installation or boot media for Alpha architecture systems.

It's interesting to see who the early adopters in the BSD world are when it comes to various things. Such as the partitioning on their #RaspberryPi installer images.

#OpenBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. No container partitions, just a UFS1 volume in an OpenBSD primary partition and a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft primary partition.

#FreeBSD has an old "MBR" partition table. It too has a FAT16 volume in a >1024cyl Microsoft partition. It has container partitions, though, with an even older BSD disklabel in a FreeBSD primary partition and a UFS2 volume contained inside that.

Waving hello from the 21st century, #NetBSD has an EFI partition table. No container partitions, of course. There is a FAT32 volume in an EFI System partition, and a UFS1 volume in a NetBSD partition.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables

#FreeBSD's FAT16 partition is 50MiB, and #NetBSD's FAT32 partition is 80MiB. These comfortably take additional files.

FAT32 is technically superior, with the variable-length root directory, but for DASD volumes whose whole purpose is to contain a couple of tens of boot loader files it's not much of a practical advantage here. And indeed on the downside, the FATs are an order of magnitude bigger.

#OpenBSD's FAT16 partition in contrast is a tiny 8MiB. #TianoCore UEFI firmware, approximately 4MiB, does not fit on it without deleting stuff.

Ironically, it is preceded by twice that amount, 16MiB, in free space not allocated to any partition. It's possible to delete the 8MiB Microsoft partition and re-create a 23MiB one, as long as one saves and restores the contents.

#UEFI #DASD #PartitionTables #RaspberryPi

This is good, because installing and using #TianoCore #UEFI firmware in place of u-boot seems to be the only way to get the #OpenBSD boot loader to recognize the #RaspberryPi's on-board display and a USB keyboard.

It is otherwise insistent on using the UART, which makes it impossible to press that "any" key to get the boot loader to stop so that one can type the magic incantation to get the kernel proper — in its turn — to use the display and keyboard. It too defaults to using the UART.

This is a Pi 4 in a PiHut "modular" case, still resembling that #Blakes7 prop. It's not designed for DB9 sockets, but it has HDMI and USB holes, plus optional plastic shields for covering them to just let power and Ethernet in when the Pi is in production.

Maintenance with just a keyboard and monitor is the goal. OpenBSD barely cleared this first hurdle of controlling its boot loader.

(It fell at a subsequent hurdle, which is why I'm now trying #NetBSD and #FreeBSD.)

#DASD #PartitionTables

The firmware on a #RaspberryPi 4 does not mind if one changes the partition types of the #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD FAT volumes to EFI system, matching #NetBSD in spirit if not in modern partitioning scheme.

OpenBSD again almost fell at the hurdle here. It is extraordinarily sensitive to the status of its UFS1 partition. Touch it, or attempt to use a fresh one made from scratch, and its booloader thinks that it is talking to an esp device instead of to an sd device, and fails. This is a very strange dependency.

NetBSD, in contrast, did not bat an eyelid when I splatted about 5GiB of home directory, dotfiles, and tooling onto its UFS1 volume, using pax on another machine which had the TF card in a card reader.

NetBSD also auto-fixes the backup copy of the EFI partition table after its device re-sizing step. It didn't bat an eyelid, again, when I adjusted the initial card myself ahead of time using FreeBSD's #gpart recover.

#UEFI #PartitionTables #pax

The #RaspberryPi hurdle that #OpenBSD fell at was its installer.

Despite it presenting two different partition table editors, I couldn't persuade it to just simply use the already existing single UFS volume that was already there. It just does not seem to cater for the idea that one might want to install to the same removable DASD that one is using, with boot, system, and swap as already defined. It either led me down a path where it zapped the existing partition table, and all of the install files, or demanded that there be another solid-state medium to install to.

Which is sad, because a Pi with just a TF card and a single purpose is still a significant use case.

Whereas in NetBSD's sysinst, choosing to install to the same system is the first option on its third menu, after picking the installer language and choosing to install.

This is a 2 horse race being comfortably won by #NetBSD, currently. I've not tried #FreeBSD yet.

#PartitionTables

I boot up #NetBSD from the install image, and it has sshd, Postfix, and inetd running before I even get to set the superuser password. Fortunately, by default it's only listening on the SSH port, on both TCP/IP v4 and v6.

But given the amount of SSH attempts per second one has to fend off nowadays, and given that whether sshd is running is a configurable option in sysinst, it's a bit off that sshd is on until the installer turns it off, or one manually turns it off.

It's not even as if it's arguably useful at that point. The only non-service account in the account database at the time is root, and root login over SSH is disabled.

The same goes for inetd and Postfix. Those seem like something that should be off at first until the installer/administrator turns them on, too.

This is an operating system bootstrapped from an installation DASD, which hasn't done any installing at all yet. It has no business delivering mail or being ready for TELNET or finger.

#ComputerSecurity #SSH

I try on #NetBSD again.

Alt...

I still cannot use the network.

Some photos of Nagoya *BSD Users' Group and Japan NetBSD Users' Group booth at Open Source Conference 2025 Nagoya (Japan) held on May 31.
We demonstrated some retro machines such as #NetBSD/macppc on Mac mini, NetBSD/evbarm on Raspberry Pi 3, NetBSD/i386 on Fujitsu laptop with old good Pentium CPU, NetBSD/evbppc on Nintendo Wii and #OpenBSD/luna88k and #FUZIX on LUNA-88K2 at the booth.
I also had a small talk about OpenBSD/luna88k and FUZIX. #oscnagoya

I had set up my old old laptop as terminal for 9front by drawterm.
Lenovo S21e, NetBSD
and
Vampire4 StandAlone !!, this is new(^_^)
#9front
#drawterm
#netbsd
#vampire4standalone

Something i found really cool Japanese tongue twister
#NetBSD #RunBSD
https://youtu.be/J76S5q_ETfo

Some random photos from OSDay 2025. I gave a talk about the BSD family and why to use them in 2025.

1/X

#OSDay #OSDay25 #OSDay2025 #Conference #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #OpenSource #OSS

Alt...

Group photo of the OSDay staff and speakers

Alt...

My laptop, with the BSD Cafe sticker, is projecting the BSD Cafe logo

Alt...

Me, giving my opinion about the Evolution of Open Source

Alt...

Me, explaining why I think we lost the value of stability

I have a spare RPi 2 (model B v1.1) and 3 (B v1.2)... think I'll try #OpenBSD and #NetBSD on them to tinker with. Last time I tried OpenBSD was on my Ultra 5 back in, um, probably ~2008 (I should boot it and see what version is on it, if I can find suitable cables).

It looks like NetBSD runs on the Pi2 and OpenBSD needs >= Pi3 so I'll do them that way round I guess.

#RunBSD

Toot from pkgsrc/www/firefox-139.0.1 under NetBSD/amd64-current. #pkgsrc #NetBSD

Some random photos from OSDay 2025. I gave a talk about the BSD family and why to use them in 2025.

2/X

#OSDay #OSDay25 #OSDay2025 #Conference #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #OpenSource #OSS

Alt...

Me, standing up and presenting myself

Alt...

Me and my wife, smiling while listening to an interesting presentation

Alt...

One of the staff members asking me something about AI

Alt...

The trophy - I won :-)

@Wintermute_BBS @VoidLinux I ❤️ #NetBSD (and the other BSDs too). Use it daily.

*sigh* so yes, I admit it - my daily driver still is @VoidLinux for various reasons that make me sound like a #1990s #windows user reluctant to switch to #linux. It involves cheap USB grabbers among other things.

Yet I have a weak spot for #NetBSD 🧡 and while #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD get some fair coverage here on the #fediverse, I am getting the impresson that NetBSD is a bit under-presented here.

So, do you also 🧡 NetBSD?!

https://netbsd.org/

@Wintermute_BBS @VoidLinux Since Voids package manager was initially written by an (ex-) #NetBSD maintainer and I was also a package maintainer for void (and sponsored a build server back around 2013-ish), I do appreciate the code and structure. I'm a happy #OpenBSD user and since its roots are in #NetBSD I got a lot of love for NetBSD. The rump kernel is a _very_ interesting concept and I wish it would see wider adoption.

A small procrastination project with NetBSD Arm. Feel free to visit the web. The counter tracker is saved locally and will increase with every refresh.

https://netbsd.bsd-devlabs.one/

#netbsd #arm #raspberrypi

If you have missed The NetBSD Foundation 2025 Annual General Meeting you can read more and find logs here!:

https://blog.NetBSD.org/tnf/entry/agm2025

#netbsd #pkgsrc

@justine #NetBSD rocks on the desktop. People who say otherwise have probably never even tried it. #RunBSD

@justine I recently got a cheap thinkcentre just to have a dedicated (not dual-boot) #NetBSD desktop

@claudiom @justine

I tried #NetBSD on a cheap second hand HP desktop, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an X11 login and full desktop environment come up right after installation. 🤓

⚠️ Resources got restocked:

- Two new nodes in Netherlands
- One new node in Ukraine
- Extended resources on nodes in Germany

@gyptazy is now improving the self-service portal and then we can go straight to the 1k free boxes :)

#RUNBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #MidnightBSD #DragonflyBSD

One thing about having a fever and being a bit “out of it”… it silences that inner critic that says something is silly or won’t work.

Last night I was tinkering with my Sun and wishing I had a wireless bridge (the study doesn’t have Ethernet yet). I rummaged and found an old RPi with a dongle. Threw #NetBSD 10 on it, set up wi-fi, set up a bridge… worked!

Won’t win speed awards accessing… my gopher and FTP jails. But, is a word with three letters.

People working on Linux or the BSDs (or illumos based OSes, etc), are you using two monitors? And, if so, what do you use them for?
I'm trying to understand if it makes sense to keep two monitors on my desk

Please boost

#Linux #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #illumos #SmartOS #OmniOS #IT #SysAdmin