はてなブログに投稿しました
NetBSD/amd64,i386 10.1 ておくれLive Image 20260101版 - tsutsuiの作業記録置き場 https://tsutsui.hatenablog.com/entry/teokure20260101
#はてなブログ #NetBSD #mikutter #pkgsrc

Having been a loyal #GPG user for years and having seen the recent gpg.fail vulnerabilities, i decided to finally do something about it: I wrote a #rustlang implementation of #OpenBSD signify with strict rules: no unsafe code, no arithmetic side effects, no proc macros. Builds on #FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #Linux, and #Windows. My contribution is the #keyring feature which allows you to specify a key-id on #Linux rather than inputting the password manually: https://crates.io/crates/signify-rs #exherbo #security

Progress. X and ctwm is running with VESA (not mach64 unfortunately) but has some distortion that needs fixing. Not exactly "snappy" either, but at least it's a GUI.

#netbsd #bsd #ctwm #xorg #x11 #retrocomputing

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ctwm on NetBSD running on a 486

I have distinct memories in the early aughts of configuring XF86Config and then xorg.conf to get X Windows working on my Linux desktop. Hours spend updating it, running startx and 🤞I would see that glorius cross-hatch pattern.

Thanks to advances in Linux on the Desktop - those days were long gone, until today...

#netbsd #ati #retrocomputing

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Screenshot of Xorg.0.log howing a No Screens Found message

Final results of my quest to run NetBSD 10.1 on my 486 system with obligatory fastfetch screen shot.

After getting NetBSD to install from floppies, the biggest challenge was getting it to use memory effectively, otherwise it would spend all its time on swap. Trick was building a custom kernel, turning off many of the daemons (syslogd, cron, ntpd, etc) and sysctl tuning.

Still a few more things I can do to lower the memory footprint, like using dropbear for ssh instead of openssh. Right now though it's relatively usable over ssh, few pauses here and there be generally responsive. Going to try X11 next, which will be interesting.

As for specs, the system is heavily Gateway 2000 486DX2-66Mhz "Family PC" slimline desktop circa 1994. Very similar to my first PC (mine was a 50Mhz version with no PCI slots).

- Anigma LP4IP1 motherboard, 3x ISA and 2x PCI on a riser card
- AMD X5-133Mhz AWD CPU @ 100Mhz (upgraded from the 66Mhz) with a 40mm Noctua fan
- 48Mb of memory
- 4Gb Industrial Compact Flash card in IDE adapter
- ATI Mach64 PCI video card
- Intel Pro 10/100 PCI network card
- ATX4VC with an 80 watt PicoPSU
- Gotek floppy emulator
- GW-12887-1 Dallas DS12887 RTC Replacement clock
- 80mm Noctua case fan

#netbsd #bsd #retrocomputing #486 #fastfetch

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Screenshot of fastfetch running NetBSD 10.1 i386 on a PC from 1994.

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Photo of Gateway 2000 slimline desktop and modern LCD panel displaying boot messages and a login prompt for NetBSD/i386. A period correct Gateway 2000 keyboard is also visible.

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Closeup of SD card, Mach64 videocard, ATX4VC/PicoPSU and 80mm Noctua case fan with a purple 3d printed grill.

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close up of AMD X5-133Mhz ADW CPU with a Noctua 40mm fan on it, RAM SIMMs are visible with an Intel Pro 10/100 network card in a PCI slot in a riser.

Let it build
Let it build
Let it buiiiiiiild
#NetBSD

What it looks like booting #NetBSD on the Wii U for the first time https://youtu.be/pfNySZMSvLQ

It's alive! SMP kernel up and running on #NetBSD Wii U.

This evening in "cli snippets for things I learned":
To more easily upgrade to #NetBSD -current, you can

1) build and install sysupgrade:

# cd /usr/pkgsrc/sysutils/sysupgrade
# make && make install

2) Then point it to the daily snapshots at:

# sysupgrade fetch https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/latest/$(sysctl kern.machine_arch)

3) Follow the rest of the sysupgrade steps found at
https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-upgrading.html

Be warned that sysupgrade etcupdate is long, boring, but important.

#RunBSD

#NetBSD 11 getting closer: "Timeout for showstoppers (before they will be downgraded) december 28, trying to move on to RC1 before the end of december."
https://wiki.netbsd.org/releng/netbsd-11/

Console works on the Wii U gamepad too, although it doesn’t quite fit with the default font size. #netbsd

Here's #NetBSD booting on a Nintendo Wii U (natively, not vWii!) https://youtu.be/ZLPe5g9j_Ss

Arcan 0.7.1 – Minutes To Midnight

https://arcan-fe.com/2025/12/27/arcan-0-7-1-minutes-to-midnight/

#FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

Booting NetBSD 10.1 installation from floppy sets, then downloading and installing over ipv6 from an http mirror. All on a 486DX2-66Mhz.

#netbsd #retrocomputing #486 #ipv6

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NetBSD 10.1 booting from floppy sets on a Gotek floppy emulator

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NetBSD kernel downloading at 337.21 KiB/s

There we go. Have a modern web browser (midori) working on a 2008 netbook, with an 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1Gbyte of RAM, all thanks to the magic of BSD. First page to fire up is of course @exquisite

#RunBSD #NetBSD

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A netbook displaying the exquisite.social "About" page

@resuna @GrantMeStrength Pity that was lost! What language did you use?

Apologies for the ESR references in this link, but it includes many stories of Trek code bases:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/super-star-trek/sst-doc.html

And there's still a #Trek in the #NetBSD source tree, under /usr/src/games/trek .

It turns out my mysterious app crashes on #NetBSD i386 were in fact due to a bug in the i915 driver. I can disable it on boot and the programs work, but of course screen resolution is off this way. Any known workarounds?

@rqm TIL!

```
vsis$ which tetris
/usr/games/tetris
```

wow #NetBSD *rules*!

I like #NetBSD so far. Even despite my stupid mistakes with pkgsrc. And not only because THERE IS TETRIS BUNDLED

#netbsd

The #NetBSD pkgsrc system for building packages is pretty neat. Took me about 30 minutes to figure it all out and I never really used NetBSD before.

Still the official docs could be improved upon but #OpenBSD set the bar pretty high for user-friendliness.

The #NetBSD 🚩community is amazing! 🔥
Let's come together to reach the foundation's $50,000 year-end goal. Your contribution directly drives the project's future and innovation. Every donation helps!
https://netbsd.org/donations/
#NetBSD #OpenSource #FOSS #Donate
#outreach

My go-to is #WindowMaker though. Or, on super low end devices (486), ctwm (default in #NetBSD and #OpenBSD I think.

@thomholwerda @hp @CursedSilicon Even if ssh for HP is old, one can still use a modern system as a jumphost using ssh -J.

A Raspberry Pi or something similarly small / low power can run a modern OS (like #NetBSD), and you can offer key-based ssh to it, and allow ssh access from it to your HP. That’s one hopefully simple possibility.

I investigated some #NetBSD/i386 bulk build failures for Go packages. They all failed with the same error, which is sus. Reported it as https://github.com/golang/go/issues/76815, and it turned out to be an actual linker bug that was fixed today! 🤩

#NetBSD 10.1 was released on December 16 2024 - exactly one year ago.

Not a bad anniversary. Post your favorite stories and/or functionalities of NetBSD in the replies, I am curious to see who is using it and for what...

@rperezrosario #netbsd

I understand the strain on maintainers, but it's still sad to see #FreeBSD culling so many 32bit packages. #OpenBSD suffers from the same problem. It seems #NetBSD will remain the platform where you can still e.g. get a working web browser for a legacy system (#Arcticfox). Same applies to the Linux world.

Hard to show with a screenshot, but the GameCube controller does work with games that use SDL2 for joystick access on #NetBSD Wii.

Added support for GameCube controllers on #NetBSD Wii. A new driver exposes the four GameCube controller sockets as HID devices that work with SDL / SDL2 as joystick devices.

Trying #NetBSD/amd64 on an old, cheap Dell Inspiron laptop.