Oh, #freebsd removed i386 support in the 15.x release. Well, hello #netbsd, how you doin ?

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟬𝟭/𝟮𝟲 (Valuable News - 2026/01/26) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/valuable-news-2026-01-26/

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

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

Testing a Chimera package update to virt-manager. Figured it was a good time to try a more modern NetBSD install. :-)

#NetBSD

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Screenshot of NetBSD with glxgears, xclock, xconsole, xeyes, xload, and xterm running.

Provoked by a toot from @jamesoff I made the experiments with the #y2k38 time boundary on #OpenBSD (bigger screendump) and #NetBSD as illustrated.
Both survived ;) of course.
NetBSD however seems to accept a date as UTC and then translates it to my local CET. OpenBSD seems to trot happily on in CET.
This means that in 12 years, when I'll be 92 years old, I won't have to worry about any time apocalypse.
I'll sleep as quietly as ever on that night. Nice to know.

James' sticker is fun anyway ;)

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Playing with y2k38 on openbsd

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Playing with y2k38 on netbsd

@thejpster I will always say #NetBSD, but that's just my personal bias. I have been running it for a while on a Netra X1, which should be similar.

Advertisement: We are happy to welcome our new sponsor at #BoxyBSD: ST-Hosting.com

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We’re excited to have https://st-hosting.com on board! You can immediately start to provision your BSD based boxes (like #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD, #NetBSD,...) at BoxyBSD in our new location in Germany, Nuremberg. Also, stay tuned for #Fosdem ;) Thanks a lot!

cc: @gyptazy
#RUNBSD #BSD #OpenSource #Hosting

I’m not an expert on e-mail. I barely understand how it works. This is just part of my path to learn NetBSD.

I've just blocked ICMP packets from fail2banned hosts, and blocked IPv6 completely, since it doesn't used in my network, lol

Orange graph is for netstat -s | grep 'bad connection attempts' for TCP section.

Possibly, the bad bots, who are using IPv6, had access to the my box all the time and abused it violently to find the way in

#networking #NetBSD #firewall

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Netstat graph from Munin. The graph for failed connections has a lot of spikes in the left side of the graph and completely zero on the right side.

@radhitya I just wanted to try another #BSD to see how the things done in it and how much it differs from #FreeBSD

The choice was between OpenBSD and #NetBSD — the second attracted me with wide range of supported devices and processor architectures. This is rare enough in the modern IT where the words "this is obsolete" and "this project wasn't updated for N days — looks like it is abandoned" became a new norm. So I decided to invest my time in NetBSD and setup it on my home server. With idea to use it in some old laptop in the future, in my mind.

For me, it fits well — it works in machine with 2 Gb of RAM, it has all necessary things for selfhosting in the binary repositories (fail2ban, Nginx, PostgreSQL, etc) and it has the same spirit of good old Unix as FreeBSD has.

Hot off the press, bob v0.6.0 is out.

Loads of changes and improvements over the past 12 days:

https://github.com/jperkin/bob/blob/main/CHANGES.md

There are some breaking changes to config.lua, and updates to the build scripts. I would recommend performing a fresh:

$ bob init /path/to/config/dir

and migrating any changes over manually. I will try and keep breaking changes to a minimum in the run up to version 1.0 when all will be set in stone.

Thanks for all your feedback so far, keep it coming!

#pkgsrc #bob #netbsd

Oh and here's a photo from 2001 showing a NetBSD crash. The first UNIX-like OS I ran on my own hardware was NetBSD in 2001 on a cobbled together PC with a Cyrix 6x86 CPU and some memory from who knows where. It would crash under heavy load, here extracting the pkgsrc tarball, due to bad RAM or the CPU getting too hot, I can't remember.

#NetBSD

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A photo of a rounded CRT screen showing a uvm_fault in green text. kernel: page fault trap, code=0 Stopped in tar at vn_stat+0x51: addb %cl,0x568ba045(%ebx)

@wezm It was one of the flat panel Sun ones, I think 19"? I'm front left in this screen grab from our opscam around that time. The Sony Vaio on my right was my #NetBSD laptop.

I used to be able to read tiny fonts. Time has caught up with me... ;-)

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BBC Internet Services "OpsCam", 15th October 2001.

As I continue to trawl through old backups please enjoy this screenshot of a NetBSD system dated Feb 2005. Not sure what I was up to, or what the system running it was.

#NetBSD #twm

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A twm desktop with several xterms, xload, and xclock.

@wezm I love old screenshots. Nearly 25 years ago I was building NetBSD 1.5Y from my Solaris 8 desktop at the BBC. Fun times.

#solaris #netbsd #evilwm

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Screenshot of a Solaris 8 desktop running various terminals, chat programs, a very early Firefox, and compiling NetBSD.

@lfa No problem, I'm using even vi while tinkering something on my #NetBSD server

#vi

Also amazing that this thing did not OOM-kill processes all over the place; even before I started compiling I did a pkgin upgrade on the poor box, which took .. a few hours. I'm all outta swap, real low on RAM, and yet it somehow got through this .. #NetBSD for the win, I guess.

Says top:

Memory: 56M Act, 27M Inact, 11M Wired, 15M Exec, 820K File, 2076K Free
Swap: 128M Total, 128M Used, 4K Free / Pools: 23M Used / Network: 23K In, 34K Out

Finally installed XFCE on my gaming PC running #NetBSD. (Well, it dual-boots, so it's either gaming or NetBSD.)

Damn, XFCE looks beautiful in HiDPI.

Also, surprisingly, the best browser on #NetBSD today is ... Chromium! Works really well if you can get it to build.

Do you want to come to #ottawa and tell a bunch of #BSD geeks about what you enjoy doing?

Submit to BSDCan 2026!

Our submissions deadline is January 17, 2026, see https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html

Tutorials: June 17-18, 2026
Conference: June 19-20, 2026

More about the BSD conferences: https://nxdomain.no/~peter/what_is_bsd_come_to_a_conference_to_find_out.html

#freebsd #netbsd #openbsd #conference #development #sysadmin

5 days left to get your @bsdcan talk submitted! Join your friends in Canada to discuss the state of the *BSDs. See talks by leaders of our industry, parents of the Internet, and that person you've been seeing on mailing lists for years!:

https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html#main

#runbsd #netbsd #freebsd #openbsd #dragonflybsd #sysadmin

Judging by the number of #NetBSD bugreports, i386 gets 3x as many reports as eg. arm:

Category             critical  serious non-crit  TOTAL           Median TTC
port-arm                    8       36        7       51      2m 28d 20:02:56
port-i386                  34      105       52      191      7m  6d 15:28:21

I don't think this says #i386 is 3x as problematic as arm, but may have a lot to do with the size of the userbase.

FreeBSD soft-ditched i386, Debian is hard-ditching it, OpenBSD has nobody to compile ports... Yet the stats seem to indicate demand.

Not quite dead yet.

#RUNBSD #retrocomputing

BSDCan 2026 is in #ottawa June 17 - 20, 2026.

The submissions deadline is January 17, 2027. See the Call for Papers page https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html for instructions on how to submit.

Want to know more about BSD and the conferences? See https://nxdomain.no/~peter/what_is_bsd_come_to_a_conference_to_find_out.html @bsdcan #bsdcan #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #freesoftware #libresoftware #conferences

Finally (2), I have some good enough DHCP server!

Tried kea from ISC — it works but requires some additional actions to be launched under #NetBSD. It has very strange default paths for file with leases, PIDs and logs:
- /usr/pkg/var/lib/kea/
- /usr/pkg/var/lib/run/kea
- /usr/pkg/var/log/kea

BTW, it could be changed via playing with some environment variables.

Also, the default startup script uses keactrl to launch DHCP server and keactrl requires some configuration for it. So, to use "service kea start" there are two configuration files are necessary:
- /usr/pkg/etc/keactrl.conf — the main configuration file for server.
- /usr/pkg/etc/kea/keactrl.conf — the configuration file for keactrl.

Then, I tried the dhcpsd — the new promising successor of ISC dhcpd, which could be configured with configuration file in Lua and conforms Unix FHS — all necessary files lies in the right places: /var/run, /var/log, etc. Sadly, it doesn't work: server starts but there are no leases for clients and no any errors in the log :-(

Then, I found cmu-dhcpd in the repos — there is a dhcpd from Carnegie Mellon University with some patches from Princeton. And, finally it works! And it also conforms Unix FHS: main configuration in the /etc/dhcpd.conf, PID-file in the /var/run/dhcpd.pid and logs in the /var/log/messages

#selfhosting #dhcp #DHCPv4 #dhcpd

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Screenshot of xterm with vi opened in it. In the vi there is a /etc/dhcpd.conf opened with some simple configuration for plain home network.

I'm going to assume running multiple automated test frameworks on a 1-core #NetBSD Pi will eventually eat itself out or starve or something. Have not heard from the #Zabbix agent in an hour or so.

The Pi wifi worked until it started failing with loss of connection. I moved the SD card to a second 0W with a plugin RJ45. Restarting test suite. Dag.

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Pretty busy CPU chart for a day or so thrashing multiple tests.

Instructions for installing #NetBSD on the Wii U: https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-powerpc/2026/01/10/msg003724.html

We should modernize the #NetBSD website.
Example:

Log Message:
Add support for the Nintendo Wii U.

#NetBSD

Two more #NetBSD systems going 11.0 BETA - a creaky 686 and a teeny Pi 0W. It's been months since I managed to write a bootable SD card for the little Pi; the 2026 image worked like a champ.

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Neofetch screen grab from NetBSD 11 BETA with a 2-screen 686 processor.

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Neofetch screen grab from NetBSD 11 BETA with a 1-core Raspberry Pi 0W.

Latest 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 - 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲/𝟬𝟭/𝟬𝟱 (Valuable News - 2026/01/05) available.

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/valuable-news-2026-01-05/

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

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

@AnachronistJohn

Running #NetBSD ...? 😉

Finally:

===> Installing binary package of qgis-3.44.5

#NetBSD
#PkgSrc

AI models don’t really 'get' the BSDs. As a result, they often provide incomplete, imprecise, or flat-out wrong answers by defaulting to Linux paradigms. When it comes to illumos-based systems, they just completely lose the plot.

This is becoming a serious issue for the BSDs and illumos ecosystems. We are seeing entire websites flooded with AI-generated tutorials and guides that are totally incorrect. Most people don't realize this; they follow the instructions, fail, and then assume that the BSDs doesn't work well or are 'unstable' because they have supposedly changed since the guide was written.

Luckily, some people eventually find my blog, reach out, and finally understand what's actually going on. Others, unfortunately, end up on major social sites or comments, claiming that these systems are broken.

In 2026, one of our greatest challenges will be teaching people how to vet their sources and filter information.
And I see this as a very, very uphill battle.

#IT #SysAdmin #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #News #UnderstandingText #Disinformation

Today, I fixed a #NetBSD bug report from 2005. Better late than never, I guess.

https://gnats.netbsd.org/30837

New year, same love for clean code. 🧡

I saw @netbsd 🚩was short $327 on their 2025 funding goal, so I sent a donation to start 2026 on a high note.

Wishing the team a great 2026.

Wishing all BSD users Happy New Year ahead!

#NetBSD #Unix #OpenSource #linux #sysadmin #runbsd