NetBSD 4.0 Has Been Released

ci4 writes to tell us that NetBSD 4.0 has been released and has been dedicated to the memory of Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino. "Itojun was a member of the KAME project, which provided IPv6 and IPsec support; he was also a member of the NetBSD core team (the technical management for the project), and one of the Security Officers. Due to Itojun's efforts, NetBSD was the first open source operating system with a production ready IPv6 networking stack, which was included in the base system before many people knew what IPv6 was. We are grateful to have known and worked with Itojun, and we know that he will be missed. This release is therefore dedicated, with thanks, to his memory."

Some actual information

[Anonymous Coward]

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks.

Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[NeoManyon]

Major achievements in NetBSD 4.0 include support for version 3 of the Xen virtual machine monitor, Bluetooth, many new device drivers and embedded platforms based on ARM, PowerPC and MIPS CPUs. New network services include iSCSI target (server) code and an implementation of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. Also, system security was further enhanced with restrictions of mprotect(2) to enforce W^X policies, the Kernel Authorization framework, and improvements of the Veriexec file integrity subsystem, which can be used to harden the system against trojan horses and virus attacks. Please read below for a list of changes in NetBSD 4.0.

http://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-4/NetBSD-4.0.html [netbsd.org]

Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES and CHANGES-4.0 files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 4.0 release tree. Some highlights include:
Networking

* agr(4): new pseudo-device driver for link level aggregation.
* IPv6 support was extended with an RFC 3542-compliant API and added for gre(4) tunnels and the tun(4) device.
* An NDIS-wrapper was added to use Windows binary drivers on the i386 platform, see ndiscvt(8).
* The IPv4 source-address selection policy can be set from a number of algorithms. See "IPSRCSEL" in options(4) and in_getifa(9).
* Imported wpa_supplicant(8) and wpa_cli(8). Utilities to connect and handle aspects of 802.11 WPA networks.
* Imported hostapd(8). An authenticator for IEEE 802.11 networks.
* carp(4): imported Common Address Redundancy Protocol to allow multiple hosts to share a set of IP addresses for high availability / redundancy, from OpenBSD.
* ALTQ support for the PF packet filter.
* etherip(4): new EtherIP tunneling device. It's able to tunnel Ethernet traffic over IPv4 and IPv6 using the EtherIP protocol specified in RFC 3378.
* ftpd(8) can now run in standalone mode, instead of from inetd(8).
* tftp(1) now has support for multicast TFTP operation in open-loop mode, server is in progress.
* tcp(4): added support for RFC 3465 Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) and Explicit Congestion Notification as defined in RFC 3168.

File systems

* scan_ffs(8), scan_lfs(8): utilities to find FFSv1/v2 and LFS partitions to recover lost disklabels on disks and image files.
* tmpfs: added a new memory-based file system aimed at replacing mfs. Contrary to mfs, it is not based on a disk file system, so it is more efficient both in overall memory consumption and speed. See mount_tmpfs(8).
* Added UDF support for optical media and block devices, see mount_udf(8). Read-only for now.
* NFS export list handling was changed to be filesystem independent.
* LFS: lots of stability improvements and new cleaner daemon. It is now also possible to use LFS as root filesystem.
* vnd(4): the vnode disk driver can be used on filesystems such as smbfs and tmpfs.
* Support for System V Boot File System was added, see newfs_sysvbfs(8) and mount_sysvbfs(8).

Drivers

*

Audio:
o Support for new models on drivers such as Intel ICH8/6300ESB, NVIDIA nForce 3/4, etc.
o Added support for AC'97 modems.

Re:Holy Shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Responding to my own post, apparently he was fighting a long illness and did not make it. Gathered from comments at undeadly [undeadly.org].
See also http://www.wide.ad.jp/news/press/20071031-itojun-e.html [wide.ad.jp]

Jeez. The guy was a good guy. Very upset that he is no longer with the community. RIP.

Re:Major Changes Between 3.0 and 4.0

[TheRaven64]

The new bluetooth stack from NetBSD has now been ported to DragonFly BSD and OpenBSD, so others benefit from this work, not just those running NetBSD. Looking through the new features list, I see a lot of things that I recognise from both OpenBSD and FreeBSD, so the sharing goes both ways.

NetBSD is, I believe, the second kernel to officially support running as a Xen 3 Domain 0 guest. Both Solaris and NetBSD have been able to do this in prerelease versions for quite a few months, but I believe NetBSD is the first to release it officially. (The first kernel overall was Linux, although the Xen patches are still not in the main kernel.org tree).

OpenBSD

[cachimaster]

If i'm not mistaken, the OpenBSD 4.2 release was also dedicated to Jun-Ichiro "itojun" Hagino, it was a big loss for the BSDs.

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Just Some Guy]

Why have the BSDs taken so long to realize this simple fact of life?

Well, in the case of OpenBSD, it's because they've gone over the Sendmail code with a fine-toothed comb and patched up any problems they found along the way. It's pretty well vetted by people who care intensely about such things. Therefore, replacing Sendmail with anything else would be a case of the devil you know being better than the devil you don't.

Re:Holy crap, they've removed Sendmail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't quite look like the rest of the world got your memo.

http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200711/mxsurvey.html [securityspace.com]

Re:Yes!

[ByOhTek]

I was nervous to - I had so many Linux users tell me how bad it was, that it was harder to use and learn than Linux, etc.

I found it wasn't the case. The more you have experience coding and building from source in Linux, the better off you'll be, but here goes:

(1) I didn't buy any books or anything, I had a friend who was into FreeBSD tell me about it. She gave me a few hints and tips on how to start and what to avoid. She said I should try it since I'd rather use Windows than Linux, and it'd be nicer for me to use a FOSS OS if I could. I listened, and tried, and was hooked on the OS within a day of installing it.

So the best resource you can have is a friend who knows what he or she is doing (or at least has a bit more of a clue than you).

(2) The handbook is your friend. under /usr/share/doc/en/books/handbook/index.html is the system documentation. You can look at it on the freebsd website under the handbook section. It is actually EXTREMELY useful, and fairly well written/comprehensive. Unless you are looking for VPN stuff, they you're sporked.

(3) The Mailing list and it's archives are invaluable. Don't worry, the people there don't eat babies or penguins (if they did, I wouldn't use the OS, I have a friend who I love to hang out with who'd never speak to me again if I talked to people who ate penguins!). Actually they are a friendly and easy going bunch. They don't like people picking on them for their OS choice, but they don't mind people preferring different OSes. If you have a question, let them know your background when you ask, so they can better tailor the advice. You'll be asked to read some stuff, but they'll tell you what you need to read, and not just give you a blind RTFM. Heck, one user recently said he wanted to migrate to Linux, and asked which distro would be easiest for a FreeBSD user, no flames came.

(4) The errors are typically useful, and if you read them, they'll point you to a file or directory that's a problem. Using that you can figure out if something needs to be edited, deleted, etc. When making packages, if something is described as "marked" (ex. "Marked as broken on AMD64", or described as "conflicts", it is the packages make file, and you may need to modify that (or find another package that does the same thing, usually there are hints, but not always). You can sometimes find documentation related to these files either in the man pages for the program that uses them, or with the file name itself. Sometimes the error messages will actually tell you what to type or give you options on what to do to fix the problem - they don't fix it automatically because they'd assume you'd rather chose the fix option rather than have the choice made for you.

More practical (basically the advice my friend gave me, aside from the location of the handbook):

1. Until you are confident in your ability to get your system up to the poing of getting a web browser out to the internet from a fresh install (read: have done it at least once), only install freebsd if you have a system you can access the internet from, preferrably while running freebsd (i.e. install FreeBSD to a virtual machine, or on a spare computer).

2. I've found that the non-minimal installs tend to be a bit confused in their setup. I just do a minimal install, and install everything else manually. Read up on the section about partitioning your disk, FreeBSD does this in an odd manner, and you'll want to be familiar with it.
2.1. Ports - Compiling your own stuff
2.1.1. Familiarize with "csup", under /usr/share/examples you'll not run this often, but it updates your ports tree. typically you just type "csup -g -L 2 [path to supfile]", there's a sample supfile in the /usr/doc/examples directory somewhere, probably in a csup or cvsup directory, and the man page is fairly useful. In fact, most BSD man pages are (weird). They usually have good examples.
2.1.2. to build a package, go to /usr/ports, find the pac

Re:Yes!

[CleverDan]

The Complete FreeBSD is available from the author, Greg Lehey, online here: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/CFBSD/ [lemis.com] Greg's site itself is pretty interesting, too.

Re:Yes!

[TheRaven64]

I always keep a tree around (and a freebsd one) for a reference so I can look up how some things are implemented at the low level. You cannot do that with linux (or god forbid Slowarez) without arming yourself with a couple of aspirins and a bottle of vodka.

I'd agree with Linux, but the Solaris code is often very, very clean. The parts I've looked at have been close to OpenBSD standard, which is the most readable kernel I've come across.

Google Cache Reveals Cause of Death

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I did a little digging and determined that it was almost certainly suicide. I found two blog posts from a google search on Itojun and noticed that the Google cache version was dated one day prior to the date listed on the blog posts. I then discovered that you can actually retrieve old text from the Google cache version of a page by tweaking your search query over and over. I determined that the two bloggers had deleted paragraphs from each of their posts talking about the cause of death, Itojun's mental health problems and his recent decent into depression.

To see what I'm talking about, check these search results [google.com] and then compare the page that's being linked. You'll notice it's dated the 31st and the paragraph from the search results has been deleted. If you then perform queries using text from the search result snippet you can reveal more and more of the deleted text. For example, like this [google.com].

I'm a bit conflicted about posting the cause of death since multiple people took the trouble to attempt to delete that information from public view, but I figure that people will find this technique at recovering deleted information quite useful. I have recovered the complete text from each blog post, but am not going to post that information. If you care that much, you can figure it out for yourself.