NetBSD Planet


May 18, 2025

DragonFly BSD Digest Lazy Reading for 2025/05/18

Dumbness or perhaps stupidity, today’s mini theme.

Your unrelated audio of the week: Squarepusher’s Ultravisitor, remastered.

Ruben Schade The world’s only stable Windows Me machine

For those too young to remember, or who wisely chose to forget, Windows Millennium Edition—aka, Windows Me—was notorious. Microsoft removed Real Mode DOS access which peterbed weirdos like me who loved rebooting into MS-DOS to play NFS:SE, but history will remember Windows Me for its instability and performance issues. It was available on the market for about a year in 2000 before Windows XP was released, and few people were sad to see it go… perhaps other than the technicians for whom the OS gave them a guaranteed and regular source of clients.

I had one factory-installed Windows Me machine as a kid, a Sony VAIO PCG-C1VM laptop. This I quickly “upgraded” (cough) to Windows 98 Second Edition like most people, and upon realising how easy it was, made a small fortune for a kid by offering to do it for friends and their parents. Windows 98 was an error-filled mess, but it was still a breath of fresh air compared to Windows Me. Then when Windows XP came out, I jumped to 2000 and lived with the performance drop so I didn’t have to deal with crashes.

But this is where the weirdness starts. I may have inadvertently stumbled upon a specific combination of parts and drivers that result in a stable Windows Me system; one that works faster, and more reliably than Windows 98. HOW!?

Like most of my retrocomputers, I bought this Dell Dimension 4100 on a lark for a bit of nostalgia. I never had one of these beige towers as a kid, but it seemed as though everyone in Singapore did around the late 1990s and early 2000s. My school upgraded all their disparate DIY Pentium 1 machines cobbled together at the likes of Sim Lim Square and Funan Centre for a fleet of these towers, and they imprinted. I saw someone in Canberra selling one for less than $100 in immaculate physical condition, and the rest is history.

My intention was to make it a glorified display piece on our study Museum Shelf of Doom, but when it arrived I was shocked to discover it was the most capable retro PC I own. It sports an absolutely blazing 800 MHz Pentium !!! CPU, 128 MiB of PC-133 memory, and… a dreadful proprietary ATI Rage 128 card which I quickly swapped out for a cheap and cheerful 4× AGP Radeon 9600 XT. This is now my primary Win 9x game machine for the likes of Train Simulator, Flight Simulator 98, Age of Empires II, Golf 95 (shaddup), The Sims, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and my old Borland IDEs.

Okay, so what does this have to do with Windows Me? Well those of you who’ve tinkered with PCs of this vintage know that SATA was either in its infancy, or not available at all. I’ve had the most success with Transcend IDE SSDs with the internal ATAPI controller, or by using industrial CF Cards. The challenge though has been getting the host machine and OS to detect UDMA support and use it, or your performance will almost make you long for the days of you 7200 RPM hard drive. Hope it’s not a Deathstar.

Windows 98 SE on this machine, despite being the factory standard OS at the time, simply doesn’t like this SSD. It takes forever to boot, copy files, and crashes upon shutdown, no matter how many times I’ve reinstalled it. The authentic Windows experience, in other words! This despite the fact UDMA is shown in Control Panel, and in the BIOS POST screens when the machine starts. The same configuration works on my other old PCs without issues, so I assume its a weird combination of stuff on this specific tower.

I thought I’d try Windows Me for a bit of a joke, but it’s had the last laugh. It’s been one of the two bootable OSs on this machine for more than a year now (I always dual-boot retro computers with NetBSD, partly for fun, but also so I can use it to copy files and so on), and it’s only crashed a handful of times. It boots quickly, all the hardware was detected and installed the first time, games run absolutely flawlessly, and I can even run Netscape Communicator to launch my Retro Corner.

I’m… kinda speechless to be honest. I guess Windows Me was testy about what it ran on, and I’ve somehow stumbled upon the perfect mix of parts to make it work, entirely by accident.

Would I recommend running Windows Me for your retrocomputing adventures? I mean, if Windows 98 SE is performing crap with your IDE SSD, maybe give it a try!? But, is a word with three letters.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-05-18.


May 17, 2025

/r/NetBSD NetBSD & iBooks & Python, oh my! | The Pipetogrep Blog

How I use NetBSD with old Apple hardware for modern(ish) Python development.

submitted by /u/sysadminchris
[link] [comments]

May 16, 2025

Pullup 9 [pullup-9 #1955] Search host bridge on all devices from PCI bus 0
Pullup 10 [pullup-10 #1120] Search host bridge on all devices from PCI bus 0

May 15, 2025

UnitedBSD Required osabi version isn't available

I'm on NetBSD 10.1, trying to build x11/rofi, which has pkgtools/x11-links in dependencies, which depends on pkgtools/osabi. pkgsrc branch is 2025Q1, just updated, same with the pkgin packages.
When trying to build it, I receive an error message saying that pkg_add can't find osabi-NetBSD-10.1.

When I checked manually with pkgin search, and then in repository, the latest version available seems to be osabi-NetBSD-10.0.
Installing this version didn't worked.

(I'm a total NetBSD noob, not even talking about building ports...)
What can i do to build this package? Should i switch to older 2024Q4 branch of pkgsrc?


May 14, 2025

Ruben Schade Building a new home server?

At the risk of invoking Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, I pose this post as a question because it’s a bit open-ended.

I’m in a bit of an awkward situation right now. For the longest time I used to buy whatever cheap HP Microserver I could get on eBay. They’re cheap, quiet, yet still manage to pack four hard drive bays. Tower chassis more than three times the size still usually only support the same number of hard drive bays, for reasons that utterly confound me. It’s as though everyone shook hands and said if they want more drives, get a noisy 2U rack server.

When our home needs began to outgrow these HP Companion Cubes, I cobbled together a server out of a Supermicro workstation board, 32 GiB of ECC DDR4-2133 memory, and a Xeon E3-1240 v6 CPU off Gumtree and eBay for less than AU $200 total. This was put into an old Antec 300 case with large, slow-spinning fans and eight drives. Almost five years later (wow!), and I’m surprised how well this is all still working. This four core machine is whisper quiet, sips power, and the FreeBSD host delivers:

Ah Monty Python. But I think we’ve reached the system’s limit, not in speed necessarily, but threads. There’s some CI stuff I’d like to try on it, and Clara and I want to try running a Stardew Valley server (cough), but I’ve already over-provisioned it as it is.

As Allan Jude one quipped at an AsiaBSDCon, the biggest challenge with homelab servers is that they often become production. Those above use cases make it eminently useful, but it limits the live tinkering I can do with it. I don’t want to be responsible for a backup failing, or a game not loading, or the TV not working, because I’m messing with some optimisations or experimental builds. Clara is the most accommodating person in the universe, but I suspect even she has limits! As do I.

My plan, such that it is, is to build a slightly more modern home server, maybe with 8 cores or more if it doesn’t push the power envelope too high. That can run our production home stuff, and I can relegate this older machine to tinkering and testing. I haven’t run the -CURRENT FreeBSD branch in years, which is a poor showing for someone so invested in the platform.

The thing is, I have no idea what’s out there. At work I live in “enterprise” server land, which is all way too hot and expensive for what I’d need. AMD might be fun, but is their consumer silicon really ECC compatible? I’m not that worried about IPMI or equivalents, because I use inexpensive network-attached KVMs. I’m a big fan of buying two generation or older hardware, because it’s (a) tested and (2) significantly cheaper, which perhaps rules out AM5 for now? Not sure.

I haven’t had to research a new budget server for a while, so I’m interested to see what I can get. Something second-hand, a bit older, and something we could stand hearing as it runs in the corner of the room.

Hey look, another open-ended post! Aren’t those great?

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-05-15.

/r/NetBSD The Server That Wasn't Meant to Exist
submitted by /u/unitedbsd
[link] [comments]
Pullup 10 [pullup-10 #1119] [PATCH] x86: Fix fpu_kern_enter/leave for machines with big fpu state (PR 57258, PR 58650)
Pullup 9 [pullup-9 #1954] [PATCH] x86: Limit extended CPU state save to supported features (PR 57661)
Pullup 10 [pullup-10 #1118] x86: Limit extended CPU state save to supported features (PR 57661)

May 13, 2025

/r/NetBSD How does one obtain the source-tarballs of pkgsrc.org packages?

If you go to the page upon pkgsrc.org corresponding to a given package such as this page for dash(1), you are presented with several downloading URLs, but all of them correspond to post-compilation executables (ie. binaries).

  1. If I might ask, where is the URL for the source-tarball?
  2. I am aware that it is possible to install some tool to automate the downloading of the source-tarballs, but I wish for the URL of the source-tarball so that I may download it manually. Thanks a lot.
submitted by /u/nepios83
[link] [comments]

May 12, 2025

Pullup 10 [pullup-10 #1117] rmdir -v
Pullup pkgsrc [pullup-pkgsrc #6965] misc/screen4 security fix
Pullup pkgsrc [pullup-pkgsrc #6964] misc/screen security fix
OS News A brief history of the BSD Fast FileSystem

We’re looking at an article from 2007 here, but I still think it’s valuable and interesting, especially from a historical perspective.

I first started working on the UNIX file system with Bill Joy in the late 1970s. I wrote the Fast File System, now called UFS, in the early 1980s. In this article, I have written a survey of the work that I and others have done to improve the BSD file systems. Much of this research has been incorporated into other file systems.

↫ Marshall Kirk McKusic

Variants of UFS are still the default file system in at least NetBSD and OpenBSD, and it’s one of the two default options in FreeBSD (alongside ZFS). In other words, this article, and the work described therein, is still relevant to this very day.

Pullup 9 [pullup-9 #1953] bridge: resolve a race condition in bridge_stop()
Pullup 10 [pullup-10 #1116] bridge: resolve a race condition in bridge_stop()
Pullup 9 [pullup-9 #1952] Fwd: CVS commit: src/sys/dev/pci

May 11, 2025

Pullup pkgsrc [pullup-pkgsrc #6963] lang/go124 security fix
/r/NetBSD NetBSD 10.x kernel MATH_EMULATION
submitted by /u/unitedbsd
[link] [comments]

May 10, 2025

Pullup 9 [pullup-9 #1951] Cosmetic fix for upcoming build clust optimization

May 09, 2025

/r/NetBSD Sub 15ms NetBSD MICROVM boot is now maintream
submitted by /u/unitedbsd
[link] [comments]

May 08, 2025

NetBSD Blog Welcome to Google Summer of Code 2025 contributors!
Google Summer of Code logo

We are happy to announce that The NetBSD Foundation will participate in Google Summer of Code 2025 with 3 projects!

Here the list of the projects and contributors:

For the next 3 weeks mentors and contributors will get in touch for the community bonding period. Mentors will help contributors to get started with the project, introduce them to the community and get more familiar with the codebase and adjusting deliverables for the the project.

Welcome Dennis, Ethan and Vasyl!


May 04, 2025

DragonFly BSD Digest Lazy Reading for 2025/05/04

Some BSD-specific links mixed in.

Your unrelated music video of the week: DRASS – Nucleation Point.  Makes me think I need to start making my phone less useful.  (via)

 


May 02, 2025

UnitedBSD Build your own NetBSD cloud image

Here's a link to some scripts that will build a NetBSD cloud image for use on hosting providers etc.
https://bitbucket.org/cmeerw/netbsd-cloud-image/src/main/

Christof generously shared this with me, and said it was ok if I post here about it.

If you want to try the images out on a server, and don't want to build it yourself, www.linveo.com has them as an installation option. These are thanks to Christof, and he creates them with the scripts linked above. It has been by far the easiest NetBSD install I've done on a remote machine. Also, linveo has been great, and there's coupons out there. I am not affiliated..just a happy user.


May 01, 2025

Pullup pkgsrc [pullup-pkgsrc #6962] Please update firefox115 to 115.23.0
Pullup pkgsrc [pullup-pkgsrc #6961] Fwd: CVS commit: pkgsrc/www/firefox128

April 28, 2025

UnitedBSD NetBSD and AR9485

Good day,

I have two laptops of different brands whereon I want to install NetBSD. Coincidentally, these different laptops have the same onboard Wi-Fi adapter, a Qualcomm Atheros AR9485. Although it is possible to install NetBSD, it is impossible to do anything network related as there is no driver for the onboard adapter. Is there any work being done in this and can I help in some way?


April 16, 2025

NetBSD General on DaemonForums netbsd gdb bug/problem
I am doing this on a raspberry pi 3 (B+ i think) running netbsd 10.1
gdb said to report this as a bug but the link it gives says to contact the distributor directly instead. I have never reported a bug directly and I don't know how to check if this has been already reported. If someone could let me know who to report it to or how that would be great.

Code:

rpi$ uname -a
NetBSD rpi 10.1 NetBSD 10.1 (RPI2) #0: Mon Dec 16 13:08:11 UTC 2024  [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/evbarm/compile/RPI2 evbarm
rpi$ cat test.s
    .section .text
    .global _start

_start:
    mov r7, #1          // Syscall number for exit
    mov r0, #0          // Exit status
    svc #0              // Make the syscall

rpi$ as -march=armv6 -o test.o test.s
rpi$ ld -o test test.o --dynamic-linker /libexec/ld.elf_so
rpi$ chmod +x test
rpi$ ./test
-sh: Cannot execute ELF binary ./test
rpi$ file test
test: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped
rpi$ gdb test
GNU gdb (GDB) 11.0.50.20200914-git
[...]
Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...
Reading symbols from test...
(No debugging symbols found in test)
(gdb) break _start
Breakpoint 1 at 0x10054
(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/NSA/TEMP.d/asm.d/hw.d/test
exec: Cannot execute ELF binary /home/NSA/TEMP.d/asm.d/hw.d/test
/usr/src/external/gpl3/gdb/lib/libgdb/../../dist/gdb/target.c:2144: internal-error: void target_mourn_inferior(ptid_t): Assertion `ptid == inferior_ptid'
 failed.
A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
further debugging may prove unreliable.
Quit this debugging session? (y or n) y

This is a bug, please report it.  For instructions, see:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.

/usr/src/external/gpl3/gdb/lib/libgdb/../../dist/gdb/target.c:2144: internal-error: void target_mourn_inferior(ptid_t): Assertion `ptid == inferior_ptid'
 failed.
A problem internal to GDB has been detected,
further debugging may prove unreliable.
Create a core file of GDB? (y or n) y
[1]  Abort trap (core dumped) gdb test
rpi$

maybe I am using as or ld with incorrect flags?

thanks for any help

April 15, 2025

Amitai Schlair Sensible basic Minecraft hosting

One of the few things I know about Minecraft is, some players I know and love could be playing together if someone were to run a server for them. That’s the sort of thing I’d gladly do, provided I could approximately never again pay attention to it.

Here’s what I came up with. Let’s see how it pans out.

Prerequisites

My Virtual Private Server at Panix is NetBSD/amd64 with plenty of RAM, disk, and network headroom. Marginal additional usage is therefore free.

System- and pkgsrc-provided services are controlled by the usual NetBSD-style rc.d scripts.

Site-specific services are supervised, including supervision trees controlled by each user. In the following excerpt from my running system:

/service/sniproxy: up (pid 11133) 81141 seconds

/service/svscan-notqmail: up (pid 325) 846389 seconds
  /home/notqmail/service/renewssl.www.notqmail.org: up (pid 20951) 81141 seconds
  /home/notqmail/service/www.notqmail.org: up (pid 24539) 81141 seconds

/service/svscan-schmonz: up (pid 394) 846389 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/agilein3minut.es: up (pid 26325) 81141 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/latentagility.com: up (pid 24554) 81141 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/renewssl.agilein3minut.es: up (pid 18299) 81141 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/renewssl.latentagility.com: up (pid 14394) 81141 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/renewssl.schmonz.com: up (pid 12424) 81140 seconds
  /home/schmonz/service/schmonz.com: up (pid 21449) 81141 seconds

These packages were already installed:

I’ve added these:

I’m installing Minecraft’s server software manually, so it’ll be my job to notice when to update. Gotta automate the noticing, at least.

Oh, and I need a sensible process-supervision run script for the Minecraft server. The script needs to solve two application-specific system-integration problems:

  1. The usual supervision signals cause the server to terminate without saving the state of the world, which seems… rude
  2. The usual way to configure a running server is to get on the console and type commands into it, which implies having started it inside a tmux session (which, I love tmux, but not for this)

We solve for (1) by running the server as a child process and translating supervision signals into Minecraft commands.

We solve for (2) by connecting a named pipe to the server’s standard input. Then commands can be sent to the server using nothing but echo and ordinary output redirection.

Without even really being asked, my brain instantly produced the mechanisms for (1) in Perl. Then someone on #s6 shared a run script that additionally solved (2) while being more than twice as short as mine. How? By writing it in execline, a language expressly designed to be this kind of glue.

Step by step: Supervising Minecraft service

1. Create dedicated Unix user with its own process supervisor

useradd -m minecraft
mkdir -p /etc/service/svscan-minecraft/log
cd /etc/service/svscan-minecraft
cat > log/run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
exec setuidgid minecraft logger -t svscan-minecraft -p daemon.info
EOF
chmod +x log/run
cat > run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
exec 2>&1
exec setuidgid minecraft argv0 svscan svscan-minecraft /home/minecraft/service
EOF
chmod +x run
ln -s /etc/service/svscan-minecraft /var/service/

2. Globally, map hostname to IP

echo '+minecraft.schmonz.com:my.server.ip.here' >> /etc/tinydns/data
service tinydns reload

3. Locally, map port number to service name

echo 'minecraft 25565/tcp # minecraft.schmonz.com' >> /etc/services
service sysdb services

4. Allow incoming connections

$EDITOR /etc/npf.conf # add minecraft to $services_tcp
service npf reload

5. Download software

su minecraft
cd
mkdir -p sites/schmonz.com/minecraft/service
cd sites/schmonz.com/minecraft
mkdir bin
curl -o bin/server.jar https://piston-data.mojang.com/v1/objects/e6ec2f64e6080b9b5d9b471b291c33cc7f509733/server.jar

6. Accept EULA

mkdir data
echo 'eula=true' > data/eula.txt

7. Create control socket

mkfifo -m 0600 data/control

8. Symlink service logs where I usually look

ln -s data/logs logs

9. Create run script

cat > service/run <<'EOF'
#!/opt/pkg/bin/execlineb -P
fdmove -c 2 1
cd /home/minecraft/sites/schmonz.com/minecraft/data
redirfd -w -nb 3 control
trap -x
{
    SIGINT  { fdmove 1 3 s6-echo stop }
    SIGHUP  { fdmove 1 3 s6-echo stop }
    SIGTERM { fdmove 1 3 s6-echo stop }
    SIGPIPE { fdmove 1 3 s6-echo stop }
}
fdclose 3
redirfd -r 0 control
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar ../bin/server.jar --nogui
EOF
chmod +x service/run

10. Enable service

ln -s /home/minecraft/sites/schmonz.com/minecraft/service ~/service/minecraft.schmonz.com

11. Send initial configuration

cat > data/control <<'EOF'
whitelist on
whitelist add so-and-so
save-on
EOF

Be notified of updates

As the minecraft user:

1. Create service and run script

cd ~/sites/schmonz.com/minecraft
mkdir -p update/service/log
cd update/service

cat > log/run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh

exec multilog t ./main
EOF
chmod +x log/run

cat > run <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh

set -e
set -x

exec 2>&1

MINECRAFT_SERVER_DOWNLOAD_PAGE='https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server'

running_version() {
   unzip -p ../bin/server.jar version.json \
       | jq -r .name
}

available_version() {
   curl \
       --silent \
       --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0" "${MINECRAFT_SERVER_DOWNLOAD_PAGE}" \
       | html2text \
       | grep -i 'minecraft_server.* nogui' \
       | sed -e 's|.*minecraft_server\.||' -e 's|\.jar.*||'
}

main() {
   cd /home/minecraft/sites/schmonz.com/minecraft/data

   while true; do
       running="$(running_version)"
       available="$(available_version)"
       if [ "${running}" != "${available}" ]; then
           echo "MINECRAFT SERVER UPDATE NEEDED: ${running} -> ${available}"
           echo "" | mail -s "Please update Minecraft server: foo -> bar" [email protected]
       fi
       sleep 250000
   done
}

main "$@"
exit $?
EOF
chmod +x run

2. Enable service

ln -s /home/minecraft/sites/schmonz.com/minecraft/update/service ~/service/update.minecraft.schmonz.com

Further improvements

If it’s desirable to have the server periodically auto-save, I’ll add one more service that writes save-all to data/control.

If pkgsrc had a minecraft-server package (FreeBSD Ports does), I could delete my ad hoc update-notification service. Maybe I’ll make it so. I do like packaging things as part of my area-under-the-curve strategy.

My host-specific supervision trees and pkgsrc’s djbware rc.d scripts (qmailsmtpd, for instance) are still using daemontools. I’ve had the intention to switch to s6 for a long time. When it happens, I’ll be happy about it.

I haven’t tried to understand why there are “Java” and “Bedrock” editions of Minecraft, but it seems like they don’t interoperate. I’m sure there are reasons for this product segmentation and that I’ll come to better understand them in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, if and when I need to add Bedrock client interop, Geyser looks like an easy option — once I’m running something other than the vanilla upstream Minecraft Java server. I’ll need to try to understand that whole situation, too.

Are you an experienced Minecraft server administrator? Please share tips and advice!

NetBSD Package System (pkgsrc) on DaemonForums MetBSD 10.1 + pkgsrc + fonts
Note, after I updated to pkgsrc 2025Q1 on NetBSD 10.1 amd64, fonts for gvim, Emacs (GUI) were messed up using the same settings before the update.

This can be fixed by installing dejavu-ttf-2.37. I wonder if a dependency was missed.
UnitedBSD Note about NetBSD + pkgsrc 2025Q1 + fonts

I updated to pkgsrc 2025Q1 on NetBSD 10.1 amd64 and I noticed gvim and Emacs GUI fonts were messed up.

I did some digging and discovered if I manually install package dejavu-ttf-2.37 the issue is corrected.

I suspect a dependency of dejavu-ttf-2.37 could be missing. on 2024Q4 the issue did not exist.

John


April 09, 2025

Ruben Schade Local versus remote RSS readers

For years I ran a few different server-side RSS readers including Miniflux, FreshRSS, and a horrible pile of Perl I wrote that Did The Job™ for me. This was for one specific reason: I wanted to be able to read my feeds on the desktop and the phone, so I needed to be able to sync it somehow.

Hosting on a server does come with other benefits. You can poll feeds even if your desktop isn’t running, which reduces your chances of missing something. You can share the public endpoint with friends and family, if they also want something to read. And as mentioned, it’s independent of whatever devices you’re reading it on. I can dial our VPN, then load our RSS reader of choice from a phone, iPad, laptop, whatever. These tools aren’t exotic, so standing up FreshRSS using my standard FEMP stack in a FreeBSD jail or two isn’t much additional effort.

Still, I suppose three things happened recently for me that made me question if the additional infrastructure here is necessary:

  1. Is a positive integer. Ah, devilishly witty. I tell people it is, otherwise they might forget.

  2. I traded in my iPad; in our case for a classic Nintendo Wii at a second-hand store! Try as I might with a few of them, I’ve never been able to “click” with an iPad the same way I was able to for other touchscreen devices like PalmPilots.

  3. I’ve transitioned to using my phone as a glorified instant messenger to cut down on distractions and screen time, so I don’t read RSS there anymore either.

This means I now catch up on my RSS feeds in the morning the same way I do email: over coffee on my laptop on the balcony. With only one endpoint remaining, I’m wondering if I really need to be running another server, FreeBSD jail, or NetBSD chroot when a desktop application would be sufficient.

I was a massive NetNewsWire fan, though I’ve also loved using Thunderbird of all things to read and archive posts. I might go back to one of these for a while and see the difference. For all the Web can do for us, I do still prefer the responsiveness and experience of a good desktop application sometimes (I suppose some of my readers will tell me that emacs fits the bill there too… maybe one step at a time))))!

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-09.


April 07, 2025

UnitedBSD Compatibility with T16 gen1 laptop?

Hey everyone, I am in the market for a new laptop for running NetBSD on and I am considering this Thinkpad T16 gen1. My main concerns are suspend and WiFi compatibility. It appears that on FreeBSD at least the wifi works and since its a fairly generic Intel chip should probably work as well. However I am not really sure about suspend, do any of you guys have any tips about verifying whether suspend mode works on any given laptop or perhaps you could recomend a better laptop to buy it terms of compatibility?

Unix Stack Exchange How to prevent data loss when using blkdiscard on NetBSD

On Linux, this command

fstrim -av

I will remove all unused blocks (particularly interesting on VM disks and necessary on SSD to preserve/get a longer duration). NetBSD has a similar command called blkdiscard

This command wipes the entire disk, so it becomes unusable (correct me if I am wrong)

blkdiscard -v /dev/rwd...

I see there is a flag which starts to discard after some bytes (or MB)

blkdiscard -v -f 256m -m 128m /dev/rwd0c

Suppose my partition uses 6GB of data, to make a safe discard (my data still remains), is this the correct command?

blkdiscard -v -f 6000m -m 128m /dev/rwd0c

April 05, 2025

Ruben Schade What’s the point?

I’m trying something a bit different this morning. I’m going to answer the most common questions I receive from people asking “what’s the point?” of something. My experience is that people usually aren’t asking such questions in good faith, but let’s address them earnestly.

Many of these beg the question, by implying I should have been doing something else. I might address the implied question too, or not. I’m also also not going to hedge my bets by saying “in my opinion”, or “your mileage may vary”, because these were asked of me, so of course they’ll be informed by my specific opinions, use cases, constraints, tastes, and ideas.

With that out of the way, let’s begin!

What’s the point of blogging?

Or: Why not just post on social media?

Nobody was asking this in the early 2000s, because it was just something people did. Nowadays in the age of corrosive social media and silos, why not just post there instead? Wait, I think I just answered the question.

Blogging is a space you own. You can post what you want, about what you want, in whatever style you want. Your words are yours. And once you start blogging, you notice other people blogging too. You realise there’s an entire other world of people sharing their ideas and creativity and joy. It’s infectious.

I think blogging is fun. It lets me process thoughts I’m having, and have a bit of a conversation with people, albeit asynchronously. It’s great. I think more people should try it.

What’s the point of coffee shops/cafés?

Or: Why not just make coffee at home?

Writers, journalists, philosophers, and common folk have been going to coffee shops to think, discuss ideas, and plan revolutions for hundreds of years. Coffee is a wonderful drink, and there’s something so fun about having it in a cozy cafe or a place where people know your name.

I also have a theory that for introverts, coffee shops offer a degree of social interaction where you can be surrounded by people, but still doing your thing either with a book or laptop. They helped me tremendously with loneliness for much of my 20s.

What’s the point of running FreeBSD?

Or: Why not just run Linux?

FreeBSD is running the servers you’re reading this text on now. It’s great, you should try it. It does things similarly to Linux in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t chase the shiny to anywhere near the same extent. It’s mature, stable, predictable, and works.

FreeBSD has the best server tooling in the business, and its permissive licencing means it also integrates easily with other excellent tooling like OpenZFS. This makes things like rollbacks a cinch. I was a Solaris/SunOS admin briefly in high school and uni, and a lot of what I remember there is in modern FreeBSD too.

Linux people have recently started realising why reproducible builds are probably a good idea for security and auditability. Everything you need to get started with FreeBSD is in base, which you can build and verify yourself. Installing a system can be as simple as building a filesystem and extracting a tarball, whether on a new machine, a VM, or a jail.

As I say to everyone asking this: give it a try. Why not?

What’s the point of simulation games?

Or: Why can’t you just drive a real train, or fly a real aircraft?

Driving a train in the real world requires specialist education, and can only be operated in specific rights of way. This means no open-ended exploring on your train, or aircraft, or space ship. You need licences, flight plans, approvals, timetables, uniforms, and undergo evaluations for competency and hiring.

It’s also much cheaper to do these things in a simulator at home.

What’s the point of being an introvert/bi/etc?

Or: Why can’t you just be normal?

The question here implies that I decided to be these things. I did not, as you’ll find if you talk to people of many different persuasions. That seems especially hard for populist far right reactionaries, so the fact you’re even asking me is a positive first step.

Introversion and sexuality are both scales. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely introverted; occasionally I do feel recharged being among a group of friends who mean a lot to me. I’ve also tended to skew towards women much of the time, though my interests and fancies still vary considerably.

I am these things because it’s who I am. The good news is, I don’t need your approval.

What’s the point of running NetBSD?

Or: Why not just run FreeBSD or OpenBSD?

NetBSD was my first BSD, and it remains near and dear to me. Much of what I said about FreeBSD applies here too.

NetBSD is a great OS to work with. It’s small, predictable, and runs similarly on anything I throw it at. I love that I can run it on several of my retrocomputers regardless of architecture, and the skills I learn are transferable. I got a giddy thrill communicating between my SPARCStation and my childhood Pentium 1 once I got that network going.

Even if you never stray from amd64 though, NetBSD makes a great server and laptop OS. It’s easy to debug; NetBSD doesn’t bury things under multiple layers of complicated abstractions, or change the syntax of something just because it’s not the current hotness. It’s *nix like you remember it… the good bits, I mean.

Also, pkgsrc is usable almost everywhere.

What’s the point of running Linux for gaming?

Or: Why not just run Windows?

I maintain enough Windows at work, and I don’t want to bring it into the home. Thanks to the efforts of Valve, Wine, and too many other projects to mention, gaming on Linux is not only viable in 2025, but fantastic. It’s not without its challenges; desktop Linux never is. But I’d rather be dealing with those problems than Windows.

What’s the point of travel?

Or: Why not just … I dunno, not?

Travel is an itch. It’s the ultimate novelty. You’re going out to see the world, witnessing how different people live and do things. You get to explore a new train system. You get to try new food. It forces you out of your groove, rut, comfort zone, whatever cliché you can think of. It’s stimulating and fun in a way nothing else is. No matter how much you prepare, there will always be surprises.

Clara and I deliberately chose the apartment we’re in now, and save most of our incomes, precisely to let us do this. It’s what we first bonded over, and it remains our favourite thing in the world to do.

What’s the point of anything?

Or: Why not just do nothing?

Honestly, at that stage I’m not qualified to answer you in a complete way. I’ve been where you are, and understand how being in such a state affects everything from your mood, appetite, motivation, self-worth, and outlook on life. Mine was triggered by family trauma when I was in my early 20s that I’m still only just recovering from now. You need to seek out help, because you deserve it.

But hand to heart, I’d say as an immediate first step: go outside. No, really. Go for a walk if you can. Leave the electronics behind, and wander. The medical literature is clear on this point: moving makes you feel better. Tackle the small things first, then you’ll be in a better mental state to address the bigger things.

What’s the point of retrocomputing?

Or: Why not just use modern machines?

I still get this asked on a regular basis, believe it or not.

Retrocomputing is a puzzle. It’s so much fun getting something working again. It’s like a living history lesson. It’s taught me more about electronics and computer fundamentals than years of lectures and seminars.

It’s also nostalgic, which as a nostalgic fool speaks to me. I love that I can power up the first childhood PC I built myself, or check out the PalmPilot I used in primary school for some reason. Like travel, I love seeing how writers, gamers, educators, engineers, and accountants must have used their Apple IIs, or the Commodore 64.

It’s a half-baked idea at the moment, but I’m also working on a theory that so many people are into retrocomputing now given the depressing state of modern IT. When it’s not peddling snakeoil and lies it’s selling our privacy and trashing our democracies. There’s still so much good in modern computing, but retrocomputing gives you an opportunity to pare back the bullshit and engage with technology again in a fun—and dare I say, more wholesome—way.

It’s also worth mentioning that retrocomputing today is great precicely because of modern IT. We have fabs that can print indie circuit boards for us. We can collaborate on code, designs, and projects for new and fun addons and storage replacements for old machines. This is something that simply wasn’t possible at the time.

It’s fun, I guess is my point. Which actually applies to most of the questions on this post, so maybe we’ll wrap it up here.

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-06.


April 03, 2025

Ruben Schade The Good News Train: Week 14, 2025

To make up for yesterday, I thought we all needed some good news. Here’s what I’ve read this week:

By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-04-04.


March 16, 2025

DragonFly BSD Digest Lazy Reading for 2025/03/16

Done early!


March 11, 2025

NetBSD General on DaemonForums NetBSD 10.x turns off the display when booting off USB 3 SSD
The NetBSD 10.1 kernel turns off the display when booting off a USB 3 SSD on my ProDesk 600 G1. (The 9.4 kernel doesn't do that, nor does 10.1 do it if it boots off a CD.) When booting the 10.1 kernel with the -a switch, after it asks for boot and dump devices, and I enter the kernel debugger (Ctrl-Alt-Esc) at the last question about the file system type and issue the "continue" command there, it starts outputting repeatedly
Code:

umass0: BBB reset failed, TIMEOUT
xhci0: xhci_set_dequeue: endpoint 0x0, timed out

Also, both 10.1 and 9.4 do a weird thing on that machine: a few minutes (how many? it's different each time!) past bootstrap the "Dhrystone" and "Coremark" integer (but not floating point) performance drops about 5 to 7 times while idle state CPU load remains near zero and CPU temperature normal. This problem doesn't exist with the other 6 operating systems on that machine nor with NetBSD 10.1 on another machine.

I've attached the "/var/run/dmesg.boot" file of NetBSD 9.4 (can't do that for 10.1 because it doesn't go up to the point of mounting the root device).

Attached Files
File Type: zip dmesg.boot.zip (6.2 KB)

March 10, 2025

OS News Exploring the (discontinued) hybrid Debian GNU/kFreeBSD distribution

For decades, Linux and BSD have stood as two dominant yet fundamentally different branches of the Unix-like operating system world. While Linux distributions, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, have grown to dominate the open-source ecosystem, BSD-based systems like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD have remained the preferred choice for those seeking security, performance, and licensing flexibility. But what if you could combine the best of both worlds—Debian’s vast package ecosystem with FreeBSD’s robust and efficient kernel?

Enter Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, a unique experiment that merges Debian’s familiar userland with the FreeBSD kernel, offering a hybrid system that takes advantage of FreeBSD’s technical prowess while maintaining the ease of use associated with Debian. This article dives into the world of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, exploring its architecture, installation, benefits, challenges, and real-world applications.

↫ George Whittaker

More of a list of upsides and downsides than an actual in-depth article, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. There’s a variety of attempts out there to somehow marry the Linux and BSD worlds, and each of them takes a unique approach. I’m not sure the Debian userland with a FreeBSD kernel is the way to go, though, and it seems I’m not alone – Debian GNU/kFreeBSD was officially dropped from Debian in 2015 or so, and after a flurry of unofficial activity in 2019, it was discontinued completely in 2023 due to a lack of activity and developer interest. Odd that the source article doesn’t mention that.

If you’re still interested in a combination of Linux and BSD, I’d keep an eye on Chimera Linux instead. It’s very actively developed, focuses on portable code by supporting many architectures, and its developers are veterans in this space. I have my eye on Chimera Linux as my future distribution of choice.


March 09, 2025

Benny Siegert on pkgsrc Developing pkgsrc with git

I stopped developing pkgsrc with CVS.

Quick bit of background: NetBSD is still using CVS as its version control system. The decision to move to something else has been taken long ago, but the switch has not happened as of today.

Working with CVS is painful for many reasons. For instance, there is no way to see your local changes without waiting several minutes for a cvs up -n. A full tree update (cvs up) churns for quite a while before it even starts updating any files.


March 06, 2025

OS News NetBSD on a JavaStation

Back when Java was still a new programming language, Sun had the idea of building a computer specifically designed for Java, unique processor running byte-code as its native machine code and all. This whole endeavour proved to be more complicated than Sun had hoped, and as such, they eventually abandoned the idea of a Java processor in favour of plain SPARC. When the JavaStation shipped, it was a regular SPARC workstation without a hard drive, running something called JavaOS from flash memory.

Since JavaOS is, of course, long gone, what can you do with JavaStation today? Well, you apparently can run NetBSD on it, but it’s quite an ordeal. The JavaStation needs to boot from the network using a combination of RARP, NFS, and more, and surprisingly, this entire setup, including the computer acting as the ‘server’ for the JavaStation, is well-documented and supported by NetBSD. Once you’ve gone through all the steps, you’ll end up with a JavaStation running the latest release of NetBSD, which is pretty cool.

Obviously there is still a lot to do; as you can see postfix isn’t happy, and the swapfile security needs tightening up for a start. But we do now have a functional NetBSD system running on a vintage network computer!

↫ Old Fart’s Almanac

NetBSD’s continued support for the most arcane of hardware will never cease to amaze me.


February 27, 2025

NetBSD Blog The NetBSD Foundation will participate in Google Summer of Code 2025!
Google Summer of Code logo

We are happy to announce that The NetBSD Foundation will participate in Google Summer of Code 2025!

Would you like to contribute to NetBSD and/or pkgsrc in the next months? Google Summer of Code is a great chance for that!

You can find a list of possible projects at Google Summer of Code project page. Of course, you can also propose your own!

Please reach us via #netbsd-code IRC channel on Libera.Chat and/or via mailing lists.

If you are more interested about Google Summer of Code please also check official homepage at g.co/gsoc.

Looking forward to a great Summer!


February 23, 2025

OS News Illumos on SPARC: possible, but problematic

While SPARC may no longer be supported by the main Illumos project, it still works and is still viable. This page brings together a variety of information regarding Illumos on SPARC, not necessarily limited to Tribblix.

↫ Tribblix website

It seems running Tribblix – and other Illumos-based distributions – on SPARC is still possible, but there are some serious limitations anyone who has tried to use even slightly older operating systems will be fairly familiar with. For instance, since there’s no Rust for Illumos on SPARC, Firefox and other applications that use it are not available, and Tribblix in particular no longer builds Pale Moon (or LibreOffice). Rust is available on Solaris 11, though, so it may be possible to bring it to Illumos. In a similar vein, Go also isn’t available for SPARC either.

As far as hardware support goes, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, as systems that should work do, in fact, not, and even systems that do work run into a very familiar problem: graphics card support is a big issue. This is a problem plaguing X.org on any outdated or sidelined architecture, and it seems Illumos is also affected. Obviously, this greatly reduces the usefulness of Illumos on workstations, but is less of an issue on servers. You’ll run into the same problem when trying to run NetBSD, OpenBSD, or Linux in, say, PA-RISC hardware.

Of course, the problem is both a lack of people interested in and capable of contributing to keeping stuff running on older architectures, further spurred on by a dwindling supply of hardware available at reasonable prices. Sad, but there isn’t much that can be done about it.


February 17, 2025

NetBSD Installation and Upgrading on DaemonForums EFI boot problem
Hello,
I am trying to boot fresh NetBSD 10.1 on older HP machine HP Compaq Elite 8300. System disk is GPT and contains Window and above NetBSD installation. I am using rEFInd for dual-boot.

Problem is that after selecting NetBSD boot entry there does not appear text-mode icon with:
...NetBSD/x86 EFI Boot (x64)...
So (IMHO) bootx64.efi has some problem.
There only appears some address ranges quickly scrolling up and then it stops.

But
when I boot from USB key and use manual boot parameters to boot OS from disk:
boot NAME=NetBSD:netbsd then OS on the disk successfully starts up.

I tried to rewrite bootx64.efi on EFI partition with /usr/mdec/bootx64.efi
or with bootx64.efi present on USB key, it does not help.
I don't know to explain myself this behavior.
My NetBSD installation is on wd0 dk4.
Any ideas ?
Code:

[    1.000000] Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
[    1.000000]    2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
[    1.000000]    2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023,
[    1.000000]    2024
[    1.000000]    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
[    1.000000] Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
[    1.000000]    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

[    1.000000] NetBSD 10.1 (GENERIC) #0: Mon Dec 16 13:08:11 UTC 2024
[    1.000000]        mkrepro%mkrepro.NetBSD.org@localhost:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC
[    1.000000] total memory = 24450 MB
[    1.000000] avail memory = 23624 MB
[    1.000000] timecounter: Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
[    1.000000] Kernelized RAIDframe activated
[    1.000000] RTC BIOS diagnostic error 0x20<config_unit>
[    1.000000] timecounter: Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 100
[    1.000004] efi: systbl at pa c943df18
[    1.000004] mainbus0 (root)
[    1.000004] ACPI: RSDP 0x00000000C9BA3000 000024 (v02 HPQOEM)
[    1.000004] ACPI: XSDT 0x00000000C9BA3080 000084 (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 AMI  00010013)
[    1.000004] ACPI: FACP 0x00000000C9BACFE8 0000F4 (v04 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 AMI  00010013)
[    1.000004] ACPI: DSDT 0x00000000C9BA3198 009E4A (v02 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 00000017 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] ACPI: FACS 0x00000000C9BB5F80 000040
[    1.000004] ACPI: APIC 0x00000000C9BAD0E0 0000BC (v03 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 AMI  00010013)
[    1.000004] ACPI: MCFG 0x00000000C9BAD1A0 00003C (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 MSFT 00000097)
[    1.000004] ACPI: HPET 0x00000000C9BAD1E0 000038 (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 AMI. 00000005)
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0x00000000C9BAD218 000460 (v01 IdeRef IdeTable 00001000 INTL 20091112)
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0x00000000C9BAD678 00544C (v01 COMPAQ WMI      00000001 MSFT 03000001)
[    1.000004] ACPI: SLIC 0x00000000C9BB2AC8 000176 (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 00000001      00000000)
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0x00000000C9BB2C40 0009AA (v01 PmRef  Cpu0Ist  00003000 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0x00000000C9BB35F0 000A92 (v01 PmRef  CpuPm    00003000 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] ACPI: DMAR 0x00000000C9BB4088 0000B8 (v01 INTEL  SNB      00000001 INTL 00000001)
[    1.000004] ACPI: ASF! 0x00000000C9BB4140 0000A5 (v32 INTEL  HCG    00000001 TFSM 000F4240)
[    1.000004] ACPI: BGRT 0x00000000C9BB41E8 00003C (v00 HPQOEM SLIC-BPC 01072009 AMI  00010013)
[    1.000004] ACPI: 5 ACPI AML tables successfully acquired and loaded
[    1.000004] ioapic0 at mainbus0 apid 2: pa 0xfec00000, version 0x20, 24 pins
[    1.000004] cpu0 at mainbus0 apid 0
[    1.000004] cpu0: Use lfence to serialize rdtsc
[    1.000004] cpu0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu0: node 0, package 0, core 0, smt 0
[    1.000004] cpu1 at mainbus0 apid 2
[    1.000004] cpu1: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu1: node 0, package 0, core 1, smt 0
[    1.000004] cpu2 at mainbus0 apid 4
[    1.000004] cpu2: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu2: node 0, package 0, core 2, smt 0
[    1.000004] cpu3 at mainbus0 apid 6
[    1.000004] cpu3: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu3: node 0, package 0, core 3, smt 0
[    1.000004] cpu4 at mainbus0 apid 1
[    1.000004] cpu4: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu4: node 0, package 0, core 0, smt 1
[    1.000004] cpu5 at mainbus0 apid 3
[    1.000004] cpu5: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu5: node 0, package 0, core 1, smt 1
[    1.000004] cpu6 at mainbus0 apid 5
[    1.000004] cpu6: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu6: node 0, package 0, core 2, smt 1
[    1.000004] cpu7 at mainbus0 apid 7
[    1.000004] cpu7: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz, id 0x306a9
[    1.000004] cpu7: node 0, package 0, core 3, smt 1
[    1.000004] acpi0 at mainbus0: Intel ACPICA 20221020
[    1.000004] acpi0: X/RSDT: OemId <HPQOEM,SLIC-BPC,01072009>, AslId <AMI ,00010013>
[    1.000004] acpi0: MCFG: segment 0, bus 0-63, address 0x00000000f8000000
[    1.000004] ACPI: Dynamic OEM Table Load:
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0xFFFFE6B95FCBA008 00083B (v01 PmRef  Cpu0Cst  00003001 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] ACPI: Dynamic OEM Table Load:
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0xFFFFE6BE573F6408 000303 (v01 PmRef  ApIst    00003000 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] ACPI: Dynamic OEM Table Load:
[    1.000004] ACPI: SSDT 0xFFFFE6B95FC50408 000119 (v01 PmRef  ApCst    00003000 INTL 20051117)
[    1.000004] acpi0: SCI interrupting at int 9
[    1.000004] acpi0: fixed power button present
[    1.000004] timecounter: Timecounter "ACPI-Safe" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 900
[    1.010635] hpet0 at acpi0: high precision event timer (mem 0xfed00000-0xfed00400)
[    1.010635] timecounter: Timecounter "hpet0" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 2000
[    1.011366] acpiec0 at acpi0 (H_EC, PNP0C09-1): not present
[    1.011366] TPMX (PNP0C01) at acpi0 not configured
[    1.011366] FWHD (INT0800) at acpi0 not configured
[    1.011366] attimer1 at acpi0 (TIMR, PNP0100): io 0x40-0x43,0x50-0x53 irq 0
[    1.011366] pckbc1 at acpi0 (PS2K, PNP0303) (kbd port): io 0x60,0x64 irq 1
[    1.011366] pckbc2 at acpi0 (PS2M, PNP0F03) (aux port): irq 12
[    1.011366] com0 at acpi0 (UAR1, PNP0501-1): io 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4
[    1.011366] com0: ns16550a, 16-byte FIFO
[    1.011366] acpivga0 at acpi0 (VGA): ACPI Display Adapter
[    1.011366] acpiout0 at acpivga0 (LCD, 0x0110): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout0: brightness levels: [0-19]
[    1.011366] acpivga0: connected output devices:
[    1.011366] acpivga0:  0x0110 (acpiout0): LCD Panel, head 0
[    1.011366] acpivga1 at acpi0 (GFX0): ACPI Display Adapter
[    1.011366] acpiout1 at acpivga1 (DD01, 0x0100): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout2 at acpivga1 (DD02, 0x0400): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout2: brightness levels: [0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,85,90,95,100]
[    1.011366] acpiout3 at acpivga1 (DD03, 0x0300): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout4 at acpivga1 (DD04, 0x0301): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout5 at acpivga1 (DD05, 0x0302): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout6 at acpivga1 (DD06, 0x0303): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout7 at acpivga1 (DD07, 0x0304): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout8 at acpivga1 (DD08, 0x0305): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout9 at acpivga1 (LCD, 0x0110): ACPI Display Output Device
[    1.011366] acpiout9: brightness levels: [0-19]
[    1.011366] acpivga1: connected output devices:
[    1.011366] acpivga1:  0x0110 (acpiout9): LCD Panel, head 0
[    1.011366] acpibut0 at acpi0 (PWRB, PNP0C0C-170): ACPI Power Button
[    1.011366] MEM2 (PNP0C01) at acpi0 not configured
[    1.011366] acpiwmi0 at acpi0 (WMID, PNP0C14-0): ACPI WMI Interface
[    1.011366] wmihp0 at acpiwmi0: HP WMI mappings
[    1.011366] acpifan0 at acpi0 (FAN0, PNP0C0B-0): ACPI Fan
[    1.011366] acpifan1 at acpi0 (FAN1, PNP0C0B-1): ACPI Fan
[    1.011366] acpifan2 at acpi0 (FAN2, PNP0C0B-2): ACPI Fan
[    1.011366] acpifan3 at acpi0 (FAN3, PNP0C0B-3): ACPI Fan
[    1.011366] acpifan4 at acpi0 (FAN4, PNP0C0B-4): ACPI Fan
[    1.011366] acpitz0 at acpi0 (TZ00)
[    1.011366] acpitz0: active cooling level 0: 71.0C
[    1.011366] acpitz0: active cooling level 1: 55.0C
[    1.011366] acpitz0: active cooling level 2: 0.0C
[    1.011366] acpitz0: active cooling level 3: 0.0C
[    1.011366] acpitz0: active cooling level 4: 0.0C
[    1.011366] acpitz0: levels: critical 105.0 C
[    1.011366] acpitz1 at acpi0 (TZ01): cpu0 cpu4 cpu1 cpu5 cpu2 cpu6 cpu3 cpu7
[    1.011366] acpitz1: levels: critical 105.0 C, passive 95.0 C, passive cooling
[    1.011366] ACPI: Enabled 4 GPEs in block 00 to 3F
[    1.011366] pckbd0 at pckbc1 (kbd slot)
[    1.011366] pckbc1: using irq 1 for kbd slot
[    1.011366] wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard
[    1.011366] pms0 at pckbc1 (aux slot)
[    1.011366] pms0: autoconfiguration error: Failed to get E6 signature.
[    1.011366] pms0: autoconfiguration error: Failed to initialize an ALPS device.
[    1.011366] pckbc1: using irq 12 for aux slot
[    1.011366] wsmouse0 at pms0 mux 0
[    1.011366] pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1
[    1.011366] pci0: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, rd/mult, wr/inv ok
[    1.011366] pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0: Intel Ivy Bridge Host Bridge (rev. 0x09)
[    1.011366] ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0: Intel Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev. 0x09)
[    1.011366] ppb0: PCI Express capability version 2 <Root Port of PCI-E Root Complex> x16 @ 8.0GT/s
[    1.011366] pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
[    1.011366] pci1: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, wr/inv ok
[    1.011366] nouveau0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0: NVIDIA product 107d (rev. 0xa1)
[    1.011366] hdaudio0 at pci1 dev 0 function 1: HD Audio Controller
[    1.011366] hdaudio0: interrupting at msi0 vec 0
[    1.011366] hdaudio0: HDA ver. 1.0, OSS 2, ISS 4, BSS 0, SDO 4, 64-bit
[    1.011366] hdafg0 at hdaudio0: NVIDIA product 001c
[    1.011366] hdafg0: DP00 8ch: Digital Out [Jack]
[    1.011366] hdafg0: DP01 8ch: Digital Out [Jack]
[    1.011366] hdafg0: 8ch/0ch 48000Hz PCM16*
[    1.011366] audio0 at hdafg0: playback, capture, full duplex, independent
[    1.011366] audio0: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for playback
[    1.011366] audio0: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for recording
[    1.011366] spkr0 at audio0: PC Speaker (synthesized)
[    1.011366] wsbell at spkr0 not configured
[    1.011366] i915drmkms0 at pci0 dev 2 function 0: Intel Ivy Bridge Integrated Graphics Device (rev. 0x09)
[    1.011366] xhci0 at pci0 dev 20 function 0: Intel 7 Series USB xHCI (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] xhci0: 64-bit DMA
[    1.011366] xhci0: interrupting at msi1 vec 0
[    1.011366] xhci0: xHCI version 1.0
[    1.011366] usb0 at xhci0: USB revision 3.0
[    1.011366] usb1 at xhci0: USB revision 2.0
[    1.011366] Intel 7 Series MEI Controller (miscellaneous communications, revision 0x04) at pci0 dev 22 function 0 not configured
[    1.011366] puc0 at pci0 dev 22 function 3: Intel 7 Series KT (com)
[    1.011366] com2 at puc0 port 0 (16550-compatible): ioaddr 0xf140, interrupting at ioapic0 pin 19
[    1.011366] com2: ns16550a, 16-byte FIFO
[    1.011366] wm0 at pci0 dev 25 function 0, 64-bit DMA: PCH2 LAN (82579LM) Controller (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] wm0: interrupting at msi2 vec 0
[    1.011366] wm0: PCI-Express bus
[    1.011366] wm0: 2048 words FLASH, version 0.13.4
[    1.011366] wm0: RX packet buffer size: 26KB
[    1.011366] wm0: Ethernet address 10:60:4b:81:4e:f0
[    1.011366] wm0: 0x6a4080<FLASH,PCIE,ASF_FIRM,AMT,WOL,EEE>
[    1.011366] ihphy0 at wm0 phy 2: i82579 10/100/1000 media interface, rev. 3
[    1.011366] ihphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto
[    1.011366] ehci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 0: Intel 7 Series USB EHCI (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] ehci0: 64-bit DMA
[    1.011366] ehci0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 16
[    1.011366] ehci0: BIOS has given up ownership
[    1.011366] ehci0: EHCI version 1.0
[    1.011366] ehci0: Using DMA subregion for control data structures
[    1.011366] usb2 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
[    1.011366] hdaudio1 at pci0 dev 27 function 0: HD Audio Controller
[    1.011366] hdaudio1: interrupting at msi3 vec 0
[    1.011366] hdaudio1: HDA ver. 1.0, OSS 4, ISS 4, BSS 0, SDO 1, 64-bit
[    1.011366] hdafg1 at hdaudio1: Realtek product 0221
[    1.011366] hdafg1: DAC00 2ch: Speaker [Built-In]
[    1.011366] hdafg1: DAC01 2ch: Speaker [Jack], HP Out [Jack]
[    1.011366] hdafg1: ADC02 2ch: Line In [Jack], Mic In [Jack]
[    1.011366] hdafg1: 2ch/2ch 44100Hz 48000Hz 96000Hz 192000Hz PCM16 PCM20 PCM24 AC3
[    1.011366] audio1 at hdafg1: playback, capture, full duplex, independent
[    1.011366] audio1: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for playback
[    1.011366] audio1: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for recording
[    1.011366] spkr1 at audio1: PC Speaker (synthesized)
[    1.011366] wsbell at spkr1 not configured
[    1.011366] hdafg2 at hdaudio1: Intel product 2806
[    1.011366] hdafg2: DP00 8ch: Digital Out [Jack]
[    1.011366] hdafg2: 8ch/0ch 48000Hz PCM16*
[    1.011366] audio2 at hdafg2: playback, capture, full duplex, independent
[    1.011366] audio2: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for playback
[    1.011366] audio2: slinear_le:16 2ch 48000Hz, blk 1920 bytes (10ms) for recording
[    1.011366] spkr2 at audio2: PC Speaker (synthesized)
[    1.011366] wsbell at spkr2 not configured
[    1.011366] ppb1 at pci0 dev 28 function 0: Intel 7 Series PCIe (rev. 0xc4)
[    1.011366] ppb1: PCI Express capability version 2 <Root Port of PCI-E Root Complex> x4 @ 5.0GT/s
[    1.011366] ppb1: link is x1 @ 2.5GT/s
[    1.011366] pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
[    1.011366] pci2: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, wr/inv ok
[    1.011366] ppb2 at pci2 dev 0 function 0: Texas Instruments product 8231 (rev. 0x03)
[    1.011366] ppb2: PCI Express capability version 1 <PCI-E to PCI/PCI-X Bridge>
[    1.011366] pci3 at ppb2 bus 3
[    1.011366] pci3: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, wr/inv ok
[    1.011366] fwohci0 at pci3 dev 0 function 0: Texas Instruments product 8235 (rev. 0x01)
[    1.011366] fwohci0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 16
[    1.011366] fwohci0: OHCI version 1.10 (ROM=1)
[    1.011366] fwohci0: No. of Isochronous channels is 4.
[    1.011366] fwohci0: EUI64 01:02:03:04:00:00:01:5a
[    1.011366] fwohci0: Phy 1394a available S400, 2 ports.
[    1.011366] fwohci0: Link S400, max_rec 2048 bytes.
[    1.011366] ieee1394if0 at fwohci0: IEEE1394 bus
[    1.011366] fwip0 at ieee1394if0: IP over IEEE1394
[    1.011366] fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
[    1.011366] fwohci0: Clear PME# now
[    1.011366] ppb3 at pci0 dev 28 function 4: Intel 7 Series PCIe (rev. 0xc4)
[    1.011366] ppb3: PCI Express capability version 2 <Root Port of PCI-E Root Complex> x1 @ 5.0GT/s
[    1.011366] ppb3: link is x1 @ 2.5GT/s
[    1.011366] pci4 at ppb3 bus 4
[    1.011366] pci4: i/o space, memory space enabled, rd/line, wr/inv ok
[    1.011366] wm1 at pci4 dev 0 function 0, 64-bit DMA: Intel i82574L (rev. 0x00)
[    1.011366] wm1: for TX and RX interrupting at msix4 vec 0 affinity to 1
[    1.011366] wm1: for TX and RX interrupting at msix4 vec 1 affinity to 2
[    1.011366] wm1: for LINK interrupting at msix4 vec 2
[    1.011366] wm1: PCI-Express bus
[    1.011366] wm1: 2048 words FLASH, version 1.8.0, Image Unique ID ffffffff
[    1.011366] wm1: ASPM L0s and L1 are disabled to workaround the errata.
[    1.011366] wm1: RX packet buffer size: 20KB
[    1.011366] wm1: Ethernet address 68:05:ca:1a:df:15
[    1.011366] wm1: 0x224080<FLASH,PCIE,ASF_FIRM,WOL>
[    1.011366] makphy0 at wm1 phy 1: Marvell 88E1149 Gigabit PHY, rev. 1
[    1.011366] makphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto
[    1.011366] ehci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 0: Intel 7 Series USB EHCI (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] ehci1: 64-bit DMA
[    1.011366] ehci1: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 23
[    1.011366] ehci1: BIOS has given up ownership
[    1.011366] ehci1: EHCI version 1.0
[    1.011366] ehci1: Using DMA subregion for control data structures
[    1.011366] usb3 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
[    1.011366] ppb4 at pci0 dev 30 function 0: Intel 82801BA Hub-PCI Bridge (rev. 0xa4)
[    1.011366] pci5 at ppb4 bus 5
[    1.011366] pci5: i/o space, memory space enabled
[    1.011366] fxp0 at pci5 dev 0 function 0: i82558 Ethernet (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] fxp0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 20
[    1.011366] fxp0: May need receiver lock-up workaround
[    1.011366] fxp0: Ethernet address 00:a0:c9:9a:8c:21
[    1.011366] inphy0 at fxp0 phy 1: i82555 10/100 media interface, rev. 0
[    1.011366] inphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
[    1.011366] ichlpcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0: Intel Q77 LPC (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] timecounter: Timecounter "ichlpcib0" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
[    1.011366] ichlpcib0: 24-bit timer
[    1.011366] tco0 at ichlpcib0: TCO (watchdog) timer configured.
[    1.011366] tco0: Min/Max interval 1/367 seconds
[    1.011366] pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 2: Intel 7 Series (desktop) SATA Controller (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] pciide0: bus-master DMA support present, but unused (no driver support)
[    1.011366] pciide0: primary channel configured to native-PCI mode
[    1.011366] pciide0: using ioapic0 pin 19 for native-PCI interrupt
[    1.011366] atabus0 at pciide0 channel 0
[    1.011366] pciide0: secondary channel configured to native-PCI mode
[    1.011366] atabus1 at pciide0 channel 1
[    1.011366] ichsmb0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3: Intel 7 Series SMBus Controller (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] ichsmb0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 18
[    1.011366] iic0 at ichsmb0: I2C bus
[    1.011366] pciide1 at pci0 dev 31 function 5: Intel 7 Series (desktop) SATA Controller (rev. 0x04)
[    1.011366] pciide1: bus-master DMA support present, but unused (no driver support)
[    1.011366] pciide1: primary channel wired to native-PCI mode
[    1.011366] pciide1: using ioapic0 pin 19 for native-PCI interrupt
[    1.011366] atabus2 at pciide1 channel 0
[    1.011366] pciide1: secondary channel wired to native-PCI mode
[    1.011366] atabus3 at pciide1 channel 1
[    1.011366] isa0 at ichlpcib0
[    1.011366] tpm0 at isa0 iomem 0xfed40000-0xfed40fff irq 7
[    1.011366] tpm0: device 0x000b15d1 rev 0x10
[    1.011366] pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
[    1.011366] spkr3 at pcppi0: PC Speaker
[    1.011366] wsbell at spkr3 not configured
[    1.011366] midi0 at pcppi0: PC speaker
[    1.011366] sysbeep0 at pcppi0
[    1.011366] attimer1: attached to pcppi0
[    1.011366] acpicpu0 at cpu0: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: C1: FFH, lat  1 us, pow  1000 mW
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: C2: FFH, lat  59 us, pow  500 mW
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: C3: FFH, lat  80 us, pow  350 mW
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P0: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 77000 mW, 3401 MHz, turbo boost
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P1: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 77000 mW, 3400 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P2: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 73840 mW, 3300 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P3: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 67694 mW, 3100 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P4: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 64705 mW, 3000 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P5: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 61772 mW, 2900 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P6: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 58907 mW, 2800 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P7: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 53315 mW, 2600 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P8: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 50601 mW, 2500 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P9: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 47940 mW, 2400 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P10: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 42787 mW, 2200 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P11: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 40284 mW, 2100 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P12: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 37833 mW, 2000 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P13: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 35433 mW, 1900 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P14: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 31421 mW, 1700 MHz
[    1.011366] acpicpu0: P15: FFH, lat  10 us, pow 29164 mW, 1600 MHz
[    1.011366] coretemp0 at cpu0: thermal sensor, 1 C resolution, Tjmax=105
[    1.011366] acpicpu1 at cpu1: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] coretemp1 at cpu1: thermal sensor, 1 C resolution, Tjmax=105
[    1.011366] acpicpu2 at cpu2: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] coretemp2 at cpu2: thermal sensor, 1 C resolution, Tjmax=105
[    1.011366] acpicpu3 at cpu3: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] coretemp3 at cpu3: thermal sensor, 1 C resolution, Tjmax=105
[    1.011366] acpicpu4 at cpu4: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] acpicpu5 at cpu5: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] acpicpu6 at cpu6: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] acpicpu7 at cpu7: ACPI CPU
[    1.011366] fwohci0: BUS reset
[    1.011366] fwohci0: node_id=0xc800ffc0, gen=1, CYCLEMASTER mode
[    1.011366] ieee1394if0: 1 nodes, maxhop <= 0 cable IRM irm(0) (me)
[    1.011366] ieee1394if0: bus manager 0
[    1.011366] timecounter: Timecounter "clockinterrupt" frequency 100 Hz quality 0
[    1.011366] timecounter: Timecounter "TSC" frequency 3392297000 Hz quality 3000
[    1.226499] uhub0 at usb0: NetBSD (0x0000) xHCI root hub (0x0000), class 9/0, rev 3.00/1.00, addr 0
[    1.238427] uhub0: 4 ports with 4 removable, self powered
[    1.238427] uhub1 at usb1: NetBSD (0x0000) xHCI root hub (0x0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 0
[    1.268426] uhub1: 4 ports with 4 removable, self powered
[    1.288426] uhub2 at usb2: NetBSD (0x0000) EHCI root hub (0x0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
[    1.308426] uhub2: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
[    1.308426] uhub3 at usb3: NetBSD (0x0000) EHCI root hub (0x0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
[    1.328426] uhub3: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
[    1.328426] IPsec: Initialized Security Association Processing.
[    1.358427] tpm0: read 8 bytes, expected 10
[    1.378430] tpm0: deactivating entropy source
[    1.398426] wd0 at atabus0 drive 1
[    1.418426] wd0: <MTFDDAK128MAM-1J1>
[    1.438426] wd0: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
[    1.438426] wd0: 119 GB, 248085 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 250069680 sectors
[    1.468426] wd0: GPT GUID: 0b27f7c4-74b3-401c-88cd-c0d8c16ad0c3
[    1.468426] dk0 at wd0: "Basic data partition", 1021952 blocks at 2048, type: <unknown>
[    1.488425] dk1 at wd0: "EFI system partition", 204800 blocks at 1024000, type: msdos
[    1.508425] dk2 at wd0: "Microsoft reserved partition", 32768 blocks at 1228800, type: ntfs
[    1.528425] dk3 at wd0: "10bd2c78-377a-4082-8212-c1176362ec16", 80660480 blocks at 1261568, type: ntfs
[    1.548425] autoconfiguration error: wd0: wedge named 'Basic data partition' already existed, using '10bd2c78-377a-4082-8212-c1176362ec16'
[    1.568425] dk4 at wd0: "NetBSD", 163839936 blocks at 81922112, type: ffs
[    1.588425] dk5 at wd0: "swap", 4307535 blocks at 245762112, type: swap
[    1.618425] wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 5 (Ultra/100)
[    1.618425] wd1 at atabus1 drive 0
[    1.638425] wd1: <WDC WD10EZEX-22BN5A0>
[    1.658425] wd1: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
[    1.658425] wd1: 931 GB, 1938021 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 1953525168 sectors (4096 bytes/physsect)
[    1.748425] wd1: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133)
[    1.748425] wd2 at atabus1 drive 1
[    1.768424] wd2: <WDC WD5000AACS-00G8B0>
[    1.788424] wd2: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
[    1.788424] wd2: 465 GB, 969021 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 976773168 sectors
[    2.328423] wd2: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133)
[    2.388433] uhub4 at uhub3 port 1: vendor 8087 (0x8087) product 0024 (0x0024), class 9/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2
[    2.408421] uhub4: single transaction translator
[    2.428421] uhub5 at uhub2 port 1: vendor 8087 (0x8087) product 0024 (0x0024), class 9/0, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2
[    2.448421] uhub5: single transaction translator
[    2.468421] uhub5: 6 ports with 6 removable, self powered
[    2.468421] uhub4: 8 ports with 8 removable, self powered
[    3.678417] umass0 at uhub5 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0
[    3.698416] umass0: Corsair (0x1b1c) Voyager 3.0 (0x1a03), rev 2.10/1.10, addr 3
[    3.718415] umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
[    3.728415] scsibus0 at umass0: 2 targets, 1 lun per target
[    3.748415] sd0 at scsibus0 target 0 lun 0: <Corsair, Voyager 3.0, 000A> disk removable
[    3.768415] sd0: fabricating a geometry
[    3.788415] sd0: 29604 MB, 29604 cyl, 64 head, 32 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 60628992 sectors
[    3.818417] sd0: fabricating a geometry
[    4.188414] sd0: GPT GUID: 867794b8-d609-49ee-9c51-33a08260ec8b
[    4.188414] dk6 at sd0: "EFI system", 262144 blocks at 2048, type: msdos
[    4.208413] dk7 at sd0: "3c386667-4e85-4442-ac6e-943931e02174", 4853760 blocks at 264192, type: ffs
[    4.228413] dk8 at sd0: "ab4a17e6-df64-4eda-9827-8e4b3e9f52b9", 20480000 blocks at 5117952, type: ntfs
[    4.248413] autoconfiguration error: sd0: wedge named 'Basic data partition' already existed, using 'ab4a17e6-df64-4eda-9827-8e4b3e9f52b9'
[    22.818332] atapibus0 at atabus2: 2 targets
[    22.838331] cd0 at atapibus0 drive 0: <hp      CDDVDW SH-216BB, R8TM6YBD604VA1, HE50> cdrom removable
[    22.868333] cd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 5 (Ultra/100)
[    22.868333] swwdog0: software watchdog initialized
[    23.588330] WARNING: 4 errors while detecting hardware; check system log.
[    23.588330] boot device: wd0
[    23.588330] root on dk4 dumps on dk5
[    23.608328] root file system type: ffs
[    23.608328] kern.module.path=/stand/amd64/10.1/modules
[    23.608328] nouveau0: NVIDIA GF119 (0d93d0a1)
[    23.788327] nouveau0: bios: version 75.19.79.00.02
[    23.938930] nouveau0: interrupting at msi5 vec 0 (nouveau0)
[    23.938930] nouveau0: fb: 512 MiB DDR3
[    24.248325] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 2 (21.10.2013).
[    24.248325] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[    24.248325] Zone  kernel: Available graphics memory: 9007199252161660 KiB
[    24.248325] Zone  dma32: Available graphics memory: 2097152 KiB
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: VRAM: 512 MiB
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: GART: 1048576 MiB
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: TMDS table version 2.0
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB version 4.0
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB outp 00: 020003a6 0f220010
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB outp 01: 02000362 00020010
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB outp 02: 048113b6 0f220010
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB outp 03: 04011372 00020010
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB conn 00: 00410146
[    24.248325] nouveau0: DRM: DCB conn 01: 00820246
[    24.258325] nouveau0: DRM: MM: using COPY0 for buffer copies
[    24.258325] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 2 (21.10.2013).
[    24.258325] [drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[    24.278324] nouveau0: [drm] Cannot find any crtc or sizes
[    24.278324] [drm] Initialized nouveau 1.3.1 20120801 for nouveau0 on minor 0
[    24.278324] i915drmkms0: interrupting at msi6 vec 0 (i915drmkms0)
[    24.308324] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20200114 for i915drmkms0 on minor 1
[    24.338324] intelfb0 at i915drmkms0
[    24.338324] [drm] DRM_I915_DEBUG enabled
[    24.338324] [drm] DRM_I915_DEBUG_GEM enabled
[    24.338324] intelfb0: framebuffer at 0xd0005000, size 1280x1024, depth 32, stride 5120
[    24.408324] {drm:netbsd:intel_set_cpu_fifo_underrun_reporting+0x29c} *ERROR* uncleared fifo underrun on pipe A
[    24.408324] {drm:netbsd:intel_cpu_fifo_underrun_irq_handler+0x64} *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun
[    24.408324] {drm:netbsd:intel_set_pch_fifo_underrun_reporting+0x14e} *ERROR* uncleared pch fifo underrun on pch transcoder A
[    24.408324] {drm:netbsd:cpt_irq_handler+0x217} *ERROR* PCH transcoder A FIFO underrun
[    24.738322] wsdisplay0 at intelfb0 kbdmux 1: console (default, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0
[    24.818322] wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0
[    32.278289] wsdisplay0: screen 1 added (default, vt100 emulation)
[    32.278289] wsdisplay0: screen 2 added (default, vt100 emulation)
[    32.278289] wsdisplay0: screen 3 added (default, vt100 emulation)
[    32.278289] wsdisplay0: screen 4 added (default, vt100 emulation)


February 10, 2025

OS News Oasis: a small, statically-linked Linux system

You might think the world of Linux distributions is a rather boring, settled affair, but there’s actually a ton of interesting experimentation going on in the Linux world. From things like NixOS with its unique packaging framework, to the various immutable distributions out there like the Fedora Atomic editions, there’s enough uniqueness to go around to find a lid for every pot. Oasis Linux surely falls into this category. One of its main unique characteristics is that it’s entirely statically linked.

All software in the base system is linked statically, including the display server (velox) and web browser (netsurf). Compared to dynamic linking, this is a simpler mechanism which eliminates problems with upgrading libraries, and results in completely self-contained binaries that can easily be copied to other systems.

↫ Oasis GitHub page

That’s not all it has to offer, though. It also offers fast and 100% reproducible builds, it’s mostly ISO C conformant, and it has minimal bootstrap dependencies – all you need is a “POSIX system with git, lua, curl, a sha256 utility, standard compression utilities, and an x86_64-linux-musl cross compiler”. The ISO C-comformance is a crucial part of one of Oasis’ goals: to be buildable with cproc, a small, very strict C11 compiler. It has no package manager, but any software outside of Oasis itself can be installed and managed with pkgsrc or Nix.

Another important goal of the project is to be extremely easy to understand, and its /etc directory is honestly a sight to behold, and as the project proudly claims, the most complex file in there is rc.init at a mere 16 lines. The configuration files are indeed incredibly easy to understand, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the archaic stuff in commercial UNIX or the complex stuff in modern Linux distributions that I normally deal with.

I’m not sure is Oasis would make for a good, usable day-to-day operating system, but I definitely like what they’re putting down.


February 06, 2025

NetBSD Package System (pkgsrc) on DaemonForums Getting GVFS to work on NetBSD 10.0 w/ XFCE4?
It's alive, autostarted by XFCE4 (or dbus?), but thunar shows nothing when plugging in USB drives. I can normally mount these disks with e.g.
Code:

mount /dev/sd0e /mnt
I've tried to search for the cause with no luck so far. GVFS doesn't seem to log anything and gvfs-* commands or their manpages don't help either. Has anyone idea what is maybe goin' on and how to fix it?
I'll try updating it to 10.1 on next time I have access to it, but I suspect problem is on GVFS side (It barely works in overall, even on Linux)

January 23, 2025

Emile Heitor Build A MMIO Booting Debian VM Out Of Cloud Images

As you might be aware of, I am working on a minimal BSD/UNIX system called smolBSD. It is based on the NetBSD operating system, and its main target is virtual machines, more specifically microvms. This system is capable of fully booting the OS in less than one second using a specially trimmed kernel along with small, specialized root systems.
I was stunned to learn (but am I wrong?) that this work does not seem to have an equivalent, not even in the Linux world. FreeBSD Firecracker support sure permits to boot a kernel is about the same time my NetBSD hacked kernel does, but there’s no work around s slim and task dedicated root filesystem.


January 19, 2025

DragonFly BSD Digest Lazy Reading for 2025/01/19

Quirky, just like I want it.

Your unrelated music link of the week: Where to Start With Tempa, The Label That Invented Dubstep.


January 17, 2025

Julio Merino Hands-on graphics without X11
If you have been following the development of EndBASIC, you know its console can display both text and graphics at once. What you may not know is that, now, it can also achieve this feat on the NetBSD console without using X11 at all. This is done by directly rendering to the wsdisplay framebuffer, and this article presents a crash course on direct graphics and keyboard access via NetBSD’s wscons framework.

January 10, 2025

Julio Merino Self-documenting Makefiles

Make, as arcane as a build tool can be, may still be a good first fit for certain scenarios. “Heresy!”, you say, as you hear a so-called “Bazel expert” utter these words.

The specific problem I’m facing is that I need to glue together the NetBSD build system, a quilt patch set, EndBASIC’s Cargo-based Rust build, and a couple of QEMU invocations to produce a Frankenstein disk image for a Raspberry Pi. And the thing is: Make allows doing this sort of stitching with relative ease. Sure, Make is not the best option because the overall build performance is “meh” and because incremental builds are almost-impossible to get right… but adopting Bazel for this project would be an almost-infinite time sink.

Anyway. When using Make in this manner, you often end up with what’s essentially a “command dispatcher” and, over time, the number of commands grows and it’s hard to make sense of which one to use for what. Sure, you can write a README.md with instructions, but I guarantee you that the text will get out of sync faster than you can read this article. There is a better way, though.


January 03, 2025

NetBSD Blog Google Summer of Code 2024 Reports: Test root device and root file system selection

This report was written by Diviyam Pat as part of Google Summer of Code 2024.

This summer I worked on NetBSD's kernel test framework to cover root device discovery and root file system selection. This area of the kernel is not very well documented and program flow has to be determined by reading the code.

I would also like to tell you about my early interactions with the project, let me start with project findings.

Why NetBSD?

Google Summer of Code 2024 is not my first time applying to GSoC. My first time was in 2022, in my first year of college. I have been fascinated with newer Windows versions since my Intel Core Duo i3 days as every new Windows version used to bring new changes and features, from Windows XP to Vista to 8.1 and then to 10 (cosmetic only) but was very heavy on my PC's memory usage that was upwards of 60% leaving very little room for applications and games.

My Intel i3 would be enough for it. This experience made me decide I wanted my project to be in the operating system space. I ventured into all OS projects on the Google Summer of Code website. Gentoo, Debian but that didn't turn out well. I then decided to explore BSDs. The community seemed friendlier, more responsive, and active in helping beginners. I started mailing all the mentors about my interests (I realized I should have done a lot more work before mailing them, it shows more dedication towards the project.)

Christoph explained the project in great detail to me, helped me with getting started and guided me through the hard parts of the project.

Project Details

Root device and file-system selection is made during the later stages of the boot process by the kernel. The kernel config file defines candidates for the root device and the kernel selects one after validating those options. If no options are defined, the auto config subroutines handle configuration. Head over to my docs for more details here. This functionality is handled primarily by the function setroot in file kern_subr.c. It also calls specialized functions for a number of cases. Our task was to add ATF tests for this function and some other functions that assist setroot. This part of the kernel works, and it has worked for over 30 years but the code is rather complex to read and there is no documentation. The only way to understand it is to read the code.

At any given stage when any condition fails the fallback option is to ask the user manually for the device. Thus this part of the kernel rarely needs attention. There are some global functions used in conditions inside setroot: rootspec, bootspec, etc. These variables are either set through the config file or through other machine-dependent kernel functions like findroot etc. We need to manually set them in our test cases and also need to stub kernel functions used by setroot and other functions. We wanted to make these test cases use 'vnd' devices, but we ran into bugs, and Christoph was trying to fix them. Therefore we had to resort to stubbing. We validate the global variables. We also test the tftproot_dhcpboot function that loads the contents of a memory disk device from a TFTP server and uses that as root device. Devices are represented by the device_t struct which is populated by the kernel. We mock this behavior through the create_device function and use this in the test programs. User input is handled by stubbing the cngetsn function. Global variables and arguments are set to test values in the body of the test cases and the function being tested is called. The test file is divided into 3 parts: 1) setroot_root, 2) setroot_ask, and 3) tftproot_dhcp. In the file kern_subr.c setroot() calls these functions but here we test them independently

Conclusion

I have worked on enhancing NetBSD's ATF tests to test the root device and file system selection process, testing the setroot function and its dependencies. These tests shall improve coverage of the ATF tests to the setroot function and in general, to root device selection. In the future, contributors can rely on these tests for kern_subr.c's functionality.


December 30, 2024

Stack Overflow How to build Visual Codium on NetBSD?

I am C++ developer and unfamiliar with script technologies like nodejs etc. I tried to build VS Codium on NetBSD 10.0 from sources 1.96.2 on github, by how-to manual. After running build/build.sh it outputs:

...
+++ ../update_settings.sh
300s/'default': true/'default': false/
sed: -E: No such file or directory
219s/'default': TelemetryConfiguration.ON/'default': TelemetryConfiguration.OFF/
sed: -E: No such file or directory
114s/'default': true/'default': false/
sed: -E: No such file or directory
#

When I look into target directory vscode I am seeing there something like result: vscode/cli/src/bin/code/main.rs How to continue with build to reach binary executable "bin/codium" ? What to do with that main.rs ? I read that it has something with rust ? Can anyone put more light on this to understand what to do ? I don't need to create installation package, it should be sufficient to run VSCodium from target build directory.


December 28, 2024

Julio Merino Revisiting the NetBSD build system

I recently picked up an embedded project in which I needed to build a highly customized full system image with minimal boot times. As I explored my options, I came to the conclusion that NetBSD, the often-forgotten BSD variant, was the best viable choice for my project.

One reason for this choice is NetBSD’s build system. Once you look and get past the fact that it feels frozen in time since 2002, you realize it is still one of the most advanced build systems you can find for an OS. And it shows: the NetBSD build system allows you to build the full OS from scratch, on pretty much any host POSIX platform, while targeting any hardware architecture supported by NetBSD. All without root privileges.

Another reason for this choice is that NetBSD was my daily workhorse for many years and I’m quite familiar with its internals, which is useful knowledge to quickly achieve the goals I have in mind. In fact, I was a NetBSD Developer with capital D: I had commit access to the project from about 2002 through 2012 or so, and I have just revived my account in service of this project. jmmv@ is back!

So, strap onto your seats and let’s see how today’s NetBSD build system looks like and what makes it special. I’ll add my own critique at the end, because it ain’t perfect, but overall it continues to deliver on its design goals set in the late 1990s.


December 19, 2024

NetBSD Blog NetBSD 10.1 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the first update of the NetBSD 10 release branch NetBSD 10.1! See the release announcement for details.

This release includes 9 months of bug fixes and a few new features after the 10.0 release in March. It also gives those still using older release a good reason to finally update to the NetBSD 10 release branch, even if they avoid dot-zero releases by all means.

If you want to try NetBSD 10.1 please check the installation notes for your architecture and download the preferred install image from the CDN or if you are using an ARM based device from the netbsd-10 builds from the bootable ARM images page.

If you have any issues with installation or run into issues with the system during use, please contact us on one of the mailing lists or file a problem report.


December 16, 2024

The NetBSD Foundation NetBSD 10.1 released

December 12, 2024

Stack Overflow writing a simple makefile for NetBSD

This is my makefile:

CC = gcc
TARGET = target

CFLAGS = -O3 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic

SRCS = $(shell find . -type f -name '*.c')
OBJS = $(patsubst %.c,%.o,$(SRCS))

.PHONY: all clean

all: $(TARGET)

$(OBJS): $(SRCS)
    $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@

.PRECIOUS: $(TARGET) $(OBJS)

$(TARGET): $(OBJS)
    $(CC) $(OBJS) -o $@

clean:
    -rm -f *.o
    -rm -f $(TARGET)

this is the output message:

gcc  -o target
gcc: fatal error: no input files
compilation terminated.
*** Error code 1

I'm trying to get this to work on NetBSD. What am I doing wrong? Also, I've found that $(SRCS) is just empty, but if I run find . -type f -name '*.c' in the shell on it's own, I do get the desired files. Please help !


November 04, 2024

Unix Stack Exchange NetBSD "-f" option in find

I can't understand what "-f" option to find command on NetBSD mean.

Manual: https://man.netbsd.org/find.1 says

-f Specifies a file hierarchy for find to traverse. File hierarchies may also be specified as the operands immediately following the options.

Usage:

find [-H | -L | -P] [-dEhsXx] -f file [file ...] [expression]

find [-H | -L | -P] [-dEhsXx] file [file ...] [expression]

I would expect the two following calls to be equivalent:

home# find ./ -name "*c"
./1.c
home# find -f ./ -name "*c"
find: unknown option -- n
find: unknown option -- a
find: unknown option -- m
find: unknown option -- e
./
./1.c
find: *c: No such file or directory

Instead to make second equivalent I have to run

home# find -f ./ -- -name "*c"
./1.c

Am I missing something?


October 13, 2024

Super User Install Linux on Old AirPort Extreme?

I have a very old AirPort Extreme, the A1408. Is it possible to install Linux on it, using the AirPort functionally as a hard disk, and then boot from that? I have also heard that AirPorts run NetBSD. Can you boot into that and run commands?