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NetBSD 9.0

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Re: NetBSD 9.0

#41

Post by cnst »

ddevault wrote: post #38
cnst wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be doable with the following rc.d configuration: resize_disklabel=YES resize_root=YES The second script is available by default, but the first one is somehow hidden from general availability: * http://bxr.su/n/distrib/utils/embedded/files/resize_disklabe... * http://bxr.su/n/etc/rc.d/resize_root You can fetch it raw, it seems to work great: cd /etc/rc.d/ ftp http://bxr.su/raw/NetBSD/distrib/utils/embedded/f…

Aye, but that doesn't seem to work. Check out the genimg script - it's already trying to set up resize_root. I've also tried resize_disklabel without success. What this needs isn't another well-meaning HN comment trying to debug by proxy - I need someone who knows how NetBSD works to get their hands dirty and get it done.

The resize_root script wouldn't do anything if the fdisk and disklabel aren't adjusted (provided it's not a raw filesystem file that's being resized as in http://wiki.netbsd.org/amazon_ec2/build_your_own_ami/ page), so it's kind of expected that it doesn't work all by itself, and that https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/builds.sr.ht/tree/master/images/... is wrong.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#42

Post by _kp6z »

theonemind wrote: post #39
harryruhr wrote: post #35

There was an Article "Are the BSDs dying" ( https://www.csoonline.com/article/3250653/is-the-bsd-os-dyin... ) where it us said, that NetBSD has the lowest code quality of all BSD variants. It also finishes last when it comes to security updates. To this day NetBSD doesn't deliver binary security updates in a timely manner. Not in the base system and not for packages. Even OpenBSD manages to do this nowadays. If there…

Contributing to the climate crisis seems like a stretch. Bitcoin obviously uses a lot of power and contributes to the climate crisis. Building OSes from source is just a hobby for most people, and probably doesn't register as a particularly environmentally intensive one compared to even reading paperback books.

I have a huge soft spot for NetBSD because it was my first BSD and first foray into kernel work. The more alarming issue affecting Open and Net is that commodity computer architecture has wildly changed in the past 10 years. A late 1980s style locks and CVs approach to SMP is only good for a handful of cores. Consequently, if you run one of these on what are becoming standard desktop class systems like Ryzen, you are throwing away a great deal of performance (and therefore energy efficiency). Basically modern computers look a lot like an HP SuperDome or whatever from 2000 which is wild and inconvenient for programmers, but reality. FreeBSD (HEAD) is now generally competent on something like an Epyc or multi-socket intel box, and there isn't much left to eek out on an 16-thread laptop.

I funded and helped stabilize a technology called Epoch Reclamation into FreeBSD that can be thought of like a cleaner version of Linux' RCU at least for tracking object liveness. One of the most interesting things I've seen go into FreeBSD recently is a further improvement on that, a novel form of safe memory reclamation directly in UMA: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D22586. This is really exciting because for instance RCU suffers from time of use to time to free issues in Linux, and this new holistic approach really does not for fast turnover workloads.

NetBSD does have a form of SMR called pserialize(9), but ignoring some of the algorithmic weaknesses it also has a lot of global or oversized locks in critical subsystems like the VFS and network stack that turn it into a fairly non-SMP friendly system let alone consideration for different memory latencies like NUMA.

A lot of these ideas from FreeBSD can be copied into Net and Open but the code bases have diverged greatly where it's not some simple forklift (for instance Net and Open use a similar kernel memory allocation that is totally different than Free).

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#43

Post by crispyporkbites »

sumanthvepa wrote: post #7
polyphonicist wrote: post #4

I am a Linux user. What would be a good reason for me to try out NetBSD? Honest question.

Well. Given the smaller user base the *BDSs are good candidates for a very low footprint secure OS installation. In our org we use an openbsd instance to run our low traffic but extremely secure master database. The system really spartan and has a very low footprint. It is sufficiently different from Linux that the casual automated attack wont work. Things like NetBSD are a useful starting point to getting an OS up a…

This smells of security through obscurity to me.

Unless you’re defending against zero days (unlikely) an up to date Linux box must surely be more secure?

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#44

Post by mapgrep »

ddevault wrote: post #26

NetBSD is probably my favorite BSD. I like its focus on simplicity and portability. I also like pkgsrc a lot more than ports. I appreciate that pkgsrc is portable beyond BSD, too - Minix uses it. Nice work, folks :)

SmartOS (a Solaris/Illumos derivative) also uses pkgsrc, in my limited experience it’s very nice.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#45

Post by agumonkey »

labawi wrote: post #27
bch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say BSD (esp Net and Open, as mentioned above), just don’t run as many processes, by design. BSDs are *nix, like Linux, but with their own traditions. If you, familiar with Linux, sat down at a NetBSD box, you’d be able to easily get around like a little girl[0]. You wouldn’t find systemd, though, you’d see a “wheel” group, your login shell might not be bash. The BSDs just decorate their houses differently than L…

I'd say it depends on the Linux distribution. Things like Ubuntu would be much like mentioned [1], packing just about everything¹, while on something like openwrt you would probably recognize or easily find out the function of all userspace processes - I counted 13 on my router. It doesn't help that linux (kernel and userspaces) tends to resemble chaotic patchwork more¹ than a reasonably designed system. ¹ exaggerati…

yeah, distros like archlinux have pretty thin base install and I always rejoy watching htop process list fit onto a third of the screen

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#46

Post by mmcgaha »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #43
sumanthvepa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. Given the smaller user base the *BDSs are good candidates for a very low footprint secure OS installation. In our org we use an openbsd instance to run our low traffic but extremely secure master database. The system really spartan and has a very low footprint. It is sufficiently different from Linux that the casual automated attack wont work. Things like NetBSD are a useful starting point to getting an OS up a…

This smells of security through obscurity to me. Unless you’re defending against zero days (unlikely) an up to date Linux box must surely be more secure?

I don't now what goes into the day-to-day maintenance at sdf.org, but they are able to provide public access to a NetBSD system without any major security breaches. The lore there is that before the switch from Linux to NetBSD security was a mess. Of course they made the change almost 20 years ago, so things probably are different today.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#47

Post by Y_Y »

fishtacos wrote: post #19
geff82 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NetBSD is a great system for learning Unix. It lets you deep dive into certain topics because you have to. I learned to use Unix with NetBSD in the 2000. Only problem: find hardware for it. If you do not have a Raspberry Pi, your PC should not be brand new ideally (3-4 years is a good starting point).

VMs don't work as well?

VMS will probably work better on your VAX, but it's not as up-to-date.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#48

Post by tedunangst »

ddevault wrote: post #24
xvilka wrote: post #13

I am waiting for NetBSD to be available in SourceHut CI[1]. We already use it for FreeBSD and OpenBSD jobs, missing only one major OS - NetBSD. [1] https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/compatibility.md

Please help! The image is almost complete: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/builds.sr.ht/tree/master/images/... But I need a NetBSD expert to come in and put on the finishing touch: making the filesystem resize to fill the available space on the qcow2. Without this, the image cannot build a new version of itself which isn't smaller than the host image, leading to image shrinkage over time and eventual breakitude.

You should be able to create a vnd that's larger than the host filesystem if you don't fill it.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#49

Post by rjsw »

xvilka wrote: post #18
rjsw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ? What are the benefits of using that ?

radare2 [1] is a portable tool and should work everywhere, like you expect to do the same from GDB, for example. [1] https://github.com/radareorg/radare2

There is a radare2 package in pkgsrc, I presume it works.

Re: NetBSD 9.0

#50

Post by tw04 »

kyuudou wrote: post #28

Force10 network switches (owned by Dell now) use NetBSD for their FTOS and have for quite some time. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Their compellent storage arrays did as well at one point. Not sure if they still do.
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