NetBSD was originally derived from the 4.3BSD-Reno release of the Berkeley Software Distribution from the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, via its Net/2 source code release and the 386BSD project.[5] The NetBSD project began as a result of frustration within the 386BSD developer community with the pace and direction of the operating system's development.[11] The four founders of the NetBSD project, Chris Demetriou, Theo de Raadt, Adam Glass, and Charles Hannum, felt that a more open development model would benefit the project: one centered on portable, clean, correct code. They aimed to produce a unified, multi-platform, production-quality, BSD-based operating system. The name "NetBSD" was chosen based on the importance and growth of networks such as the Internet at that time, and the distributed, collaborative nature of its development.[12]
The NetBSD source code repository was established on 21 March 1993 and the first official release, NetBSD 0.8, was made on 19 April 1993.[13] This was derived from 386BSD 0.1 plus the version 0.2.2 unofficial patchkit, with several programs from the Net/2 release missing from 386BSD re-integrated, and various other improvements.[13][14] The first multi-platform release, NetBSD 1.0, was made in October 1994, and being updated with 4.4BSD-Lite sources, it was free of all legally encumbered 4.3BSD Net/2 code.[15] Also in 1994, for disputed reasons, one of the founders, Theo de Raadt, was removed from the project. He later founded a new project, OpenBSD, from a forked version of NetBSD 1.0 near the end of 1995.[16] In 1998, NetBSD 1.3 introduced the pkgsrc packages collection.[17]
Until 2004, NetBSD 1.x releases were made at roughly annual intervals, with minor "patch" releases in between. From release 2.0 onwards, NetBSD uses semantic versioning, and each major NetBSD release corresponds to an incremented major version number, i.e. the major releases following 2.0 are 3.0, 4.0 and so on. The previous minor releases are now divided into two categories: x.y "stable" maintenance releases and x.y.z releases containing only security and critical fixes.[18]
NetBSD used to ship with twm as a preconfigured graphical interface (window manager); in 2020 (version 9.1) this was changed to the more modern and versatile CTWM.[19]
Features
NetBSD/amd64 startup in console modeNetBSD/amd64 console login and welcome message
As the project's motto ("Of course it runs NetBSD" ) suggests, NetBSD has been ported to a large number of 32- and 64-bitarchitectures. These range from VAXminicomputers to Pocket PCPDAs. NetBSD has also been ported to several video game consoles such as the Sega Dreamcast[20] and the Nintendo Wii.[21] As of 2019, NetBSD supports 59 hardware platforms (across 16 different instruction sets). The kernel and userland for these platforms are all built from a central unified source-code tree managed by CVS. Currently, unlike other kernels such as μClinux, the NetBSD kernel requires the presence of an MMU in any given target architecture.
NetBSD's portability is aided by the use of hardware abstraction layer interfaces for low-level hardware access such as bus input/output or DMA. Using this portability layer, device drivers can be split into "machine-independent" (MI) and "machine-dependent" (MD) components. This makes a single driver easily usable on several platforms by hiding hardware access details, and reduces the work to port it to a new system.[22]
This permits a particular device driver for a PCI card to work without modifications, whether it is in a PCI slot on an IA-32, Alpha, PowerPC, SPARC, or other architecture with a PCI bus. Also, a single driver for a specific device can operate via several different buses, like ISA, PCI, or PC Card.
In 2005, as a demonstration of NetBSD's portability and suitability for embedded applications, Technologic Systems, a vendor of embedded systems hardware, designed and demonstrated a NetBSD-powered kitchen toaster.[23]
Commercial ports to embedded platforms were available from and supported by Wasabi Systems, including platforms such as the AMD Geode LX800, FreescalePowerQUICC processors, Marvell Orion, AMCC405 family of PowerPC processors, and the IntelXScale IOP and IXP series.
Portable build framework
The NetBSD cross-compiling framework (also known as "build.sh"[24]) lets a developer build a complete NetBSD system for an architecture from a more powerful system of different architecture (cross-compiling), including on a different operating system (the framework supports most POSIX-compliant systems). Several embedded systems using NetBSD have required no additional software development other than toolchain and target rehost.[25]
As of 2017, NetBSD had reached fully reproducible builds on amd64 and SPARC64.[26] The build.sh -P flag handles reproducible builds automatically.
NetBSD features pkgsrc (short for "package source"), a framework for building and managing third-party application software packages. The pkgsrc collection consists of more than 20,000 packages as of October 2019[update].[27] Building and installing packages such as Lumina, KDE, GNOME, the Apache HTTP Server or Perl is performed through the use of a system of makefiles. This can automatically fetch the source code, unpack, patch, configure, build and install the package such that it can be removed again later. An alternative to compiling from source is to use a precompiled binary package. In either case, any prerequisites/dependencies will be installed automatically by the package system, without need for manual intervention.
pkgsrc is a cross-platform packaging system, for it supports not only NetBSD, but can be used on several other Unices, among which macOS, Solaris and Linux are considered primary targets.[28] Other BSDs, HP-UX, Minix, SCO UNIX (Unixware and OpenServer) and QNX have a number of active pkgsrc users but do not receive active maintenance. pkgsrc is the default package management system on SmartOS[29] and Minix3.[30] It was also previously adopted as the official package management system for DragonFly BSD,[31] and made available as an alternative packaging framework on MirBSD[32] and QNX.[33]
Symmetric multiprocessing
NetBSD has supported SMP since the NetBSD 2.0 release in 2004,[34] which was initially implemented using the giant lock approach.
During the development cycle of the NetBSD 5 release, major work was done to improve SMP support; most of the kernel subsystems were modified to use the fine-grained locking approach. New synchronization primitives were implemented and scheduler activations was replaced with a 1:1 threading model in February 2007.[35][36] A scalable M2 thread scheduler was also implemented,[37] providing separate real-time (RT) and time-sharing (TS) queues, and improving the performance on MP systems. Threaded software interrupts were implemented to improve synchronization. The virtual memory system, memory allocator and trap handling were made MP safe. The file system framework, including the VFS and major file systems were modified to be MP safe. As of NetBSD 10.0, the only subsystems running with a giant lock are SATAdevice drivers, interrupt handlers, the autoconf(9) framework and most the network stack, unless the NET_MPSAFE kernel option is enabled.[38]
In reality, starting with release 8.0, various parts of the network stack have been made MP safe already,[39] but NET_MPSAFE is kept disabled by default, because non-MP-safe components that are also unprotected by the giant lock may otherwise crash the kernel when loaded in memory.[40]
The 4.4BSD scheduler still remains the default, but was modified to scale with SMP, merging features from SCHED_M2.[41] In 2017, the scheduler was changed to better distribute load of long-running processes on multiple CPUs, and tunable kern.schedsysctl(3) parameters were introduced.[42] The release of NetBSD 10.0 brought significant performance enhancements, especially on multiprocessor and multicore systems;[43] the scheduler gained major awareness of NUMA and hyperthreading, and became able to spread the load evenly across different physical CPUs, as well as to scale better on a mixture of slow and fast cores (e.g. ARM big.LITTLE).[44]
The Kernel Authorization framework[47] (or kauth) is a subsystem managing all authorization requests inside the kernel, and used as system-wide security policy. kauth(9) acts as a gatekeeper between kernel's own routines, by checking whether a given call or a specific operation is allowed within the context, and returns EPERM if not.[48] Most syscalls issue an authorization request in their corresponding handler via kauth_authorize_action(). kauth also allows external modules to plug-in the authorization process.
Verified Executables (or Veriexec) is an in-kernel file integrity subsystem in NetBSD. It allows the user to set digital fingerprints (hashes) of files, and take a number of different actions if files do not match their fingerprints. For example, one can allow Perl to run only scripts that match their fingerprints.[49]
Starting with version 2.0, NetBSD supports non-executable mappings on platforms where the hardware allows it.[50] Process stack and heap mappings are non-executable by default. This makes exploiting potential buffer overflows harder. NetBSD supports PROT_EXEC permission via mmap() for all platforms where the hardware differentiates execute access from data access, though not necessarily with single-page granularity.[51]
NetBSD implements several exploit mitigation features, such as ASLR (in both userland and kernel[52][53]), restricted mprotect() (W^X) and Segvguard from the PaX project, and GCCStack Smashing Protection (SSP, or also known as ProPolice, enabled by default since NetBSD 6.0) compiler extensions.
The cryptographic device driver (CGD) provides transparent disk encryption by acting as a logical device that is layered on top of another block device, such as a physical disk or partition (including CDs and DVDs) or a vnd(4) pseudo device.[54] It supports the Adiantum cipher, besides AES in CBC/XTS modes.[55]
NPF, introduced with NetBSD 6.0,[56] is a layer 3 packet filter, supporting stateful packet inspection, IPv6, NAT, IP sets, and extensions.[57] It uses BPF as its core engine, and supports bpfjit. NPF was designed with a focus on high performance, scalability, multi-threading and modularity.
Other features include BSD securelevels,[58] blocklistd(8), a daemon capable of blocking ports on demand to avoid DoS abuse,[59] and the wg(4) interface (added in 2020), which provides a homegrown implementation of the Wireguard protocol.[60]
Memory management
NetBSD uses the UVM[61]virtual memory system, developed by Charles D. Cranor at Washington University in 1998, and committed to the NetBSD source tree by Matthew Green, who handled integration issues and wrote the swap subsystem.[62]
The original Mach based 4.4BSD system[63] was replaced by UVM in NetBSD 1.4.[64] UVM is designed to reduce the complexity of the 4.4BSD VM system, and offer improved performance for those applications which make heavy use of VM features, such as memory-mapped files and copy-on-write memory.[65]
While retaining the same MD/MI layering and mapping structures of the BSD VM,[66] UVM introduces some noticeable changes:
Memory objects are allocated and managed in cooperation with their backing data source (typically vnodes), reducing the overhead of the vm_object chain management. The vm_pagestructure describes how the backing store can be accessed. Essentially, this is a pointer to a list of functions which act as bridge between UVM and the external backing store (such as a disk) that provides UVM with its data. UVM's memory object points directly to the pager operations, making the allocation of pager-related data structures more efficient.
Anonymous pages are grouped in multi-page clusters for pageout. Each page’s location on swap is assigned, so that the cluster occupies a contiguous chunk of swap and can be paged out in a single large I/O operation. This enhances paging response time for I/O operations, and allows UVM to recover quicker from page shortages.
Memory sharing is supported using three data movement mechanisms: page loanout, page transfer, and map entry passing.[67] A process may safely let a shared copy-on-write copy of its memory be used either by other processes, the I/O system, or the IPC system. The unified buffer cache (ubc(9)[68] ), written by Chuck Silvers, allows to use UVM pages to cache vnode data rather than the traditional UNIX buffer cache.[69] This avoids costly data copies, and makes more memory available for caching regular file data.
In 2003, UVM was modified to use a top-down memory management, thus merging the space reserved for heap growth and the area of space reserved for mmap(2)'ed allocations.[70] This allows the heap to grow larger, or a process to mmap more or larger objects.
Support for RAM hot-plugging was added in 2016.[71] The uvm_hotplug(9) API replaces the previously exposed vm_physmem static array with a red–black tree backing to keep track of memory segments, allowing the list of physical pages to be dynamically expanded or collapsed.
During the release cycle of NetBSD 10.0, major work was done to optimize the virtual memory system.[72] The page allocator was rewritten to be more efficient and CPU topology aware, adding preliminary NUMA support. The algorithm used in the memory page lookup cache was switched to a faster radix tree. Tracking and indexing of clean/dirty pages was improved, speeding up fsync(2) on large files by orders of magnitude. Lock contention was reduced by making the maintentance of page replacement state more concurrent.
Virtualization
The Xenvirtual-machine monitor has been supported in NetBSD since release 3.0. The use of Xen requires a special pre-kernel boot environment that loads a Xen-specialized kernel as the "host OS" (Dom0). Any number of "guest OSes" (DomU) virtualized computers, with or without specific Xen/DomU support, can be run in parallel with the appropriate hardware resources.
The need for a third-party boot manager, such as GRUB, was eliminated with NetBSD 5's Xen-compatible boot manager.[73] NetBSD 6 as a Dom0 has been benchmarked comparably to Linux, with better performance than Linux in some tests.[74]
As of NetBSD 9.0, accelerated virtualization is provided through the native type-2 hypervisor NVMM (NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor).[75] It provides a virtualization API, libnvmm, that can be leveraged by emulators such as QEMU.[76][77] The kernel NVMM driver comes as a dynamically loadable kernel module, made of a generic machine-independent frontend, to which machine-dependent backends can be plugged to implement the core virtualization (currently only x86 AMD SVM and Intel VMX are supported).[78] A unique property of NVMM is that the kernel never accesses guest VM memory, only creating it.[79] Intel's Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) provides an alternative solution for acceleration in QEMU for Intel CPUs only, similar to Linux's KVM.[80]
NetBSD 5.0 introduced the rump kernel,[81] an architecture to run drivers in user-space by emulating kernel-space calls. A rump kernel can be seen as a lightweight, portable virtualized driver execution environment, characterized by small memory footprint and minimized attack surface.[82]
The core of a rump kernel contains a set of fundamental routines which allow it to access the host platform's resources, such as virtual memory, thread scheduler and I/O functions. This is called the rampuser(3) hypercall interface.[83] The various kernel subsystems (e.g. TCP/IP stack, filesystems, hardware device drivers), globally referred as drivers, are layered on top of the hypercall interface, by being linked against a stripped-down version of the NetBSD kernel that can be executed in user mode. Most drivers are optional, and may be included or not depending on the target application and scope.
This "anykernel" design allows adding support of NetBSD drivers to other kernel architectures,[84] ranging from exokernels to monolithic kernels.[85] Other possible applications of rump kernels include deploying a task-specific unikernel to provide a POSIX API for application depending on it, running a self-contained database with minimal footprints,[86] a userspace Wireguard instance,[87] editing the contents of a file system as unprivileged user, and segregating a web browser to its own TCP/IP stack.[88]
The bio(4) interface for vendor-agnostic RAID volume management through bioctl has been available in NetBSD since 2007.[89] Support for software RAID is provided as a port of CMU RAIDframe, available since NetBSD 1.4.[90] The ccd(4) driver provides the capability of combining one or more disks/partitions into one virtual disk, acting as another in-kernel RAID 0 subsystem.[91]
UFS2, an extension to BSD FFS adding 64-bit block pointers, variable-sized blocks (similar to extents), and extended flag fields, was ported from FreeBSD in 2003[92] and made available since NetBSD 2.0.[93] The fss(4)[94]snapshot driver was introduced the same year,[95] allowing to create a read-only, atomic view of a FFS filesystem at a given point of time; a FFS snapshot works as a special device, which can be mounted and used in conjunction with utilities like dump(8) to create and export system backups.[96]
WAPBL, a FFS filesystem extension providing data journaling, was contributed by Wasabi Systems in 2008.[97] Journaling allows rapid filesystem consistency after an unclean shutdown, and improves write performance by reducing synchronous metadata writes, especially when creating a large number of inodes.[98] Support for soft updates on NetBSD FFS(v1/2) was eventually removed in favor of WAPBL.[99]
The ZFS filesystem developed by Sun Microsystems was imported into the NetBSD base system in 2009.[102] In 2018, the ZFS codebase was updated and rebased on FreeBSD's implementation.[103] ZFS was finally marked safe for daily use in NetBSD 9.0.[104] As of 10.0 release, NetBSD ZFS stack is comparable to that of FreeBSD 12 (or below), with ZFS filesystem version "5.3", zpool version "5000" (some feature flags are not supported).[105][106] Native ZFS encryption is noticeably missing, though a zpool may be created within a cgd(4) encrypted disk.[107] Initial support for ZFS root is available, but neither integrated in the installer nor in the bootloader.[108]
The NetBSD Logical Volume Manager is based on a BSD reimplementation of a device-mapper driver and a port of the Linux Logical Volume Manager tools. It was mostly written during the Google Summer of Code 2008.[109]
The CHFSFlash memory filesystem was imported into NetBSD in November 2011. CHFS is a file system developed at the Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Hungary, and is the first open source Flash-specific file system written for NetBSD.
The PUFFS framework, introduced in NetBSD 5.0,[110] is a kernel subsystem designed for running filesystems in userspace, and provides FUSE kernel level API compatibility in conjunction with the perfused(8) userland daemon.
A tmpfs implementation for NetBSD using conventional in-memory data structures, was first developed by Julio M. Merino Vidal in 2005 as a GSoC project,[111] and merged the same year in the NetBSD source tree.[112]
Compatibility with other operating systems
At the source code level, NetBSD is very nearly entirely compliant with POSIX.1 (IEEE 1003.1-1990) standard and mostly compliant with POSIX.2 (IEEE 1003.2-1992).
NetBSD provides system call-level binary compatibility on the appropriate processor architectures with its previous releases, but also with several other UNIX-derived and UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux, and other 4.3BSD derivatives like SunOS 4. This allows NetBSD users to run many applications that are only distributed in binary form for other operating systems, usually with no significant loss of performance.[113] Initial support for a Haiku binary compat layer was published on the netbsd-user mailing list.[114]
WINE can be installed on NetBSD through pkgsrc.[115] Kernel support for USER_LTD -required for WoW64- was contributed by Maxime Villard in 2017,[116] allowing Win32 applications to be executed on amd64.[117] The amd64 port of wine for NetBSD was completed by Naveen Narayanan as part of GSoC 2019.[118]
Kernel scripting
Kernel-space scripting with the Lua programming language was added in NetBSD 7.0.[119] The Lua language (i.e., its interpreter and standard libraries) was initially ported by Lourival Vieira Neto to the NetBSD kernel during GSoC 2010 and has undergone several improvements since then.[120] The Lua (userspace) Test Suite was ported to NetBSD kernel Lua during GSoC 2015.[121]
There are two main differences between user and kernel space Lua: kernel Lua does not support floating-point numbers; as such, only Lua integers are available.[122] It also does not have full support to user space libraries that rely on the operating system (e.g., io and os). A sample implementation of I/O (file systems and sockets) bindings for kernel Lua was developed by Guilherme Salazar.[123]
Possible applications of the Lua kernel interpreter include embedding extensions for the NPF packet fiter,[124][125] and building an in-kernel application sandbox based on kauth(9), with sandbox policies provided as Lua scripts.[126]
Kernel debugging
NetBSD provides a minimalist kernel debugger -DDB(4)- which is invoked by default whenever the kernel would otherwise panic.[127] DDB allows to inspect processes and threads, investigate deadlocks, get a stack trace, and generate a kernel crash dump for later analysis.[128]
Strict consistency check is enabled by building the kernel with option DIAGNOSTIC. This will cause the kernel to panic if corruption of internal data structures is detected (e.g. kernel NULL pointer dereference).[129]
NetBSD also supports a variety of in-kernel bug detection facilities,[130] including code sanitizers (undefined behavior, address, thread, memory sanitizers),[131][132] a kernel memory disclosure detection system (KLEAK)[133] and a kernel diagnostic subsystem named heartbeat(9).[134]
LKMs
Loadable kernel modules have been supported on NetBSD since 0.9. The original lkm(4) interface [135] written by Terry Lambert was replaced by the new modules(7) subsystem,[136] which supports dependency handling between modules, and loading of kernel modules on demand.[137]
New modules can only be loaded when securelevel is less than or equal to zero, or if the kernel was built with options INSECURE, due to security concerns regarding the lack of memory protection between modules and the rest of the kernel.
Every kernel module is required to define its metadata through the C macro MODULE(class, name, required) and to implement a MODNAME_modcmd function, which the kernel calls to report important module-related events, like when the module loads or unloads.[138]
Support for using an initial ramdisk is available but not enabled by default,[139] except for specific configurations (e.g. root encryption).[140]
The rc.d(8) framework, designed by Luke Mewburn[141] for NetBSD 1.5,[142] provides a fully modular service management system, using individual shell scripts for controlling services, similar to what System V does, but without runlevels.[143] When /etc/rc/ is invoked by init(8), it executes scripts located in the /etc/rc.d directory. The order in which scripts are executed is determined by the rcorder(8) utility, based on the requirements stated in the dependency tags found within each script.[144]
NetBSD has featured a native hardware monitoring framework since 1999/2000. In 2003, it served as the inspiration behind the OpenBSD's sysctl hw.sensors framework when some NetBSD drivers were being ported to OpenBSD.[145]
As of March2019[update], NetBSD had close to 85 device drivers exporting data through the API of the envsys framework. Since the 2007 revision, serialization of data between the kernel and userland is done through XML property lists with the help of NetBSD's proplib(3).
Sound subsystem
The NetBSD audio(4)[146] kernel API, modelled after SunOS sound stack (SADA),[147] provides at the same time a uniform programming interface layer above different underlying audio hardware drivers, and a simple and well-documented backend for different sound libraries (SDL, PortAudio, Mozilla cubeb) to use.
Applications may interact with the /dev/audiodevnode directly, using a series of ioctls specified in the sys/audioio.h header file. Audio device information may be queried with the AUDIO_GETDEV ioctl. Playing and recording sound implies opening /dev/audio for read() / write() operations and passing a audio_infostruct to the kernel. This results in reduced audio latency and CPU usage compared to using additional abstraction layers (other sound libraries and/or sound servers).[148]
The audio stack was reworked in NetBSD 8.0 to provide an in-kernel software mixing engine, with support for virtual channels;[149] this allows more than one process to play or record audio at the same time.
A compatibility mode for the OSS API is provided by the soundcard.h header file and the libossaudio library,[150] which internally operate using the native Sun-like audio interface.
NetBSD includes built-in MIDI support through the machine-independent midi(4)[151] system.
NetBSD's clean design, high performance, scalability, and support for many architectures has led to its use in embedded devices and servers, especially in networking applications.[153] The project has also been noted for its stability[154] and reliability over time.[155]
Dell Force10 uses NetBSD as the underlying operating system that powers FTOS (the Force10 Operating System), which is used in high scalability switch/routers.[158] Force10 also made a donation to the NetBSD Foundation in 2007 to help further research and the open development community.[159]
Several companies are known to use NetBSD internally:
Wasabi Systems[169] provides a commercial "Wasabi Certified BSD" product based on NetBSD[170] with proprietary enterprise features and extensions, which are focused on embedded, server and storage applications. Wasabi has a long history of cooperation with the NetBSD project, including the development of WAPBL[171] and PCI storage devices powered by NetBSD.[172]
Precedence Technologies[173] offers thin-client software (ThinIT) and accompanying hardware based on NetBSD.[174]
Internet Initiative Japan, Inc. (IIJ) sells CPErouters commercialized as "SEIL",[175] which run a modified version of NetBSD at their core, and operate through a proprietary network management system (SMF) also based on NetBSD.[176] The SEIL/X4 has 2x GE ports (WAN, DMZ), 4x GE L2 switch ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, and reaches a throughput of 2Gbps, and VPN rate of up to 2 Gbit/s.[177]
Moritz Systems, an EU-based IT company specialized in embedded systems, IoT, edge computing and quality audits, also bases its products on NetBSD.[178]
TDI Security,[179] a US company specialized in cybersecurity, offers portable SAN and VPN solutions (named "pocketSAN" and "pocketVPN" respectively), designed to be run from a USB thumb-drive or an embedded device, and built upon a minimalist deployment of NetBSD installed on flash memory ("polyBSD").[180]
The NPF packet filter has been used in commercial products such as Outscale[187] and BisonRouter.[188]
NetBSD's own curses implementation[189] is used by Sabotage Linux.[190]
Rump kernels have been integrated in other operating systems to provide additional functionality:
Genode OS Framework; uses a rump kernel to support various files systems, both as a standalone FS server (rump_fs) and as a library plugin for its modular VFS (vfs_rump.lib.so).[191][192]
GNU Hurd; implements multiple rump kernel deployments to get modern device drivers, ranging from storage device drivers (RumpDisk), to sound devices drivers (RumpSound), and drivers for Ethernet/WLAN controllers (RumpNet).[193]
The SDF Public Access Unix System, a non-profit public access UNIXshell provider with the aim to provide remotely accessible computing facilities, uses NetBSD to power its infrastructure.[195] With a network of eight 64-bit enterprise class servers running NetBSD, and realising a combined processing power of over 21.1 GFLOPS (2018),[196] the SDF.org cluster is considered the largest NetBSD installation in the world, factually working as a testbed for future NetBSD releases.[197]
Licensing
All of the NetBSD kernel and most of the core userland source code is released under the terms of the BSD License (two, three, and four-clause variants). This essentially allows everyone to use, modify, redistribute or sell it as they wish, as long as they do not remove the copyright notice and license text (the four-clause variants also include terms relating to publicity material). Thus, the development of products based on NetBSD is possible without having to make modifications to the source code public. In contrast, the GPL, which does not apply to NetBSD, stipulates that changes to source code of a product must be released to the product recipient when products derived from those changes are released.
On 20 June 2008, the NetBSD Foundation announced a transition to the two clause BSD license, citing concerns with UCB support of clause 3 and industry applicability of clause 4.[198]
NetBSD also includes the GNU development tools and other packages, which are covered by the GPL and other open source licenses. As with other BSD projects, NetBSD separates those in its base source tree to make it easier to remove code that is under more restrictive licenses.[199] As for packages, the installed software licenses may be controlled by modifying the list of allowed licenses in the pkgsrc configuration file (mk.conf).
Releases
The following table lists major NetBSD releases and their notable features in reverse chronological order. Minor and patch releases are not included.
Support for new AArch64 security features: Privileged Access Never, Pointer Authentication, Branch Target Identification. Support for Linux binary compatibility on AArch64.
Support for PVH Xen virtualization, paravirtualization and multiprocessor Dom0 support in Xen
class="templateVersion co swatch-maintained" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, still maintained" data-sort-value="9.0" | Old version, still maintained: 9.0[104][201]
14 February 2020
Support for AArch64 (64-bit ARMv8-A) machines, including SBSA/SBBR, big.LITTLE, compatibility with 32-bit binaries, and up to 256 CPUs
Enhanced support for ARMv7-A, including UEFI bootloader, big.LITTLE, kernel mode setting for Allwinner and other SoCs, and device tree support
Hardware accelerated virtualization for QEMU via NVMM (NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor)
Improvements in the NPF firewall, updated ZFS, new and reworked drivers
Support for various new kernel and userland code sanitizers, and kernel ASLR. Audited network stack.
Removal of various old and unmaintained components, such as Intel 386 and ISDN support
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="8.0" | Old version, not maintained: 8.0[39]
17 July 2018
Audio system reworked with an in-kernel mixer
USB stack reworked with support for USB 3 host controllers and data rates
PaXASLR enabled by default on supported architectures
Hardened memory layout with fewer writable pages and PaX MPROTECT (W^X) enforced by default on supported architectures
Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability mitigations for Intel and AMD CPUs
Added a UEFI bootloader, NVMe driver, nouveau driver for Nvidia GPUs, support for more ARM boards including the Raspberry Pi 3
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="7.0" | Old version, not maintained: 7.0[202][203]
8 October 2015
Add accelerated support for modern Intel and Radeon devices on x86 through a port of the Linux 3.15 DRM/KMS code.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="6.0" | Old version, not maintained: 6.0[204]
SMP support for Xen domU kernels, initial suspend/resume support for Xen domU, PCI pass-through support for Xen3, and addition of the balloon driver
Major rework of MIPS port adding support for Symmetric multiprocessing and 64-bit (O32, N32, N64 ABIs are supported) processors, DSP v2 ASE extension, various NetLogic/RMI processor models, Loongson family processors, and new SoC boards
Improved SMP on PowerPC port and added support for Book E Freescale MPC85xx (e500 core) processors
apropos rewritten to implement full text search for man pages
Access to driver-internal limit values added to sysmon_envsys(9),[204] freshly utilized by new drivers like aibs(4)[205]
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="5.0" | Old version, not maintained: 5.0[206][207][208]
29 April 2009
Rewritten threading subsystem based on a 1:1 model and rewritten scheduler implementation.[206]
Rewritten Loadable kernel module framework, which will replace old LKMs. Use of X.Org rather than XFree86 by default for i386 and amd64 ports, and introduction of drm(4)/DRI for 3D hardware acceleration. Preliminary support for using Clang instead of GCC as the system compiler.[209]
Added support for ASLR in the kernel and dynamic linker.
Rewritten envsys framework (envsys2); addition of 8 new Hardware Monitoring sensor drivers; new I2C attachment of the lm(4) driver; additional hardware support in several sensor drivers[206]
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="4.0" | Old version, not maintained: 4.0
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="3.0" | Old version, not maintained: 3.0
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="2.0" | Old version, not maintained: 2.0
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.6" | Old version, not maintained: 1.6
14 September 2002
Unified Buffer Cache (UBC) was introduced, which unifies the filesystem and virtual memory caches of file data.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.5" | Old version, not maintained: 1.5
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.4" | Old version, not maintained: 1.4
12 May 1999
UVM, a rewritten virtual memory subsystem, was introduced.
Added RAIDframe, a software RAID implementation, and imported IPFilter.
Completion of the integration of all remaining 4.4BSD Lite-2 kernel improvements.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.3" | Old version, not maintained: 1.3
9 March 1998
XFree86 source tree was made a supported part of the distribution.
The pkgsrc packages collection system was introduced.[215]
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.2" | Old version, not maintained: 1.2
4 October 1996
Support for NFSv3, SCSI scanner and medium changer devices added.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.1" | Old version, not maintained: 1.1
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="1.0" | Old version, not maintained: 1.0
The legally encumbered Net/2-derived source code was replaced with equivalent code from 4.4BSD-lite, in accordance with the USL v BSDi lawsuit settlement.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="0.9" | Old version, not maintained: 0.9
20 August 1993
Contained many enhancements and bug fixes.
This was still a PC-platform-only release, although by this time, work was underway to add support for other architectures.
class="templateVersion co swatch-unsupported" style="color: var(--color-base, #202122); " title="Old version, not maintained" data-sort-value="0.8" | Old version, not maintained: 0.8
20 April 1993
The first official release, derived from 386BSD 0.1 plus the version 0.2.2 unofficial patchkit, with several programs from the Net/2 release missing from 386BSD re-integrated, and various other improvements.[220]
Logo
The NetBSD "flag" logo, designed by Grant Bissett, was introduced in 2004 and is an abstraction of the older logo,[221] which was designed by Shawn Mueller in 1994. Mueller's version was based on the famous World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.[222]
The NetBSD Foundation
The NetBSD Foundation is the legal entity that owns the intellectual property and trademarks associated with NetBSD,[223] and on 22 January 2004, became a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit organization. The members of the foundation are developers who have CVS commit access.[224] The NetBSD Foundation has a Board of Directors, elected by the voting of members for two years.[225]
Hosting
Hosting for the project is provided primarily by Columbia University, and Western Washington University, fronted by a CDN provided by Fastly. Mirrors for the project are spread around the world and provided by volunteers and supporters of the project.
Commit guidelines
The project defines guidelines to make commits to its CVS source tree. On April 4, 2004, its first version, 1.1, was published.[226] The 10 guidelines of this version can be summarized as:[227][228]
Commit only familiar code you are familiar with;
Do not commit tainted code to the repository, i.e., if the code is not yours, check its license;
The more intrusive your changes are the higher is the level of required prior approval;
Commit only code that you have tested;
Group commits together that are part of the same fix;
Each commit should be a separate patch/fix/addition/etc.;
Do not mix functionality or bug-fix patches with whitespace/layout updates;
Clearly document your changes in the commit log;
Give proper credit if your commit contains code;
Do not revert other developer's commits, try to reach an agreement.
In May 2024, the second guideline was extended to state that code generated by "large language model or similar technology" must not be committed without prior written approval by core.[229][230]
↑ Ganssle, Jack G; Noergaard, Tammy; Eady, Fred; Edwards, Lewin; Katz, David J (14 September 2007). Embedded Hardware. Newnes. ISBN978-0-7506-8584-9. pp. 291–292.
↑ "About NetBSD". The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. The NetBSD Project's goals. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
↑ "NetBSD features list". The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2014. NetBSD focuses on clean design and well architected solutions.
↑ Love, Robert (2005). "Chapter 19". Linux Kernel development (2.ed.). Sams Publishing. ISBN0-672-32720-1. Retrieved 7 June 2014. Some examples of highly portable operating systems are Minix, NetBSD, and many research systems.
↑ Marshall Kirk McKusick (30 April 1996). "BSD Memory-Management Design Decisions". The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. Retrieved 24 February 2025.
↑ Charles D. Cranor (June 1999). "The UVM Virtual Memory System"(PDF). Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference. Retrieved 24 February 2025.
↑ Simon Pratt (2 February 2016). "BSD Virtual Memory". blog.pr4tt.com. Retrieved 24 February 2025.
↑ "Myths about FreeBSD". Retrieved 7 June 2014. The two operating systems do share a lot of code, for example most userland utilities and the C library on OS X are derived from FreeBSD versions.
↑ Sevan Janiyan (22 September 2018). "What's in store for NetBSD 9.0"(PDF). EuroBSDcon 2018. NetBSD Gallery. Retrieved 14 February 2025. SDF is a NetBSD development site
↑ "Distro description". Licensing Section: Free Penguin. Retrieved 7 June 2014. NetBSD separates those in its base source tree, in order to make removal of code under more restrictive licenses easier.
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