Just installed netbsd 10.1 amd 64 and after running the *glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"* it said that it's using OpenGL 3.1 and mesa 19.1.17 which are both very outdated. I know NetBSD is about stability and not supposed to be cutting edge but the 19.x releases are getting a little old now (goes back to 2019). Also opengl 3.1 is very old now too (2009).

Has anyone had any success with running NetBSD on the raspberry pi 3(b+)? I tried running it through the UEFI firmware image, which resulted in a kernel panic, while running it without UEFI firmware loaded up a few things, the last thing I remember showing up was ”boot>” And a blinking cursor, but I could unfortunately not use my keyboard without the UEFI firmware image loaded. I did try changing the usb ports and using another keyboard but that didn’t help.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have, and please let me know if you need more information.

UPDATE:

It turns out it was having trouble loading from my external HDD connected via USB, but it loaded fine on my SD card. Does anyone know if there’s any solution for this?

I am pretty lost here. I assume xinput has something to do with trackpad scrolling, but I can’t make head or tails out of the output:

$ xinput list (Linux output) Elan Touchpad Elan Trackpoint

$ xinput list (NetBSD 10.1 output) Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] /dev/wsmouse id=7 [slave pointer (2)] Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] /dev/wskbd id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]

So are there any of these NetBSD xinput values that I can use for setting xinput set-prop "Device Name" "VertTwoFingerScroll" 1?

would it be viable to run an internal proxy-cache of the netbsd binary pkgsrc repos? They're often quite slow from where we are (NZ) and we could probably just cache big hunks of them with nginx. Would just a basic nginx proxy-pass vhost work for this?

I've proposed the talk 'Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 2025' for the upcoming OSDay 2025 in Florence, Italy, this March. My talk has been pre-selected, but the top 8 talks will be chosen based on votes (👍 on GitHub).

So, if you want me to go to Florence and present our beloved BSDs, go vote at https://github.com/Schroedinger-Hat/osday/issues/564

I have followed the directions at https://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/getting.html#getting-first to download the "current" pkgsrc tarball via

$ftp ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc.tar.gzftp 

and extracted it to /usr/pkgsrc. Unfortunately, the highest version of libreoffice that appears in misc/libreoffice is libreoffice6-bin.

However, https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/misc/libreoffice/index.html suggests that NetBSD is in fact up to date, and has libreoffice-24.8.3.2. So I'm a bit confused now, and wondering where to get a tarball that is actually current...

I have an old AMD K6 266mhz with 512MB of RAM. I also have an assortment of PATA DOMs that I would like to try various operating systems on to boot this thing. I have a 2GB PATA DOM with Windows 98 installed. I have a 512MB PATA DOM that I've been trying to get some flavour of Linux or BSD installed on. I've tried TinyCore and DSL but for some reason their installers have an issue installing a bootloader and I haven't gotten around to making that work.

In the meantime, I've heard that NetBSD is particularly well suited for old hardware. I've read that the requirements recommend at least 512MB of disk space. I usually prefer to give my OS a bit more room to breathe, so to speak, and if NetBSD requires 512MB, I'm concerned that actually trying to run it with that much space might leave it a little constrained.

Can anyone here tell me how well it might run on this rig or if it's actually just too old for NetBSD or if the rig itself will support it but the drive is just too small? Unfortunately, the rest of my DOMs are even smaller and the 2GB with Windows 98 on it is the only one I have of that size.

Hello my old friends, I'm writing you because of both desperation and frustration. Well, truly saying, the condition is not unusual to me Look, this falling apart device, is my Notestar laptop with i486sx CPU, 8Mb RAM and 512Mb CompactFlash card serving as an HDD. A few years ago it was nicely able to run DOS, Windows3.x/95 and some ancient versions of FreeBSD and NetBSD. But today, after sitting offline, it has issues with the keyboard - at least Enter key doesn't work anymore, so I'm unable to re-scan and configure the drive, set time and etc (yes, blame me - the battery is dead). There is a PS/2 look a like port, but I have only USB keyboards and a cheap PS/2-USB adapter, which doesn't work. So, the only thing I can do now, is to helplessly look at BIOS and hate my luck level.

The reason why I have powered it on today is that, I wanted to boot NetBSD 10.0 there, with the kernel that I specially patched to bring FPU emulation back (which was removed since NetBSD 5.0). This was the first test run on real hardware and I failed it right from the start.

I'm bad at repairing - I'm afraid I can make it even worse. So, I no longer have the hardware to run the code I wrote.

Anyway, whether any of you have a 486SX machine and would like to try potentially working/not-working NetBSD 10.0 GENERIC_TINY kernel with MATH_EMULATION option, let me know, and I share the compiled kernel. Meanwhile, I will prepare the patched code and publish it, perhaps, on Github with "untested/potentially not working" tag. This is the only option I have, unless you might suggest something else.

Happy Friday!

https://preview.redd.it/jz1rvtlcgmde1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10e5beb461729e8a6c918a5679945eda74fffeb2

UPD. The repository is here: https://github.com/mezantrop/i486SX\_soft\_FPU. Let me know, if you are brave enough to try it.

I'm running NetBSD 10.0 on a PC Engines APU board, having switched from FreeBSD due to a lack of support for 32-bit and other things.

This board has two Atheros radios in there, appearing as 5212 devices. I'm using one to connect to the local WiFi using wpa_supplicant and that works great. However, I'm trying to use the other as a hotspot and hostapd just doesn't want to play ball:

Configuration file: /etc/hostapd.conf
ctrl_interface_group=0 (from group name 'wheel')
BSS count 1, BSSID mask 00:00:00:00:00:00 (0 bits)
ath0: interface state UNINITIALIZED->COUNTRY_UPDATE
Previous country code , new country code IE 
Continue interface setup after channel list update
ctrl_iface not configured!
Channel list update timeout - try to continue anyway
Completing interface initialization
Mode: (null)  Channel: 44  Frequency: -1 MHz
Could not set channel for kernel driver
Interface initialization failed
ath0: interface state COUNTRY_UPDATE->DISABLED
ath0: AP-DISABLED 
hostapd_interface_deinit_free(0xae7c7000)
hostapd_interface_deinit_free: num_bss=1 conf->num_bss=1
hostapd_interface_deinit(0xae7c7000)
ath0: interface state DISABLED->DISABLED
hostapd_bss_deinit: deinit bss ath0
ath0: Flushing old station entries
bsd_send_mlme_param: op=3 reason=3 addr=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
ath0: Deauthenticate all stations
bsd_send_mlme_param: op=3 reason=3 addr=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
bsd_set_privacy: enabled=0
bsd_set_key: alg=0 addr=0x0 key_idx=0 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
bsd_del_key: key_idx=0
bsd_set_key: alg=0 addr=0x0 key_idx=1 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
bsd_del_key: key_idx=1
bsd_set_key: alg=0 addr=0x0 key_idx=2 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
bsd_del_key: key_idx=2
bsd_set_key: alg=0 addr=0x0 key_idx=3 set_tx=0 seq_len=0 key_len=0
bsd_del_key: key_idx=3
ath0: AP-DISABLED 
hostapd_cleanup(hapd=0xae79c000 (ath0))
ath0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING 
hostapd_free_hapd_data: Interface ath0 wasn't started
hostapd_interface_deinit_free: driver=0xbfd340 drv_priv=0xae792000 -> hapd_deinit
hostapd_interface_free(0xae7c7000)
hostapd_interface_free: free hapd 0xae79c000
hostapd_cleanup_iface(0xae7c7000)
hostapd_cleanup_iface_partial(0xae7c7000)
hostapd_cleanup_iface: free iface=0xae7c7000

To my untrained eye, it looks like it is having difficulties talking to the kernel driver for the radio. I tried downloading the hostapd source, but it won't compile because it needs /usr/include/netpacket. I assume there's a NetBSD-specific version which has been ported. But I went looking for hostapd in the NetBSD source tree (on Github) and couldn't find it there, either.

I know these Atheros radios are pretty ancient, as is the APU board, but they run nicely on 12 volts and it's nice not to have to dump this stuff just because the release train has left the station.

My first time trying NetBSD, on the downloading kernel state(http://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.1/and64/binary/sets/kern-GENERIC.tar) the download freezes on exactly 99% , just says stalled, what do I do?(sorry for bad English)

I'd like to have a laptop just for NetBSD, only for offline coding (Xfce, Geany, vim, GHC, Ruby). Last time I installed NetBSD in 2010 and everything went well but now I don't want to fight with EFI, etc. I tried to install NetBSD on Acer Aspire E13, Tuxedo InfinityBook and it didn't work.

What would be the good choice for used laptop for NetBSD? Pinebook, some old Chromebook? I know that NetBSD will work perfectly on Lenovos but is there some other choice?

SOLVED - see below

I've always used NetBSD installed in a BIOS/MBR partition, and this is my first attempt at a GPT/UEFI install. Nothing works. Here's what I tried . . .

Attempt 1: booted the USB stick in UEFI mode, used all the GPT install defaults for partitioning (128MB EFI, big data partition, and swap). Full install. Rebooted and black screen at bootup. Nothing.

Attempt 2: booted the USB stick in UEFI mode, dropped into a shell, and poked around. The installed system is all there, and the EFI partition has a valid efi/boot/bootx64.efi (verified by md5). Waitaminnit! efi, not EFI. It's a FAT16 filesystem, not FAT32. I reformatted with newfs_msdos -F 32, recreated the directory structure as EFI/boot and copied bootx64.efi. Unmount, reboot, no joy. Same black screen.

Attempt 3: Tried the manual install procedure from the NetBSD wiki and prepared my drive in advance. When the installer asked where to install, I went to the dk(4) menu, picked my big data partition, confirmed, and it brought me right back to the main install screen and not the next step. I couldn't go further so I had to use the wd0 choice as in my Attempt 1. Same result - black screen after reboot.

FreeBSD boots perfectly in UEFI so it's not my machine. rEFInd can boot FreeBSD too. Either I must be missing something or doing something stupid. All indications point to the bootx64.efi file looking in the wrong place, but this in uncharted waters for me so I could be way off base.

Macine is a Dell Optiplex 790 with an i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 500GB drive. USB image is NetBSD-10.1-amd64-install.img.gz, MD5 checked on download and on USB.

SOLVED: Even though NetBSD shows up in the UEFI boot selector, the computer is seeing the EFI partition but not seeing the bootx64.efi file!!!

I tried booting with the FreeBSD efi file, knowing I'd get some sort of error, but black screen again. That was my clue.

Even though NetBSD was showing on the BIOS boot selector, it must be pointing to the wrong place. I deleted the entry in the BIOS, recreated it to point to the actual efi file, and voilà, NetBSD boots.

And the peasants rejoined!

Processing img hmso8rkmid9e1...

Hey, I have been working a lot on my open-source chess game, chess-tui. This is a simple rust written TUI that let's you play chess games from your terminal. You can now play against other players online or against any UCI compatible chess engine !

Would love to have your feedback on that, and if you like it make sure you star it !

It is already available on pkgsrc !
pkgsrc link: https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/games/chess-tui/index.html

Repo: https://github.com/thomas-mauran/chess-tui
Website: https://thomas-mauran.github.io/chess-tui/

Flashed img from here https://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/arm/ using Balena Etcher. After booting the board prints "ehci failed to shut down host controller" twice and then stucks.

What can you suggest?

I have all the man pages for the commands, but the commands themselves are coming up "not found". What package has them so I can reinstall?

Hello everybody, I would like to ask, if there are any plans of NetBSD to support new HW components appearing in todays laptops, e.g. amplifiers like Cirrus CS35L41. Or any other new types of components which manufacturers tends to put into laptops. Personaly I bought a "wrong" laptop having that amplifier wired and only then I got to know BSD world. :/ Does it even make sense for BSD to aim for such broad HW support for desktop purposes? Thank you!

https://preview.redd.it/avldpm2e388e1.png?width=1366&format=png&auto=webp&s=56e6996c5e2d11e8ea11865ab06795da2f66d678

Its wifi adapter is broken, and battery is dead. I have to copy everything via a USB flash drive. But it still works ;)

Hey!,I just installed NetBSD and I noticed that I don't have any desktop manager, I'd like to use marswm but I don't find the instructions very clear, could someone give me a tutorial on how to do it?

Hello everyone. I'm trying to boot NetBSD from an USB stick and I can't manage to get it to work.

THE PROBLEM

Just after selecting the boot device, the boot process gets stuck at "NetBSD/x86 cd9660 Primary Bootstrap"

HOW I FLASHED THE ISO

I've downloaded the ISO file from here and flashed it through the following command on Linux Mint

sudo dd if=/home/peppefailla/Scrivania/netbsd.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress && sync

---

So basically it just doesn't launch and gets stuck. What to do now? Pls help, thanks