Announcing NetBSD 6.1

Introduction

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.

Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1. Please see the release map graph on the NetBSD website for a visual representation of the relationship between releases.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 6.1 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found at https://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/. We encourage users who wish to install via ISO or USB disk images to download via BitTorrent by using the torrent files supplied in the images area. A list of hashes for the NetBSD 6.1 distribution has been signed with the well-connected PGP key for the NetBSD Security Officer: https://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/hashes/NetBSD-6.1_hashes.asc

NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses, and may be used without paying royalties to anyone. Free support services are available via our mailing lists and website. Commercial support is available from a variety of sources. More extensive information on NetBSD is available from our website:

Fund Drive

Your donations to the NetBSD Foundation have allowed the project to make major improvements to the code base. With the release of NetBSD 6.1, we would like to continue funded development in various areas, including:

  • Improving network stack concurrency and performance.
  • Development of modern file systems and improvement of existing ones.
  • Features which are useful in embedded environments, such as high resolution timers and execute in place (XIP) support.
  • Automatic testing and quality assurance.
For more information about donating, visit https://www.NetBSD.org/donations/. The NetBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization in the US, and donations may be tax deductible.

Major Changes Between 6.0 and 6.1

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES-6.1 file in the top level directory of the NetBSD 6.1 release tree. An abbreviated list is as follows:

Security Advisory Fixes

Security Fixes

  • expat: Fix CVE-2012-1147, CVE-2012-1148 and CVE-2012-0876.
  • BIND: Address CVE-2012-5688: Named could die on specific queries with dns64 enabled.
  • Fixed a crash which could happen with sysctl security.curtain=1 set. (PR#47598)
  • Address CVE-2012-5667: Multiple integer overflows in GNU grep.
  • Several fixes to entropy handling in the kernel.
  • Prevent ktrace from being able to crash the kernel.

General kernel

  • posix_spawn(): Fix processes with attributes.
  • Resolve races between vget() and vrele() resulting in vget() returning dead vnodes.
  • Prevent crash when unsupported fd's are used with kevent.
  • Fix a bug where kmem_alloc() could be called from interrupt context.
  • WAPBL: coalesce writes to the journal to speed up wapbl_flush() on raid5 by a factor of 3 to 4.

Networking

  • Fix "atomic fragments" for IPv6.
  • ipf: Fix alignment issues in ipmon. (PR#47101)
  • npf: handle delayed checksums in the network stack. (PR#47235)
  • Fixed some locking issues in ipf(4)
  • npf(3): Many fixes and updates. Config syntax has changed somewhat, please check your config files.
  • Fixed sendto(2) issue with IPv6 UDP datagrams. (PR#47408)
  • vioif(4): Fixed an issue which caused recent QEMU to crash.

File systems

  • smbfs: Make smbfs actually work on big-endian ports.
  • smbfs: various fixes. (PR#25070)
  • Allow mounting ext2fs and msdosfs in 32-bit compat mode.
  • v7fs: fix off-by-one error.

Drivers

  • ciss(4): don't try to handle sensors if there aren't any.
  • isp(4): Fix FC-AL devices on QLogic ISP2100. (PR#47302)
  • mfi(4): Add support for LSI Thunderbolt (SAS2208) controllers.
  • mfi(4): Add support for running the MegaCLI Linux binary to manage the controller.
  • puc(4): Additional device support.
  • bge(4): Add support for Apple's Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter. (PR#46961)
  • mvgbe(4): fix a number of issues
  • nfe(4): Avoid bounce buffering and improve performance.
  • wm(4): Fix handling of 82578D and 82579V chips. Various other fixes.
  • fss(4): Don't crash when running multiple dump -X. (PR#47514)
  • fss(4): Fixed panic. (PR#47020)

Platforms

  • alpha:
    • Fixed longjmp/setjmp on alpha for statically linked programs such as those in /rescue.
  • amiga:
    • New ed(4) device driver for Hydra and ASDG Zorro2 bus network cards.
  • arm:
    • Fix gcc bugid 51408 for arm. (PR#46972)
    • Fixed a bit check in the Kirkwood IRQ code.
    • Fixed incorrect counts for 'vmstat -e' on Kirkwood.
    • Make bigendian ARM get the MBR partition and offset correct. (PR#47081)
    • Fixed bug where IRQ masks of GPIO were set incorrectly on Marvell SoCs.
    • Fixed static linking on ARM platforms. (PR#47139)
    • Properly block IRQs >= 32. (PR#45371)
    • Greatly improved Raspberry Pi support - USB and onboard Ethernet now work.
    • Enabled DCache Streaming Switch and Write Allocate for Sheeva CPUs.
    • Added support for the watchdog timer in some Marvell SoCs.
    • Fix for non-MBR disks on ARM. (PR#47463)
  • mips:
    • MIPS ports have switched to gdb 7.3.1. GDB6 is removed.
  • vax:
    • Reverted MAXPARTITION bump to 16, lowering it to 12 instead, to fix bootblocks and installboot for VAX 780 and other machines booting via VMB.EXE.
  • x68k:
    • Update bootloader: cdboot, netboot support and bugfixes.
    • Add floppy format support.
  • x86 (i386, amd64):
    • Work around a possible gcc bug generating bad assembler code. (PR#45673)
    • Disable C1E on AMD K8 CPUs, to prevent freeze during boot.
    • Fix running BSDi and NetBSD <= 1.0 binaries. (PR#41341)
    • Add support in ld.elf_so for relocation type R_386_TLS_TPOFF32. (PR#47061)
    • Fix some ACPI panics. (PR#47016)
    • The amd64 port now supports dtrace. (Not compiled in by default)
  • xen:
    • Prevent a memory corruption issue that locks up a Xen DomU, and can potentially cause file system corruption. (PR#47056, PR#47057)
    • Fix: Xen Dom0 NetBSD kernel could crash by adding duplicate xenwatches.

Userland fixes

  • Library Updates

    • pthread(3): libpthread minor number was bumped for the addition of pthread_cond_setclock(). Threaded binaries built on NetBSD 6.1 will not function on NetBSD 6.0.
    • pthread(3): libpthread can be dlopen()ed again.
    • terminfo(3): Various fixes to libterminfo.
    • libc: fix memory corruption in rpc. (PR#13082)
    • libutil: Fixed a bug in parsedate(3) where it would treat all input as if it were in the local time zone.

  • Update to tzdata2013c.
  • cdb: don't refuse to open databases without entries or keys.
  • Address graphics corruption in recent Cairo, manifested most commonly by certain rendered text sections appearing as solid rectangular blocks of color.
  • Added flock(1), inspired by the Linux program of the same name.
  • Updated Postfix to version 2.8.13.
  • wsconsctl(8): add support for touchscreen calibration. (PR#45872)
  • openssl: Fixed a multiple-free bug.

NetBSD mirror sites

Please use a mirror site close to you.

System families supported by NetBSD 6.1

The NetBSD 6.1 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

NetBSD/acorn26 Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems
NetBSD/acorn32 Acorn RiscPC/A7000, VLSI RC7500
NetBSD/algor Algorithmics, Ltd. MIPS evaluation boards
NetBSD/alpha Digital/Compaq Alpha (64-bit)
NetBSD/amd64 AMD family processors like Opteron, Athlon64, and Intel CPUs with EM64T extension
NetBSD/amiga Commodore Amiga and MacroSystem DraCo
NetBSD/amigappc PowerPC-based Amiga boards.
NetBSD/arc MIPS-based machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec
NetBSD/atari Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
NetBSD/bebox Be Inc's BeBox
NetBSD/cats Chalice Technology's CATS and Intel's EBSA-285 evaluation boards
NetBSD/cesfic CES FIC8234 VME processor board
NetBSD/cobalt Cobalt Networks' MIPS-based Microservers
NetBSD/dreamcast Sega Dreamcast game console
NetBSD/emips The Extensible MIPS architecture from Microsoft Research
NetBSD/evbarm Various ARM-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbmips Various MIPS-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbppc Various PowerPC-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbsh3 Various Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/ews4800mips NEC's MIPS-based EWS4800 workstation
NetBSD/hp300 Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series
NetBSD/hppa Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 700 workstations
NetBSD/hpcarm StrongARM based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcmips MIPS-based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcsh Hitachi Super-H based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/i386 IBM PCs and PC clones with i486-family processors and up
NetBSD/ibmnws IBM Network Station 1000
NetBSD/iyonix Castle Technology's Iyonix ARM based PCs
NetBSD/landisk SH4 processor based NAS appliances
NetBSD/luna68k OMRON Tateisi Electric's LUNA series
NetBSD/mac68k Apple Macintosh with Motorola 68k CPU
NetBSD/macppc Apple PowerPC-based Macintosh and clones
NetBSD/mipsco MIPS Computer Systems Inc. family of workstations and servers
NetBSD/mmeye Brains mmEye multimedia server
NetBSD/mvme68k Motorola MVME 68k Single Board Computers
NetBSD/mvmeppc Motorola PowerPC VME Single Board Computers
NetBSD/netwinder StrongARM based NetWinder machines
NetBSD/news68k Sony's 68k-based NET WORK STATION series
NetBSD/newsmips Sony's MIPS-based NET WORK STATION series
NetBSD/next68k NeXT 68k black hardware
NetBSD/ofppc OpenFirmware PowerPC machines
NetBSD/pmax Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
NetBSD/prep PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines
NetBSD/rs6000 IBM RS/6000 MCA-based PowerPC machines.
NetBSD/sandpoint Motorola Sandpoint reference platform, including many PPC-based NAS boxes
NetBSD/sbmips Broadcom SiByte evaluation boards
NetBSD/sgimips Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations
NetBSD/shark Digital DNARD (shark)
NetBSD/sparc Sun SPARC (32-bit) and UltraSPARC (in 32-bit mode)
NetBSD/sparc64 Sun UltraSPARC (in native 64-bit mode)
NetBSD/sun2 Sun Microsystems Sun 2 machines with Motorola 68010 CPU
NetBSD/sun3 Motorola 68020 and 030 based Sun 3 and 3x machines
NetBSD/vax Digital VAX
NetBSD/x68k Sharp X680x0 series
NetBSD/xen The Xen virtual machine monitor
NetBSD/zaurus Sharp ARM PDAs

Ports available in source form only for this release include the following:

NetBSD/ia64 Itanium family of processors

Acknowledgments

The NetBSD Foundation would like to thank all those who have contributed code, hardware, documentation, funds, colocation for our servers, web pages and other documentation, release engineering, and other resources over the years. More information on the people who make NetBSD happen is available at:

We would like to especially thank the University of California at Berkeley and the GNU Project for particularly large subsets of code that we use. We would also like to thank the Internet Systems Consortium Inc. and the Network Security Lab at Columbia University's Computer Science Department for current colocation services.

About NetBSD

NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license. NetBSD is developed and supported by a large and vibrant international community. Many applications are readily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.

About the NetBSD Foundation

The NetBSD Foundation was chartered in 1995, with the task of overseeing core NetBSD project services, promoting the project within industry and the open source community, and holding intellectual property rights on much of the NetBSD code base. Day-to-day operations of the project are handled by volunteers.

As a non-profit organization with no commercial backing, the NetBSD Foundation depends on donations from its users, and we would like to ask you to consider making a donation to the NetBSD Foundation in support of continuing production of our fine operating system. Your generous donation would be particularly welcome to help with ongoing upgrades and maintenance, as well as with operating expenses for the NetBSD Foundation.

Donations can be done via PayPal to , or via Google Checkout and are fully tax-deductible in the US. See www.NetBSD.org/donations/ for more information, or contact directly.


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