The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.6.2 of the NetBSD 
operating system is now available.

About NetBSD 1.6.2

NetBSD 1.6.2 is a maintenance release for users of NetBSD 1.6.1 and earlier 
releases, and it provides the following updates relative to 1.6.1:

    * A number of security issues have been fixed.
    * Some performance fixes have been incorporated.
    * Improved device support in some existing drivers.
    * Some new device drivers have been added.
    * Some minor userland fixes have been applied.
    * The stability of the sparc64 port has been greatly enhanced.

The NetBSD 1.6.2 distribution consists of the full NetBSD source, binary 
releases for 40 ports including the X Window System, and the 
NetBSD Packages Collection 1.6.2 release.

A complete list of changes are available in the CHANGES-1.6.2 file in top 
level directory of the NetBSD 1.6.2 release tree. Also, included later in this
announcement is a list of the major changes in NetBSD 1.6.2.

Complete source and binaries are available at many sites around the world. You
can download NetBSD via FTP, AnonCVS, SUP and other methods from a mirror site
near you.

Dedication

The NetBSD Foundation would like to dedicate the NetBSD 1.6.2 release to the 
memory of Erik Reid, who went missing and is presumed dead in a sailing 
accident on 18 February 2004. Erik's contributions to NetBSD included work on 
support for SGI MIPS R4000, integrating XFree86 Direct Rendering 
Interface (DRI), and managing the build lab. His death came as a shock, and 
he will be greatly missed by all of us. May he rest in peace.

About NetBSD

The NetBSD operating system is a full-featured, open source, UNIX-like 
operating system descended from the Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 
4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2. NetBSD runs on 52 different system 
architectures featuring 17 machine architectures across 11 distinct CPU 
families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 1.6.2 release contains 
complete binary releases for 40 different machine types.

NetBSD is a highly integrated system. In addition to its highly portable, 
high performance kernel, NetBSD features a complete set of user utilities, 
compilers for several languages, the X Window System, firewall software and 
numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code. The NetBSD 
Packages Collection contains over 4400 packages and binary package releases 
for a number of platforms are currently in progress.

More information on the goals of the NetBSD Project can be procured from the 
NetBSD web site at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/Goals/

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 web site. Commercial support is available from a 
variety of sources; some are listed at:

http://www.NetBSD.org/gallery/consultants.html

More extensive information on NetBSD is available from the NetBSD web site:

http://www.NetBSD.org/

NetBSD is the work of a diverse group of people spread around the world. The 
`Net' in our name is a tribute to the Internet, which enables us to 
communicate and share code, and without which the project would not exist. 

Major Changes Between 1.6.1 and 1.6.2

The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES-1.6.2 file in the top
level directory of the NetBSD 1.6.2 release tree. Some highlights include:

Kernel

    * With pciide(4), make Promise controllers do DMA with large disks 
      requiring 48-bit LBA drives.
    * Add error detection when running low on swap, to improve stability in 
      low-memory situations.
    * Support for more SiS and Intel controllers were added to pciide(4).
    * Support for the new PowerBook G4 12-inch added.
    * mlx(4) stability improved.
    * A long-standing stability problem with the original Sun4c sparc 
      systems (SS1, SS1+, and IPC) has been found and fixed. Some 
      optimizations were done for these systems as well.
    * Sun3, Sun3x, and Sun2 may now boot from tape files, through addition of 
      seek support for tape files.
    * The USERCONF option has been added to the i386 kernels; see userconf(4) 
      for more information.
    * Hardware random number generator support for Intel 865 and 875P 
      chipsets added.
    * Fix wdc(4) to work with pre-ATA drives.
    * General support for multi-function pcmcia cards has been fixed.
    * Various fixes to linux emulation have been added.

Networking

    * rtk(4) multicast problem fixed.
    * fxp(4) support yet a few more chip variants.
    * tlp(4) driver fixed so that the DEC Alpha PWS no longer panics.
    * Path MTU discovery black-hole detection has been added.
    * bce(4) driver added for Broadcom BCM4401 chipset, as seen in recent 
      Dell laptops.
    * A workaround has been added for a race condition in the networking code 
      which could corrupt the callout data structure.
    * Various networking stack fixes for IPv4, IPv6 and IPSEC.

Security

The following security issues have been fixed:

    * NetBSD-SA2004-004 Insufficient packet validation in racoon IKE daemon
    * NetBSD-SA2004-003 Inconsistent IPv6 path MTU discovery handling
    * NetBSD-SA2004-002 OpenSSL 0.9.6 ASN.1 parser vulnerability
    * NetBSD-SA2004-001 shmat reference counting bug
    * NetBSD-SA2003-018 DNS negative cache poisoning
    * NetBSD-SA2003-017 OpenSSL multiple vulnerability
    * NetBSD-SA2003-016 Sendmail - another prescan() bug CAN-2003-0694
    * NetBSD-SA2003-015 Remote and local vulnerabilities in XFree86 font 
                        libraries
    * NetBSD-SA2003-014 Insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2)
    * NetBSD-SA2003-012 Out of bounds memset(0) in sshd
    * NetBSD-SA2003-011 off-by-one error in realpath(3)
    * NetBSD-SA2003-010 remote panic in OSI networking code

System administration and user tools

    * Possible crash in vi(1) triggered by an error was fixed.
    * XFree86 upgraded to version 4.3.0 for those architectures which use 
      XFree86 version 4.
    * scsictl(8) now supports a few new commands.
    * BIND has been upgraded to version 8.3.7.
    * DHCP has been upgraded to version 3.0.1rc11 with various fixes.
    * CVS has been upgraded to version 1.11.10.

And of course there have also been innumerable bug fixes and other 
miscellaneous enhancements.

Please note that at the moment, sysinst will not assist you in installing 
pre-built third-party binary packages or the pkgsrc system itself. See the 
NetBSD packages collection documentation:

http://www.NetBSD.org/Documentation/software/packages.html

Lastly, it should be noted that the X11 binaries shipped in NetBSD 1.6.2 for 
i386, macppc and cats are based on XFree86 4.3.0, other ports are based on 
XFree86 3.3.6. You may at compile time pick which sources to build and 
install. Please also note that the X server does not currently build on cats, 
this will hopefully be fixed shortly. The rest of the X sets are included. 

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:

http://www.NetBSD.org/People/

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 Software Consortium and the Helsinki 
University of Technology for current colocation services.

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.

NetBSD mirror sites

Please use a mirror site close to you.

    * FTP           - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#ftp
    * ISO images    - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#iso
    * Anonymous CVS - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#anoncvs
    * SUP           - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#sup
    * CVSup         - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#cvsup
    * rsync         - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#rsync
    * AFS           - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#afs
    * NFS           - http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#nfs

Please also note our list of CD-ROM vendors.

http://www.NetBSD.org/Sites/cdroms.html

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