Subject: NetBSD 1.5 released and available for download
To: None <netbsd-announce@netbsd.org>
From: Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net>
List: current-users
Date: 12/06/2000 17:10:00
			   Announcing NetBSD 1.5
			   =====================

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.5 of the
NetBSD operating system is now available.

NetBSD is widely known as the most portable operating system in the
world.  It currently supports thirty-one different system families and
twelve different CPU families, all from a single source tree, and is
always being ported to more.

NetBSD 1.5 continues our long tradition with major improvements in
file system and memory management performance, major security
enhancements (including integration of IPsec, SSH and Kerberos 5), and
support for many new platforms and peripherals.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 1.5 are available for download
at ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5/ and many of our mirror
sites.  A list of mirror sites is provided at the end of this
announcement.


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
   thirty-one different system architectures featuring twelve distinct
   families of CPUs, and is being ported to more.  The NetBSD 1.5
   release contains complete binary releases for twenty 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.  We also support third party software
   (including the KDE and GNOME desktops) through our package system.

   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 our web site
   at:

        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.


System families supported by NetBSD 1.5
---------------------------------------

   The NetBSD 1.5 release provides supported binary distributions for the
   following systems:

     * Digital Alpha (64-bit)
     * Commodore Amiga, MacroSystem DraCo
     * Machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec
     * Acorn RiscPC/A7000, CATS, Digital Shark, EBSA-285, VLSI RC7500
     * Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
     * Cobalt Networks' Microservers
     * Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series
     * MIPS based Windows CE PDA machines
     * i386 family IBM PCs and clones
     * Apple Macintosh
     * Apple Power Macintosh and clones (including the G4 cube)
     * Motorola MVME 68k SBCs
     * Sony's m68k based "NET WORK STATION" series
     * NeXT 68k 'black' hardware
     * PC532
     * Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
     * Sun SPARC (32-bit)
     * Sun UltraSPARC (64-bit)
     * Sun 3 and 3x
     * Digital VAX

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

     * PowerPC-based Amiga boards
     * Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems
     * Be Inc's BeBox
     * Evaluation boards with Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4 CPUs
     * OMRON Tateishi Electric's LUNA series
     * Brains' mmEye Multi Media Server
     * Sony's MIPS based "NET WORK STATION" series
     * PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines
     * Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations
     * Sharp X680x0 series


Major changes between 1.4 and 1.5
---------------------------------

   It is difficult to completely summarize the extensive development
   between the 1.4 and 1.5 releases.  Some highlights include:

   Kernel

     * Ports to new platforms including: arc, cobalt, hpcmips,
       news68k, sgimips, and sparc64.
     * Improved performance and stability of the UVM virtual memory
       subsystem.
     * Implementation of generic kernel locking code, as well as a
       restructure and re-tuning of the scheduler, to be used by the
       future symmetric multi-processing (SMP) implementation.
     * Improved compatibility support for Linux, OSF1, and SVR4
       programs.
     * New compatibility support for Win32 programs.
     * Support for dynamically loaded ELF kernel modules.
     * Kernel process tracing using ktruss(1).
     * Deletion of swap devices using swapctl(8).
     * Easier hot-swapping of keyboards and mice using a new wscons
       multiplexing device - wsmux.
     * Improved PCMCIA and CardBus support, including support for
       detaching of devices and cards, resulting in better support for
       notebooks and PDA devices.
     * Numerous hardware improvements, including areas such as: audio,
       UDMA/66 support for ATA drives, USB, and wireless networking.

   Networking

     * Addition of IP version 6 (IPv6) and IPsec to the networking
       stack, from the KAME project.  This includes addition of kernel
       code for IPv6/IPsec and conversion of most clients and daemons
       to support both IPv4 and IPv6 (including RPC and NFS over
       IPv6).
     * Integration of TI-RPC, and a more `secure' rpcbind(8)
       (supporting communication over an authenticated Unix-domain
       socket, and by default only allowing set and unset requests
       over that channel).
     * Integration of OpenSSL, SSH and Heimdal.  (More on this under
       `Security'.)

   File Systems

     * Significant performance enhancements to the Berkeley Fast File
       System, primarily due to integration of Kirk McKusick's soft
       updates and `trickle sync' code.  Several reliability issues
       were also fixed separately.
     * Support for the Windows NT `NTFS' file system (read-only at
       this stage).
     * Support for revision 1 of the Linux `ext2fs' file system.
     * Enhanced stability and usability of LFS (the BSD log-structured
       file system).
     * Various RAIDframe enhancements including: auto-detection of
       RAID components and auto-configuration of RAID sets, and the
       ability to configure the root file system (/) on a RAID set.
     * Support for Microsoft Joliet extensions to the ISO 9660 CD file
       system.
     * Improved file system vnode locking mechanisms, thus resolving a
       source of several panics in the past.
     * Support for RPC and NFS over IPv6.
     * Server part of NFS locking (implemented by rpc.lockd(8)) now
       works.

   Security

     * Strong cryptographic libraries and applications integrated,
       including the AES cipher Rijndael, the OpenSSL library, more
       complete Kerberos IV and Kerberos V support (from the Heimdal
       project), and an SSH server and client.
     * sysctl(3) interfaces to various elements of process and system
       information, allowing programs such as ps(1), dmesg(1) and the
       like to operate without recompilation after kernel upgrades,
       and removing the necessity to run setgid kmem (thus improving
       system security).
     * Disable various services by default, and set the default
       options for disabled daemons to a higher level of logging.
     * Several code audits were performed.  One audit replaced string
       routines that were used without bound checking, and another one
       to identify and disable places where format strings were used
       in an unsafe way, allowing arbitrary data entered by (possibly)
       malicious users to overwrite application code, and leading from
       Denial of Service attacks to compromised system.

   System administration and user tools

     * Conversion of the rc(8) system startup and shutdown scripts to
       an `rc.d' mechanism, with separate control scripts for each
       service, and appropriate dependency ordering provided by
       rcorder(8).
     * postfix(1) provided as alternative mail transport agent to
       sendmail(8).
     * User management tools useradd(8), usermod(8), userdel(8),
       groupadd(8), groupmod(8), and groupdel(8) added to the system.
     * Incorporation of a login class capability database
       (/etc/login.conf) from BSD/OS.
     * Improved support for usernames longer than eight characters in
       programs such as at(1) and w(1).
     * Many enhancements to ftpd(8) providing features found in larger
       and less secure FTP daemons, such as user classes, connection
       limits, improved support for virtual hosting, transfer
       statistics, transfer rate throttling, and support for various
       IETF ftpext working group extensions.
     * The ftp(1) client has been improved even further, including
       transfer rate throttling, improved URL support, command line
       uploads.  See the man page for details.

   Miscellaneous

     * Transition of i386 and sparc platforms from a.out to the SVR4
       ELF executable format.  (Other platforms using a.out will be
       converted in future releases.)
     * Addition of many SUSv2 features to the curses(3) library,
       including support for color.
     * Updates of most third party packages that are shipped in the
       base system, including file(1), ipfilter(4), ppp(4),
       sendmail(8), named(8) and dhcpd(8) to the latest stable
       releases.
     * Many new packages in the pkgsrc system, including the open
       source desktops KDE and GNOME, as well as the latest Tcl/Tk,
       perl and many of the components of the Java Enterprise
       platform.  The package framework itself now has full wildcard
       dependency support.
     * Updates to the NetBSD source code style guide (located in
       /usr/share/misc/style) to use ANSI C only (instead of K&R) and
       reflect current best practice, and begin migrating the NetBSD
       source code to follow it.

   And of course there have also been innumerable bug fixes and other
   miscellaneous enhancements.  Kernel interfaces have continued to be
   refined, and more subsystems and device drivers are shared among
   the different ports.  You can look for this trend to continue.


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 contributors is available at:

	http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/

   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, and the Internet Software Consortium, Redback Networks
   and the Helsinki University of Technology for current colocation
   services.

   Finally, we honor the passing of great pioneers in the fields of
   networking, operating systems and compression, including W. Richard
   Stevens, Phil Katz and Mike Muuss.  Their contributions have
   greatly enhanced our lives and made our work possible.


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
-------------------

   The following are registered NetBSD mirror sites.  If you wish to
   register your site as a NetBSD mirror, contact mirrors@netbsd.org.
   
   
   FTP mirrors
   
      Australia
      
      * RMIT University, Melbourne
        ftp://ftp.au.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * AARNet Mirror Project, UQ, Brisbane
        ftp://ftp2.au.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
        Limited to Australian connections
      
      Austria
      
      * University of Technology, Vienna
        ftp://ftp.at.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Finland
      
      * The Finnish University and Research Network, Espoo
        ftp://ftp.fi.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      France
      
      * Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06
        ftp://ftp2.fr.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * BSDfr
        ftp://ftp.bsdfr.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Germany
      
      * Gigabell AG, Frankfurt
        ftp://ftp.de.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * FilePile
        ftp://filepile.nacamar.net/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
        ftp://ftp.netbsd.uni-mainz.de/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Hungary
      
      * ftp.fsn.hu
        ftp://ftp.hu.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        ftp://ftp.jp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Electrotechnical Laboratory
        ftp://core.ring.gr.jp/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Dream Train Internet Inc., Tokyo
        ftp://ftp.dti.ad.jp/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Otemachi Tokyo.
        ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Nagoya University of Commerce and Business
        ftp://mirror.nucba.ac.jp/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * ASAHI Net
        ftp://ring.asahi-net.or.jp/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Netherlands
      
      * University of Amsterdam
        ftp://ftp.nl.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Norway
      
      * Tromso
        ftp://ftp2.no.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Norwegian University of Science and Technology
        ftp://ftp.ntnu.no/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Russia
      
      * Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Chernogolovka
        ftp://ftp.ru.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      South Africa
      
      * UUNET (SA), Cape Town
        ftp://ftp.za.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      Sweden
      
      * Lulea University of Technology
        ftp://ftp.se.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Swedish University NETwork, Uppsala
        ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/NetBSD/
      
      UK
      
      * PLiG
        ftp://ftp.uk.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * SunSite
        ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/netbsd/
      
      USA
      
      * Silicon Valley, California
        ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * SourceForge
        ftp://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/NetBSD/
      
      * University of Minnesota
        ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
        ftp://ftp.eecs.umich.edu/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Iowa State University
        ftp://ftp.iastate.edu/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * OpNet Inc., Bryn Mawr, PA
        ftp://ftp.op.net/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Two Guys Software Foundation
        ftp://ftp.twoguys.org/pub/NetBSD/
      
      * Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ
        ftp://netbsd.stevens-tech.edu/pub/NetBSD/
      
      
   rsync mirrors
      
      France
      
      * Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06
        rsync://rsync.fr.netbsd.org/
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        rsync://rsync.jp.netbsd.org/
      
      USA
      
      * Silicon Valley, California
        rsync://rsync.netbsd.org/
      
      
   SUP mirrors
      
      Australia
      
      * RMIT University, Melbourne
        Instructions: ftp://sup.au.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/sup/README.sup
      
      France
      
      * Paris University
        Instructions: similar to sup.netbsd.org, host=sup.fr.netbsd.org
      
      * Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06
        Instructions: similar to sup.netbsd.org, host=sup2.fr.netbsd.org
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        Instructions: ftp://sup.jp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/sup/README.sup
      
      Norway
      
      * Norwegian University of Science and Technology
        Instructions: /usr/src/share/examples/supfiles/sup.no.netbsd.org
      
      USA
      
      * Silicon Valley, California
        Instructions: ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/sup/README.sup
      
      * University of Minnesota
        Instructions: similar to sup.netbsd.org, host=ftp.cs.umn.edu hostbase=/ftp/ftp/packages/NetBSD
      
      
   AnonCVS mirrors
      
      Austria
      
      * Vienna University, Department of Statistics and Decision Support Systems,
        Working Group for Computer Supported Didactics
        Instructions: for ssh: 'CVSROOT=anoncvs@sunsite.univie.ac.at:/cvsroot;
        CVS_RSH=ssh'. for pserver:
        'CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@sunsite.univie.ac.at:/cvsroot'
      
      France
      
      * Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06
        Instructions: for ssh:
        'CVSROOT=anoncvs@anoncvs.fr.netbsd.org:/pub/NetBSD-CVS; CVS_RSH=ssh'. for
        pserver: 'CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.fr.netbsd.org:/pub/NetBSD-CVS'
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        Instructions: for pserver:
        'CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.jp.netbsd.org:/cvs/cvsroot', password:
        anoncvs. http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ja/JP/Documentation/anoncvs.html (in
        Japanese)
      
      Norway
      
      * Tromso
        Instructions: http://www.pasta.cs.uit.no/Pasta/virtual.html
      
      USA
      
      * Silicon Valley, California
        Instructions: for ssh: 'CVSROOT=anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot;
        CVS_RSH=ssh'. for pserver:
        'CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot'
      
      
   AFS mirrors
      
      Sweden
      
      * Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
        AFS path: /afs/stacken.kth.se/ftp/pub/NetBSD
      
      USA
      
      * Iowa State University
        AFS path: /afs/iastate.edu/public/ftp/pub/netbsd
      
      
   WWW mirrors
      
      Australia
      
      * RMIT University, Melbourne
        http://www.au.netbsd.org/
      
      * www2.au.netbsd.org
        http://www2.au.netbsd.org/
      
      Austria
      
      * University of Technology, Vienna
        http://www.at.netbsd.org/
      
      Czech Republic
      
      * instinct.org, Prague
        http://www.cz.netbsd.org/
      
      Finland
      
      * Global Wire Oy, Lappeenranta
        http://www.fi.netbsd.org/
      
      France
      
      * Paris University
        http://www.fr.netbsd.org/
      
      * Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 06
        http://www2.fr.netbsd.org/
      
      Germany
      
      * www.de.netbsd.org
        http://www.de.netbsd.org/
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        http://www.jp.netbsd.org/
      
      Luxembourg
      
      * Wagener Consulting s.à r.l.
        http://netbsd.wagener-consulting.lu/
      
      Netherlands
      
      * www.nl.netbsd.org
        http://www.nl.netbsd.org/
      
      Norway
      
      * Bergen IT Consult AS
        http://www.no.netbsd.org/
      
      * Tromso
        http://www2.no.netbsd.org/
      
      Poland
      
      * Lodz
        http://www.pl.netbsd.org/
      
      USA
      
      * Silicon Valley, California
        http://www.netbsd.org/
      
      
   CVSweb interfaces
      
      Japan
      
      * Internet Research Institute Inc., Tokyo
        http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/
      
      Norway
      
      * Tromso
        http://cvsweb.no.netbsd.org/


--
- Charles M. Hannum
  President, The NetBSD Foundation