OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD 5.9 released (early!)

Contributed by tj on from the early-fish-gets-the-iso dept.

The release of OpenBSD 5.9, previously scheduled for the usual May 1st, has just been officially announced!

We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 5.9.
This is our 39th release on CD-ROM (and 40th via FTP/HTTP).  We remain
proud of OpenBSD's record of more than twenty years with only two remote
holes in the default install.

The release page mentions most of the major improvements, and the detailed changelog has a much longer list. Here are some of the bigger things incorporated into 5.9 that we're excited about.

  • Pledge
    With a great Hackfest presentation to lay out all the details, pledge(2) is one of the more prominent changes. We say prominent, but you actually shouldn't notice any difference with it enabled... assuming all your applications behave correctly. Much work has been done in this area, with around 70% of the OpenBSD userland being modified to use pledge within a single release cycle! A few ports also got the same treatment - something to expect more of as time goes on.

  • UEFI
    Many new laptops come with UEFI now, some without an option to fall back to a traditional BIOS. With the 5.9 release, OpenBSD can now be booted on such machines.

  • GPT
    Assuming you're on the amd64 platform, support for GPT has been vastly improved throughout the OS. The installer has been updated to accommodate as well, and it even works on softraid(4) volumes.

  • Rewritten less
    The less(1) we're all familiar with has been completely rewritten. After importing a fork from illumos' Garrett D'Amore, OpenBSD continued to make improvements to the code. A safer and more modern tool was the end result, even if it's just for viewing text. Hopefully there will be less bugs now.

  • Xen domU
    If running OpenBSD under Xen (such as on Amazon's cloud platform) sounds interesting to you, you'll be happy to know that 5.9 includes some pretty solid support for this.

  • Graphics
    Laptop users rejoice, as 5.9 includes graphics support for Intel's Broadwell and Bay Trail GPUs!

  • Network SMP
    Many improvements have been made to get the network stack running multithreaded. There's still plenty more to do in this area, but some exciting progress has definitely been made already.

  • 802.11n
    Another big one for laptop users: initial support for N wireless has landed in both the iwm(4) and iwn(4) drivers.

  • UTF-8
    Locale support for everything but C and UTF-8 has been torn out, and many utilities in the base system have much better UTF-8 support than prevously.

    As always, OpenSSH, OpenSMTPD, LibreSSL and all the other sub-projects have got some nice updates of their own. Hit up the release page for more info, and consider picking up a CD set or making a donation to support the project. Be sure to check out the errata page and apply any relevant patches. Happy upgrades!

  • (Comments are closed)


    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (134.117.249.254) on

      You forgot to mention vmm(4).

      Comments
      1. By brynet (Brynet) on http://brynet.biz.tm/

        > You forgot to mention vmm(4).

        vmm is not enabled yet in 5.9.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (200.49.180.107) on

      exciting release, let's hope carrizo and kaveri graphics support coming soon!

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (107.0.73.130) on

        > exciting release, let's hope carrizo and kaveri graphics support coming soon!

        I hear work on GLAMOR is still needed.

    3. By Lard Vant (185.65.132.110) on

      I'd like to donate but Paypal won't accept my card. Had no problem donating to FSF and EFF. Please use something other than Paypal.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (217.197.84.42) on

        You could also check the wanted hardware list and try to find vendor which sells wanted hardware and accepts your card: http://www.openbsd.org/want.html

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (184.56.7.101) on

          > You could also check the wanted hardware list and try to find vendor which sells wanted hardware and accepts your card:
          > http://www.openbsd.org/want.html

          Foundation got over $250,000 in doantations in 2015.
          Surely they can set aside their own funding pool for hardware.

          When I started with 5.2, their annual goal was $50k. I'm sure Beck and deRaddt were doing a "Indecent Proposal" circle jerk session on a bed covered in 100 dollar bills.

          And this fuck keeps on asking "How much did you donate?" "Where is your diff?"

          Fuck You OpenBSD! :-)

      2. By Anonymous Coward (107.0.73.130) on

        > I'd like to donate but Paypal won't accept my card. Had no problem donating to FSF and EFF. Please use something other than Paypal.

        According to the OpenBSD Foundation website[0], Cheques, bank transfers, and Bitcoins are also accepted.

        http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html

      3. By Marc (213.61.152.126) on

        > Please use something other than Paypal.

        You could still buy a couple of CD-sets. The openbsdstore doesn't use Paypal.

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (73.51.8.29) on

          > > Please use something other than Paypal.
          >
          > You could still buy a couple of CD-sets. The openbsdstore doesn't use Paypal.

          The openbsdstore does accept paypal as a form of payment.

          Comments
          1. By Marc (80.187.105.100) on

            > The openbsdstore does accept paypal as a form of payment.

            Yeah, but not solely.

    4. By Anonymous Coward (156.35.97.35) on

      OpenBSD 5.9 released on march 29th... it seems the TARDIS functionality still needs adjustements.

      Comments
      1. By Luna Jernberg (bittin) bittin@reimu.nl on

        > OpenBSD 5.9 released on march 29th... it seems the TARDIS functionality still needs adjustements.



        hehe indeed, downloaded it yesterday + the tunes, thinking of buying a tshirt or so later for supporting the project

        :)

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

          > > OpenBSD 5.9 released on march 29th... it seems the TARDIS functionality still needs adjustements.
          >
          >
          >
          > hehe indeed, downloaded it yesterday + the tunes, thinking of buying a tshirt or so later for supporting the project
          >
          > :)

          "Try not! Do, or do not! There is no try!" - Yoda

    5. By Anonymous Coward (91.83.17.85) on

      Why not may 1st?

    6. By Anonymous Coward (31.209.51.24) on

      Is http://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/5.9/common/003_pledge.patch.sig fixed in the release?
      If not, could you distrubute updated kernels (or if possible a binary patcher) with this three character patch included?

      Feels bad, if you have to compile a kernel for a brand new release before you dare to go to production with it....

      Comments
      1. By brynet (Brynet) on http://brynet.biz.tm/

        It takes minutes to compile a new kernel on modern hardware, alternatively you can wait for a 3rd party like m:tier to release binpatches.

    7. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

      Would it be possible to drop the OGG-File and replace it with a OPUS encoded file?

      OPUS is a requirement for WebRTC and is supported by Chrome/Firefox.
      Everybody who can't use this Format can still use MP3. :)

      OPUS is better (Quality/Size) then Ogg Vorbis :-)

      Comments
      1. By brynet (Brynet) on http://brynet.biz.tm/

        If you buy the release media you can always transcode the RAW CD Audio to any format you prefer.

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

          > If you buy the release media you can always transcode the RAW CD Audio to any format you prefer.

          That was not the intention (not that I don't buy it): My intention was to point out a new media file format which is widely supported (compared to Vorbis, sadly :( )

    8. By Anonymous Coward (2620:0:105f:13:184c:70c6:4cd3:58e7) on

      Does this mean CD pre-orders were also shipped already? Can't wait!

    9. By Joe (66.249.84.114) on

      Is this an early April Fools Joke?

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

        > Is this an early April Fools Joke?

        Yes, we included NSA and BND Trojans just to ensure that it works....
        It's impressive how much Code is shared (we signed NDAs of course, sorry I can't tell more)... but we're proud we got it working! PLEDGE helped us a lot to seperate the two interception SYSCTLs... that was a requirement fromt he US of course...



        *satire*


        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (68.1.71.252) on

          > > Is this an early April Fools Joke?
          >
          > Yes, we included NSA and BND Trojans just to ensure that it works....
          > It's impressive how much Code is shared (we signed NDAs of course, sorry I can't tell more)... but we're proud we got it working! PLEDGE helped us a lot to seperate the two interception SYSCTLs... that was a requirement fromt he US of course...
          >
          >
          >
          > *satire*
          >
          >
          >
          No SVR? No Deuxieme Bureau? GCHQ? Slackers.

    10. By jeez (151.67.85.252) on

      ...but you don't know the real reason for this early release... the explanation on Friday!

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

        > ...but you don't know the real reason for this early release... the explanation on Friday!

        Theo got pregnant.....! But keep it secret!

    11. By Anonymous Coward (96.231.240.35) on

      But sadly support for ST-506 based hard drives has been removed! :-(

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (79.247.132.99) on

        > But sadly support for ST-506 based hard drives has been removed! :-(

        Seriously: You own still one which works?! Srly? WOW!

    12. By Microsoft (151.67.76.130) on

      Redmond - We are pleased to announce that Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the OpenBSD project. The agreement required the early release of the 5.9 version as the last free release.

      We at Microsoft love OpenBSD’s technology and we love the team that Theo has formed. That’s why today we are excited to welcome the project’s contributors to Microsoft. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently.

      We’ll continue to develop OpenBSD’s market-leading security features as well as explore scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our products and services portfolio.

      In the interim, I'm extremely excited to announce that Theo de Raadt ha been appointed Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Microsoft.

      Former Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates stated:"it is a dream come true... if only de Raadt joined us at the time of Vista he could have slapped our developers so hard that we would have avoided such disaster".

      The marketing department is jubilant at the idea of having a new version of Windows every 6 months, and it has already named de Raadt "Chief Slapper Officer" for his role.

      In the coming months, we’ll have more to share about how Microsoft will integrate OpenBSD technology. Moreover, OpenBSD’s technology aligns with Microsoft’s investments and ambition to develop Skynet intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (132.3.57.81) on

        > Redmond - We are pleased to announce that Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the OpenBSD project. The agreement required the early release of the 5.9 version as the last free release.
        >
        > We at Microsoft love OpenBSD’s technology and we love the team that Theo has formed. That’s why today we are excited to welcome the project’s contributors to Microsoft. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently.
        >
        > We’ll continue to develop OpenBSD’s market-leading security features as well as explore scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our products and services portfolio.
        >
        > In the interim, I'm extremely excited to announce that Theo de Raadt ha been appointed Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Microsoft.
        >
        > Former Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates stated:"it is a dream come true... if only de Raadt joined us at the time of Vista he could have slapped our developers so hard that we would have avoided such disaster".
        >
        > The marketing department is jubilant at the idea of having a new version of Windows every 6 months, and it has already named de Raadt "Chief Slapper Officer" for his role.
        >
        > In the coming months, we’ll have more to share about how Microsoft will integrate OpenBSD technology. Moreover, OpenBSD’s technology aligns with Microsoft’s investments and ambition to develop Skynet intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf.

        Oh, if pnly.....

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (132.3.57.82) on

          > > Redmond - We are pleased to announce that Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the OpenBSD project. The agreement required the early release of the 5.9 version as the last free release.
          > >
          > > We at Microsoft love OpenBSD’s technology and we love the team that Theo has formed. That’s why today we are excited to welcome the project’s contributors to Microsoft. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently.
          > >
          > > We’ll continue to develop OpenBSD’s market-leading security features as well as explore scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our products and services portfolio.
          > >
          > > In the interim, I'm extremely excited to announce that Theo de Raadt ha been appointed Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Microsoft.
          > >
          > > Former Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates stated:"it is a dream come true... if only de Raadt joined us at the time of Vista he could have slapped our developers so hard that we would have avoided such disaster".
          > >
          > > The marketing department is jubilant at the idea of having a new version of Windows every 6 months, and it has already named de Raadt "Chief Slapper Officer" for his role.
          > >
          > > In the coming months, we’ll have more to share about how Microsoft will integrate OpenBSD technology. Moreover, OpenBSD’s technology aligns with Microsoft’s investments and ambition to develop Skynet intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf.
          >
          > Oh, if pnly.....
          >

          Aside from the "last free" bit.

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