what the heck is a NetBSD?

our plot to make a weird operating system for your computers

note: this talk was prepared in approximately 10 minutes when I figured out it might be possible to request a slot from the organizer at such a small event (camp++ in Hungary), fuelled by espresso and Club Mate. It was intended to be amusing, but might serve as a nice little introduction to NetBSD regardless.

a brief introduction to BSD

• the 80s: hackers at the University of California forked Unix

  • their fork of Unix was called Berkeley Software Distribution

• eventually, they had rewritten a lot of the original Unix code

  • their fork was very popular for features such as TCP/IP
  • so it became one of the first open source projects

• ... but AT&T sued over a phone number (Unix trademark)

  • overshadowed by GNU and Linux which was not being sued

a brief introduction to NetBSD

• started as a merge of x86 (and Amiga, etc...) support into BSD sources

  • one of the oldest open source communities (history intact to 1993)
  • one of the first projects developed online (hence Net)
  • not a distribution, but a whole unique OS

• "stable research platform"... meaning:

  • we experiment with OS dev ideas and you get to use them in prod ;)

• "runs on a toaster"...

  • but more interesting things are relevant today

why might you want to use it?

• some interesting features and design

  • rump kernel architecture
  • pkgsrc, NPF firewall, NVMM hypervisor...
  • really nice security architecture

• blend of "retro Unix"...

  • small, understandable, hackable system...
  • rc.d, periodic scripts, man (not texinfo) pages...

• ... with modern features?

  • modern x86 and ARM hardware support (all "mainline")...
  • advanced filesystem stuff, e.g. ZFS...

what is a pkgsrc?

a very versatile package management system from NetBSD

• probably fits your use case

  • can be used as a source package manager or binary package manager
  • high level tools (pkgin) and low level tools (pkg_add, pbulk)...
  • does not require root

• supports many platforms

  • primarily NetBSD and Solaris, with NetBSD as "tier 1"
  • also Linux, macOS, FreeBSD... HP-UX?

• popular for scientific HPC (NASA, universities...)

what is a rump kernel?

• run small monolithic kernels in userspace...

  • use filesystem drivers on filesystem images, etc
  • use our audio stack on GNU HURD
  • very useful for testing

• ... or use the drivers in your bare metal application

• imagine back alley surgery, but for kernel drivers

security...? quality assurance...?

i think this part is pretty important

• the core OS

  • ... has a big test suite and is very fuzzed
  • ... is entirely reproducible

• interesting design decisions, e.g. NVMM hypervisor...

  • small library and small kernel module
  • aiming to reduce attack service of compromised VMs

• oopsie mitigations?

  • executable integrity protection
  • restrict capabilities for abuse of root with securelevel
  • very strong PaX MPROTECT, ASLR, enabled by default...

how i got involved

• i wanted to run something interesting on my laptop...

• and then i had a source tree with the whole OS in front of me...

  • i got into scratching itches with audio and input drivers...

• very inclusive, small and helpful community

any questions?

• catch me on:
  • IRCnet: niaa