NetBSD 1.5.2 Release Announcement
The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.5.2 of the NetBSD operating system is now available.
NetBSD 1.5.2 is a patch release mostly intended to address recently discovered security vulnerabilities as well as platform-specific problems. The NetBSD Project recommends that you upgrade NetBSD 1.5 or 1.5.1 systems to 1.5.2 at your earliest convenience.
A complete list of changes are available in the CHANGES-1.5.2 file in top directory of the NetBSD 1.5.2 release tree. Also, included later in this announcement, is a list of the major changes added between NetBSD 1.5.1 and 1.5.2.
Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 1.5.2 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites via FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other methods is provided at the end of this announcement; the latest list of available download sites may also be found at: http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/
CD images (ISOs), bootable on some platforms, will be available as of Sunday, 16 September 2001. Also included are three binary package CD images identical to those distributed for NetBSD 1.5.1. These will be available at the download sites listed under the "ISO image mirrors" section.
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 44 different system architectures featuring 16 distinct families of CPUs, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 1.5.2 release contains complete binary releases for 21 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.
More information on the goals of the NetBSD Project can be procured from the NetBSD web site:
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:
More extensive information on NetBSD is available from our web site.
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.
The NetBSD 1.5.2 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:
| NetBSD/alpha | Digital/Compaq Alpha (64-bit) |
| NetBSD/amiga | Commodore Amiga, MacroSystem DraCo |
| NetBSD/arc | MIPS-based machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec |
| NetBSD/arm32 | Acorn RiscPC/A7000, CATS, Digital Shark, EBSA-285, VLSI RC7500 |
| NetBSD/atari | Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades |
| NetBSD/cobalt | Cobalt Networks' MIPS-based Microservers |
| NetBSD/hp300 | Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series |
| NetBSD/hpcmips | MIPS-based Windows CE PDA machines |
| NetBSD/i386 | 80x86-based IBM PCs and clones |
| NetBSD/mac68k | Apple Macintosh with 68k CPU |
| NetBSD/macppc | Apple Power Macintosh and clones |
| NetBSD/mvme68k | Motorola MVME 68k SBCs |
| NetBSD/news68k | Sony's 68k-based "NET WORK STATION" series |
| NetBSD/next68k | NeXT 68k 'black' hardware |
| NetBSD/pc532 | The NS32532-based PC532 computer |
| NetBSD/pmax | Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems |
| NetBSD/sparc | Sun SPARC (32-bit) and UltraSPARC (in 32-bit mode) |
| NetBSD/sparc64 | Sun UltraSPARC (in native 64-bit mode) |
| NetBSD/sun3 | Sun 3 and 3x |
| NetBSD/vax | Digital VAX |
| NetBSD/x68k | Sharp X680x0 series |
Ports available in source form only for this release include the following:
| NetBSD/amigappc | PowerPC-based Amiga boards |
| NetBSD/arm26 | Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems |
| NetBSD/bebox | Be Inc's BeBox |
| NetBSD/evbsh3 | Evaluation boards with Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4 CPUs |
| NetBSD/luna68k | The LUNA product line of OMRON Tateishi Electric |
| NetBSD/mmeye | Brains' mmEye Multi Media Server |
| NetBSD/newsmips | Sony's MIPS-based "NET WORK STATION" series |
| NetBSD/prep | PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines |
| NetBSD/sgimips | Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations |
As of this writing, the pc532 binary release was still being built for the NetBSD 1.5.2 release, and will be available on the NetBSD download sites some time after this announcement.
The complete list of changes between NetBSD 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 can be found in the file CHANGES-1.5.2 in the top directory of the source tree. The following are highlights only:
- Fixed buffer overflow bug in telnetd; see Security Advisory SA#2001-012.
- Fixed weakness in OpenSSL random number generator; see Security Advisory SA#2001-013.
- Fixed dump and dump_lfs to drop setgid-tty privileges; see Security Advisory SA#2001-014.
- Added bounds checks to values passed from userland to kernel; see Security Advisory SA#2001-015.
- Fixed unsafe use of chdir(2) in fts(3); see Security Advisory SA#2001-016.
- Fixed root compromise bug in Sendmail 8.11.3; see Security Advisory SA#2001-017.
- Several bugs in the installation system on some platforms (causing NetBSD 1.5.1 not to install properly) have been fixed.
- The DHCP software has been upgraded to ISC version 3, Release Candidate 10, fixing additional bugs.
The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc), which is used to maintain, build, track dependencies, and maintain NetBSD-specific fixes to third-party programs, has been shipped with NetBSD 1.5.2 using the same source file (pkgsrc.tgz) as was shipped in NetBSD 1.5.1.
Please note that at the moment, sysinst will not assist you in installing pre-built third-party binary packages or the pkgsrc system itself, so you will have to manually install packages using pkg_install or fetch and extract the pkgsrc.tgz tar file to get started.
Lastly, it should be noted that the X11 binaries shipped in NetBSD 1.5.2 are still based on XFree86 version 3.3.6. Several newer graphics cards are inadequately supported by that code base, but on the other hand sup port for several older graphics cards is not available in newer XFree86 code. NetBSD is in the process of moving to XFree86 version 4, and is currently maintaining both the XFree86 3.3.6 and the XFree86 version 4 code in the xsrc source set, and you may at compile time pick which sources to build and install. To ease installation, testing and use of the XFree86 version 4 code, a binary snapshot based on XFree86 version 4.1.0 has been made available for NetBSD/i386 1.5.x at: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/i386/
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
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.
Last but not least, we would like to mention the fact that NetBSD's and every other Unix systems' internal clock just counted 10^9 since the epoch (Jan 1, 1970). We look forward to provide a stable, fast and secure operating system for the next billion of seconds!
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.
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