Announcing NetBSD 5.0

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that NetBSD 5.0, the thirteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system, is now available. NetBSD 5.0 features greatly improved performance and scalability on modern multiprocessor (SMP) and multi-core systems. Multi-threaded applications can now efficiently make use of more than one CPU or core, and system performance is much better under I/O and network load, benefiting, for example, server, scientific, and software development workloads.

This improved performance is the result of a rewritten threading subsystem based on a 1:1 threading model, new kernel synchronization primitives, kernel preemption, a rewritten scheduler implementation, real-time scheduling extensions, processor sets, and dynamic CPU sets for thread affinity. Almost all core kernel subsystems, like virtual memory, memory allocators, file system frameworks for major file systems, and others were audited and overhauled to make use of highly concurrent algorithms.

In addition to scalability and performance improvements, a significant number of major features have been added. Some highlights are: a preview of metadata journaling for FFS file systems (known as WAPBL, Write Ahead Physical Block Logging), the 'jemalloc' memory allocator, the X.Org X11 distribution instead of XFree86 on a number of ports, the Power Management Framework, ACPI suspend/resume support on many laptops, write support for UDF file systems, the Automated Testing Framework, the Runnable Userspace Meta Program framework, Xen 3.3 support for both i386 and amd64, POSIX message queues and asynchronous I/O, and many new hardware device drivers. Please read below for a full list of changes in NetBSD 5.0.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 5.0 are available for download at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found at http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/. We encourage users who wish to install via ISO images to download via BitTorrent by using the torrent files supplied in the ISO image area. A list of hashes for the NetBSD 5.0 distribution has been signed with the well-connected PGP key for the NetBSD Security Officer: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/hashes/NetBSD-5.0_hashes.asc

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 website. Commercial support is available from a variety of sources. More extensive information on NetBSD is available from our website:

Your donation to the NetBSD Foundation allows the project to make major improvements to the code base. With work having begun on NetBSD 6.0, we announce the 2009 Fund Drive, targeting 60,000 USD by the end of the year. We would like to continue funded development in various areas, including:

Some highlights include:

Besides this list, there have also been innumerable bug fixes and miscellaneous enhancements.

Using block device nodes directly for I/O may cause a kernel crash when the file system containing /dev is FFS and is mounted with -o log. Workaround: use raw disk devices, or remount the file system without -o log.

Occasionally, gdb may cause a process that is being debugged to hang when "single stepped". Workaround: kill and restart the affected process.

gdb cannot debug running threaded programs correctly. Workaround: generate a core file from the program using gcore(1) and pass the core to gdb, instead of debugging the running program.

Statically linked binaries using pthreads are currently broken.

Certain early revision AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 processors contain a bug that may cause system instability when running with more than one CPU core active. An OS-level workaround for this issue has been prepared but was not ready in time for inclusion in NetBSD 5.0. It will be available as part of a later release in the 5.0 series.

Please use a mirror site close to you.

The NetBSD 5.0 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

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

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:

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 Systems Consortium Inc., the Network Security Lab at Columbia University's Computer Science Department, and Ludd (Luleå Academic Computer Society) computer society at Luleå University of Technology for current colocation services.

NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. Its clean design and advanced features make it excellent for use in both production and research environments, and the source code is freely available under a business-friendly license. NetBSD is developed and supported by a large and vivid international community. Many applications are readily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.

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.

As a non-profit organization with no commercial backing, The NetBSD Foundation depends on donations from its users, and we would like to ask you to consider making a donation to the NetBSD Foundation in support of continuing production of our fine operating system. Your generous donation would be particularly welcome assistance with ongoing upgrades and maintenance, as well as with operating expenses for The NetBSD Foundation.

Donations can be done via PayPal to <[email protected]> and are fully tax-deductible in the US. If you would prefer not to use PayPal, or would like to make other arrangements, please contact <[email protected]>.