Announcing NetBSD 8.3 (May 4, 2024)

Quick links for the impatient:

Download 8.3 from our CDN.

Hashes, signed with the NetBSD Security Officer's PGP key, of all files in the distribution.

Introduction

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 8.3, the third update of the NetBSD 8 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.

Note

This release is the final release of the NetBSD 8.x branch. No further updates will be made, even for security issues.

The netbsd-8 branch has already been desupported by pkgsrc.

All users are strongly recommended to urgently update to a newer, supported release, ideally the newest NetBSD 10.0 release (or alternatively the latest update of the previous stable branch, NetBSD 9.4).

Some highlights of the 8.3 release are:

  • X: update libX11 from 1.6.5 to 1.6.10 and various security updates. Updated xterm(1) to 366.
  • tmux(1): update to 3.1c.
  • httpd(8): fix serving files greater than 4GB on 32bit machines.
  • Updated timezone data to 2024a.
  • Increased max open files limit by default on machines with large RAM.
  • ftp(1): support relative redirects when using http.
  • named(8): update root name servers to 2023112702.
  • audioplay(1), audiorecord(1): support for newer .wav formats.

The complete list of changes since NetBSD 8.2 can be found in the CHANGES-8.3 file in the top level directory of the NetBSD 8.3 release tree.

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 8.3 are available for download from our CDN and many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP, AnonCVS, and other services may be found at https://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/. A list of hashes for the NetBSD 8.3 distribution has been signed with the well-connected PGP key for the NetBSD Security Officer: NetBSD-8.3_hashes.

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:

NetBSD mirror sites

Please use a mirror site close to you.

System families supported by NetBSD 8.3

The NetBSD 8.3 release provides supported binary distributions for the following systems:

NetBSD/acorn32 Acorn RiscPC/A7000, VLSI RC7500
NetBSD/algor Algorithmics, Ltd. MIPS evaluation boards
NetBSD/alpha Digital/Compaq Alpha (64-bit)
NetBSD/amd64 AMD family processors like Opteron, Athlon64, and Intel CPUs with EM64T extension
NetBSD/amiga Commodore Amiga and MacroSystem DraCo
NetBSD/amigappc PowerPC-based Amiga boards.
NetBSD/arc MIPS-based machines following the Advanced RISC Computing spec
NetBSD/atari Atari TT030, Falcon, Hades
NetBSD/bebox Be Inc's BeBox
NetBSD/cats Chalice Technology's CATS and Intel's EBSA-285 evaluation boards
NetBSD/cesfic CES FIC8234 VME processor board
NetBSD/cobalt Cobalt Networks' MIPS-based Microservers
NetBSD/dreamcast Sega Dreamcast game console
NetBSD/emips The Extensible MIPS architecture from Microsoft Research
NetBSD/epoc32 Psion EPOC PDAs
NetBSD/evbarm Various ARM-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbmips Various MIPS-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbppc Various PowerPC-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/evbsh3 Various Hitachi Super-H SH3 and SH4-based evaluation boards and appliances
NetBSD/ews4800mips NEC's MIPS-based EWS4800 workstation
NetBSD/hp300 Hewlett-Packard 9000/300 and 400 series
NetBSD/hpcarm StrongARM based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcmips MIPS-based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hpcsh Hitachi Super-H based Windows CE PDA machines
NetBSD/hppa Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 700 workstations
NetBSD/i386 IBM PCs and PC clones with i486-family processors and up
NetBSD/ibmnws IBM Network Station 1000
NetBSD/iyonix Castle Technology's Iyonix ARM based PCs
NetBSD/landisk SH4 processor based NAS appliances
NetBSD/luna68k OMRON Tateisi Electric's LUNA series
NetBSD/mac68k Apple Macintosh with Motorola 68k CPU
NetBSD/macppc Apple PowerPC-based Macintosh and clones
NetBSD/mipsco MIPS Computer Systems Inc. family of workstations and servers
NetBSD/mmeye Brains mmEye multimedia server
NetBSD/mvme68k Motorola MVME 68k Single Board Computers
NetBSD/mvmeppc Motorola PowerPC VME Single Board Computers
NetBSD/netwinder StrongARM based NetWinder machines
NetBSD/news68k Sony's 68k-based NET WORK STATION series
NetBSD/newsmips Sony's MIPS-based NET WORK STATION series
NetBSD/next68k NeXT 68k black hardware
NetBSD/ofppc OpenFirmware PowerPC machines
NetBSD/pmax Digital MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems
NetBSD/prep PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) and CHRP machines
NetBSD/rs6000 IBM RS/6000 MCA-based PowerPC machines.
NetBSD/sandpoint Motorola Sandpoint reference platform, including many PPC-based NAS boxes
NetBSD/sgimips Silicon Graphics' MIPS-based workstations
NetBSD/shark Digital DNARD (shark)
NetBSD/sparc Sun SPARC (32-bit) and UltraSPARC (in 32-bit mode)
NetBSD/sparc64 Sun UltraSPARC (in native 64-bit mode)
NetBSD/sun2 Sun Microsystems Sun 2 machines with Motorola 68010 CPU
NetBSD/sun3 Motorola 68020 and 030 based Sun 3 and 3x machines
NetBSD/vax Digital VAX
NetBSD/x68k Sharp X680x0 series
NetBSD/xen The Xen virtual machine monitor
NetBSD/zaurus Sharp ARM PDAs

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

NetBSD/acorn26 Acorn Archimedes, A-series and R-series systems
NetBSD/ia64 Itanium family of processors

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 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. and the Network Security Lab at Columbia University's Computer Science Department for current colocation services.

About NetBSD

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 vibrant international community. Many applications are readily available through pkgsrc, the NetBSD Packages Collection.

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.

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 to help with ongoing upgrades and maintenance, as well as with operating expenses for the NetBSD Foundation.

Donations can be done via PayPal to , or via Google Checkout and are fully tax-deductible in the US. See www.NetBSD.org/donations/ for more information, or contact directly.


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