OpenBSD 4.6

Released Oct 18, 2009
Copyright 1997-2009, Theo de Raadt.
ISBN 978-0-9784475-4-0
4.6 Song: "Planet of the Users"

• Order a CDROM from our ordering system.
• See the information on The FTP page for a list of mirror machines.
• Go to the pub/OpenBSD/4.6/ directory on one of the mirror sites.
• Briefly read the rest of this document.
• Have a look at The 4.6 Errata page for a list of bugs and workarounds.
• See a detailed log of changes between the 4.5 and 4.6 releases.

All applicable copyrights and credits can be found in the applicable file sources found in the files src.tar.gz, sys.tar.gz, xenocara.tar.gz, or in the files fetched via ports.tar.gz. The distribution files used to build packages from the ports.tar.gz file are not included on the CDROM because of lack of space.

What's New

This is a partial list of new features and systems included in OpenBSD 4.6. For a comprehensive list, see the changelog leading to 4.6.

• New/extended platforms:
  • mvme68k
    • Added support for the MVME141 and MVME165 boards.
  • sparc
    • The bootblock load address was moved so that larger kernels can be loaded.
  • sparc64
    • Added acceleration support for many of the PCI frame buffer drivers, such as Sun PGX, PGX64 and XVR-100, and Tech Source Raptor GFX graphics cards.
  • sgi
    • Added support for the SGI Octane, SGI Origin 200 and SGI Fuel families of systems.
    • Several bugs in interrupt handling have been fixed, resulting in much snappier system response.

• Improved hardware support, including:
  • Several new/improved drivers for sensors, including:
    • The ips(4) driver now has sensor support, complementing the bio support.
    • The acpithinkpad(4) driver now has temperature and fan sensor support.
    • New endrun(4) driver for the EndRun Technologies timedelta sensor.
    • The fins(4) driver now has support for F71806, F71862 and F71882.
    • The acpitz(4) driver now shows correct decimals for temperature.
  • Added radeonfb(4) to sparc64, an accelerated framebuffer for Sun XVR-100 boards.
  • Added support in re(4) for RTL8103E and RTL8168DP devices.
  • Added support for BCM5709/BCM5716 devices in the bnx(4) driver.
  • Added support for ICH10 variants of em(4).
  • Added support for VIA VX855 chipset in the viapm(4) and pciide(4) drivers.
  • Added support for Intel SCH IDE to pciide(4).
  • Added support for the Broadcom HT-1100 chipset in the piixpm(4) driver.
  • Added support for 82574L based devices in the em(4) driver.
  • A number of network drivers including ix(4), sis(4), msk(4), bnx(4), and vr(4) now use MCLGETI(9) to reduce memory usage and increase performance under load and attack.
  • Added support for VIA CX800 south bridge to the viapm(4) driver.
  • Added support in em(4) for the newer 82575 (and maybe 82576) chips.
  • zyd(4) now supports devices with Airoha AL2230S radios.
  • zyd(4) now works on big-endian machines
  • urtw(4) now supports RTL8187B based devices.
  • New otus(4) driver for Atheros AR9001U USB 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N wireless devices.
  • New berkwdt(4) driver for Berkshire Products PCI watchdog timers.
  • New udl(4) driver for USB video devices.
  • Support for a variety of newer models in bge(4).
  • Initial version of vsw(4), a driver for the virtual network switch on sun4v sparc64s.
  • Implemented machfb(4), an accelerated driver for the sparc64 PGX/PGX64 framebuffers.
  • Added a vcc(4) and vcctty(4) driver for the "Virtual Console Concentrator" found on the control domain of sun4v systems.
  • Implemented 64-bit FIFO modes for ciss(4) devices.
  • Enable hardware VLAN tagging/stripping on ix(4).
  • Added basic support for Envy24HT chips in the envy(4) driver.
  • Many improvements and updates to the isp(4) driver.
  • Added support for 88E8057-based Yukon 2 Ultra 2-devices in msk(4).
  • The ips(4) driver now works reliably.
  • Added raptor(4), an accelerated framebuffer driver for the Tech Source Raptor GFX cards on the sparc64 platform.
  • Enabled schsio(4) on i386 and amd64 and added watchdog timer support.
  • New acpivideo(4) driver for ACPI display switching and brightness control.

• New tools:
  • Added smtpd(8), a new privilege-separated SMTP daemon.
  • Imported the tmux(1) terminal multiplexer, replacing window(1).

• pf(4) improvements:
  • Enabled pf(4) by default in the rc.conf(8).
  • Removed pf(4) scrub rules, and only do one kind of packet reassembly. Rulesets with scrub rules need to be modified because of this.
  • Regular rules can now have per-rule scrub options.
  • Added new "match" keyword which only applies rule options but does not change the current pass/block state.
  • Make all pf(4) operations transactional to improve atomicity of reloads.
  • Stricter pf(4) checking for ICMP and ICMPv6 packets.
  • Various improvements to pfsync(4) to lower sync traffic bandwidth and optionally allow active-active firewall setups.
  • Fix pf(4) scrub max-mss for IPv6 traffic.

• OpenBGPD, OpenOSPFD and other routing daemon improvements:
  • In bgpd(8), rework most of the RDE to allow multiple RIBs. It is possible to filter per-RIB and attach neighbors to a specific RIB.
  • Added an option to bgpd(8) to change the "connect-retry" timer.
  • Allow bgpd.conf(5) and bgpctl(8) to contain 32-bit ASN numbers written in ASPLAIN format.
  • Fix bgpd(8) to correctly encode MP unreachable NLRI so IPv6 prefixes get removed correctly.
  • Changed the behaviour of "redistribute default" for ospfd(8) and ripd(8). A default route has to be present in the FIB to be correctly advertised.
  • Make ospfd(8) and ripd(8) track reject and blackhole routes and allow them to be redistributed even if pointing to 127.0.0.1.
  • Allow to specify an alternate control socket for ospfd(8).
  • ospfd(8) can now be bound into an alternate routing domain.
  • Fix ospfd(8) route metric for "redistribute default".
  • Initial version of ldpctl(8) and ldpd(8), a label distribution protocol daemon for mpls.
  • Make dvmrp(8) RDE aware of multicast group members per interface.
  • Support for pruning in dvmrp(8).

• Generic Network-Stack improvements:
  • Support for virtual routing and firewalling with the addition of routing domains.
  • Add code in ifconfig(8) to bind an interface to a routing domain.
  • Add support to ping(8), traceroute(8), arp(8), nc(1) and telnet(1) to specify which routing domain to use.
  • Allow ifconfig(8) to turn off IPv6 completely for an interface and make rtsold(8) turn on inet6 on the interface.
  • Routes track the interface link state.
  • route(8) flush accepts "-iface" or "-priority" to only flush routes matching these conditions.
  • Multiple dhclients can now coexist without causing mayhem.
  • Make wireless interfaces have an interface priority of 4 by default. Makes them less preferred then wired interfaces.
  • Do not accept IPv4 ICMP redirects by default.
  • Added the MAC address to the log entries in dhclient(8).
  • Make systat(1) show interface description names in the interface view, and add new NFS server and client views.
  • Make tun(4) emulate link state depending on the open and close of the device fd.
  • Use pf state-table information to speed up decision on whether a packet is to be delivered locally or forwarded.
  • More routing socket checks added to make userland applications more resilient to kernel changes.

• Install/Upgrade process changes:
  • New disklabel(8) automatic partition allocator with a variety of smart heuristics.
  • The installer has been nearly rewritten mostly with a focus on simplifying installation.

• OpenSSH 5.3:
  • Do not limit home directory paths to 256 characters. (bz #1615)
  • Several minor documentation and correctness fixes.

• Over 5,800 ports, minor robustness improvements in package tools.
• Many pre-built packages for each architecture:

  i386: 5606 sparc64: 5413 alpha: 5346

  sh: 1261 amd64: 5544 powerpc: 5427

  sparc: 3711 arm: 5291 hppa: 4790

  vax: 1785 mips64: 3443

  Some highlights:
  • Gnome 2.24.3.
  • KDE 3.5.10.
  • Xfce 4.6.1.
  • MySQL 5.0.83.
  • PostgreSQL 8.3.7.
  • Postfix 2.6.2.
  • OpenLDAP 2.3.43.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3.0.11 and 3.5.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.22.
  • OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.
  • Emacs 21.4 and 22.3
  • Vim 7.2.190.
  • PHP 5.2.10.
  • Python 2.4.6, 2.5.4 and 2.6.2.
  • Ruby 1.8.6.369.

• As usual, steady improvements in manual pages and other documentation.

• The system includes the following major components from outside suppliers:
  • Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.4 + patches, freetype 2.3.9, fontconfig 2.6.0, Mesa 7.4.2, xterm 243 and more)
  • Gcc 2.95.3 (+ patches) and 3.3.5 (+ patches)
  • Perl 5.10.0 (+ patches)
  • Our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS and DSO support
  • OpenSSL 0.9.8k (+ patches)
  • Groff 1.15
  • Sendmail 8.14.3, with libmilter
  • Bind 9.4.2-P2 (+ patches)
  • Lynx 2.8.6rel.5 with HTTPS and IPv6 support (+ patches)
  • Sudo 1.7.2
  • Ncurses 5.2
  • Latest KAME IPv6
  • Heimdal 0.7.2 (+ patches)
  • Arla 0.35.7
  • Binutils 2.15 (+ patches)
  • Gdb 6.3 (+ patches)

How to install

Following this are the instructions which you would have on a piece of paper if you had purchased a CDROM set instead of doing an alternate form of install. The instructions for doing an FTP (or other style of) install are very similar; the CDROM instructions are left intact so that you can see how much easier it would have been if you had purchased a CDROM instead.

• CD1:4.6/i386/INSTALL.i386

• CD2:4.6/amd64/INSTALL.amd64
• CD2:4.6/macppc/INSTALL.macppc

• CD3:4.6/sparc64/INSTALL.sparc64

• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/alpha/INSTALL.alpha
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/armish/INSTALL.armish
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/hp300/INSTALL.hp300
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/hppa/INSTALL.hppa
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/landisk/INSTALL.landisk
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/mac68k/INSTALL.mac68k
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/mvme68k/INSTALL.mvme68k
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/mvme88k/INSTALL.mvme88k
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/sgi/INSTALL.sgi
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/socppc/INSTALL.socppc
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/sparc/INSTALL.sparc
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/vax/INSTALL.vax
• FTP:.../OpenBSD/4.6/zaurus/INSTALL.zaurus

Quick installer information for people familiar with OpenBSD, and the use of the "disklabel -E" command. If you are at all confused when installing OpenBSD, read the relevant INSTALL.* file as listed above!

OpenBSD/i386:

Play with your BIOS options to enable booting from a CD. The OpenBSD/i386 release is on CD1. If your BIOS does not support booting from CD, you will need to create a boot floppy to install from. To create a boot floppy write CD1:4.6/i386/floppy46.fs to a floppy and boot via the floppy drive.

Use CD1:4.6/i386/floppyB46.fs instead for greater SCSI controller support, or CD1:4.6/i386/floppyC46.fs for better laptop support.

If you can't boot from a CD or a floppy disk, you can install across the network using PXE as described in the included INSTALL.i386 document.

If you are planning on dual booting OpenBSD with another OS, you will need to read INSTALL.i386.

To make a boot floppy under MS-DOS, use the "rawrite" utility located at CD1:4.6/tools/rawrite.exe. To make the boot floppy under a Unix OS, use the dd(1) utility. The following is an example usage of dd(1), where the device could be "floppy", "rfd0c", or "rfd0a".

# dd if=<file> of=/dev/<device> bs=32k

Make sure you use properly formatted perfect floppies with NO BAD BLOCKS or your install will most likely fail. For more information on creating a boot floppy and installing OpenBSD/i386 please refer to FAQ 4.3.2.

OpenBSD/amd64:

The 4.6 release of OpenBSD/amd64 is located on CD2. Boot from the CD to begin the install - you may need to adjust your BIOS options first. If you can't boot from the CD, you can create a boot floppy to install from. To do this, write CD2:4.6/amd64/floppy46.fs to a floppy, then boot from the floppy drive.

If you can't boot from a CD or a floppy disk, you can install across the network using PXE as described in the included INSTALL.amd64 document.

If you are planning to dual boot OpenBSD with another OS, you will need to read INSTALL.amd64.

OpenBSD/macppc:

Put CD2 in your CDROM drive and poweron your machine while holding down the C key until the display turns on and shows OpenBSD/macppc boot.

Alternatively, at the Open Firmware prompt, enter boot cd:,ofwboot /4.6/macppc/bsd.rd

OpenBSD/sparc64:

Put CD3 in your CDROM drive and type boot cdrom.

If this doesn't work, or if you don't have a CDROM drive, you can write CD3:4.6/sparc64/floppy46.fs or CD3:4.6/sparc64/floppyB46.fs (depending on your machine) to a floppy and boot it with boot floppy. Refer to INSTALL.sparc64 for details.

Make sure you use a properly formatted floppy with NO BAD BLOCKS or your install will most likely fail.

You can also write CD3:4.6/sparc64/miniroot46.fs to the swap partition on the disk and boot with boot disk:b.

If nothing works, you can boot over the network as described in INSTALL.sparc64.

OpenBSD/alpha:

Write FTP:4.6/alpha/floppy46.fs or FTP:4.6/alpha/floppyB46.fs (depending on your machine) to a diskette and enter boot dva0. Refer to INSTALL.alpha for more details.

Make sure you use a properly formatted floppy with NO BAD BLOCKS or your install will most likely fail.

OpenBSD/armish:

After connecting a serial port, Thecus can boot directly from the network either tftp or http. Configure the network using fconfig, reset, then load bsd.rd, see INSTALL.armish for specific details. IOData HDL-G can only boot from an EXT-2 partition. Boot into linux and copy 'boot' and bsd.rd into the first partition on wd0 (hda1) then load and run bsd.rd, preserving the wd0i (hda1) ext2fs partition. More details are available in INSTALL.armish.

OpenBSD/hp300:

Boot over the network by following the instructions in INSTALL.hp300.

OpenBSD/hppa:

Boot over the network by following the instructions in INSTALL.hppa or the hppa platform page.

OpenBSD/landisk:

Write miniroot46.fs to the start of the CF or disk, and boot normally.

OpenBSD/mac68k:

Boot MacOS as normal and extract the Macside "BSD/Mac68k Booter" utility from FTP:4.6/mac68k/utils onto your hard disk. Configure the "BSD/Mac68k Booter" with the location of your bsd.rd kernel and boot into the installer. Refer to the instructions in INSTALL.mac68k for more details.

OpenBSD/mvme68k:

You can create a bootable installation tape or boot over the network.
The network boot requires a MVME68K BUG version that supports the NIOT and NBO debugger commands. Follow the instructions in INSTALL.mvme68k for more details.

OpenBSD/mvme88k:

You can create a bootable installation tape or boot over the network.
The network boot requires a MVME88K BUG version that supports the NIOT and NBO debugger commands. Follow the instructions in INSTALL.mvme88k for more details.

OpenBSD/sparc:

Boot from one of the provided install ISO images, using one of the two commands listed below, depending on the version of your ROM.

ok boot cdrom 4.6/sparc/bsd.rd
or
> b sd(0,6,0)4.6/sparc/bsd.rd

If your SPARC system does not have a CD drive, you can alternatively boot from floppy. To do so you need to write floppy46.fs to a floppy. For more information see FAQ 4.3.2. To boot from the floppy use one of the two commands listed below, depending on the version of your ROM.

ok boot floppy
or
> b fd()

Make sure you use a properly formatted floppy with NO BAD BLOCKS or your install will most likely fail.

If your SPARC system doesn't have a floppy drive nor a CD drive, you can either setup a bootable tape, or install via network, as told in the INSTALL.sparc file.

OpenBSD/sgi:

Burn cd46.iso on a CD-R, put it in the CD drive of your machine and select Install System Software from the System Maintenance menu.

If your machine doesn't have a CD drive, you can setup a DHCP/tftp network server, and boot using "bootp()/bsd.rd". Refer to the instructions in INSTALL.sgi for more details.

OpenBSD/socppc:

After connecting a serial port, boot over the network via DHCP/tftp. Refer to the instructions in INSTALL.socppc for more details.

OpenBSD/vax:

Boot over the network via mopbooting as described in INSTALL.vax.

OpenBSD/zaurus:

Using the Linux built-in graphical ipkg installer, install the openbsd46_arm.ipk package. Reboot, then run it. Read INSTALL.zaurus for a few important details.

Notes about the source code:

src.tar.gz contains a source archive starting at /usr/src. This file contains everything you need except for the kernel sources, which are in a separate archive. To extract:

# mkdir -p /usr/src
# cd /usr/src
# tar xvfz /tmp/src.tar.gz

sys.tar.gz contains a source archive starting at /usr/src/sys. This file contains all the kernel sources you need to rebuild kernels. To extract:

# mkdir -p /usr/src/sys
# cd /usr/src
# tar xvfz /tmp/sys.tar.gz

Both of these trees are a regular CVS checkout. Using these trees it is possible to get a head-start on using the anoncvs servers as described here. Using these files results in a much faster initial CVS update than you could expect from a fresh checkout of the full OpenBSD source tree.

How to upgrade

If you already have an OpenBSD 4.5 system, and do not want to reinstall, upgrade instructions and advice can be found in the Upgrade Guide.

Ports Tree

A ports tree archive is also provided. To extract:

# cd /usr
# tar xvfz /tmp/ports.tar.gz
# cd ports

The ports/ subdirectory is a checkout of the OpenBSD ports tree. Go read the ports page if you know nothing about ports at this point. This text is not a manual of how to use ports. Rather, it is a set of notes meant to kickstart the user on the OpenBSD ports system.

The ports/ directory represents a CVS (see the manpage for cvs(1) if you aren't familiar with CVS) checkout of our ports. As with our complete source tree, our ports tree is available via anoncvs. So, in order to keep current with it, you must make the ports/ tree available on a read-write medium and update the tree with a command like:

# cd [portsdir]/; cvs -d anoncvs@server.openbsd.org:/cvs update -Pd -rOPENBSD_4_6

[Of course, you must replace the local directory and server name here with the location of your ports collection and a nearby anoncvs server.]

Note that most ports are available as packages through FTP. Updated packages for the 4.6 release will be made available if problems arise.

If you're interested in seeing a port added, would like to help out, or just would like to know more, the mailing list ports@openbsd.org is a good place to know.