Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Improving RAIDframe

This report was written by Emmanuel Nyarko as part of Google Summer of Code 2026.

The Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a disk management framework developed by Carnegie-Mellon University. NetBSD uses RAIDframe as one of its disks management modules. It involves setting up multiple disks and creating a disk unit from them. The current NetBSD RAIDframe framework supports several levels of disks arrangement in a single array, see raid(4).

NetBSD's RAIDframe supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 6. However, there are some limitations that this project aims to improve. Firstly, RAID level 1, which is also called mirroring, allows for only two disks in a single mirror pair. Secondly, RAIDframe scrubbing, which involves reading your disks to check for read failures, is not yet supported. Thirdly, RAID level 6, even though included in source, is not well tested and not encouraged to be used.

In this project I have worked on:

• Implementation of a RAID level 1 extension called N-way RAID 1 to support multiple disks in a RAIDframe mirror
• Implementation of RAID scrubbing

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Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Port the Enlightenment desktop environment to NetBSD

This report was written by Dimitris Gounaridis as part of Google Summer of Code 2026.

Enlightenment desktop is a low on resources desktop environment without sacrificing on visuals. NetBSD support for this BSD-licensed desktop has been left a few years behind. The aim of this project is to port the newest version of the desktop to pkgsrc and commit upstream portability fixes when necessary to ease future versions updates for NetBSD.

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NetBSD 11.0 released!

The NetBSD project is pleased to (finally) announce the 11.0 release!
See the release announcement for details.

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NetBSD 11.0 RC7 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the seventh release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Testing Compat Linux: Syscall testing

This report was written by Henrique Brito as part of Google Summer of Code 2026.

NetBSD is capable of executing Linux compiled binaries through a thin, in-kernel translation layer, compat_linux, which, among many other things, is responsible for ‘capturing’ the syscalls made by the program and calling a stub, which is responsible for generating the expected output and behavior. Generally this stub ends up calling the NetBSD version of the syscall and translating the results in a way a Linux program would expect. Sometimes it has to do more work.

The goal is to use LTP, the already known and battle-tested Linux test suite, to check how close compat_linux is to a native Linux system. Focusing on the syscall aspect of it.

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NetBSD 11.0 RC6 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the sixth release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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NetBSD 11.0 RC5 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the fifth (and this time hopefully final) release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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Annual General Meeting 2026

Today, the NetBSD Foundation had an open annual general meeting in a public IRC channel. It began with presentations, and was followed by a Q&A session where we took questions from the public. Here's the full log.

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NetBSD 11.0 RC4 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the fourth (and this time hopefully final) release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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Welcome to Google Summer of Code 2026 contributors!

We are happy to announce that The NetBSD Foundation will participate in Google Summer of Code 2026 with 5 projects!

Here the list of the projects and contributors:

• Improving and Stabilizing the racoon2 IKE Daemon in NetBSD - Artem Belan
• Port the Enlightenment desktop environment to NetBSD - Dimitris Gounaridis
• Improving RAIDframe - Emmanuel Nyarko
• Testing Compat Linux: Syscall testing - Henrique Brito
• Convert a Wi-Fi driver to the new Wi-Fi stack - Vishal@88

From May 1 to May 24 it starts the community bonding period. Contributors will familiarize with the codebase, get in touch with their mentors and the community and work with the mentors to set the deliverables for the project.

Welcome Artem, Dimitris, Emmanuel, Henrique and Vishal!

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NetBSD 11.0 RC3 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the third (and probably final) release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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NetBSD 11.0 RC2 available!

The NetBSD project is pleased to announce the second release candidate of the upcoming 11.0 release, please help testing!
See the release announcement for details.

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