More NetBSD-current fun at Linveo!
Hello!
- VPS Share
Would anybody be interested in sharing my free Linveo AMD Ryzen 9 9950X NetBSD VPS in Arizona? It's open to friends who want to help me learn.
- Goals
Tonight I decided to (1) try some method of rolling release updates of NetBSD pkgsrc. For example, please see pkg_rolling-replace (mailing list, 2008 introduction), please see also the man page. I could use help figuring out the best method of rolling updates with pkgsrc.
Also, I think it might be fun to (2) see whether I can get 9vx working. I could use help with the code and the compiling on 64 bit NetBSD of the vx32 sandboxing library used by 9vx.
Maybe I could (3) try the X Windows installation from pkgsrc instead of the xsrc version, but I haven't looked into pkgsrc X, very much as yet.
- Procedure
I'm beginning by wiping and reinstalling my NetBSD-current VPS at Linveo. <3 The reinstall is from Linveo vmcontrol, which offers @cmeerw's 
NetBSD 10.1 image.
The process is installing NetBSD 10.1, then, with changes appropriate for 10.1, following the simple NetBSD 10 to NetBSD-current steps in Quick Recipe For Self-Compiled NetBSD-current On A Linveo VPS.
linveo# ftp -o - https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.1/amd64/binary/sets/comp.tar.xz | progress -z tar xpf - -C /
linveo# which gcc
/usr/bin/gcc
linveo# cd /usr
linveo# mkdir obj src tools
linveo# mkdir /home
linveo# useradd -m -G wheel tom
linveo# passwd tom
Changing password for tom.
New Password:
Retype New Password:
linveo# chown tom obj src tools
linveo# su tom
linveo#
linveo$ pwd
/usr
linveo$ export CVSROOT="[email protected]:/cvsroot"
linveo$ export CVS_RSH="ssh"
linveo$ cvs checkout -A -P src
linveo$ cd src
linveo$ nohup ./build.sh -j 2 -O ../obj -T ../tools -U distribution && \
> nohup ./build.sh -j 2 -O ../obj -T ../tools -U kernel=GENERIC
I like nohup because it gives me a full transcript of all the terminal output and because I don't have to stay connected. Back in the old days I used to start a NetBSD-current build and then sleep. I don't remember a build which failed to complete, but there might have been one.
I will post again, later, or maybe tomorrow, about whether this build completes.
Comments
Wow! This VPS is fast! Both builds seem to have completed successfully!
So, sleep now, and install tomorrow.
Here is the new kernel install, followed by a reboot to run the new kernel.
Then, with the new kernel running, we install the new userland and reboot again so that we are running both the new kernel and the new userland.
The new kernel needs to be running before we try to run the new userland because some on the new userland binaries may require features from the new kernel, whereas the new kernel should be capable of running both the old and the new userland binaries.
It seems that this VPS is running self-compiled NetBSD-current!
NetBSD uses pkgsrc to compile and install self-compiled binaries for approximately 28,000 third-party programs which are not part of the NetBSD core. For quick reference, besides the pkgsrc.org site, there also is the pkgsrc section of the NetBSD wiki, a mailing list, and an IRC channel.
Besides the current version of pkgsrc, called HEAD, there are quarterly branch releases.
Remarkably, pkgsrc runs on many other operating systems besides NetBSD!
Besides self-compiling, there are pre-compiled binaries available for SmartOS/Illumos, MacOS, NetBSD-current, and Enterprise Linux.
Here, on our Linveo VPS, is the install via CVS of pkgsrc HEAD, plus downloading of the current package vulnerability list.
Just found two articles from the pkgsrc section of the NetBSD wiki:
and
I have been wanting to see good tutorials on these subjects for a while! Yaaay!
Just finished updating, re-compiling, re-installing, and rebooting NetBSD-current.
Plus I made a new backup.
Next up is pkgsrc.
Still hope to try the pkgsrc rolling release updating and modular xorg. . . . And 9vx.
Thanks again to @linveo for the amazingly fast VPS!
Thanks to @cmeerw for the NetBSD 10.1 boot image from which I started.
While NetBSD was compiling I was messing with the NetBSD evbaarm-aarch64 install ISO on another VPS at netcup.
I didn't succeed in getting the Netcup VPS to fully boot the NetBSD aarch64 ISO. I could see the initial boot messages and 1,2 install from,boot from option. And I could choose option 1. But, as soon as the boot went into graphic mode, netcup's HTML viewer disconnected and did not reconnect when the viewer was restarted.
Just for fun, I decided to try cross compiling an aarch64 Qemu image on the Linveo VPS. I am following the NetBSD Guide Chapter 33 on Cross-compiling.
The first step is building the tool chain, which seems to have succeeded.
The next step is to build the kernel, which also seems to have succeeded.
Next is building the userland, which again seems to have succeeded.
Now it seems like I have the needed image.
Next step is to convert arm64.img.gz to qcow2, upload it, and see if it boots over at netcup. A hint on how to do the conversion is in NetBSD Arm on Oracle Cloud. It's unclear to me exactly how netcup's situation differs from the situation at Oracle. So, I'n not sure if the image will run at netcup. We will see!
Thanks @linveo!
I started by updating and auditing the package vulnerabilities database as explained on the pkgsrc.org home page.
Not very many packages are installed. As mentioned in the above linked NetBSD wiki page (linked again here for convenience), it's possible to get a list of installed packages:
I read, again, the entire pkg_rolling-replace wiki section and also the pkg_rolling-replace man page.
I picked the -rsuv options.
The command I ran and it's result seemed to show that no updates were needed. It's only been a few weeks, and there are only a few packages, so maybe it's unsurprising that the resulting action is "nothing."
The top six lines were added to the nohup.out file with vi and the name of the file was changed to add the description and the date.
What are my mistakes?
Thanks @linveo! 
Here we go with modular xorg.
Initially, I made a backup of the server with the newly recompiled NetBSD-current plus the newly refreshed pkgsrc.
Following the above linked NetBSD wiki instructions, I added
/etc/mk.conf:Let's try compiling and installing modular xorg.
I'm watching what happens in another terminal with
tail -f nohup.out. I'm also googling around about modular xorg. I will post again about whether the compile completes, whether the install completes, and about configuration. I'd be grateful for any hints about mistakes I am making. Thanks everyone! Thanks @linveo for the fast, free VPS!Okay, the build broke.
Googling the error
error: cannot convert 'util_qsort_adapter_data*' to 'int (*)(const void*, const void*, void*)'does produce results. . . .
While the compile was running, I was looking around and trying to understand basic questions about X and NetBSD, such as why are there two versions of X (the main
/usr/xsrcversion and the pkgsrc modular xorg version), the advantages and disadvantages of each version, and why someone might use each of the two versions.I skimmed three helpful blog posts by Nia Alarie:
Default window manager switched to CTWM in NetBSD-current (2020)
Wayland on NetBSD - trials and tribulations (2020
X.Org on NetBSD - the state of things (2024)
I need to look at all this some more. . . .
Thanks @Linveo! 
Found https://pkgsrc.se/[email protected]
Subject: CVS commit: pkgsrc/graphics/MesaLib
From: Thomas Klausner
Date: 2025-03-07 07:56:21
Message id: [email protected]
Log Message:
MesaLib: fix build on NetBSD-current (qsort_r)
Files:
Revision Action file
1.167 modify pkgsrc/graphics/MesaLib/distinfo
1.1 add pkgsrc/graphics/MesaLib/patches/patch-src_util_u__qsort.h
I am wondering if the issue might have been touched on March 07, a few days before I last updated pkgsrc on March 12.
Hmm. Why don't I have that patch?
Why is this stuff dated February 23?
Did I make a mistake picking the -rsuv options with pkg_rolling-replace? No, because this package wasn't installed then, so it didn't receive attention from pkg_rolling replace?
And pkg_rolling-replace doesn't update all the rest of pkgsrc (the uninstalled packages)?
So, after pkg_rolling-replace, one has to update all the rest of pkgsrc? Or, did I misunderstand when I thought that a full pkgsrc update was not required prior to calling pkg_rolling-replace?
Yaaay!? 
Updating all of pkgsrc. Unsure if that's wise, given being in the middle of a make and install. But, I can easily revert to the backup from just prior to today's shenanigans.
Now, return to the build of modular-xorg.
From
tail -f nohup.out, the build seems like it's cooking along. More soon. . . .Edit to add the great news that the build seems to have completed! This VPS is fast! Thanks @linveo!
Here is the install portion of the nohup.out modular xorg build log:
Lots of new packages! (Compare with before modular xorg was built and installed!)
What happens if I run pkg_rolling-relace now?
So, pkg_rolling-replace finished successfully. Quite a few packages were recompiled and reinstalled.
I also hand installed x11vnc from pkgsrc. Just headed over to /use/pkgsrc/x11vnc/x11vnc, make, and make install.
The pkg_rolling-replace output and the x11vnc compile output will be available for a short time. If anyone wants to see them, please let me know.
Tomorrow, or sometime, I need to:
Just now I was over looking at the LES BSD thread to review a few topics. Wow! I miss @FrankCastle and @Crab! Those guys were so helpful! @cmeerw too, of course!
A few more of you too! 
Thanks! 
Special thanks to @linveo for the great, free VPS! 
Well, X does seem to work:
Here's the patch:
And here, again is the error:
Today's update and rebuild seemed to work fine! Thanks @linveo!
Kernel build seemed to work okay too:
I still think probably I am making some mistakes, here and there, and it sure would be great if people would kindly point them out, please!
Thanks to @linveo for the super fast VPS!
Installing the new kernel and rebooting:
Reboot to run new kernel:
Install new userland:
Reboot again to run both new kernel and new userland:
Thanks @linveo!
Haha, I enthusiastically ran etcupdate! After that, the server only booted single user, no ssh, and with a read only file system. Luckily I could get in via VNC, change the file system to rw, move the broken /etc aside, and untar my /etc-revert.tgz file. Now the server boots normally, and sshd works, but there might be a few itchy aspects.
Here's a screenshot from just before I untarred the etc-revert. 
Edit to add evidence that I did get back in:
Thanks @linveo!
I was surprised just now to see that it has been three months since I last posted here about
etcupdate!Nevertheless, since I got myself a bit more together on
etcupdate, I've been quietly following NetBSD-current, rebuilding every day or every few days. I've been rebuilding pkgsrc as well.It all "just works" now. Really fast, too!
As I asked in the OP:
Thanks again to @linveo for the nice, fast, free VPS!
Thanks again to @cmeerw for the NetBSD-10 image that started all the fun! 
Just so everyone can see today's dates:
Thanks! Best wishes for a 🇺🇸 Happy 4th of July! 🇺🇸
Hello!
NetBSD-current is yet again building very quickly here on this Linveo VPS!
Thanks to @Linveo for this nice, fast VPS! Thanks to @cmeerw for the NetBSD image which got this VPS started! Thanks to everybody at the NetBSD project!
Does anybody want to share this really fast Linveo VPS? The compile takes a few hours and a couple of reboots. I do the compiles a few times per week. The remainder of the time, somebody else could use this VPS for another project which would run on NetBSD-current and which would be okay with occasional reboot.
If I am using this VPS ten hours a week, which has 168 hours, there are 158 hours available. It's super fast, and it's free!
Thanks!
Tom
Has any BSDs thought about transitioning to Wayland?
DM us for private tracker invite.
Hi @terrorgen! I wish I knew enough to answer your question. Lots of results when I Google searched your question, but, seemingly no pointer to source code. Best wishes!
I'm so grateful for my Linveo VPS which happily and speedily runs my NetBSD-current builds! Thanks Linveo!
Every time I compile I can pick out something new to learn about.
From today's compile, what is libgcc_s/_bswapdi2.o?
Is libgcc_s/_bswapdi2.o on Linux too?
Thanks for any hints!
Thanks again to @linveo
and NetBSD! 
Special thanks to @cmeerw! 
Yet another successful build! Well, the compiling part is pretty easy! The developing part is harder. I guess.
Here we go again with yet another successful NetBSD-current + pkgsrc update and rebuild.
If somebody here wants to share this terrifically fast VPS from Linveo,
that would be fine with me.
@Not_Oles did your NetBSD VPS ever lock up (waiting for I/O that never completes)?
I am seeing my NetBSD VPS occasionally lock up, and so far it looks like some issue with the virtio block device (either on the NetBSD side or the qemu side).
With something like
I seem to get it to lock up after a few hours (with the sleep the load on the host should be fine, even when running over longer periods). Just wondering if that's something that you are (or could be) seeing on your VPS as well?
(btw, the VPS comes back to life when logging in via the VNC console)
@cmeerw I feel really lucky, no trouble at all here. FWIW, do I remember right that we are on different node processor architectures? Mine is AMD Ryzen 9 9950X on kvmaz13. If I can help, please let me know. Thanks @linveo!
I used to be on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core Processor on kvmtx11, but it seems I am now also on an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 16-Core Processor (thanks @linveo). Just trying to figure out how reproducible (or common) the issue I am seeing is...
I have filed https://gnats.netbsd.org/59618 for this issue, and it already got confirmed.
@cmeerw Congrats!
FWIW, I did read skim through the gnats link you posted and onward also through the references there. First time I looked at nxr.netbsd.org and opengrok.
Since testing and troubleshooting were done on hlcs, I guess we now can celebrate hlcs having contributed to NetBSD development! Thanks @Hosteroid for hlcs!
I'm still not having any trouble on my very fast @linveo VPS! But I am glad to see this bug exposed. Thanks @linveo for the VPSes @cmeerw and I are using!
Sorry it's been a while since I have been around this thread. I have completed all of the node upgrades in Texas to 9950X, so 7950X is a thing of the past. Now all locations are on 9950x.
linveo.com | Shared Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Servers
Could someone please help me with the following type mismatch compile error in /pkgsrc/x11/xf86-video-openchrome?
Today is November 18. The error has persisted for several days, since I first saw it on November 12. I seemed to have had a successful pkgsrc rebuild on November 5, but I am not sure that xf86-video-openchrome was included in the November 5 rebuild.
Specific questions:
NetBSD and pkgsrc seem to catch issues very quickly. The fact that this issue has persisted for several days makes me wonder if some mistake I made somehow is an underlying cause of the error.
Where do I look for daily pkgsrc build reports by package to see whether xf86-video-openchrome builds on the test platform?
How do I find the commit history showing where and when the cause of the error was introduced?
How to fix without causing a problem for other packages?
Thanks very much, everyone! <3 Special thanks to @linveo for the very fast VPS!
Tom
To update pkgsrc, I usually run, as root, inside tmux, in
/usr/pkgsrc:The terminal output is captured in a file called nohup.out.
Looks like maybe I found the pkgsrc BulkTracker! The BulkTracker is linked from the pkgsrc home page, https://pkgsrc.org. Scroll down to information for developers, wherein BulkTracker is the last item.
But, if I go to the BulkTracker x11 page, there do not seem to be any amd64 entries. So I am confused. . . .
Am I making a mistake expecting to build xf86-video-openchrome on amd64?
Looks like I could do without the xf86-video-openchrome package since I might not be using a VIA chipset? See also https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Openchrome/.
Unfortunately, I don't have the answer to your question, but you might try asking on the NetBSD mailing list "pkgsrc-users":
https://netbsd.org/mailinglists/#pkgsrc-users
In the past, I sometimes wrote to this list when I had an issue with a compilation using pkgsrc.
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
Right, if you don't have that chipset, then the best strategy would be to avoid trying to build it
By the way, it appears that this package hasn't been built for any of architectures that NetBSD supports:
https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/x11/xf86-video-openchrome/index.html
In addition, this package isn't available in either Debian 13 (trixie) or Debian testing:
https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=all§ion=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
This suggests that an attempt to build xf86-video-openchrome at this time won't succeed
But for NetBSD it would be nice to find where exactly the option not to build this package is located
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
@Not_Oles , you seem to like living on the edge
Any reason why you're trying to build modular-xorg?
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
I think that I've found the relevant Makefile:
https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/meta-pkgs/modular-xorg-drivers/Makefile
You could try commenting out the line
and see whether this brings you more luck
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
Yes!
This VPS isn't running any services. It's just for having lots of fun trying small parts of NetBSD.
I just wanted to try the modular Xorg. You can see, above, on March 14, when I installed the modular xorg meta-package.
As you probably know, NetBSD has the X11R7 set in the main distribution and Xorg in pkgsrc. Part of the reason for the two different approaches to X might be differences in the licensing and differences in developers.
Ever since March 14, pkgsrc, as implemented on this VPS, nothing special, has been rebuilding Xorg without any issue until about November 12 or a little before.
Yes, definitely looks like it would work! Thank you!
Another alternative might be to remove the modular xorg meta-package and go with a simpler install of only some of the packages in the meta-packages? For example, maybe an approach like https://rubenerd.com/modular-xorg-on-netbsd-from-scratch/ might work. Um, which if any driver is needed for this VPS? Which packages? More fun coming up soon!
Looks like xf86-video-amdgpu might be the only driver needed for this VPS?
What happens if I get rid of the modular xorg meta-package plus all the other X packages, and install just
wm/twm
x11/modular-xorg-server/ # includes Xvfb
meta-pkgs/modular-xorg-fonts/
x11/xf86-input-keyboard/
x11/xf86-input-mouse/
x11/xf86-video-vmware/
x11/xauth/
X11/x11vnc
X11/xeyes/
x11/xinit/
X11/xterm # Maybe X11/rxvt-unicode
Will this give me a minimal, but working X via VNC?
I'm a long-term NetBSD user -- but not exclusively NetBSD -- but I don't like living on the edge,
so I've always just used NetBSD stable (now: 10.1) and pkgsrc stable
I confess that I've never tried to build modular-xorg, largely because the xorg that's part of the base distribution has always worked for my purposes
I think that they're both xorg, but that the xorg of the base distribution has been modified to suit the purposes of the base distribution. If you wish, the xorg of the base distribution is a kind of "light fork" of the standard xorg, where the latter is available as modular-xorg in pkgsrc
Just to note that that's a very old blog entry from 2004, shortly after the forking of xorg from xfree86, which doesn't reflect the current state of X in NetBSD
"A single swap file or partition may be up to 128 MB in size. [...] [I]f you need 256 MB of swap, you can create two 128-MB swap partitions." (M. Welsh & L. Kaufman, Running Linux, 2e, 1996, p. 49)
I think you are right! Yesterday I was trying to figure out the history of X and X as it has been in NetBSD. . . .
Thanks for always being helpful!
Oh God. I didn't think I'd be reading about XFree86 in TYOOL 2025. XLibre has really pissed off a lot of troons and they're going out of their way to stymie and destroy it from different distributions (e.g. Alpine) by making baseless claims and stating privately that it's entirely political.
That's why I'm nuking my Alpine instances and going back to OpenBSD.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington