Traditionally, The NetBSD project participated in the Google Summer of Code 2020. Six projects were selected for this year program:

• Apurva Nandan – Benchmark NetBSD
• Jain Naman – Curses library automated testing
• Nikita Gillmann – Make system(3) and popen(3) use posix_spawn(3) internally
• Ayushi Sharma – Enhance the syzkaller support for NetBSD
• Aditya Vardhan Padala – Rumpkernel Syscall Fuzzing
• Nisarg Joshi – Fuzzing the network stack of NetBSD in a rumpkernel environment
• Jason High – Extending the functionality of the netpgp suite

Here you can find links to all the currently posted reports (will update the list if new ones will be posted):

Benchmark NetBSD:

1. GSoC Reports: Benchmarking NetBSD, first evaluation report
2. GSoC Reports: Benchmarking NetBSD, second evaluation report
3. GSoC Reports: Benchmarking NetBSD, third evaluation report

Curses library automated testing

1. GSoC Reports: Curses Library Automated Testing, Part 1
2. GSoC 2020 Second Evaluation Report: Curses Library Automated Testing
3. Google Summer of Code 2020: [Final Report] Curses Library Automated Testing

Make system(3) and popen(3) use posix_spawn(3) internally:

1. GSoC Reports: Make system(3) and popen(3) use posix_spawn(3) internally, Part 1
2. GSoC Reports: Make system(3), popen(3) and popenve(3) use posix_spawn(3) internally (Final report)

Enhance the syzkaller support for NetBSD:

1. GSoC Reports: Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD, Part 1
2. GSoC Reports: Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD, Part 2
3. Google Summer of Code 2020: [Final Report] Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD

Rumpkernel Syscall Fuzzing:

1. GSoC Reports: Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls, Part 1
2. GSoC Reports: Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls, Part 2
3. Google Summer of Code 2020: [Final Report] RumpKernel Syscall Fuzzing

Fuzzing the network stack of NetBSD in a rumpkernel environment:

1. GSoC Reports: Fuzzing the NetBSD Network Stack in a Rumpkernel Environment, Part 1
2. GSoC 2020: Report-2: Fuzzing the NetBSD Network Stack in a Rumpkernel Environment

Extending the functionality of the netpgp suite:

1. GSoC Reports: Extending the functionality of NetPGP, Part 1

Other interesting reads:

The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD:

1. The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 1)
2. The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 2)
3. The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 3)
4. The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 4)
5. The GNU GDB Debugger and NetBSD (Part 5)

LLDB work (since Feb of 2019):

1. Final report on Clang / LLD state
2. LLDB from trunk is running on NetBSD once again!
3. LLDB/LLVM report for March 2019
4. LLDB: extending CPU register inspection support
5. XSAVE and compat32 kernel work for LLDB
6. LLDB: watchpoints, XSTATE in ptrace() and core dumps
7. Work-in-progress threading support in LLDB
8. LLDB Threading support now ready for mainline
9. Threading support in LLDB continued
10. LLDB Threading support now ready for mainline
11. Clang build bot now uses two-stage builds, and other LLVM/LLDB news
12. LLDB now works on i386
13. Towards backtracing through signal trampolines and fresh libc++
14. LLDB work concluded

Last but not the least:

1. Improving libossaudio, and the future of OSS in NetBSD

A bit too late but here one can find links to the final reports from GSoC’2019 (hope I didn’t miss any):

• Adapting TriforceAFL for NetBSD, Part 3
• Enhancing Syzkaller Support for NetBSD, Part 3
• GSoC 2019 Report: Adding NetBSD KNF to clang-format, Final
• Porting wine to amd64 on NetBSD, third evaluation report
• GSoC 2019 Report: Implementation of compat_netbsd32 DRM ioctl/Getting DRM applications running under compat-linux
• Porting NetBSD to HummingBoard Pulse
• GSoC 2019 Final Report: Incorporating the memory-hard Argon2 hashing scheme into NetBSD

Previous reports:

• Second round of GSoC reports are available in NetBSD blog
• First round of GSoC reports

Looks like it was one of the most productive and successful summers for the NetBSD project!

Second round of GSoC’2019 reports are available in NetBSD blog:

• Adapting TriforceAFL for NetBSD, Part 2
• Enhancing Syzkaller Support for NetBSD, Part 2
• GSoC 2019 Report: Adding NetBSD KNF to clang-format, Part 2
• Porting wine to amd64 on NetBSD, second evaluation report
• GSoC 2019 Report Update: Incorporating the memory-hard Argon2 hashing scheme into NetBSD

Fun read:

USBNET: A story of networking and threads that won’t stop pulling

Continuation on fuzzers:

Fuzzing NetBSD Filesystems via AFL. [Part 2]

Other work sponsored by the NetBSD project:

• Getting the GNU gdbserver to work
• Work-in-progress threading support in LLDB

The NetBSD project is participating in Google Summer of Code 2019 and projects for this year were announced:

• Akul Abhilash Pillai – Adapting TriforceAFL for NetBSD kernel fuzzing
• Manikishan Ghantasala – Add KNF (NetBSD style) clang-format configuration
• Siddharth Muralee – Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD
• Surya P – Implementation of COMPAT_LINUX and COMPAT_NETBSD32 DRM ioctls support for NetBSD kernel
• Jason High – Incorporation of Argon2 Password Hashing Algorithm into NetBSD
• Saurav Prakash – Porting NetBSD to HummingBoard Pulse
• Naveen Narayanan – Porting WINE to amd64 architecture on NetBSD

Must admit that few projects are out of my knowledge area but some of them are really interesting I am planning to follow them closely. As an interesting fact Siddharth is participating for the second year in a row.

Following one month after NetBSD 8 release, the NetBSD team announced the end of life for NetBSD 6.x branches. They won’t receive any updates (including security patches) or support anymore. So, it’s time to upgrade if you haven’t done yet…

Release policy was changed as well starting 8.0 release. It will be no “teeny” bugfixes x.x.x (e.g. 6.0.1) branches anymore, only x.x (e.g. 8.0) update releases and they will contain both bug/security fixes as well as enhancements and new features that are deemed to be safe. This way the team expects to have more frequent releases, better long-term support and new features/enhancements to come to binary releases faster. Branches prior 8 are not affected by this policy though.

Last but not the least, Google Summer of Code 2018 coding period is over and you can read all the reports from the students:

GSoC 2018 Reports: Kernel Address Sanitizer, Part 1
GSoC 2018 report: Kernel Address Sanitizer, Part 2
GSoC 2018 Reports: Kernel Address Sanitizer, Part 3

GSoC 2018 Reports: Integrate libFuzzer with the Basesystem, Part 1
GSoC 2018 Reports: Integrate libFuzzer with the Basesystem, Part 2
GSoC 2018 Reports: Integrate libFuzzer with the Basesystem, Part 3

GSoC 2018 Reports: Kernel Undefined Behavior Sanitizer, Part 1

GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, Part 1
GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 2: remote repositories (git and CVS)
GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 3: remote repositories (SVN and Mercurial)
GSoC 2018 Reports: Configuration files versioning in pkgsrc, part 4: configuration deployment, pkgtools and future improvements

NetBSD’s Google Summer of Code projects were announced:

• Socket option to timestamp UDP packets in the kernel
  Student: Vlad Balan
• TLS (HTTPS) support in net/tnftp
  Student: Miklós HOMOLYA
• Port ASan to NetBSD
  Student: steve
• Sysinst enhancements
  Student: Eugene Lozovoy
• HTree directory indexing for Ext3
  Student: Vyacheslav Matyushin
• NAT-PMP and/or UPnP IGD support for NPF; MiniUPnP integration
  Student: Zoltan Arnold Nagy
• NAT64/46 and NPTv6 integration with NPF
  Student: mpp

I wish great summer and success for students.

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