OpenBSD version 6.3 has been released. OpenBSD is demonstrating to be an excellent server operating system. Security is more critical now than ever before. OpenBSD leads the pack when it comes to security features. OpenBSD provides a very robust and trustworthy system that comes with the cutting-edge security feature. OpenBSD 6.3 continues to offer the “multi-platform, ultra-secure operating system” experience. The OpenBSD team releases a new version every six months.
What’s new in OpenBSD 6.3
Some of the new features and systems include improved hardware support for:
- Raspberry PI soc i.e. Broadcom BCM2835/BCM2836/BCM2837
- New driver for EFI runtime services
- Rockchip RK3328/RK3328 SoC support has been addedd
- Allwinner A10/A20, A23/A33, A80 and R40/V40 SoCs support has been added
- Allwinner A33, GR8 and R40/V40 SoCs support has been added
- SAS3.5 MegaRAIDs support has been added
- Intel Cannon Lake and Ice Lake integrated Ethernet support has been added
- Virtual machine monitor (vmm) and virtual machine daemon (vmd) support has been improved
- Network stack improvements
- Installer improvements
- Routing daemons and other userland network improvements
- OpenBSD/arm64 now uses kernel page table isolation to mitigate Spectre variant 3 (Meltdown) attacks
- Introduce “execpromises” in pledge
- OpenSSH 7.7
- OpenSMTPD 6.0.4
- LibreSSL 2.7.2
- Many pre-built packages for various architecture like aarch64, amd64 and more
How to upgrade OpenBSD 6.2 to 6.3
Upgrades only supported from version 6.2 release to the 6.3 release. The procedure to update version 6.2 to 6.3 is a pretty stretch forward and simple:
- Boot into version 6.2 server/desktop
- Grab version 6.3 kernel install kernel named bsd.rd
- Verify kernel file
- Install the kernel using the mv command
- Reboot the box
- Boot from the install kernel by typing ‘b bsd.rd’ at boot> prompt
- Follow on-screen installation procedure for upgrade
- When done reboot the box and upgrade all package by running the ‘pkg_add -u -v’ command
My OpenBSD version 6.3 server
Video demo
Download OpenBSD 6.3 iso images and more
You can grab OpenBSD iso images or usb images by visiting this page. The release page contains a more complete list of changes, and the upgrade page gives recommendations on how to upgrade to the version 6.3 release.
Posted by: Vivek Gite
The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.