Every OpenBSD admin has booted bsd.rd at least once — to install, upgrade, or rescue a broken system. But few people stop to look at what’s actually inside that file.

In this article over at the OpenBSD Jumpstart site, they take a look at just that.

The contents and format of the bsd.rd ramdisk kernel is shown, so you can understand and customize it for your own needs.

Enjoy!

Version 0.122 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated):

Version 0.121 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated):

In a move likely to be welcomed by users of streaming video services, Robert Nagy (robert@) has added a port for OpenWV (a free and open-source reimplementation of Google's Widevine CDM), and enabled its use with the chromium port:

Seasoned networkers will know to tell you that legacy IPv4 and modern IPv6 are, in fact, not directly compatible, and shipping traffic between IPv4 and IPv6 networks requires address family translation.

On our favorite operating system and its siblings, that special case has been handled via the af-to option and special case rules since back in the OpenBSD 5.1 days.

But that special case has always felt a bit awkward to some, and now David Gwynne (dlg@) is airing a patch on tech@ with a view to making af-to "less magical".

In the message titled pf: make af-to less magical, David explains the motivation,

List:       openbsd-tech
Subject:    pf: make af-to less magical
From:       David Gwynne <david () gwynne ! id ! au>
Date:       2026-01-16 2:11:57
Message-ID: aWmebWvdwBi6z98j () animata ! net

i only recently figured out that af-to is very special in pf, but i dont
think it should be.

currently af-to has the following restrictions:

1. it only works for incoming packets, ie, you can only use it on "pass
in" rules in pf.

2. it forces the translated packet to be forwarded.

a consequence of these, and 2 in particular, is that only one state is
created for an af-to connection over the firewall. this is unlike other
forwarded connections where there's generally two states created, one
when the packet comes in from the wire into the stack, and another when
the packet goes out from the stack to the wire.

Following a recent series of commits by Helg Bredow (helg@) and Stefan Fritsch (sf@), OpenBSD/arm64 now works as a guest operating system under the Apple Hypervisor.

The commits read

List:       openbsd-cvs
Subject:    CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
From:       Helg Bredow <helg () cvs ! openbsd ! org>
Date:       2026-01-12 18:15:33


CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	helg@cvs.openbsd.org	2026/01/12 11:15:33

Modified files:
	sys/dev/pv     : viogpu.c 

Log message:
viogpu_wsmmap() returns a kva but instead should return a physical
address via bus_dmamem_mmap(9). Without this, QEMU would only show a
black screen when starting X11. On the Apple Hypervisor, the kernel
would panic.

With these two commits, Mike Larkin (mlarkin@) set the stage for, and next up, bumped the maximum number of processors supported on OpenBSD/amd64 from 64 to 255.

The first commit message reads,

List:       openbsd-cvs
Subject:    CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
From:       Mike Larkin <mlarkin () cvs ! openbsd ! org>
Date:       2026-01-14 21:25:26

CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	mlarkin@cvs.openbsd.org	2026/01/14 14:25:26

Modified files:
	sys/arch/amd64/amd64: pmap.c 

Log message:
Support more than 64 bits for amd64 TLB shootdown IPI masks

The rkpi-client project has made a new release, rkpi-client 9.7, available with important new features and bug fixes.

The announcement reads,

Subject:    rpki-client 9.7 released
From:       Sebastian Benoit <benno () openbsd ! org>
Date:       2026-01-13 21:05:05

rpki-client 9.7 has just been released and will be available in the
rpki-client directory of any OpenBSD mirror soon. It is recommended
that all users upgrade to this version for improved reliability.

rpki-client is a FREE, easy-to-use implementation of the Resource
Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) for Relying Parties to facilitate
validation of BGP announcements. The program queries the global RPKI
repository system and validates untrusted network inputs. The program
outputs validated ROA payloads, BGPsec Router keys, and ASPA payloads
in configuration formats suitable for OpenBGPD and BIRD, and supports
emitting CSV and JSON for consumption by other routing stacks.

David Gwynne (dlg@) has removed LACP mode from the trunk(4) network driver. The commit message explains the reasoning:

CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	dlg@cvs.openbsd.org	2026/01/11 21:38:15

Modified files:
	share/man/man4 : trunk.4 
	sys/conf       : files 
	sys/net        : if_trunk.c 

Log message:
remove lacp support from trunk(4)

lacp is better supported by aggr(4). users of lacp in trunk(4)
should migrate to aggr(4).

trunk(4) and the lacp support inside it is one of the last chunks
of code that still requires the netlock in the ethernet stack. the
last time i tried to fix this i ended up writing aggr(4), and nothing
about this code has improved since then. the other protos such as
failover and loadbalance are trivial in comparison and will be easy
to improve in the future.

discussed with and no objections from many

David also added an entry to the "Following current" FAQ with additional details and an example of migration to aggr(4).