http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/OpenBSD_4.2_Released
Code:
As in our previous releases, 4.2 provides significant improvements,
including new features, in nearly all areas of the system:
- New/extended platforms:
o OpenBSD/sparc64.
The PCIe UltraSPARC IIIi machines like the V215 and V245 are
now supported.
o OpenBSD/hppa.
Four-digit B/C/J-class workstations like the B2000, C3750 or J6750
are now supported (in 32-bit mode).
o OpenBSD/alpha.
Add support in the alpha platform for a couple of new Alpha models,
AlphaServer 1200 and 4100.
- Platforms skipped this release:
o OpenBSD/sgi.
This architecture will not be released this time.
- Install/Upgrade process changes:
o New install method!!
For the most popular architectures, the FTP sites have a ~200MB
install ISO file, which contains the base set, permitting
non-network installs.
o Allow the specification of an NTP server during installation.
o Allow no fsck'ing of clean non-root partitions during upgrade.
o Check for INSTALL.<arch> to confirm sets are for the correct
architecture.
o Create and format the MSDOS partition for macppc installs
in a more flexible and reliable way.
- Improved hardware support, including:
o Native Serial-ATA support:
o ahci(4) driver for SATA controllers conforming to the Advanced
Host Controller Interface specification.
o jmb(4) driver for the JMicron JMB36x SATA II and PATA Host Controller.
o sili(4) driver for SATA controllers using the Silicon Image
3124/3132/3531 SATALink chipsets.
o The pciide(4) driver has had support added for newer chipsets, including:
o Intel ICH8M PATA
o JMicron JMB36x PATA
o VIA CX700/VX700 PATA
o The lm(4) driver now supports Winbond W83627DHG and W83627EHF-A
Super I/O Hardware Monitors.
o The siop(4) driver now has support for NCR 53C720/770 controllers in
big endian mode. In particular this means that the onboard Fast-Wide
SCSI on many hppa machines is supported now.
o New tht(4) driver for Tehuti Networks 10Gb Ethernet controllers.
o The malo(4) driver now supports Marvell 88W8385 802.11g based
Compact Flash devices.
o New uts(4) driver for USB touch screens, supported by the xtsscale(1)
calibration utility.
o The i810(4) X.Org driver and the PCI AGP driver now support
Intel i965GM chips.
o New led(4) driver for the front panel LEDs on the V215/245.
o New bbc(4) driver providing support for the BootBus Controllers in
UltraSparc III systems.
o New pmc(4) driver for the watchdog(4) timer on the National Semiconductor
PC87317 SuperIO chip.
o New pyro(4) driver for the SPARC64 Host/PCIe bridge.
o New astro(4) driver for the Astro Memory and I/O controller on hppa.
o New elroy(4) driver for the Elroy PCI hostbridge on hppa.
o New lcd(4) driver for the front panel LCD display on hppa.
o New ssio(4) driver for the National Semiconductor PC87560 Legacy IO on
hppa.
o New pxammc(4) driver for the MMC/SD/SDIO controller on zaurus.
o New xlights(4) driver for the front panel lights on the Xserve G4.
o New sysbutton(4) driver for the system identification button on
the Xserve G4.
o New piixpcib(4) driver for System Management Mode initiated speedstep
frequency scaling on certain pairings of the Intel PIIX4 ISA bridges
and Intel Pentium 3 processors.
o CPU frequency and voltage can now be scaled on all CPUs when running
GENERIC.MP on a multiprocessor i386 or AMD64 machine with enhanced
speedstep or powernow.
o Intel enhanced speedstep is now supported on OpenBSD/amd64.
o New support for the on die CPU temperature sensor found on the
Intel Core family of processors.
o The nvram(4) driver is now available on OpenBSD/amd64.
- New tools:
o cwm(1) has replaced wm2 as a simple-looking low-resource window manager.
o zless(1), view compressed files with less(1).
o mount_vnd(8), a utility to configure vnode disks from fstab(5).
- New functionality:
o FFS2, the updated version of the fast file system.
o ftp(1) now can send cookies loaded from a netscape-like cookiejar,
supports proxies requiring a password, and has a keep-alive option
to avoid over-aggressive control connection dropping.
o pkg_add(1) has been vastly improved. It is more robust, outputs more
consistent error messages, and can deal with a lot more update
scenarios gracefully. It also has much better look-up capabilities for
multiple entries in PKG_PATH, stopping at the first directory with
suitable candidates.
o ftp-proxy(8) is now able to automatically tag packets passing through
the pf(4) rule with a supplied name.
o Kernel work queues, workq_add_task(9), workq_create(9),
workq_destroy(9) provides a mechanism to defer tasks to a process
context when it is impossible to run such a task in the current context.
o ifconfig(8) now understands IP address/mask in CIDR notation.
o Add IP (v4 and v6) load balancing to carp(4), similar to the
ARP balancing.
o sensorsd(8) now supports a zero-configuration monitoring and has
a more intuitive logging for all sensors that automatically provide
sensor state. It also features advancements in user-specified
monitoring, including monitoring of sensors that are periodically
flagged as invalid.
o sensorsd.conf(5) now supports sensor matching by sensor type,
allowing easier configuration.
o The i386 bootloader can now load amd64 kernels.
o The amd64 bootloader can now load i386 kernels.
- Assorted improvements and code cleanup:
o Large (>1TB) disk and partition support in the disklabel and buffer
cache code and in the userland utilities that manipulate disk blocks.
Note that some parts of the system are not 64-bit disk block clean
yet, so partitions larger than 2TB cannot be used at the moment.
o Large (>2^32-1 sectors) SCSI disk sizes now probed.
o Thread support for the Objective-C library (libobjc).
o carp route handling has been fixed, solving some problems the
routing daemons were exhibiting.
o Various improvements in pf increase performance drastically,
stateful passing more than twice as fast than before.
o A change in how the kernel random pool is stirred increases performance
with network interface cards that support interrupt mitigation a lot.
o i386 TLB handling improved to avoid possible corruption on
Core2Duo processors.
o Rework TLB shootdown code for i386 and amd64, gives fairly large speed
improvements.
o i386 and amd64 use the BIOS disk geometry when creating default
disklabels.
o Default disk geometry changed from 64 heads/32 sectors to
255 heads/63 sectors.
o More USB devices with various quirks coerced to work.
o Archive/Wangtek cartridge tape drives (wt*) no longer supported.
o rcs has improved GNU compatibility.
o make(1) has improved stability of -j option.