Three ways to look at the same machine - at the same time: a BIOS VGA console, a 256-color xterm, and a responsive web UI - all connected to the same cell and backup management backend.Which one would you pick?
https://netbsd-cells.petermann-digital.de
#netbsd #modernretrocomputing #freebsd #openbsd #dragonflybsd
It’s becoming real... When you build clean interfaces from the ground up, the next GUI is not magic. It is a concrete architectural vision, solid technical design, and a few prompts away...
A small update on NetBSD Cells 🙂
I’ve spent some time recently polishing things up and have updated the project page. I also built a new evaluation DVD image so it’s easier to try the current state of the project.
It now includes a few of the things I’ve been working on lately, like the reconcile engine in cellmgr, some early volume and backup management, and cellui for interactive administration.
If you’re curious about where the project currently stands, I wrote a short status report here:
https://www.petermann-digital.de/en/blog/netbsd-cells-status-report-2026q1/
Project page and download:
https://netbsd-cells.petermann-digital.de/
Feedback, thoughts, and questions are always very welcome.
"Can you show what Cells for NetBSD actually does?"
Sure.
Fresh NetBSD install, deploy a Luanti server from a manifest, backup, restore, inspect processes inside the cell, then nuke everything again.
My personal record is <4 minutes.
The video is slower because OBS + VM + music nearly killed my laptop.
Cells for NetBSD... Lightning Talk without the Talk ;-)
…and for those who wondered about the recurring MantisBT example in the screenshots - that is one of my end-to-end scenarios I use to test the practical viability of the Reconcile Engine, including things like volume management.
The scope is deliberately host-centric. It is not a cluster-wide deployment model like Kubernetes, but always framed around something like a sovereign home server, where I simply want to manage and operate my services in a clean and structured way.
For example, running a bug tracker with its database and reverse proxy - or something entirely different, like a Luanti game server for my son.
Some documentation has also started to emerge, because at this point it can no longer really be explained in a one-pager:
#netbsd #devops #modernretrocomputing #luanti #mantisbt #selfhosted #clt2026
What this page gives you This walkthrough is for admins who want one complete, realistic stack example from shipped manifests to running service. You will learn: how a multi-cell stack is modeled in manifests how dependencies (CELL_DEPENDS_ON) enforce rollout order how volume mounts model data ownership and persistence boundaries Shipped example location on NetBSD: /usr/share/examples/cellmgr/mantisbt Topology and dependency graph The MantisBT example has three cells and three volumes:
Pushing Cells for NetBSD even further... cellmgr becoming a scriptable reconcilation engine with full lifecycle management including backup/restore, with cellui as the go-to TUI for midnight commander enthusiasts. And why stop there, when you could have a PAM authenticated web UI with feature-parity as well?
What about a nice Midnight Commander-style TUI to manage cells interactively? 🤔
Cells for NetBSD is an experimental NetBSD-native isolation model with kernel-enforced boundaries, supervised service execution, and snapshot telemetry for practical host-side operations.
@monkey well, I do have the same issue.
I'm working on @OS1337 for that reason.
But if you want more than 80x25 MDA, consider @bunsenlabs / #BunsenLabsLinux, which is a #32bit-available #Debian-based distro. ¹
As for #Browsing, @ActionRetro made #FrogFind… ⁴
#FrugalComputing #Netbooks #ModernRetroComputing #Reuse #UseLonger #OS1337
Attached: 1 image Thanks to a donation by @[email protected], I've been able to test @OS1337 on a real #EeePC701-4G and so far this seems to have only some minor hiccups. - OFC I've first ran into the #137GB barrier with the #BIOS when booting my regular #Vendoy drive but then again at the time the #EeePC was released, 240GB SSDs were unobtanium and would've costed propably more than a dozen 701-4G's retail...
Matthias Petermann
Kevin Karhan 