OpenBSD 7.9 is now available as the project’s 60th release, bringing platform, kernel, graphics, wireless, virtualization, installer, and userland updates.
A key new feature is delayed hibernation, which prevents a suspended system from fully draining its battery. After a configurable delay, the system wakes and immediately enters hibernation. The machdep.hibernatedelay sysctl value sets the delay in seconds before this transition.
Another highlight is that OpenBSD 7.9 adds a kernel scheduler mechanism for systems with CPU cores at varying speeds. The hw.blockcpu sysctl variable allows users to exclude specific CPU classes, such as SMT, performance, efficiency, or slower cores, from scheduling, which is available on amd64 and arm64 systems.
Moreover, the release replaces the CAS spinlock in kernel mutexes with a parking lock, enables parallel fault handling on amd64 and arm64, and blocks loading binaries without an executable PT_LOAD segment. It also introduces infrastructure to support up to 52 partitions per disk in future updates.
Graphics support is updated to use the DRM subsystem, now based on the Linux kernel 6.18.22, which provides a newer Direct Rendering Manager driver.
Hardware support is expanded across architectures as well. On arm64, OpenBSD 7.9 adds support for RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs, enables the ice driver, and supports the Genesys Logic GL9755 SDHC controller found in some Apple Silicon laptops. On amd64, it adds SMU support to amdpmc, increases MAXCPUs to 255, fixes a bug for systems with over 512 GB RAM, and mitigates floating-point state leakage on AMD Zen and Zen+ systems.
On top of that, the riscv64 port now supports SpacemiT K1 SoC systems with new clock, GPIO, PCIe, Ethernet, and device tree support. Additional architecture-specific updates include fixes for ice on sparc64, memory barrier changes on powerpc64, TLB shootdown improvements on alpha, and several updates for big-endian systems.
Virtualization improvements include the new machdep.vmmode to report host or guest status, vmboot support for sysupgrade within vmd virtual machines, enhanced AMD SEV handling, and multiple VMM/VMD fixes for races, hangs, deadlocks, and guest reboot behavior.
Networking updates add or improve support for Quectel EC200A LTE modems, Realtek RTL8126, Broadcom BCM575xx devices, and SpacemiT K1 Ethernet interfaces. The release enables 64-bit DMA transfers for several network drivers and activates SoftLRO by default for bnxt and ice.
Wireless support is enhanced with basic 802.11ax support, 160 MHz channels at 5 GHz for iwx, PMF support for iwm, iwx, and qwx, Wi-Fi 6E radio support for BZ devices in iwx, and default-enabled powersave support for iwx.
Finally, installer and upgrade enhancements include safer sysupgrade when /usr exceeds 90% capacity, improved firmware device scanning via fw_update, better keydisk partition detection, and amd64 support for loading kernels from the EFI system partition, aligning with arm64 functionality.
For additional details, see the release page. OpenBSD 7.9 is now available from the project’s mirror network.
