This is a partial list of new features and systems included in OpenBSD 4.6. For a comprehensive list, see the changelog leading to 4.6.

• New/extended platforms:
  • mvme68k
    • Added support for the MVME141 and MVME165 boards.
  • sparc
    • The bootblock load address was moved so that larger kernels can be loaded.
  • sparc64
    • Added acceleration support for many of the PCI frame buffer drivers, such as Sun PGX, PGX64 and XVR-100, and Tech Source Raptor GFX graphics cards.
  • sgi
    • Added support for the SGI Octane, SGI Origin 200 and SGI Fuel families of systems.
    • Several bugs in interrupt handling have been fixed, resulting in much snappier system response.

• Improved hardware support, including:
  • Several new/improved drivers for sensors, including:
    • The ips(4) driver now has sensor support, complementing the bio support.
    • The acpithinkpad(4) driver now has temperature and fan sensor support.
    • New endrun(4) driver for the EndRun Technologies timedelta sensor.
    • The fins(4) driver now has support for F71806, F71862 and F71882.
    • The acpitz(4) driver now shows correct decimals for temperature.
  • Added radeonfb(4) to sparc64, an accelerated framebuffer for Sun XVR-100 boards.
  • Added support in re(4) for RTL8103E and RTL8168DP devices.
  • Added support for BCM5709/BCM5716 devices in the bnx(4) driver.
  • Added support for ICH10 variants of em(4).
  • Added support for VIA VX855 chipset in the viapm(4) and pciide(4) drivers.
  • Added support for Intel SCH IDE to pciide(4).
  • Added support for the Broadcom HT-1100 chipset in the piixpm(4) driver.
  • Added support for 82574L based devices in the em(4) driver.
  • A number of network drivers including ix(4), sis(4), msk(4), bnx(4), and vr(4) now use MCLGETI(9) to reduce memory usage and increase performance under load and attack.
  • Added support for VIA CX800 south bridge to the viapm(4) driver.
  • Added support in em(4) for the newer 82575 (and maybe 82576) chips.
  • zyd(4) now supports devices with Airoha AL2230S radios.
  • zyd(4) now works on big-endian machines
  • urtw(4) now supports RTL8187B based devices.
  • New otus(4) driver for Atheros AR9001U USB 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N wireless devices.
  • New berkwdt(4) driver for Berkshire Products PCI watchdog timers.
  • New udl(4) driver for USB video devices.
  • Support for a variety of newer models in bge(4).
  • Initial version of vsw(4), a driver for the virtual network switch on sun4v sparc64s.
  • Implemented machfb(4), an accelerated driver for the sparc64 PGX/PGX64 framebuffers.
  • Added a vcc(4) and vcctty(4) driver for the "Virtual Console Concentrator" found on the control domain of sun4v systems.
  • Implemented 64-bit FIFO modes for ciss(4) devices.
  • Enable hardware VLAN tagging/stripping on ix(4).
  • Added basic support for Envy24HT chips in the envy(4) driver.
  • Many improvements and updates to the isp(4) driver.
  • Added support for 88E8057-based Yukon 2 Ultra 2-devices in msk(4).
  • The ips(4) driver now works reliably.
  • Added raptor(4), an accelerated framebuffer driver for the Tech Source Raptor GFX cards on the sparc64 platform.
  • Enabled schsio(4) on i386 and amd64 and added watchdog timer support.
  • New acpivideo(4) driver for ACPI display switching and brightness control.

• New tools:
  • Added smtpd(8), a new privilege-separated SMTP daemon.
  • Imported the tmux(1) terminal multiplexer, replacing window(1).

• pf(4) improvements:
  • Enabled pf(4) by default in the rc.conf(8).
  • Removed pf(4) scrub rules, and only do one kind of packet reassembly. Rulesets with scrub rules need to be modified because of this.
  • Regular rules can now have per-rule scrub options.
  • Added new "match" keyword which only applies rule options but does not change the current pass/block state.
  • Make all pf(4) operations transactional to improve atomicity of reloads.
  • Stricter pf(4) checking for ICMP and ICMPv6 packets.
  • Various improvements to pfsync(4) to lower sync traffic bandwidth and optionally allow active-active firewall setups.
  • Fix pf(4) scrub max-mss for IPv6 traffic.

• OpenBGPD, OpenOSPFD and other routing daemon improvements:
  • In bgpd(8), rework most of the RDE to allow multiple RIBs. It is possible to filter per-RIB and attach neighbors to a specific RIB.
  • Added an option to bgpd(8) to change the "connect-retry" timer.
  • Allow bgpd.conf(5) and bgpctl(8) to contain 32-bit ASN numbers written in ASPLAIN format.
  • Fix bgpd(8) to correctly encode MP unreachable NLRI so IPv6 prefixes get removed correctly.
  • Changed the behaviour of "redistribute default" for ospfd(8) and ripd(8). A default route has to be present in the FIB to be correctly advertised.
  • Make ospfd(8) and ripd(8) track reject and blackhole routes and allow them to be redistributed even if pointing to 127.0.0.1.
  • Allow to specify an alternate control socket for ospfd(8).
  • ospfd(8) can now be bound into an alternate routing domain.
  • Fix ospfd(8) route metric for "redistribute default".
  • Initial version of ldpctl(8) and ldpd(8), a label distribution protocol daemon for mpls.
  • Make dvmrp(8) RDE aware of multicast group members per interface.
  • Support for pruning in dvmrp(8).

• Generic Network-Stack improvements:
  • Support for virtual routing and firewalling with the addition of routing domains.
  • Add code in ifconfig(8) to bind an interface to a routing domain.
  • Add support to ping(8), traceroute(8), arp(8), nc(1) and telnet(1) to specify which routing domain to use.
  • Allow ifconfig(8) to turn off IPv6 completely for an interface and make rtsold(8) turn on inet6 on the interface.
  • Routes track the interface link state.
  • route(8) flush accepts "-iface" or "-priority" to only flush routes matching these conditions.
  • Multiple dhclients can now coexist without causing mayhem.
  • Make wireless interfaces have an interface priority of 4 by default. Makes them less preferred then wired interfaces.
  • Do not accept IPv4 ICMP redirects by default.
  • Added the MAC address to the log entries in dhclient(8).
  • Make systat(1) show interface description names in the interface view, and add new NFS server and client views.
  • Make tun(4) emulate link state depending on the open and close of the device fd.
  • Use pf state-table information to speed up decision on whether a packet is to be delivered locally or forwarded.
  • More routing socket checks added to make userland applications more resilient to kernel changes.

• Install/Upgrade process changes:
  • New disklabel(8) automatic partition allocator with a variety of smart heuristics.
  • The installer has been nearly rewritten mostly with a focus on simplifying installation.

• OpenSSH 5.3:
  • Do not limit home directory paths to 256 characters. (bz #1615)
  • Several minor documentation and correctness fixes.

• Over 5,800 ports, minor robustness improvements in package tools.
• Many pre-built packages for each architecture:

  i386: 5606 sparc64: 5413 alpha: 5346

  sh: 1261 amd64: 5544 powerpc: 5427

  sparc: 3711 arm: 5291 hppa: 4790

  vax: 1785 mips64: 3443

  Some highlights:
  • Gnome 2.24.3.
  • KDE 3.5.10.
  • Xfce 4.6.1.
  • MySQL 5.0.83.
  • PostgreSQL 8.3.7.
  • Postfix 2.6.2.
  • OpenLDAP 2.3.43.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3.0.11 and 3.5.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.22.
  • OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.
  • Emacs 21.4 and 22.3
  • Vim 7.2.190.
  • PHP 5.2.10.
  • Python 2.4.6, 2.5.4 and 2.6.2.
  • Ruby 1.8.6.369.

• As usual, steady improvements in manual pages and other documentation.

• The system includes the following major components from outside suppliers:
  • Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.4 + patches, freetype 2.3.9, fontconfig 2.6.0, Mesa 7.4.2, xterm 243 and more)
  • Gcc 2.95.3 (+ patches) and 3.3.5 (+ patches)
  • Perl 5.10.0 (+ patches)
  • Our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS and DSO support
  • OpenSSL 0.9.8k (+ patches)
  • Groff 1.15
  • Sendmail 8.14.3, with libmilter
  • Bind 9.4.2-P2 (+ patches)
  • Lynx 2.8.6rel.5 with HTTPS and IPv6 support (+ patches)
  • Sudo 1.7.2
  • Ncurses 5.2
  • Latest KAME IPv6
  • Heimdal 0.7.2 (+ patches)
  • Arla 0.35.7
  • Binutils 2.15 (+ patches)
  • Gdb 6.3 (+ patches)