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FreeBSD 9.1-RC2 available (and PC-BSD 9.1-RC2)

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The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle was released last week (due to a busy break abroad I’m posting this only now). ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and powerpc64 architectures are available.

Remember, this is not the final release version, so only use for testing purposes.

The FreeBSD 9.1 Release Schedule may be of interest, though the release is slightly delayed, as well as the FreeBSD 9.1 ToDo Wiki.

Following this FreeBSD release, the PC-BSD Project has announced PC-BSD 9.1-RC2.

FreeNAS 8 Plugins

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FreeNAS 8.2 and newer versions have support for plugins, i.e. extentions in the form of PC-BSD‘s PBIs (Push Button Install).

There’s some good plugin documentation available on the FreeNAS website explaining how to use the plugins, how to install the plugins jail, how to create, find, install, and configure PBIs, such as Firefly, miniDLNA and Transmission. If there’s no PBI available (yet), the page shows how you can create your own PBIs, and how to install non-PBI software using the FreeBSD ports and packages collections.

Plugin support is still a bit crude in FreeNAS 8.2, but it is looking a lot more polished in the upcoming FreeNAS 8.3.

FreeNAS 8 Plugins

FreeNAS 8.2.0 Plugins Part 1: Installing

FreeNAS 8.3.0 Plugins Part 2: Plugins Configuration

 

pfSense tutorial: Configure pfSense as an SMB-caliber firewall

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“Imagine this scenario: Another business group in your midsize company needs some new network connectivity, but they also require a number of network security features, including an integrated access point, user authentication, VPN capabilities, and a firewall to separate a certain group from the rest of the network. Oh, and they also want access to Snort and Nmap. Luckily, pfSense offers all of these features along with a number of customization options.”

Keith Barker explains in this video tutorial how to configure an SMB-caliber firewall

FreeNAS 8.3.0-BETA3 available

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The FreeNAS team has announced the availability of FreeNAS 8.3.0-BETA3. This is the last planned public beta of 8.3.0 as it moves towards the final.

“This BETA includes a refactoring of the Active Directory and LDAP integration. It has a rework of serial port support, adding the ability to set the serial port speed. The NFS sharing was refactored in BETA2 with an eye towards maintaining compatability with sharing schemes set up in previous FreeNAS releases. The refactored sharing is more powerful and flexible than previous releases, while enforcing the OS based rules. Support for the LSI “skinny” RAID conrollers was added.”

Announcement | Download FreeNAS 8.3.0-BETA3 | FreeNAS website

PC-BSD: From C*p to Critical

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Michael Dexter has written up a review of PC-BSD 9.1.

He thinks PC-BSD is a great system with many window managers to choose from, has a good package manager and great jails management.

However, FreeBSD’s weak point is PC-BSD‘s: hardware support.

“It took time but PC-BSD is really shaping up nicely and teaches quite a few lessons about holistic OS design. I haven’t even explored its “Life Preserver” backup/FreeNAS option but the developers are clearly are focusing on adding the missing tools of the highest value. They are also focused on creating a complete client/server ecosystem and PC-BSD 9.1 users can look forward to expanded command line alternatives to the GUI tools. PC-BSD also has quite a few invisible features such as the unified base OS .txz it uses for jail creation that I may end up using for building BHyVe images. PC-BSD 9.0 and newer is truly worth a try and I applaud the progress its developers have made.”

pfSense – Squid + Squidguard / Traffic Shapping Tutorial

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Ever wanted to set up a pfSense firewall/router with content filtering? Howtoforge has one of the easiest tutorials to help you set this up. If you have a spare box, there’s no reason now to wait any longer: pfSense – Squid + Squidguard / Traffic Shapping Tutorial

In this tutorial I will show you how to set up pfSense 2.0.1 up as an Internet Gateway with Squid Proxy / Squidguard Filtering. I will also show that you have to configure some extra features of pfSense like traffic shapping with squid.

PC-BSD 9.1 Review (Jupiter Broadcasting – video)

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Jupiter Broadcasting has an episode reviewing PC-BSD

The PC-BSD 9.1 review starts at 39:50.

Notes and Summary

  • Your choice of Desktop Environments, Installer automatically adjusts the defaults depending on how much ram you have installed
  • Your options: KDE, Gnome, LXDE or XFCE
  • Another option is TrueOS, a console based server, FreeBSD with the CLI version of Warden, the PBI system, ZFS Boot Environments and other utilities
  • The install also offers vanilla FreeBSD Server
  • PC-BSD allows you to do a full ‘root on ZFS’ install (only recommended if you have 4 or more GB of ram), including creating many different datasets with different settings such as compression for optimal use of space
  • You have the option of the Basic Wizard, the Advanced Wizard, or the FreeBSD CLI partitioning system
  • The advanced Wizard also allows you to setup more complex ZFS mirror or RAIDZ
  • You can choose to optionally encrypt your hard disk using GELI
  • Warden is a Graphical and Command Line based manager for FreeBSD’s Jails feature
  • In FreeBSD a jail is a secondary installation of the OS files, which is then started in a chroot, and the processes, network and user/group IDs are separate
  • Allows you to manage three types of jails:
  • Traditional Jail – run internet applications in a container, if compromised, the attacker only gains access to the jail, not the host OS
  • Ports Jail – less secure version if jails, allows you to install applications from the FreeBSD ports tree without interfering with the PBI package manager in the host OS
  • Linux Jail – install Debian or Gentoo in a jail, and run your linux applications in a full linux environment
  • Warden also allows you to stop a jail, pack it up, and move it to a different physical machine
  • Warden also allows you to install meta-packages into the jails with a single click, allowing you to deploy apache+php+mysql in no time
  • Warden can back your jails storage with ZFS, allowing you to take advantage of ZFS features such as snapshots, clones (writable snapshots), revert to a previous snapshot, etc

Installing and configuring Squid and DansGuardian under FreeBSD

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Installing and configuring FreeBSD as router is something most of us won’t do daily. It’s one of those jobs you do once, and when it’s up and running, you let your server / router do its work and you don’t touch it – unless there’s a problem.

Squid and DansGuardian are some excellent tools for caching and content filtering. Squid is a caching proxy  supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. DansGuardian is a web content filter. It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering.

Since configuring Squid and DansGuardian is not something we daily do, the following tutorial may be useful: Installing and configuring Squid and DansGuardian under FreeBSD.

If you run pfSense, you can install Squid and DansGuardian too.

Another interesting tutorial is the one on creating plugins for FreeBSD’s new pkgng package management: Writing plugins for pkgns.