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FreeBSD 11.1-RC3 is available

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The developers of FreeBSD have made available the 3rd release candidate of version 11.1. FreeBSD 11.1 is slated to release on July 21. See the full release notes at the link below and download the ISO here.

A summary of changes since 11.1-RC2 includes:

o A rare truncation case has been fixed in the runtime linker.

o Signatures of several pthread(3) stubs have been corrected.

o Deprecation notices have been added to gdb(1), kgdb(1), sicontrol(8),
  wlconfig(8), as well as several drivers that have been removed from
  12.0.

o Loop termination in vm_map_find_min() has been fixed.

o The layout of the vm_map_entry struct has been restored.  See the
  "SPECIAL NOTE" below for one known corner case regarding this.

o The Heimdal KDC-REP service encrypted ticket usage has been fixed.
  [FreeBSD-SA-17:05.heimdal]

o An issue where some Intel SDHCI/eMMC controllers can fail on the first
  attempt after a D3 to D0 transition has been fixed.

o Capsicum support has been added to bhyve(4).

A list of changes since 11.0-RELEASE are available in the releng/11.1
release notes:

    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/relnotes.html

Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 11.1-RELEASE cycle progresses.

Official announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2017-July/087407.html

Release schedule: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.1R/schedule.html

DistroWatch: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09897

Mapping the Journey – Episode 4: Interview with George Neville Neil, President of The FreeBSD Foundation

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Mapping the Journey, a podcast featuring those who are making strides in tech with stories seldom heard, interviews George Neville-Neil — known FreeBSD contributor and the current President of the FreeBSD Foundation. Follow the link for a full description of the podcast.

George Neville-Neil is a computer scientist, software engineer, and author. He is FreeBSD Core Team Member and President of The FreeBSD Foundation.

He is the co-author (with Marshall Kirk McKusick) of the textbook The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System.

He has coded and published several pieces of open source software, including work on the FreeBSD Operating System, Precision Time Protocol daemon, Conductor, Packet Construction Set and Packet Debugger. He also specializes in building High-speed, low-latency systems for customers in the financial services sector.

For the last 10 years Neville-Neil has served on ACM Queue’s magazine editorial board, where he developed the column Kode Vicious, which has been a regular feature in both Queue and Communications of the ACM for the last 10 years. He is also Editor in Chief at The FreeBSD Journal.

Original post: https://www.mappingthejourney.com/single-post/2017/07/06/Episode-4-Interview-with-George-Neville-Neil-President-of-FreeBSD

[How-To] Building a BSD home router (pt. 4-8)

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In this tutorial, user eerielinux shows us how to set up a BSD home router with pfSense and OPNsense, both open-source router/firewall OS based on FreeBSD. Follow the links below for each part of the 8 part tutorial series.

Part 1 of this article series was about why you want to build your own router, and how to assemble the APU2 that I chose as the hardware to build this on. Part 2 gave some Unix history and explained what a serial console is. Part 3 demonstrated serial access to the APU and showed how to update its firmware.

This post is about the serial installation of pfSense, one of two FreeBSD-based router/firewall operating systems that we’re going to explore in this series (the other being OPNsense). As pfSense is the older and more established product, we’re beginning with that one.

Building a BSD home router (pt. 4): Installing pfSense

This post will show how to install OPNsense, a great alternative to pfSense.

Preparation

OPNsense was forked from pfSense (more on than in the next post) and thus you will find lots of similarities if you have read the post on installing pfSense. The OPNsense team decided to move forward more quickly and did lots of interesting but invasive changes. One strong point for example is that it is already based on FreeBSD 11.0. There is one drawback to this, however: a problem with the XHCI (USB3) driver can lead to the installation media not being able to mount the filesystem and boot up. This makes installing OPNsense a little bit more complicated since the APU2 only has UBS3 ports.

Building a BSD home router (pt. 5): Installing OPNsense

A little overview: In this post I will give you some background information, compare the appearance / usability of both products and then take a look at some special features before giving a conclusion.

pfSense vs. OPNsense: Who wins?

This article is about comparing both products and helping you to make a decision. It is not terribly in-depth, because that task would require its own series of articles (and a lot more free time for me to dig much deeper into the topic). But still there’s a lot you may want to know to get a first impression on which one you should probably choose. If you do some more research and write about it, please let me know and I will happily link to your work!

Building a BSD home router (pt. 6): pfSense vs. OPNsense

 

Revisiting the initial question

In the first post I asked the question “Why would you want to build your own router?” and the answer was “because the stock ones are known to totally suck”. I have since stumbled across this news: Mcafee claims: Every router in the US is compromised. Now Mcafee is a rather flamboyant personality and every is a pretty strong statement. But I’m not such a nit-picker and in general he’s definitely right. If you have a couple of minutes, read the article and/or watch the short Youtube interview that it has embedded.

Building a BSD home router (pt. 7): Advanced OPNsense installation

 

Fixing swap

This is the last part of this series of building a BSD home router. In the previous article we did an advanced setup of OPNsense that works but is currently wasting valuable disk space. We also configured OPNsense for SSH access. Now let’s SSH in and su – to root and continue! Choose shell (menu point 8) so that we can have a look around.

Building a BSD home router (pt. 8): ZFS and jails

BSDNow.TV Episode 200: Getting Scrubbed to Death

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In this BSD Now episode, hosts Allan J & Benedict R discuss NetBSD 8.0, try to measure the weight of an electron, and take a look at stack clashing. Click play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_06_28-getting_scrubbed_to_death

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/116226/getting-scrubbed-to-death-bsd-now-200/

BSDNow.TV Episode 199: Read the source, KARL

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In this BSD Now episode, hosts Allan & Benedict discuss the latest FreeBSD 11.1 updates, Kernel address randomized link (KARL), and the benefits of OpenBSD’s source code reading, & more. Click play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_06_21-read_the_source_karl

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/115961/read-the-source-karl-bsd-now-199/

 

[How-To] Install BSD’s Lumina On Linux

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This tutorial by user Derrik Diener will show you how to install the lightweight Lumina Desktop Environment on Linux distributions. Lumina is a new desktop environment developed by Ken Moore for the TrueOS project.

Move over KDE and Gnome, there’s a new desktop environment on the block, and it’s built with the BSD platform in mind. Lumina is it’s name, and it has a lot of unique features that Linux users should take note of. For starters, it’s a Qt5 desktop environment that is light in performance, meaning it can run on just about anything. Along with that, it has killer ZFS integration which makes restoring file system snapshots a breeze, and more. There’s a lot to love about Lumina, and that’s why it’s been getting a lot of attention. If you’re wondering exactly what it is that makes the Lumina desktop so great, there is good news; you can install BSD’s Lumina on Linux, with a little work. It’s a tedious process for some versions of Linux, but ultimately worth it, especially if you’re longing for something different.

In this tutorial, we’ll go over exactly how to get TrueOS’s Lumina desktop environment compiled, and running on all of the major Linux distributions on the market (and even some of the lesser known ones too).

Full tutorial: http://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/install-bsds-lumina-on-linux/

FreeBSD Foundation 2017 Project Proposal Solicitation

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The FreeBSD Foundation is offering grants and requesting project proposals in areas such as: improving security of FreeBSD and its applications, testing infrastructure and quality insurance, tools for supporting development within the community, improving FreeBSD’s out-of-box experience, ZFS, etc. Go on to their page for more information on how to apply.

The FreeBSD Foundation is soliciting the submission of proposals for work relating to any of the major subsystems or infrastructure within the FreeBSD operating system.

Key Dates

  • Call opens for proposal submissions: June 9, 2017
  • Proposal deadline: July 14, 2017
  • Announcement of accepted proposals: August 11, 2017

The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and building the FreeBSD Project worldwide.  One way the Foundation provides this support is by funding software development, including work performed by the Foundation’s permanent staff, and by providing development grants.

FreeBSD Foundation Proposal: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-foundation-2017-project-proposal-solicitation/

 

BSDNow.TV Episode 198: BSDNorth or You can’t handle the libtruth

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In this BSD Now episode, hosts Benedict and Allan give us a recap on BSDCan 2017, as well as give us tips on speaking at a conference. Press play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_06_14-you_cant_handle_the_libtruth

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/115811/you-cant-handle-the-libtruth-bsd-now-198/

[How-To] Installing FreeBSD 11

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User developerslogblog shows us how to install a fresh FreeBSD 11 server and explains each step of the installation process. See the link below on how to get started on this open source operating system.

Having played for a while with TrueOS, a desktop oriented FreeBSD based distribution, I have decided to try the original FreeBSD system: I intend to use it as a FAMP testing server for some projects.

The first step is, of course, installing FreeBSD: I am happy to say that for a system with a slightly intimidating reputation, the installation process has gone like a breeze: quick, and easy.

Downloading FreeBSD

I chose to download the boot iso: this is a smaller image of 2xx MB, it does not contains all the necessary packages to install FreeBSD, so it will need to connect to an Internet server during the installation process to download the rest of the stuff.

The official FreeBSD site has also available for download bigger images (up to a 2.x GB DVD). Some years ago, the first time I tried FreeBSD, I installed it in an old machine with a not very reliable Internet connection, I remember I used the standard CD iso.

Installing FreeBSD 11 …

Installing FreeBSD 11