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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

[HOWTO] FreeNAS 11, RancherOS, & Portainer

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In this tutorial, user SaskiFX shows us how to get RancherOS set up on FreeNAS 11 via Docker, along with Portainer. RancherOS is a Linux is distribution designed for containers. See the link below for the full set of instructions.

So when FreeNAS 11 came, I updated from 9.10 to get rolling on the new options. Unfortunately this killed my VirtualBox jail that I was using to run some services I couldn’t get working in a jail. So I started looking on how to get Docker running under FreeNAS 11 so I could replace those services and get some future proofing for the 11.1 and onward releases that should support Docker out of the box. From the posts on the forums they look to be heading for RancherOS as the underlying Docker operating system.

I originally tried to get this working under the default VM tab in the new interface, but it was not cooperating. I then moved over to using iohyve and bhyve from the command line to get this working. Here are the basic steps I used to get this kicking.

Prep

Setup the iohyve pool and options. Select where the pool you want, and the main network card you want attached.
iohyve setup pool=<storage pool> kmod=1 net=<NIC>

Fetch the latest RancherOS iso for the install.
iohyve fetch https://releases.rancher.com/os/latest/rancheros.iso

Should see the ISO you downloaded above listed.
iohyve isolist

Create the VM, and give it a size of disk you need. I used 40G since I wouldn’t need tons of space.
iohyve create RancherOS <SIZE>G

Set the VM startup options. I’m keeping this minimal as I don’t want to take too many resources. Adjust the ram and cpu as you want.
iohyve set RancherOS loader=grub-bhyve ram=2G cpu=1 con=nmdm0 os=debian

Should see the VM listed now.
iohyve list

RancherOS Install …

Full tutorial: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/howto-freenas-11-rancheros-docker-and-portainer.54595/

[How-To] Speeding up builds on FreeBSD

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User xmj shows us how to speed up your builds on FreeBSD. Head over to their Github for the full set of instructions.

If you’re repeatedly building components of the FreeBSD operating system – kernel, base or userland – you will be interested in optimizing the build duration. Luckily, over time the various commercial users of FreeBSD have figured out various ways of speeding up that build process. The probably most obvious way of shaving off time is through to not rebuild things that have not changed. In this article I’d like to show a few ways of achieving this from a user’s perspective.

METAMODE

For kernel/base builds, one way of achieving this is using meta mode. This makes make(1) capture information that will be relevant for next builds in a .meta file, such as the compiler invocation, files read during compile (including includes, and their location), libraries used, interesting syscalls issued, etc. make(1) achieves that by using the filemon(4) interface (required for e.g. tracing syscalls issued during make(1) execution). On subsequent runs, if a .meta file can be found, make(1) determines if the information in this .meta file still contains uptodate information (e.g. by comparing the proposed to the past compiler invocation), comparing access times for libraries and code used to the object previously built), and if not, rebuilds the object.

Full tutorial: https://xmj.github.io/articles/sysadmin/builds_ccache_memcached.html

Other: Turning FreeBSD to HardenedBSD

The FreeNAS Development Team releases FreeNAS v 11.0!

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The wait is over! The FreeNAS Development Team is proud to present FreeNAS version 11.0! The new version brings a myriad of updates and features that we hope the community will enjoy.

This version brings new virtualization and object storage features to the World’s Most Popular Open Source Storage Operating System. FreeNAS 11.0 adds bhyve virtual machines to its popular SAN/NAS, jails, and plugins, letting you use host web-scale VMs on your FreeNAS box. It also gives users S3-compatible object storage services, which turns your FreeNAS box into an S3-compatible server, letting you avoid reliance on the cloud. For a quick summary of what’s new in FreeNAS 11.0, watch the video below.

 

 

Click here to view the entire blog post: http://www.freenas.org/blog/freenas-11-0/

FreeBSD 11.1-BETA1 now available

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The developers of FreeBSD have made available version 11.1-BETA-1. This is a minor update as noted by Phoronix. Download the latest ISO/IMG here.

Official announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2017-June/087242.html

FreeBSD 11.1 is this summer’s minor update to FreeBSD 11, although not as significant as the development work and features going into FreeBSD 12. FreeBSD 11.1 is scheduled for release on 26 July while over the next month are still two more betas, at least threee release candidates, and then tagging the final -RELEASE build. So far things are on schedule for getting the release out on time as detailed here.

Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-11.1-Beta-1

DistroWatch: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09853

FreeBSD Development Projects Update (May 2017)

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For May 2017 (Summer), the FreeBSD Foundation began hiring co-op students from the University of Waterloo. The University of Waterloo is a pioneer and leader of co-op education. They chose CS students Siva Mahadevan and Guangyuan (Charlie) Yang for the summer project due to each of them creating their own Continuous Integration systems. Siva’s Tinderbox style dashboard view for the FreeBSD Jenkins Continuous Integration (Ci) system, which can be seen here: https://ci.freebsd.org/tinderbox/. Similarly. Charlie created a project investigating FreeBSD on the ARM-based BeagleBone Green. See the link below to read the entire report.

Original post: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/may-2017-development-projects-update/

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reports that 64-bit inodes support is now available in FreeBSD via the ino64 project, according to a commit for FreeBSD 12.

This week FreeBSD has finally merged the fruits of the ino64 project: 64-bit inodes support.

While Linux and other operating systems (including DragonFlyBSD) have supported 64-bit inodes for data structures on file-systems, FreeBSD has been limited to 32-bit. But thanks to the work of many on the ino64 project, FreeBSD now has support for 64-bit inodes while retaining backwards compatibility.

Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-64-bit-Inodes-ino64

Discussion: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/node/954302