In this BSD Now episode, hosts Benedict R and Allan J discuss NetBSD, a BSD Phone, OpenBSD, TrueOS, and more. Click play below to tune in:
BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_03_29-catching_up_to_bsd
Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/113371/catching-up-to-bsd-bsd-now-187/
The FreeBSD Foundation has released their newsletter for Q1. This issue features a review of the project grant process, blacklistd port completion, Intel partnership, 2017 fundraising initiatives, Joseph Kong, Google Summer of Code, and more. View the PDF at the link below.
Dear FreeBSD Community Member, Welcome to the first FreeBSD Foundation newsletter of 2017. We’re trying something new this year and moving to a quarterly issue. Doing so allows us to offer content more immediately via our blog and social media channels. You can subscribe to the rss feed of the blog here. From new partnerships to attending conferences around the world, it’s been a very busy quarter for the Foundation team. Take a minute to see what we’ve been up to and thank you for your continued support! Deb
FreeBSD Foundation Update, Q1 2017: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/FreeBSD-Foundation-Q1-2017-Update.pdf
Related: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/march-2017-development-projects-update/
This in-depth guide by Cooltrainer will show you how to set up FreeBSD 11 as a desktop operating system. Head over to the link below for the full set of instructions.
FreeBSD is a fast, secure, modern Unix-like operating system with a fantastic community, great documentation, and powerful technologies like ZFS and LLVM. It’s my operating system of choice for everything from my i7-2600k desktop to my home router to my ARM plug computer jukebox. Though famed for its uptime in the datacenter the same OS is just as suited to desktop or laptop computing with a little work.
New Installations
The Getting FreeBSD page has links to ISOs for the six tier 1 architectures. This guide focuses on amd64/i386 PCs though is broadly applicable to them all. The ISOs are available in
bootonly, CD, DVD, andmemstick. I usually grab the nearest >1GB USB drive and ddthe newestmemstickimage to it. The larger DVD images are available complete with Ports distribution files for those doing fully-offline installations.
Full tutorial: https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/
Source:
User Andy Mender is back with another insightful blog about FreeBSD. Read what he writes about FreeBSD’s storage capabilities — ZFS, bhyve, as well as an article about FreeBSD to Debian at the links below. 
For the last couple of weeks I have been delving deeper into the arcane arts of FreeBSD, paying extra attention to containers (jails), local/remote package distribution (poudriere) and storage utilities (ZFS RAID, mirrors). Truth be told, with every ounce of practical knowledge I was increasingly impressed by this Unix-like operating system. It’s nothing short of amazing, really! The irony lies in the fact that FreeBSD is an underdog in the Unix world (less than OpenBSD or Illumos, but still), despite the fact that it excels as a server environment and established many technologies currently in focus (process isolation, efficient networking and firewalls, data storage, etc.) years ago already. GNU/Linux is picking up pace, but it still has a long way to go.
……
What I mean to say is that FreeBSD has its place in the world and the time is ripe to truly begin to appreciate it!
Since the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) is steadily getting more and more stable on non-Solaris and non-FreeBSD systems, I decided to put my data pool created for the previous entry to the test. In principle, it should be possible to migrate a pool from one operating system to another. Imagine the following scenario – a company is getting new hardware and/or new IT experts and needs to migrate to a different OS. In my case it was from FreeBSD to Debian and vice versa. All data volumes were located in a single pool, but depending on the size of the company, it might be several pools instead. Before even thinking of migrating it is first important to make sure that all I/O related to the pool(s) to be migrated was stopped. When the coast is clear we can “zpool export <pool>” and begin our exodus to another operating system.
Check out this tutorial from Vivek Gite on how to use jails on FreeNAS Corral. Jails was a feature in FreeNAS 9.10 and was replaced with Containers in Corral. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.
I recently installed or upgraded to FreeNAS Corral (version 10). However, I noticed that there is no support for FreeBSD jails as of 26/March/2017. How do I install and configure traditional FreeBSD jails on FreeNAS Corral (version 10)?
FreeNAS Corral now supports Docker containers for doing all of its “application hosting” and existing jails/plugins data will simply continue to live in the jails/dataset in the ZFS volume but will be inactive, since jails are no longer used in Corral. This tutorial shows you how to create and configure FreeBSD jail on FreeNAS Corral 10 from command line.
Full tutorial: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-install-and-configure-jails-on-freenas-corral-10/
In this BSD Now episode, hosts Allan Jude and Benedict R report on AsiaBSDcon, TrueOS, FreeBSD News, IllumOS, and more. Press play below to tune in:
BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_03_22-the_fast_and_the_firewall_toyko_drift
Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/107716/fast-the-firewall-tokyo-drift-bsd-now-186/
This short guide by user solence will show you how to set your Raspberry Pi as a serial console server for FreeBSD. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.
My home server runs FreeBSD 11.0, and, of course, has full disk encryption. This requires a passphrase to be entered while booting, so I need a keyboard and
monitor attached, and have to be in the same room for restarts and after power outages. This is not acceptable at all. There is no need for a display and keyboard otherwise, and I want to be able to enter the passphrase remotely, but without compromising security. Luckily, the server has a serial port and I have a spare Raspberry Pi. So I can connect the serial port to the Raspberry Pi, SSH into it and use the serial console of the server just like physical access. Hooray for stuff from the 1960s still being useful!
So first things first, I need to connect the Raspberry Pi to the serial console. Since it only has USB (aside from GPIO), a USB to serial port adapter is necessary. The Raspberry Pi runs FreeBSD 11.0, which has good out-of-the-box support for the Prolific PL2303 chipset, so I just ordered a cheap apdater based on it. It probably works with Linux as well, if you’re using Raspbian. You can use dmesg to check if it was detected correctly:
In this BSD Now episode, hosts Allan Jude and Kris Moore talk about exciting changes headed to this show. Find out what they’re talking about by pressing the play button below!
BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_03_16-exit_interview
Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/107556/exit-interview-bsd-now-185/
Recently, the FreeBSD Foundation announced a $250,000 donation from the computing giant Intel. This news follows a partnership between the open-source operating system, the Foundation behind it, and Intel to further improve FreeBSD support on Intel hardware.
We were thrilled to announce at AsiaBSDCon 2017 a collaborative effort and partnership with Intel. Intel has committed to a $250,000 donation to show their support for FreeBSD as a viable operating system, foster collaboration between Intel, the Foundation, and FreeBSD, and to improve the support of FreeBSD in Intel products and technologies. Find out more about the partnership here.
New Uranium Level Donation and Collaborative Partnership with Intel: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/news-and-events/latest-news/new-uranium-level-donation-and-collaborative-partnership-with-intel/
This guide by user nerdazoid will show you how to install and update FreeBSD 11.0 on a Raspberry Pi machine. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.
FreeBSD runs great on a Raspberry Pi, but the official images are all stable or current branches and there is no support for binary updates, i.e. freebsd-update. So I tried to figure out how to install the latest release version and keep it updated as well, without starting from scratch with a new image every time.
While it is possible to build a kernel and world on the Raspberry Pi itself, it takes about a week to finish (trust me, I tried) and you need a much larger /tmp on a disk or share for it to work in the first place. Since FreeBSD can also be cross-compiled, I decided to use my Xeon box to do the heavy lifting and then just install it on the Raspberry Pi.
Full tutorial: https://nerdazoid.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/installing-and-updating-freebsd-11-0-release-on-a-raspberry-pi/