FreeBSDNews.com

Juniper Networks backs FreeBSD with MIPS port

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When it comes to new features in an open source operating system, sometimes features are developed by community developers and other times they are contributed by commercial vendors. The recent FreeBSD 8.0 operating system release benefited from both types of contributions.

juniper_networks_logoIn particular, as part of the FreeBSD 8.0 release, there is new experimental MIPS support which was contributed by networking vendor Juniper Networks

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“Juniper has been a longtime supporter of openness in all its forms, open standards in networking, open APIs in our products, and certainly open source software that serves a greater good,”

Mike Bushong, Director of Product Management, Junos Software at Juniper Networks told InternetNews.com.

“Contributing work back to FreeBSD was just one way we could give a little something back to the community that has served us so well for more than 10 years.”

Juniper’s involvement with FreeBSD, goes deeper than just MIPS, as Juniper’s core JUNOS operating system has its roots in FreeBSD. JUNOS is used in nearly every Juniper networking product and is now also being licensed to third party vendors and is also part of the Juniper OEM gear that is sold by Dell and IBM.

Though Juniper does not directly ship FreeBSD in its commercial products today, according to Bushong, Junos continues to benefit from its roots in FreeBSD. Juniper has been updating its Junos operating system every 90 days since the operating system was first released in 1998.

“Today, we still use FreeBSD as our base operating system, Bushong said. “FreeBSD has proven to be quite flexible in supporting vendor innovation, and its proven track record of reliability, performance, and scalability is paramount in the networking world.”

Juniper’s connection to FreeBSD isn’t limited to historical connections either and goes beyond its Junos roots.

“Juniper maintains a strong relationship with the FreeBSD committer community, sponsoring various projects within FreeBSD that will ultimately serve the entire user base, “

said Bushong.

Whole article: Juniper Backs FreeBSD With MIPS Port

PC-BSD 8.0 – Last alpha version

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PC-BSD LogoLast weekend brought about the latest alpha release of the upcoming PC-BSD 8.0. This is the first build based on FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE, with KDE 4.3.4, NVIDIA driver 195.22 (32-bit and 64-bit drivers included), a re-written system installer, and new artwork.

Here are some of the notable changes:

  • FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE
  • NVIDIA 195.22 drivers
  • KDE 4.3.4
  • brand new SysInstaller with new look and feel, new backend, support for a wider variety of file system layouts, ability to change and try different keyboard layouts
  • install either PC-BSD or FreeBSD from the same disk
  • Using glabel on file systems to prevent issues with device renaming
  • improved splash graphics, theme data
  • fixed KDE printer tool in system settings
  • added new tool, ‘Life Preserver’, which allows backing up the system to a remote SSH + rsync system.

The current PC-BSD alpha is now considered feature complete, with the developers starting to focus on bug fixing rather than on adding new features.

According to the release announcement, a first public beta of PC-BSD 8.0 is expected within the next two weeks.

Please help us test. Feedback can be given on the testing mailing list

First look at FreeBSD 8.0

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Jesse Smith from Distrowatch has taken FreeBSD 8.0 for a ride. Below his findings.

freebsd project logo 100x100FreeBSD has long been recognised as a fast, stable and reliable operating system, powering large server farms of some of the biggest web sites and search engines on the Internet. This week Jesse Smith installed the project’s latest release, version 8.0, on his home server to ascertain that it works as advertised. What were his findings? Read on to find out.

Sometimes it feels to me as if Linux distributions overshadow all other aspects of the open source ecosystem. It can be very easy to jump from one flavour of Linux to another, and to yet another, without being aware of the many other options available. This week, I decided to go in a different direction and explore the latest offering from the BSD communities: FreeBSD, version 8.0.

The FreeBSD operating system is very flexible and well-suited to many different environments, including embedded systems and desktop machines. However, as the project’s motto, “The Power To Serve,” indicates, FreeBSD gains most of its strong reputation from running servers. Keeping that in mind, I borrowed an old desktop box with a 1 GHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM and installed the latest version of FreeBSD on it to see how it would function as a home server.

One of the first things that stand out about the FreeBSD project is its web site. The layout is easy to read, the presentation is professional and there is more documentation than you can shake a USB stick at. It is wonderfully easy to find just about any information one needs on this site. When troubles arise or when advice is needed, there is a friendly community forum. The latest version of this operating system comes in several different flavours, including a CD edition, with the basic system, and a DVD edition with all the bells and whistles. The operating system will run on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 architectures, Sparc64 and PowerPC systems, among others. All in all, there’s a wide variety to choose from and likely a download to suite just about everybody. I grabbed the CD image for i386 machines and got to work.

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Conclusion:

In the past, I’ve referred to FreeBSD as both stable and powerful and this release confirms that reputation. After spending a week installing, configuring and using the latest version of FreeBSD, I’d like to add that it’s a very mature and polished operating system too. On the surface, the system looks complex and arcane, but great lengths have been taken to make each step of each task smooth for the administrator. This is largely thanks to the FreeBSD Handbook, but credit should also be given to unusually clear man pages. I found the output, error messages and defaults for most commands were helpful, increasing the refined, friendly feel of the system. There are a number of minor surprises for people coming from Linux systems, mostly in small differences in commands and the layout of the file system, but nothing significant. In fact, I found the FreeBSD directories to be clean and well organized. At various points during the week, I visited the project’s forums and always found a friendly community member willing to answer questions. Version 8.0 of the FreeBSD operating system is fast, powerful, well crafted and rock solid; I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in setting up their own server.

Full review

Well, what’s stopping you from installing FreeBSD on your server?

BSD Mag 2010-01 – Infinity. Freedom. FreeBSD

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The 2010 Q1 issue of BSD Mag is now available.

Table of contents:

bsdmag2010-01Keeping FreeBSD Up-To-Date: OS Essentials

An important system administration task, and a principle of running a defensible network, is keeping operating systems and applications up-to-date.

Using BSD for your Studies

About four years ago I was starting my undergraduate computing degree. I knew that UNIX-like operating systems had proven themselves in the server room, but how would they fare in the lecture theatre?

The FreeBSD Chatterbox

Day in and day out, your FreeBSD sits there quietly, processing its workload. It never complains or asks for any favors, but what would it say if it could talk?

Encrypting the FreeBSD root file system

Systems are only as secure as you make them. Thankfully, FreeBSD offers an excellent range of tools and mechanisms to insure that all your security needs are met.

Setting up PC-BSD as a server

PC-BSD is so easy to install and the KDE-desktop easy enough to use that we might almost forget it’s roots as server operating system. Now, and in the future, the majority of desktop users might not consider this piece of information of any value.

How to Build a Scalable Search Engine Using the BuildaSearch Web Service

BuildaSearch was featured in the 4/2009 issue of BSD Magazine. While other articles do a fantastic job focusing on core BSD technology, I feel that it is also important to cover web services powered by BSD systems.

Is NetBSD ready for a desktop?

In this article I am focusing on the usability of the NetBSD as a desktop. I would like to show what NetBSD can do today and whether it is mature enough to challenge PC-BSD or Linux. If you want to know, keep reading.

FreeBSD on the SheevaPlug

Though NetBSD is better known for supporting a wide variety of processors and systems, FreeBSD has an active embedded component, as well. In this article, we’ll take a look at the ARM-based SheevaPlug and show you how to boot your Plug using FreeBSD.

Email server in FreeBSD Configuring FreeBSD as a mail server with Postfix and Dovecot in FreeBSD 7.X

This tutorial is a step by step guide on how to setup your own mail server using Postfix as the Mail Transfer Agent(MTA) and Dovecot as the IMAP server and as the authenticating agent for Postfix. These instructions were tested with FreeBSD 7.2

Monitoring OpenBSD with Symon

Once you have your OpenBSD Server running, you might want to monitor your machine. There are several ways to do this and there is a large amount of tools you could use for it.

BSD as the Platform for Operationalizing Organizational Flexability via a Data Concourse

A major change is about to take place in large organizations worldwide and BSD is positioned perfectly to play a starring role.

Living The PC-BSD Lifestyle

Some people are Mac, some are Windows, I am PC-BSD. PC-BSD is more than an operating system, it’s a lifestyle.

BSD Tips&trics

In this issue of BSD Tips and Tricks, readers share some of their favourite tips for solving problems and saving time.

How to Rename Ethernet Interfaces Under FreeBSD

I haven’t written about things like this in a while but the question was put to me and I thought it’d be worth jotting something down.

Year 40 of the UNIX epoch begins

As many UNIX/Linux users know, all UNIX like operating systems start the count of time at January 1, 1970, the start of the UNIX epoch. Yes, I know that this is not precisely when the UNIX operating system was born but for our purposes it will do. It is similar to the idea that January 1, 2010 A.D. does not really represent the precise time since the birth of Christ (astronomers have proven this to be off by a few years) but we still use it as a time marker.

Links:

FreeNAS ready for the next step – Future of FreeNAS

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freenas logo 100x100Olivier Cochard-Labbé, the original founder of the FreeNAS Project, has indicated that FreeNAS is in need of some big modification to remove some of its current  limitations (one of the biggest is the non support of easly users add-ons).

This will probably require a full-rewrite of the FreeNAS base.

He also mentions that plans with regards to the future of FreeNAS are:

– Volker, the current FreeNAS project leader and main developer, will create a new project called “‘OpenMediaVault” based on a GNU/Linux using all its experience acquired with all its nights and week-ends spent to improve FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He still continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share its time with this 2 projects).

ixsystems logo– And, a great surprise: iXsystems, a company specialized in professional FreeBSD  products and services, has offered to take FreeNAS under their wings as an open source community driven project. This  mean that they will involve their professionals FreeBSD developers to FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit to do a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.

Olivier will come back to actively work on FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (that is “production ready” for ZFS).

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

FreeBSD shines while Apple fails

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This is an article by Paul Rubens on Serverwatch. Paul analyses the difference between Apple and the FreeBSD (security) Team with regards to tackling security problems:

Apple is making a lot of money these days. The more money it makes, the greater the contempt for its customers it seems to display. A critical bug recently discovered in FreeBSD, and the speed with which this bug was resolved, illustrates this rather well. If you use Apple’s products in your business, be afraid; be very afraid.

Here’s how the sorry story unfolds. FreeBSD 8.0 was released last week, and the latest version of the UNIX-like OS was generally received with approval. FreeBSD enjoys a good reputation with its followers, and many OSes and products contain code based on or borrowed from the OS, including Juniper routers, and — ironically, as we shall see — Mac OS X.

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So far so good. Until Monday morning, when researcher Nikolaos Rangos announced he discovered “an unbelievable [sic] simple local r00t bug in recent FreeBSD versions,” along with some exploit code. The vulnerability affected the 8.0 release, as well as the older 7.1 and 7.0 versions of FreeBSD.

All software has bugs, but it’s how people react when things go wrong that you can judge them. Did the FreeBSD folks sit around and do nothing? Did they busy themselves with other things and leave 8.0, 7.1 and 7.0 users vulnerable to pwnage? No, they did not!

Continued

Released: m0n0wall 1.3

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m0n0wall logo 100x100Manuel Kasper has announced m0n0wall 1.3.

“After almost three years in beta, I have decided that m0n0wall 1.3 is now good enough for production. It’s basically a re-release of 1.3b18, with two fixes thrown in. No major bugs have been reported anymore, but as always, upgrade on your own risk .

Major changes in this release (since 1.23):

  • switched base operating system to FreeBSD 6.4
  • consolidated net45xx, net48xx and wrap images into a single “embedded” image
  • switched bridge implementation to if_bridge: bridge member  interfaces will now always be filtered (the filtering bridge option has been removed)
  • IPv6 support (enable on advanced setup page)
  • firewall support for IPsec traffic
  • IPsec NAT-T, DPD and dynamic tunnels
  • countless bugfixes and other improvements

If you’re upgrading a 1.2 generic-pc installation, you need to install 1.3b7 before you install 1.3 (because the image is too big to fit in the MFS that 1.2 allocates for the firmware upgrade).

If you’re upgrading a 1.2 net45xx/net48xx/wrap installation, you need to rename the embedded image to reflect your platform before you upload it (this is a one time thing only).”

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