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pfSense 2.3.3 RELEASE Now Available!

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The developers of pfSense have announced the official version 2.3.3 RELEASE. See the link below for the full release notes. Download here.

pfsense-logo-150x150We are happy to announce the release of pfSense® software version 2.3.3!

This is a maintenance release in the 2.3.x series, bringing numerous stability and bug fixes, fixes for a handful of security issues in the GUI, and a handful of new features. The full list of changes is on the 2.3.3 New Features and Changes page, including a list of FreeBSD and internal security advisories addressed by this release.

This release includes fixes for 101 bugs, 14 Features, and 3 Todo items.

If you haven’t yet caught up on the changes in 2.3.x, check out the Features and Highlights video. Past blog posts have covered some of the changes, such as the performance improvements from tryforward, and the webGUI update.

Official announcement: https://blog.pfsense.org/?p=2325

DistroWatch: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09729

pfSense: http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/freebsd-based-pfsense-2-3-3-open-source-firewall-released-with-over-100-changes-513210.shtml

Upcoming FreeBSD Events

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The FreeBSD Foundation has announced several FreeBSD events happening in the next month. You will find their presence at FreeBSD Storage Summit, USENIX, SCaLE, to AsiaBSDCon 2017. Head on over to their page for a description of each.

freebsd_foundationFrom sponsoring events to attending conferences, the Foundation is continuing its mission of advocacy in early 2017. In the next few weeks, members of the Foundation team will be representing the Project and the Foundation at events around the world.

2017 FreeBSD Storage Summit
February 27, 2017
Santa Clara, CA

USENIX FAST ’17
February 27-March 2, 2017
Santa Clara, CA

SCALE 15x
March 2-5, 2017
Pasadena, CA

AsiaBSDCon 2017
March 9-12, 2017
Tokyo, Japan

Original post: https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/upcoming-freebsd-events/

[How-To] Setting Up a FreeBSD DNS Adblocker

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This tutorial by user ProToxin will show you how to set up a DNS adblocker on FreeBSD. Please note that he uses a DigitalOcean droplet in his example, and an SSH key is required. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

no_adsI’ve come across a few sites that will instruct you with how to setup an adblock dns server on FreeBSD. Unfortunately, many of them are either out of date, over complicated, request referral clicks, or aren’t whole. Now, I’m not saying that mine will be any better, but, here we go.

The DNS service I help run use both Ubuntu with Bind9 and FreeBSD with Unbound. In this post, we will talk about setting up a FreeBSD-based DNS adblocker running Unbound.

UPDATE: If you’re interested in adding DNSCrypt to this server, I’ve added a post on setting up DNSCrypt with this Unbound configuration: https://protoxin.net/adding-dnscrypt-to-unbound/

Full tutorial: https://protoxin.net/setting-up-a-freebsd-dns-adblocker/

BSDNow.TV Episode 181: The Cantrillogy (Not special edition)

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In this BSD Now episode, hosts Kris Moore and Allan Jude present us a throwback of interviews with Bryan Cantrill, a notable Software Engineer who worked at Sun Microsystems. Press play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content roundup: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_02_15-the_cantrillogy

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/106911/the-cantrillogy-bsd-now-181/

FreeBSD 4th Quarter 2016 Status Report

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The developers of FreeBSD have released their status report for the 4th Quarter of 2016. Here you will find detailed reports from the Release Engineering Team, Ports Collection, FreeBSD Core Team, and FreeBSD Foundation. Projects highlighted are Ceph on FreeBSD, OpenBSM, Sysctl Exporter for Prometheus, the Graphics Stack, FreeBSD Hyper-V and Azure, and many more.

freebsdlogo

Another year has passed (and another has gotten well underway, while we worked to assemble this report). Over the past two years that I have been part of the monthly@ team that assembles these reports, it has been enlightening to watch the individual entries pass through my emacs and/or vim. These reports give me a picture of what is going on with FreeBSD that I could not get just from reading commit mail; I hope that is also true for our readers.

This quarter brings the usual mix of continuations of many stalwart projects and entires of new participants, as well as the return of some items after a few quarters’ hiatus. Enjoy and be enlightened!

—Benjamin Kaduk

Original announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2017-February/001781.html

Official status report: https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2016-10-2016-12.html

Work on FreeBSD as they ended out 2016 included finalizing 11.0-RELEASE, expanding the Ports Tree to now more than 27,000 packages, better supporting Azure and Hyper-V for virtualization, improve ARM and ARM64 support, advance their reproducible builds support so that about 80% of the ports tree can now be built reproducibly, made progress on LLVM’s LLD linker as their system linker, continued porting the LXQt desktop to FreeBSD, and more.

Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-Q4-2016-Report

Lumina Adds Luster to Linux Desktop

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Lumina Desktop Environment, developed by Ken Moore of TrueOS, has been making rounds in the BSD world and is now being recognized by Linux users alike. Read the article to see how Lumina can be ideal for your Linux workflow, due to its simplicity as a lightweight desktop environment.

luminaThe Lumina Desktop Environment desktop is a standout in the crowded field of Linux graphical user interface choices.

Lumina is a compact, lightweight, XDG-compliant graphical desktop environment developed from scratch. Its focus is on giving users a streamlined, efficient work environment with minimal system overhead.

Lumina was first developed for the BSD family of operating systems (such as FreeBSD and TrueOS). It is gaining interest among Linux users, having been introduced for a growing number of Linux distros.

I installed Fedora 24, Manjaro and PCLinuxOS on several test computers. I chose these popular Linux distros because they have add-on installations available from the Lumina project. This gave me an opportunity to take a first look at the Lumina desktop without applying an excessive amount of overhead.

Read the full story here: http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/84301.html

[How-To] Virtual Private Network with FreeBSD

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This guide by Virtualisation Works shows us how to get a VPN set up with FreeBSD. See the links below for both parts of the tutorial.

vpnWith inexpensive and agile cloud services, it is not unusual for a service to have multiple points of presence around the globe.  In each point of presence, there is usually a per-tenant private network for internal (and confidential) system communications.  One can go further and combine these internal networks together with virtual links. Here I explain the steps how this can be achieved with FreeBSD without relying extra networking services from the cloud vendors.

Virtual Private Network with FreeBSD (Part 1)

If you are following the guide in FreeBSD handbook, you must be frustrated because of the complicated configurations.  Those configurations are good in the sense it restricts the IPsec to particular IP pairs but they are also too tough for purpose of connecting just two routers.  In this example, I break these assumptions and go as minimal as possible so the readers can have a smoother learning curve.  I protect the private ports from unsolicited connections with the help of PF firewall instead of the IPsec configuration.

Virtual Private Network with FreeBSD (Part 2)

[How-To] ownCloud with RaspberryPi 3 and FreeNAS

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In this tutorial, user ro55mo of Level1Tech shows us how to get an ownCloud setup on Raspberry Pi 3, using a FreeNAS system as a data store. Follow the link below for the full set of instructions.

owncloudfreenasThis guide is intended for the installation of OwnCloud on a RaspberryPi 3 with a FreeNAS server as the storage backend.

I am aware this is rather backward as FreeNAS has an OwnCloud plug-in you can install but I wanted to see if it was possible.

Objective

The object is to have the RaspberryPi act as a web front end for the backend storage. Their are guides on doing this with external USB drives but a FreeNAS server with ZFS and RAID struck me as a more sensible storage solution.

The storage must be totally transparent to the user (me). I don’t want to have to rely on the “external” storage module that comes with OwnCloud as these all end up with seperate folders inside your view of OwnCloud. If this was the case and I forgot to upload something to the right folder I could exhaust the 16GG MicroSD card on the RaspberryPi very fast.

As stated elsewhere in the guide my FreeNAS box is not in its “final form” yet. But once it is and I have an offsite backup in place I will replace Dropbox and Google drive with this solution.

Full tutorial: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/guide-owncloud-with-raspberrypi-3-and-freenas/112919/7

BSDNow.TV Episode 180: Illuminating the desktop

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In this BSD Now episode, host Allan Jude interviews Ken Moore while is brother is out of town, regarding the latest of BSD desktop computing and Lumina Desktop Environment. Press play below to tune in:

BSD Now weekly content: http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2017_02_08-illuminating_the_desktop

Jupiter Broadcasting show notes: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/106756/illuminating-the-desktop-bsd-now-180/

Steam on TrueOS via playonbsd

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It looks like running Steam on TrueOS is becoming easier, as reported by Michael Larabel of Phoronix and Josh Smith of TrueOS. Steam can be run using playonbsd, which is based on Wine and can be downloaded from the AppCafe. Check out the link below for the full story and instructions.

steamonbsd

We’ve done a couple of tutorials in the past on using Steam and Wine with PC-BSD, but now with the addition of playonbsd to the AppCafe library, you have more options than ever before to game on your TrueOS system.  We’re going to have a look today at playonbsd, how it works with TrueOS, and what you can expect if you want to give it a try on your own system.  Let’s dive right in!

The first thing you’ll want to do is grab playonbsd from the AppCafe library.  Open up AppCafe and do a quick search.  It should come right up.  Click the download button on the right side to grab and install it on your local system.

Steam on TrueOS: https://www.trueos.org/blog/playonbsd-trueos-getting-steamy-ive-much-/wine

Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=TrueOS-AppCafe-Steam