FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE Now Available

FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE Now Available
-------------

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE.  This is the second release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.1 and introduces some new features.  Some of the highlights:

• The ZFS filesystem now supports TRIM when used on solid state drives.
• The virtio(4) drivers have been added to the GENERIC kernel configuration for amd64 and i386 architectures.
• The ZFS filesystem now supports lz4 compression.
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8y.
• DTrace hooks have been enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.
• DTrace has been updated to version 1.9.0.
• Sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.7.
• OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.2p2.
• Import unmapped I/O support from head/.

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the

online release notes and errata list, available at:

    http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.2R/relnotes.html

    http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.2R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities,

please see:

    http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

 Availability

 -------------

FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc,

powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.

MD5 and SHA256 hashes for the release ISO and memory stick images are

included in the original announcement email.

At the time of this announcement the following FTP sites have

FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE available.

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.2/

However before trying these sites please check your regional mirror(s)

first by going to:

  ftp://ftp.<yourdomain>.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD

Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.

More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:

  http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

For instructions on installing FreeBSD or updating an existing machine to

9.2-RELEASE please see:

  http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.2R/installation.html

 Support

 -------

FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE will be supported until 2014-09-30.

The End-of-Life dates can be found at:

  http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/

 Other Projects Based on FreeBSD

 -------------------------------

There are many "third party" Projects based on FreeBSD.  The Projects

range from re-packaging FreeBSD into a more "novice friendly" distribution

to making FreeBSD available on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure.  For more

information about these Third Party Projects see:

  http://wiki.FreeBSD.org/3rdPartyProjects

 Acknowledgments

 ---------------

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to

support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 9.2 including

The FreeBSD Foundation, Yahoo!, NetApp, Internet Systems Consortium,

Sentex Communications, New York Internet, Juniper Networks, and

iXsystems.

The release engineering team for 9.2-RELEASE includes:

• Ken Smith - Release Engineering Lead
• Marcus von Appen - Release Engineering
• Glen Barber - Release Engineering, 9.2-RELEASE Release Engineer
• Konstantin Belousov - Release Engineering
• Joel Dahl - Release Engineering
• Marc Fonvieille - Release Engineering, Documentation
• Steven Kreuzer - Release Engineering
• Erwin Lansing - Package Building
• Xin Li - Release Engineering, Security
• Simon L. B. Nielsen - Security Officer Emeritus
• Josh Paetzel - Release Engineering
• Colin Percival - Security Officer Emeritus
• Craig Rodrigues - Release Engineering
• Hiroki Sato - Release Engineering, Documentation
• Gleb Smirnoff - Release Engineering
• Dag-Erling Smørgrav - Security Officer
• Marius Strobl - Release Engineering
• Robert Watson - Release Engineering, Security

 Trademark

 ---------

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.

FreeBSD 10.0-ALPHA4 Now Available

The fourth ALPHA build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.

Due to build issues within the head/ branch, ALPHA3 ISO builds were skipped.

The image checksums are at the end of the announcement email.

ISO images and, for architectures that support it, the memory stick images are available here and at any of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

If you notice problems, please report them through the PR system or on the -current mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "head/" branch.

Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree.

Important note to freebsd-update(8) users: freebsd-update(8) is not a supported upgrade path for the 10.0-ALPHA builds.

Changes between -ALPHA2 and -ALPHA3 include:

• Update OFED to Linux 3.7 and update Mellanox drivers.
• Add driver for the PAPR VSCSI virtual SCSI controller.
• Disable ISC BIND build by default, and enable LDNS/unbound.
• Correct a NULL pointer deference in nslookup and nsupdate.
• Update the CAM version to 18.  This includes compatibility shims to the previous version.
• Introduce a kern.geom.notaste sysctl that can be used to temporarily disable GEOM tasting to avoid the "bouncing GEOM" problem where, when you shut down the consumer of a provider which can be viewed in multiple ways, GEOM will immediately taste that provider's alter ego and reattach the consumer.
• Update dialog to 1.2-20130923.
• Import a new libcxxrt.
• Remove the armv6eb architecture.
• Update OpenSSH to 6.3p1.
• Merge Xen PVHVM support into the GENERIC kernel config for both amd64 and i386.
• Substantial rewrite of bxe(4) to add support for the BCM57712 and BCM578XX controllers.
• Connect LLDB to the build (disabled by default).
• Update arcmsr(4) driver to 1.20.00.28.
• Implement epoll support in Linuxulator.
• Add vmx(4) to i386 and amd64 GENERIC.

FreeBSD 20 Year Anniversary Party

Matt Olander has announced a 20th Anniversary party to be held in San Francisco on Saturday, November 2nd:

20 years ago, Nate Williams, Rod Grimes, and Jordan Hubbard came together to turn their 386BSD patchkit into something greater. David Greenman gave their combined efforts a name.

Today, FreeBSD is the stable, powerful operating system they dreamed of and people all around the world come together to make it better every day.

In honor of its users, administrators, developers, and advocates, we are pleased to invite you to FreeBSD’s 20th Anniversary Celebration being held Saturday, November 2, 2013 at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco!  Festivities will begin at 6 pm, during which time we’ll
have exclusive access to the upstairs area of the club.  At 9 pm doors will be opened to the public, who will join us as we celebrate into the wee hours of the morning.

There will be drinks, music, and great company. Sponsors of the event include iXsystems, Netflix, Google, NetApp, and the FreeBSD Foundation.  There will also be a raffle with giveaways from O’Reilly Media and No Starch Press, among others.

We hope you’ll join us for an evening of revelry and merriment on November 2nd!  Please RSVP at http://www.freebsdparty.com by Friday, October 18th if you plan to attend this historic event.

When:  Saturday, November 2nd, 2013, 6PM-2AM PST
Where: DNA Lounge, San Francisco, CA, USA
Cost: Nothing

Note: If you plan to bring someone, please RSVP with their name, too! We have limited spots, so if you know you can make it, RSVP soon.

Feel free to spread the word.

CFT: Ports Now Have Stack Protector Support

Bryan Drewery recently announced a call for testing as FreeBSD Ports now support enabling Stack Protector on FreeBSD 10 i386 and amd64. Currently, on older releases, only amd64 is supported, though support may be added for earlier i386 releases once all ports properly respect LDFLAGS.

To enable this support,  add WITH_SSP=yes to make.conf and rebuild all installed ports. The default SSP_CLFAGS is -fstack-protector, but -fstack-protector-all may optionally be set instead.

Testers are needed to help identify any major ports that have run-time issues. The plan is to eventually enable support by default. If you find any problematic ports, you can assist by submitting a problem report.

FreeBSD 10 Release Schedule

The FreeBSD 10 release schedule is now available. When reading the schedule, keep in mind that the dates are guidelines rather than hard dates. For example, if show-stopper issues are found during the BETA or RC phases, the dates will slip depending upon the amount of time it takes to fix the issue. You can assist in this release by downloading and testing the latest image and reporting any bugs. As of today, the latest testing image is ALPHA2.

Some of the highlights in this release can be found in the What's New for FreeBSD 10 wiki page. Over the next few months we'll have blog posts describing some of the new features.

As of now, the schedule is as follows:

• BETA1 build starts:             October 12, 2013
• BETA2 build starts:             October 18, 2013
• releng/10.0 branch:            October 25, 2013
• RC1 build starts:                 October 25, 2013
• RC2 build starts:                 November 2, 2013
• RC3 build starts:                 November 10, 2013
• RELEASE build starts:         November 18, 2013
• RELEASE announcement:   November 24, 2013

FreeBSD 10.0-ALPHA2 Now Available

The second ALPHA build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums are at the end of the announcement announcement email.

ISO images and, for architectures that support it, the memory stick images are available here and at any of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

If you notice problems, please report them through the PR system or on the -current mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "head/" branch.

Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree.

Important note to freebsd-update(8) users: freebsd-update(8) is not a supported upgrade path for the 10.0-ALPHA builds.

Changes between -ALPHA1 and -ALPHA2 include:

• Add -stdlib=libstdc++ to CXXFLAGS when building libstdc++ and libsupc++ with clang.
• Fix an issue that caused Integrated RAID volumes on LSI mps(4) controllers to not get scanned on boot.
• Fix a panic during pageout observed on some powerpc64 systems.
• Import Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers from projects/hyperv branch.
• Add the new iSCSI target an initiator (iscsictl(8)).
• Add the vmx(4) driver to amd64 and i386 GENERIC kernels.
• Various fixes to the drm/radeon driver.
• Various updates to the unbound import.

FreeBSD 10.0-ALPHA1 Now Available

The first ALPHA build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums are at the end of the announcement email.

ISO images and, for architectures that support it, the memory stick images are available here and at any of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

If you notice problems, please report them through the PR system or on the -current mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "head/" branch.

Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree.

Important note to freebsd-update(8) users: freebsd-update(8) is not a supported upgrade path for the 10.0-ALPHA builds.

FreeBSD 9.2-RC4 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.2-RC4 has been announced. Refer to the announcement for the checksums for each file.

The fourth release candidate builds of the 9.2-RELEASE release cycle are now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.

ISO images and, for architectures that support it, the memory stick images
are available here.

If you notice problems you can report them through the normal GNATS PR system or here on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system use "releng/9.2".

Please be aware that cvsup and CVS are both deprecated, and are not supported methods of updating the src/ tree.

Changes between -RC3 and -RC4 include:

• Revert the tribute boot loader logo as the default logo.

• Fix a filesystem bug that would cause removed files to fail to dereference vnodes until the filesystem was forcibly unmounted and remounted.
• Fix a rtadvd(8) segmentation fault on service reload.
• Create and correct ownership and permissions of /var/authpf in the standard mtree.
• Fix a NFS deadlock.
• Stop SIOCSIFADDR, SIOCSIFBRDADDR, SIOCSIFDSTADDR and SIOCSIFNETMASK at the socket layer rather than pass them on to the link layer without validation or credential checks.  [SA-13:12]
• Prevent cross-mount hardlinks between different nullfs mounts of the same underlying filesystem.  [SA-13:13]
• Fix the length calculation for the final block of a sendfile(2) transmission which could be tricked into rounding up to the nearest page size, leaking up to a page of kernel memory.  [SA-13:11]

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:


# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.2-RC4

During this process, FreeBSD Update may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically performed merging was done correctly.

# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:

# freebsd-update install

It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example, FreeBSD 8.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat8x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

[CFT] Update of xorg libraries and MESA

Niclas Zeising has posted a Call for Testers on behalf of the FreeBSD x11 team. If you have some testing hardware, especially if you have been waiting for KMS for ATI or devd autoconfiguration, apply the patch and post your feedback. Here is the CFT:

It is time once again to update parts of the FreeBSD xorg stack, and the x11@ team needs YOUR help in testing!

This patch updates various xorg related libraries and drivers, most of this is visible for all users of xorg. xorg-server now has the possibility to use devd instead of hal for autoconfiguration. It also updates the MESA stack (libGL, dri) and libdrm for users of the new xorg stack (WITH_NEW_XORG=). Last, but definitely not least, it enables KMS for ati graphics cards, if you have the latest current, and compile with WITH_NEW_XORG=.

It also contains a shlib version bumb of pixman, and ports depending on pixman.  Be aware of this when updating pixman.

Please test this on as many platforms and versions of FreeBSD as possible, both the old and new stack, so that we can try to avoid any regressions or other issues.  The plan is to have this in the ports tree in a few weeks, at the most.

To use the patch, check out the ports tree, preferably using svn and apply the patch using svn patch /path/to/patch.  It should be possible to apply the patch using patch as well, but this is not tested. After the patch is applied, recompile the updated ports.  See UPDATING for further instructions regarding libGL, dri and pixman.  This is important!

Please let us know of any issues, or if everything is working without a hitch.

For more information, see https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics and https://wiki.freebsd.org/Xorg, or come talk to us in #freebsd-xorg at EFNet on IRC.

Glen Barber Interview in Today's Episode of BSD Now

Today's episode of BSD Now features an interview with Glen Barber from the FreeBSD release engineering team. Glen will discuss how FreeBSD release engineering works and what his role is on the release engineering team, the new features in the upcoming 9.2-RELEASE, and his new role with the FreeBSD Foundation.

This episode also discusses the latest news including a 3x speed improvement in FreeBSD disk encryption, OpenBSD's Y2038 patch, the New Xorg/mesa, a tutorial on poudriere (binary package building), and viewer feedback questions.

This episode can be streamed live at 2:00PM EDT, 18:00 UTC. Afterwards, the episode will be archived on the same web page.

BSDNow Podcast - First Episode

The first episode of BSDNow has been released. Hosted by Allan Jude and Kris Moore, the show covers the latest news about all things BSD as well as tutorials and interviews. This episode features an in-depth interview with OpenBSD's Peter Hessler about his BGP-spamd project and a tutorial about using stunnel to evade intrusion detection systems.

http://www.bsdnow.tv/episodes/2013-09-04_bgp_bsd

There are also RSS feeds for both the audio and video versions of the show.