FreeBSD 9.2 Feature Highlight: ZFS General Improvements

Along with the many user facing changes discussed previously, there are also a number of internal changes to ZFS that will be available with the release of FreeBSD 9.2.

• Asynchronous destruction of datasets - ZFS will no longer make you wait while it does the house keeping to destroy a dataset and free the space that was formerly used by that dataset, the zfs command will return and the work will continue in the background
• Structural changes to the way snapshots track blocks that have changed and are no longer part of the snapshot, these changes result in higher performance when there are many snapshots and also reduce the space utilized by snapshots
• Single Copy ARC - The ZFS ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) is where ZFS caches data and metadata to improve performance. In previous versions of ZFS, if you accessed the same block from a dataset, and then from a clone or snapshot of that dataset, that block would end up in the ARC twice. With this improvement the block will only be stored in the ARC once allowing more unique blocks to be cached at one time
• ZIO nop-write - If your dataset has a cryptographically secure hash (SHA256) and dataset compression enabled, ZFS will now compare the checksum of the compressed block with the existing block before it is written. If the hashes match then the block is not written, saving I/O as well as reducing space consumption (if there were any snapshots of the block that would have changed, then additional space would have been consumed)
• Parallel processing of free operations - Previous versions of ZFS only used a single thread to reclaim free space. The new system now frees blocks asynchronously in parallel
• Spacemap improvements - The latest version of ZFS includes enhancements that greatly improve write performance to highly fragmented pools 
• Improved DTrace support - A number of new DTrace probes have been added to ZFS to make it easier to track what is happening inside ZFS. Additionally a new error probe has been implemented throughout ZFS that will make it easier to pinpoint the source of any error messages

In addition to the above, it is also now possible to add a comment to a zpool which is output as part of the list returned by the zpool import command.

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE Now Available

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE Announcement

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/10 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE and introduces some new features.

Some of the highlights:

• The new console driver, vt(4), has been added.
  
• Support for FreeBSD/i386 guests has been added to bhyve(4).
  
• The bhyve(4) hypervisor now supports booting from a zfs(8) filesystem.
  
• Support for SMP was added to the armv6 kernels and enabled by default in the configuration files for all platforms that contain multi-core CPUs.
  
• Initial support for UEFI boot has been added for the FreeBSD/amd64 architecture.
  
• Support has been added to cache geli(8) passphrases during system boot.
  
• Support for the UDP-Lite protocol (RFC 3828) has been added to the IPv4 and IPv6 stacks.
  
• The new filesystem automount facility, autofs(5), has been merged from FreeBSD-CURRENT.
  
• The sshd(8) rc.d(8) startup script now generates ED25519 sshd(8) host keys if keys do not already exist when ssh_keygen_alg() is invoked.
  
• OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.6p1.
  
• The nc(1) utility has been updated to match the version in OpenBSD 5.5.
  
• Sendmail has been updated to 8.14.9.
  
• The unbound(8) caching resolver and ldns have been updated to version 1.4.22.
  
• OpenPAM has been updated to Ourouparia (20140912).
  
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.1j.
  
• The pkg(8) package management utility has been updated to version 1.3.8.
  

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list, available at:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/10.1R/relnotes.html
• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/10.1R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

 

Availability

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64, and armv6 architectures.

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP as described in the section below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones such as amd64 and i386.

SHA256 and MD5 hashes for the release ISO and memory stick images are included in the PGP-signed version of this announcement, available at:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/10.1R/announce.asc

Additional UEFI-capable images are available for the amd64 (x86_64) architecture.

The purpose of the images provided as part of the release are as follows:

dvd1

This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, the documentation, and a small set of pre-built packages aimed at getting a graphical workstation up and running. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. This should be all you need if you can burn and use DVD-sized media.

disc1

This contains the base FreeBSD operating system. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.

bootonly

This supports booting a machine using the CDROM drive but does not contain the installation distribution sets for installing FreeBSD from the CD itself. You would need to perform a network based install (e.g., from an FTP server) after booting from the CD.

memstick

This can be written to an USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.

As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:

 # dd if=FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img \
   of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync
        

Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.

mini-memstick

This can be written to an USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to boot a machine, but does not contain the installation distribution sets on the medium itself, similar to the bootonly image. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.

As one example of how to use the mini-memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:

 # dd if=FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img \
   of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync
        

Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE can also be purchased on CD-ROM or DVD from several vendors. One of the vendors that will be offering FreeBSD 10.1-based products is:

• FreeBSD Mall, Inc. https://www.freebsdmall.com

Pre-installed virtual machine images are also available for the amd64 (x86_64) and i386 (x86_32) architectures in QCOW2, VHD, and VMDK disk image formats, as well as raw (unformatted) images.

 

 FTP

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE may be downloaded via ftp from the following site:

• ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/10.1/

However before trying this site, please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:

• ftp://ftp.<your_country_code>.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:

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

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE virtual machine images may be downloaded via ftp from:

• ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/VM-IMAGES/10.1-RELEASE/

For instructions on installing FreeBSD or updating an existing machine to 10.1-RELEASE please see:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/10.1R/installation.html

 

Support

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE will be supported until January 1, 2017. The End-of-Life dates can be found at:

• https://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:

• https://wiki.FreeBSD.org/3rdPartyProjects

 

Acknowledgments

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 10.1 including The FreeBSD Foundation, Yahoo!, NetApp, Internet Systems Consortium, ByteMark Hosting, Sentex Communications, New York Internet, Juniper Networks, NLNet Labs, iXsystems, and Yandex.

The release engineering team for 10.1-RELEASE includes:

Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering Lead, 10.1-RELEASE Release Engineer
Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Joel Dahl <joel@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org>			Package Building
Bryan Drewery <bdrewery@FreeBSD.org>			Package Building
Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering, Documentation
Steven Kreuzer <skreuzer@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Xin Li <delphij@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering, Security Officer
Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>			Security Officer Emeritus
Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering, Documentation
Gleb Smirnoff <glebius@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>			Security Officer
Marius Strobl <marius@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering
Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>			Release Engineering, Security

 

 Trademark

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.

Love FreeBSD? Support this and future releases with a donation to The FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-RC4 Now Available

The fourth RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

This is anticipated to be the final RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE cycle.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/10.1" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available here.

Changes between 10.1-RC3 and 10.1-RC4 include:

•  Fix ATA CF ERASE breakage for certain CF cards.
•  Fix a race in pmap_emulate_accessed_dirty() that could trigger a EPT misconfiguration VM-exit.

Important note to ZFS users on the i386 architecture:  Using multi-disk ZFS configurations on i386 (mirror, raidz-1, raidz-2, etc.) may cause
a kernel panic on boot.

Adding 'options KSTACK_PAGES=4' to the kernel configuration is observed to resolve the problem.  Please *do* *not* upgrade your system with freebsd-update(8) if using a multi-disk ZFS setup, since this will override the kernel configuration with the GENERIC kernel.

This is also mentioned in the 10.1-RELEASE Errata Documentation.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC4 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-RC4

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 9.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-RC3 Now Available

The third RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/10.1" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available here.

Changes between 10.1-RC2 and 10.1-RC3 include:

• Several fixes to the UDPLite protocol implementation.
• The vt(4) driver has been updated to save and restore keyboard mode and LED states when switching windows.
• Several fixes to the SCTP protocol implementation.
• A potential race condition in obtaining a file pointer has been corrected.
• Fix ZFS ZVOL deadlock and rename issues.
• Restore libopie.so ABI compatibility with 10.0-RELEASE.
• Removed the last vestige of MD5 password hashes.
• Several rc(8) script updates and fixes.
• bsdinstall(8) has been updated to allow selecting local_unbound in the default services to enable at first boot.
• Prevent ZFS leaking pool free space.
• Fix rtsold(8) remote buffer overflow vulnerability. [SA-14:20]
• Fix routed(8) remote denial of service vulnerability. [SA-14:21]
• Fix memory leak in sandboxed namei lookup. [SA-14:22]
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.1j. [SA-14:23]
• Fix an issue where a FreeBSD virtual machine provisioned in the Microsoft Azure service does not recognize the second attached disk on the system.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC3 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-RC3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-RC2 Now Available

The second RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/10.1" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available here.

Changes between 10.1-RC1 and 10.1-RC2 include:

• Fix XHCI driver for devices which have more than 15 physical root HUB ports.
• Fix old iSCSI initiator to work with new CAM locking.
• Fix page length reported for Block Limits VPD page.
• Add QCOW v1 & v2 support to mkimg(1).

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC2 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-RC2

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-RC1 Now Available

The first RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/10.1" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available here.

Changes between 10.1-BETA3 and 10.1-RC1 include:

• A bug that would cause all processes to appear to have the parent PID of '1' has been fixed.
• Various updates to bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8).
• The Hyper-V KVP (key-value pair) driver has been added, and enabled by default on amd64 and i386 architectures.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC1 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-BETA3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-BETA3 Now Available

The third BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

This is expected to be the final BETA release of the 10.1-RELEASE cycle.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Changes between 10.1-BETA2 and 10.1-BETA3 include:

• Support for serial and null console has been added to the UEFI boot loader.
• A potential panic triggered by referencing a device that has been renamed has been fixed in the cam(4) subsystem.
• OpenPAM has been updated to the Ourouparia (20140912) release.
• New sysctls have been added to vt(4) to enable or disable potentially dangerous key combinations (such as reboot, halt, and break to debugger).
• The mkimg(1) utility has been updated to allow creating empty partition entries.
• The GEOM_ELI class will now cache passphrases for disk decryption, which allows the system to boot after the first passphrase entry if the remaining disks on the system use the same passphrase.
• Support for controlling mfi(4) controller properties has been added to mfiutil(8).
• The /usr/lib32/compat shared library directory has been added to the default ld-elf32.so.1 path.
• Use of "no" for a Norwegian keymap file is now permitted in rc.conf(5).
• Several bug fixes to autofs(5) have been implemented.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA3 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-BETA3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-BETA2 Now Available

The second BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Changes between 10.1-BETA1 and 10.1-BETA2 include:

• UEFI-capable memory stick images and CDROM/DVDROM images are now build by default for the 10.1-RELEASE cycle.
• The gssapi_krb5 library is now included in the gssapi(3) build.
• The default motd(5) text has been changed to clarify the included information and including references to additional resources.
• A potential crash in ctld(8) has been fixed when a getaddrinfo(3) call fails.
• Fix Denial of Service in TCP packet processing.  [SA-14:19.tcp]
• Support for Promise TX8660 8-port 3Gbps HBA has been added.
• A crash in clang(1) triggered by debuginfo has been fixed.
• The kern.features sysctl(8) will now report if SCTP is available in the running kernel.
• Parsing IPv6 nameserver lines in unbound(8) has been fixed.
• A crash in pam(3) has been fixed if neither PAM_RHOST or PAM_TTY are set.
• Several bug fixes and improvements to the vt(4) driver have been merged from FreeBSD-Current.
• The bsdinstall(8) screen prompting if the user would like to use a chroot(8) shell within the newly-installed system for further configuration now defaults to 'No.'
• Several optimizations to the math(3) library have been merged, including new implementations for C99 functions expl(), coshl(), sinhl(), tanhl(), erfl() and erfcl().

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA2 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add \
  /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/All/pkg-*.txz

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install the Subversion, Gnome, and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

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 10.1-BETA2

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 Now Available

The first BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA1 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

Note to consumers of the dvd1.iso image: The packages included on the dvd do not have a corresponding pkg(8) repository due to an incompatibility with pkg-1.2.x and pkg-1.3.x.  This will be fixed for BETA2.

The packages will not be recognized by bsdconfig(8), however can be  installed manually.

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/All/pkg-*.txz

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install the Subversion, Gnome, and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/subversion [...]

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 10.1-BETA1

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE Announcement

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE and introduces some new features.

Some of the highlights:

• The zfs(8) filesystem has been updated to support the bookmarks feature.
  
• The uname(1) utility has been updated to include the -U and -K flags, which print the __FreeBSD_version for the running userland and kernel, respectively.
  
• The fetch(3) library has been updated to support SNI (Server Name Identification), allowing to use virtual hosts on HTTPS.
  
• Several updates to gcc(1) have been imported from Google.
  
• The hastctl(8) utility has been updated to output the current queue sizes.
  
• The protect(1) command has been added, which allows exempting processes from being killed when swap is exhausted.
  
• The etcupdate(8) utility, a tool for managing updates to files in /etc, has been merged from head/.
  
• A new shared library directory, /usr/lib/private, has been added for internal-use shared libraries.
  
• OpenPAM has been updated to Nummularia (20130907).
  
• A new flag, "onifconsole" has been added to /etc/ttys. This allows the system to provide a login prompt via serial console if the device is an active kernel console, otherwise it is equivalent to off.
  
• Sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.9.
  
• BIND has been updated to version 9.9.5.
  
• The xz(1) utility has been updated to a post-5.0.5 snapshot.
  
• OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.6p1.
  
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8za.
  

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list, available at:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html
• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.3R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/ 

 

Availability

FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.

FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP as described in the section below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones such as amd64 and i386.

SHA256 and MD5 hashes for the release ISO and memory stick images are included at the bottom of this message.  A PGP-signed version of this announcement is available at:

• https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/9.3R/announce.asc

Please refer to the official announcement email for the full details regarding FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE.

 

Acknowledgments

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 9.3 including The FreeBSD Foundation, Yahoo!, NetApp, Internet Systems Consortium, ByteMark Hosting, Sentex Communications, New York Internet, Juniper Networks, NLNet Labs, iXsystems, and Yandex.

The release engineering team for 9.3-RELEASE includes:

Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering Lead, 9.3-RELEASE Release Engineer
Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Joel Dahl <joel@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org>	Package Building
Bryan Drewery <bdrewery@FreeBSD.org>	Package Building
Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering, Documentation
Steven Kreuzer <skreuzer@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Xin Li <delphij@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering, Security Officer
Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org>	Security Officer Emeritus
Craig Rodrigues <rodrigc@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering, Documentation
Gleb Smirnoff <glebius@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Dag-Erling Smøgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>	Security Officer
Marius Strobl <marius@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering
Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>	Release Engineering, Security

 

Trademark

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.

Love FreeBSD? Support this and future releases with a donation to The FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-RC3 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-RC3 Now Available


The third RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums can be found in the PGP-signed announcement email.

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

    http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

(or any of the FreeBSD mirror sites).

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/9.3" branch.

A list of changes since 9.2-RELEASE are available on the 9.3-RELEASE release notes page here:

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html

Changes between 9.3-RC2 and 9.3-RC3 include:

• Bug fix for axge(4) range checks and receive loop header parsing.
• Bug fix to exclude loopback addresses rather than loopback interfaces has been fixed.
• Bug fix in uhso(4) to prevent memory use after free() and mtx_destroy().
• Bug fix in bsdinstall(8) where certain conditions could prevent directory creation before use.
• Bug fix for DNS-based load balancing.
• Vendor update to oce(4).

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 9.3-RC3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 misc/compat8x port can be installed to provide other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

    # shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

    # freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-RC2 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-RC2 Now Available


The second RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums can be found in the PGP-signed announcement email.

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

    http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

(or any of the FreeBSD mirror sites).

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/9.3" branch.

A list of changes since 9.2-RELEASE are available on the 9.3-RELEASE release notes page here:

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html

Changes between 9.3-RC1 and 9.3-RC2 include:

• A bug in the fast rx buffer recycle path has been fixed in the cxgbe(4) driver.
• A bug that would incorrectly allow two listening SCTP sockets on the same port bound to the wildcard address has been fixed.
• Multiple vulnerabilities have been fixed in file(1) and libmagic(3).  [FreeBSD-SA-14:16.file]
• A workaround has been implemented to fix serial ports on certain motherboards, in particular the Intel D2500CCE board.
• A bug in bsdgrep(1) that would prevent certain pattern matching has been fixed.
• The bsdconfig(8) utility has been updated to support pkg(8)-format packages.
• Firmware for the cxgbe(4) Chelsio T4 and T5 cards has been updated to version 1.11.27.0.

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 9.3-RC2

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 misc/compat8x port can be installed to provide other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

    # shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

    # freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-RC1 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-RC1 Now Available


The first RC build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums can be found in the PGP-signed announcement email.

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

    http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

(or any of the FreeBSD mirror sites).

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

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/9.3" branch.

A list of changes since 9.2-RELEASE are available on the stable/9 release notes page here:

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/relnotes.html

Changes between 9.3-BETA3 and 9.3-RC1 include:

• Various bug fixes in the hptrr(4) driver.
• Time zone data has been updated to tzdata2014e.
• Handling of the '-P' flag without '-p' or '-r' has been fixed in the daemon(8) utility.
• A bug in the nvme(4) controller initialization path has been fixed.
• A bug in the fast receive buffer recycle path has been fixed in the cxgbe(4) driver.

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 9.3-RC1

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 misc/compat8x port can be installed to provide other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

    # shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

    # freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-BETA3 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-BETA3 Now Available


The third BETA build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums can be found in the PGP-signed announcement email.

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

    http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

(or any of the FreeBSD mirror sites).

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

Please note, as the FreeBSD bug tracking system is undergoing maintenance, the PR system may be unavailable.  Problem reports submitted this maintenance period are being queued for later processing.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/9" branch.

A list of changes since 9.2-RELEASE are available on the stable/9 release notes page here:

    http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/9-STABLE/relnotes/article.html

Changes between 9.3-BETA2 and 9.3-BETA3 include:

• A new ttys(5) flag, onifconsole, has been added, which activates ttyu0 if the device is an active kernel console.
• The NFSv4 server now allows creating a hard link to a symbolic link, as was allowed in NFSv3.
• OpenSSL has been updated to 0.9.8za.
• A deadlock caused by incorrect reference counts has been fixed in the usb(4) driver.
• The arc4random(3) library has been updated to match that in FreeBSD-CURRENT.
• The amount of data collected by hwpmc(4) has been increased to work with modern processors and available RAM.
• A new pmcstat(8) flag, '-l', has been added, which ends event collection after the specified number of seconds.

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 9.3-BETA3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 misc/compat8x port can be installed to provide other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

    # shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

    # freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 9.3-BETA1 Now Available

FreeBSD 9.3-BETA1 Now Available


The first BETA build of the 9.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums can be found in the PGP-signed announcement email.

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

    http://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/

(or any of the FreeBSD mirror sites).

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

Please note, as the FreeBSD bug tracking system is undergoing maintenance, the PR system may be unavailable.  Problem reports submitted this maintenance period are being queued for later processing.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/9" branch.

A list of changes since 9.2-RELEASE are available on the stable/9 release notes page here:

    http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/9-STABLE/relnotes/article.html

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 9.3-BETA1

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 misc/compat8x port can be installed to

provide other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

    # shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

    # freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!  https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/

FreeBSD Participating in Google Summer of Code

FreeBSD is pleased to announce that once again we have been selected to participate in the Google Summer of Code program.  This gives University students the opportunity to earn a $5,500 USD stipend in exchange for working on Open Source software over their Summer break.  Students have around 12 weeks to work on their project, and will be mentored by existing FreeBSD committers.  Participating organisations will earn $500 USD per student mentored.

FreeBSD's organisation page may be found here and a list of possible project ideas may be found here. Please note that projects do not have to come from the ideas list, and indeed students are encouraged to produce their own project ideas - the majority of past projects have been thought up by the participants themselves.  More details about FreeBSD's participation in Google Summer of Code including contact details can be found here.

Students are also encouraged to visit the GSoC website to view more details of the program, including eligibility requirements, and a list of other participating organisations.

Please also help us advertise Google Summer of Code and FreeBSD at your
local university or college campus using this poster.

The application deadline is March 21st 19:00 UTC.

FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE Now Available

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE.  This is the first release of the stable/10 branch.

Some of the highlights:

• GCC is no longer installed by default on architectures where clang(1) is the default compiler.
• Unbound has been imported to the base system as the local caching DNS resolver.
• BIND has been removed from the base system.
• make(1) has been replaced with bmake(1), obtained from the NetBSD Project.
• pkg(7) is now the default package management utility.
• pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1), and related tools have been removed.
• Major enhancements in virtualization, including the addition of bhyve(8), virtio(4), and native paravirtualized drivers providing support for FreeBSD as a guest operating system on Microsoft Hyper-V.
• TRIM support for Solid State Drive has been added to ZFS.
• Support for the high-performance LZ4 compression algorithm has been added to ZFS.

See the full 10.0-RELEASE announcement here.

FreeBSD 10.0-RC5 Now Available

The fifth RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

This is expected to be the final RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE cycle.

The image checksums follow at the end of this email.

Important note to freebsd-update(8) users:  Please be sure to follow the instructions in the following FreeBSD Errata Notices before upgrading the system to 10.0-RC5:

• EN-13:04.freebsd-update
• EN-13:05.freebsd-update

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.0-RC5 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.

Changes between -RC4 and -RC5 include:

• Fix an IPv4 multicast regression.
• Fixes OpenSSL for CVE-2013-4353, CVE-2013-6449, CVE-2013-6450.
• Revert a change to the kinfo_file structure to preserve ABI.
• Fix a race condition which could prevent the file descriptor table from being properly updated.

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 10.0-RC5

During this process, freebsd-update(8) 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 9.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.0-RC4 Now Available

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

This is expected to be the final RC build of the 10.0-RELEASE cycle.

The image checksums follow at the end of this email.

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 freebsd-stable mailing list.

Important note to freebsd-update(8) users:  Please be sure to follow the instructions in the following FreeBSD Errata Notices before upgrading the system to 10.0-RC4:

• EN-13:04.freebsd-update
• EN-13:05.freebsd-update

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.0-RC4 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.

Changes between 10.0-RC3 and 10.0-RC4 include:

• Tighten default restrictions for ntpd(8) server.
• Fix kernel crash discovered with recent Java port update.

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!