Bsd Now

Happinesses and stresses of full-time FOSS work, building a FreeBSD fileserver, Kubernetes on FreeBSD bhyve, NetBSD 9 RC1 available, OPNSense 20.1 is here, HardenedBSD’s idealistic future, and more. Headlines The happinesses and stresses of full-time FOSS work (https://drewdevault.com//2020/01/21/Stress-and-happiness.html) In the past few days, several free software maintainers have come out to discuss the stresses of their work. Though the timing was suggestive, my article last week on the philosophy of project governance was, at best, only tangentially related to this topic - I had been working on that article for a while. I do have some thoughts that I’d like to share about what kind of stresses I’ve dealt with as a FOSS maintainer, and how I’ve managed (or often mismanaged) it. February will mark one year that I’ve been working on self-directed free software projects full-time. I was planning on writing an optimistic retrospective article around this time, but given the current mood of the ecosystem I thi

Linux couldn’t duplicate OpenBSD, FreeBSD Q4 status report, OPNsense 19.7.9 released, archives retain and pass on knowledge, HardenedBSD Tor Onion Service v3 Nodes, and more. Headlines OpenBSD has to be a BSD Unix and you couldn't duplicate it with Linux (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/OpenBSDMustBeABSD?showcomments) OpenBSD has a well deserved reputation for putting security and a clean system (for code, documentation, and so on) first, and everything else second. OpenBSD is of course based on BSD (it's right there in the name) and descends from FreeBSD NetBSD (you can read the history here). But one of the questions you could ask about it is whether it had to be that way, and in particular if you could build something like OpenBSD on top of Linux. I believe that the answer is no. Linux and the *BSDs have a significantly different model of what they are. BSDs have a 'base system' that provides an integrated and fully operational core Unix, covering the kernel, C library and compiler, and the n

Hyperbola Developer interview, why you should migrate from Linux to BSD, FreeBSD is an amazing OS, improving the ptrace(2) API in LLVM 10, First FreeBSD conference in Australia, and a guide to containers on FreeNAS. Headlines FreeBSD is an amazing operating System (https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/freebsd-is-an-amazing-operating-system.html) Update 2020-01-21: Since I wrote this article it got posted on Hacker News, Reddit and Lobster, and a few people have emailed me with comments. I have updated the article with comments where I have found it needed. As an important side note I would like to point out that I am not a FreeBSD developer, there may be things going on in the FreeBSD world that I know absolutely nothing about. I am also not glued to the FreeBSD developer mailing lists. I am not a FreeBSD "fanboy". I have been using GNU/Linux a ton more for the past two decades than FreeBSD, mainly due to hardware incompatibility (lacking or buggy drivers), and I love both Debian GNU/Linux and Arch Linux just

Upgrading FreeBSD from 11.3 to 12.1, Distrowatch switching to FreeBSD, Torvalds says don’t run ZFS, iked(8) removed automatic IPv6 blocking, working towards LLDB on i386, and memory-hard Argon2 hashing scheme in NetBSD. Headlines Upgrading FreeBSD from 11.3 to 12.1 (https://blog.bimajority.org/2020/01/13/upgrading-freebsd-from-11-3-to-12-1/) Now here’s something more like what I was originally expecting the content on this blog to look like. I’m in the process of moving all of our FreeBSD servers (about 30 in total) from 11.3 to 12.1. We have our own local build of the OS, and until “packaged base” gets to a state where it’s reliably usable, we’re stuck doing upgrades the old-fashioned way. I created a set of notes for myself while cranking through these upgrades and I wanted to share them since they are not really work-specific and this process isn’t very well documented for people who haven’t been doing this sort of upgrade process for 25 years. Our source and object trees are read-only exported from the bu

Your Impact on FreeBSD in 2019, Wireguard on OpenBSD Router, Amazon now has FreeBSD/ARM 12, pkgsrc-2019Q4, The Joys of UNIX Keyboards, OpenBSD on Digital Ocean, and more. Headlines Your Impact on FreeBSD in 2019 (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/your-impact-on-freebsd-in-2019/) It’s hard to believe that 2019 is nearly over. It has been an amazing year for supporting the FreeBSD Project and community! Why do I say that? Because as I reflect over the past 12 months, I realize how many events we’ve attended all over the world, and how many lives we’ve touched in so many ways. From advocating for FreeBSD to implementing FreeBSD features, my team has been there to help make FreeBSD the best open source project and operating system out there. In 2019, we focused on supporting a few key areas where the Project needed the most help. The first area was software development. Whether it was contracting FreeBSD developers to work on projects like wifi support, to providing internal staff to quickly implement hardwa

Announcing HyperbolaBSD, IPFW In-Kernel NAT setup on FreeBSD, Wayland and WebRTC enabled for NetBSD 9/Linux, LLDB Threading support ready for mainline, OpenSSH U2F/FIDO support in base, Dragonfly drm/i915: Update, and more. Headlines HyperbolaBSD Announcement (https://www.hyperbola.info/news/announcing-hyperbolabsd-roadmap/) Due to the Linux kernel rapidly proceeding down an unstable path, we are planning on implementing a completely new OS derived from several BSD implementations. This was not an easy decision to make, but we wish to use our time and resources to create a viable alternative to the current operating system trends which are actively seeking to undermine user choice and freedom. This will not be a "distro", but a hard fork of the OpenBSD kernel and userspace including new code written under GPLv3 and LGPLv3 to replace GPL-incompatible parts and non-free ones. Reasons for this include: Linux kernel forcing adaption of DRM, including HDCP. Linux kernel proposed usage of Rust (which contains freed

How learning OpenBSD makes computers suck a little less, How Unix works, FreeBSD 12.1 Runs Well on Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, BSDCan CFP, HardenedBSD Infrastructure Goals, and more. Headlines Why computers suck and how learning from OpenBSD can make them marginally less horrible (https://telegra.ph/Why-OpenBSD-is-marginally-less-horrible-12-05) How much better could things actually be if we abandoned the enterprise development model? Next I will compare this enterprise development approach with non-enterprise development - projects such as OpenBSD, which do not hesitate to introduce ABI breaking changes to improve the codebase. One of the most commonly referred to pillars of the project's philosophy has long been its emphasis on clean functional code. Any code which makes it into OpenBSD is subject to ongoing aggressive audits for deprecated, or otherwise unmaintained code in order to reduce cruft and attack surface. Additionally the project creator, Theo de Raadt, and his team of core developers engage in

Authentication Vulnerabilities in OpenBSD, NetBSD 9.0 RC1 is available, Running FreeNAS on a DigitalOcean droplet, NomadBSD 1.3 is here, at e2k19 nobody can hear you scream, and more. Headlines Authentication vulnerabilities in OpenBSD (https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/12/04/5) We discovered an authentication-bypass vulnerability in OpenBSD's authentication system: this vulnerability is remotely exploitable in smtpd, ldapd, and radiusd, but its real-world impact should be studied on a case-by-case basis. For example, sshd is not exploitable thanks to its defense-in-depth mechanisms. From the manual page of login.conf: OpenBSD uses BSD Authentication, which is made up of a variety of authentication styles. The authentication styles currently provided are: passwd Request a password and check it against the password in the master.passwd file. See loginpasswd(8). skey Send a challenge and request a response, checking it with S/Key (tm) authentication. See loginskey(8

In this episode, we interview Michael W. Lucas about his latest book projects, including the upcoming SNMP Mastery book. Interview - Michael Lucas Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) Your browser does not support the HTML5 video tag. Special Guest: Michael W Lucas.

LLDB Threading support now ready, Multiple IPSec VPN tunnels with FreeBSD, Netflix Optimized FreeBSD's Network Stack More Than Doubled AMD EPYC Performance, happy eyeballs with unwind(8), AWS got FreeBSD ARM 12, OpenSSH U2F/FIDO support, and more. Headlines LLDB Threading support now ready for mainline (https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/lldb_threading_support_now_ready) Upstream describes LLDB as a next generation, high-performance debugger. It is built on top of LLVM/Clang toolchain, and features great integration with it. At the moment, it primarily supports debugging C, C++ and ObjC code, and there is interest in extending it to more languages. In February, I have started working on LLDB, as contracted by the NetBSD Foundation. So far I've been working on reenabling continuous integration, squashing bugs, improving NetBSD core file support, extending NetBSD's ptrace interface to cover more register types and fix compat32 issues and fixing watchpoint support. Then, I've started working on improving thread s

We read FreeBSD’s third quarterly status report, OpenBSD on Sparc64, ZoL repo move to OpenZFS, GEOM NOP, keeping NetBSD up-to-date, and more. Headlines FreeBSD third quarterly status report for 2019 (https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-07-2019-09.html) This quarter the reports team has been more active than usual thanks to a better organization: calls for reports and reminders have been sent regularly, reports have been reviewed and merged quickly (I would like to thank debdrup@ in particular for his reviewing work). Efficiency could still be improved with the help of our community. In particular, the quarterly team has found that many reports have arrived in the last days before the deadline or even after. I would like to invite the community to follow the guidelines below that can help us sending out the reports sooner. Starting from next quarter, all quarterly status reports will be prepared the last month of the quarter itself, instead of the first month after the quarter's end. This means tha

LPI releases BSD Certification, openzfs trip report, Using FreeBSD with ports, LLDB threading support ready, Linux versus Open Source Unix, and more. Headlines Linux Professional Institute Releases BSD Specialist Certification - re BSD Certification Group (https://www.lpi.org/articles/linux-professional-institute-releases-bsd-specialist-certification) Linux Professional Institute extends its Open Technology certification track with the BSD Specialist Certification. Starting October 30, 2019, BSD Specialist exams will be globally available. The certification was developed in collaboration with the BSD Certification Group which merged with Linux Professional Institute in 2018. G. Matthew Rice, the Executive Director of Linux Professional Institute says that "the release of the BSD Specialist certification marks a major milestone for Linux Professional Institute. With this new credential, we are reaffirming our belief in the value of, and support for, all open source technologies. As much as possible, future cr

FreeBSD 12.1 is here, A history of Unix before Berkeley, FreeBSD development setup, HardenedBSD 2019 Status Report, DNSSEC, compiling RainbowCrack on OpenBSD, and more. Headlines FreeBSD 12.1 (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/announce.html) Some of the highlights: BearSSL has been imported to the base system. The clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 8.0.1. OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1d. Several userland utility updates. 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/12.1R/relnotes.html A History of UNIX before Berkeley: UNIX Evolution: 1975-1984. (http://www.darwinsys.com/history/hist.html) Nobody needs to be told that UNIX is popular today. In this article we will show you a little of where it was yesterday and over the past decade. And, without meaning in the least to minimise the incredible contributions of Ken Thompson and Dennis R

Migrating drives and zpool between hosts, OpenBSD in 2019, Dragonfly’s new zlib and dhcpcd, Batch renaming images and resolution with awk, a rant on the X11 ICCCM selection system, hammer 2 emergency space mode, and more. Headlines Migrating drives and the zpool from one host to another. (https://dan.langille.org/2019/10/26/migrating-drives-and-the-zpool-from-one-host-to-another/) Today is the day. Today I move a zpool from an R710 into an R720. The goal: all services on that zpool start running on the new host. Fortunately, that zpool is dedicated to jails, more or less. I have done some planning about this, including moving a poudriere on the R710 into a jail. Now it is almost noon on Saturday, I am sitting in the basement (just outside the server room), and I’m typing this up. In this post: FreeBSD 12.0 Dell R710 (r710-01) Dell R720 (r720-01) drive caddies from eBay and now I know the difference between SATA and SATAu PLEASE READ THIS first: Migrating ZFS Storage Pools (https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01

The earliest Unix code, how to replace fail2ban with blacklistd, OpenBSD crossed 400k commits, how to install Bolt CMS on FreeBSD, optimized hammer2, appeasing the OSI 7-layer burrito guys, and more. Headlines The Earliest Unix Code: An Anniversary Source Code Release (https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-earliest-unix-code-an-anniversary-source-code-release/) What is it that runs the servers that hold our online world, be it the web or the cloud? What enables the mobile apps that are at the center of increasingly on-demand lives in the developed world and of mobile banking and messaging in the developing world? The answer is the operating system Unix and its many descendants: Linux, Android, BSD Unix, MacOS, iOS—the list goes on and on. Want to glimpse the Unix in your Mac? Open a Terminal window and enter “man roff” to view the Unix manual entry for an early text formatting program that lives within your operating system. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of Unix. In the summer of 1969, that same

Unix is 50, Hunting down Ken's PDP-7, OpenBSD and OPNSense have new releases, Clarification on what GhostBSD is, sshuttle - VPN over SSH, and more. Headlines Unix is 50 (https://www.bell-labs.com/unix50/) In the summer of 1969 computer scientists Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created the first implementation of Unix with the goal of designing an elegant and economical operating system for a little-used PDP-7 minicomputer at Bell Labs. That modest project, however, would have a far-reaching legacy. Unix made large-scale networking of diverse computing systems — and the Internet — practical. The Unix team went on to develop the C language, which brought an unprecedented combination of efficiency and expressiveness to programming. Both made computing more "portable". Today, Linux, the most popular descendent of Unix, powers the vast majority of servers, and elements of Unix and Linux are found in most mobile devices. Meanwhile C++ remains one of the most widely used programming languages today. Unix may be a

An interview with Trenton Schulz about his early days with FreeBSD, Robot OS, Qt, and more. Interview - Trenton Schulz - freenas@norwegianrockcat.com (mailto:freenas@norwegianrockcat.com) Robot OS on FreeBSD BR: Welcome to the show. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started with BSD? AJ: You were working for Trolltech (creators of Qt). Was FreeBSD used there and how? BR: Can you tell us more about the work you are doing with Robot OS on FreeBSD? AJ: Was EuroBSDcon your first BSD conference? How did you like it? BR: Do you have some tips or advice on how to get started with the BSDs? AJ: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us before we let you go? Beastie Bits FreeBSD Miniconf at linux.conf.au 2020 Call for Sessions Now Open (https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-miniconf-at-linux-conf-au-2020-call-for-sessions-now-open/) Portland BSD Pizza Night: Oct 24th, 19:00 @ Rudy’s Gourmet Pizza (http://calagator.org/events/1250476319) NYC*BUG Install Fest: Nov 6th 18:45 @ Suspen

/* Title: Episode 320: Codebase: neck deep Description: FreeBSD on the Google Pixelbook, Porting NetBSD to the AMD x86-64, ZFS performance really does degrade as you approach quota limits, Fixing up KA9Q-unix, HAMMER2 and fsck for review, the return of startx(1) for non-root users, and more. Tags: freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, dragonflybsd, trueos, trident, hardenedbsd, tutorial, howto, guide, bsd, interview, google pixelbook, pixelbook, case study, portability, porting, zfs, zfs performance, performance, quota, quota limits, zfs quota, ka9q, unix, hammer2, fsck, startx Date: 2019-10-16 */ Headlines FreeBSD and custom firmware on the Google Pixelbook (https://unrelenting.technology/articles/FreeBSD-and-custom-firmware-on-the-Google-Pixelbook) FreeBSD and custom firmware on the Google Pixelbook Back in 2015, I jumped on the ThinkPad bandwagon by getting an X240 to run FreeBSD on. Unlike most people in the ThinkPad crowd, I actually liked the clickpad and didn\u2019t use the trackpoint much. But this summer I\u2019

Causing ZFS corruption for fun, NetBSD Assembly Programming Tutorial, The IKEA Lack Rack for Servers, a new OmniOS Community Edition LTS has been published, List Block Devices on FreeBSD lsblk(8) Style, Project Trident 19.10 available, and more. Headlines Causing ZFS corruption for fun and profit (https://datto.engineering/post/causing-zfs-corruption) Datto backs up data, a lot of it. At the time of writing Datto has over 500 PB of data stored on ZFS. This count includes both backup appliances that are sent to customer sites, as well as cloud storage servers that are used for secondary and tertiary backup of those appliances. At this scale drive swaps are a daily occurrence, and data corruption is inevitable. How we handle this corruption when it happens determines whether we truly lose data, or successfully restore from secondary backup. In this post we'll be showing you how at Datto we intentionally cause corruption in our testing environments, to ensure we're building software that can properly handle thes

DragonFlyBSD vs. FreeBSD vs. Linux benchmark on Ryzen 7, JFK Presidential Library chooses TrueNAS for digital archives, FreeBSD 12.1-beta is available, cool but obscure X11 tools, vBSDcon trip report, Project Trident 12-U7 is available, a couple new Unix artifacts, and more. Headlines DragonFlyBSD 5.6 vs. FreeBSD 12 vs. Linux - Ryzen 7 3700X (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=bsd-linux-3700x) For those wondering how well FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD are handling AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors, here are some benchmarks on a Ryzen 7 3700X with MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE where both of these popular BSD operating systems were working out-of-the-box. For some fun mid-week benchmarking, here are those results of FreeBSD 12.0 and DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 up against openSUSE Tumbleweed and Ubuntu 19.04. Back in July I looked at FreeBSD 12 on the Ryzen 9 3900X but at that time at least DragonFlyBSD had troubles booting on that system. When trying out the Ryzen 7 3700X + MSI GODLIKE X570 motherboard o