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FreeBSD ZFS vs. ZoL performance, Dragonfly 5.4.2 has been release, containing web services with iocell, Solaris 11.4 SRU8, Problem with SSH Agent forwarding, OpenBSD 6.4 to 6.5 upgrade guide, and more. Headlines FreeBSD ZFS vs. ZoL Performance, Ubuntu ZFS On Linux Reference With iX Systems having released new images of FreeBSD reworked with their ZFS On Linux code that is in development to ultimately replace their existing FreeBSD ZFS support derived from the code originally found in the Illumos source tree, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the FreeBSD 12 performance of ZFS vs. ZoL vs. UFS and compared to Ubuntu Linux on the same system with EXT4 and ZFS. Using an Intel Xeon E3-1275 v6 with ASUS P10S-M WS motherboard, 2 x 8GB DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMMs, and Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe solid-state drive was used for all of this round of testing. Just a single modern NVMe SSD was used for this round of ZFS testing while as the FreeBSD ZoL code matures I'll test on multiple systems using a more div

OpenBSD 6.5 has been released, mount ZFS datasets anywhere, help test upcoming NetBSD 9 branch, LibreSSL 2.9.1 is available, Bail Bond Denied Edition of FreeBSD Mastery: Jails, and one reason ed(1) was a good editor back in the days in this week’s episode. Headlines OpenBSD 6.5 Released Changelog Mirrors 6.5 Includes OpenSMTPD 6.5.0 LibreSSL 2.9.1 OpenSSH 8.0 Mandoc 1.14.5 Xenocara LLVM/Clang 7.0.1 (+ patches) GCC 4.2.1 (+ patches) and 3.3.6 (+ patches) Many pre-built packages for each architecture: aarch64: 9654 amd64: 10602 i386: 10535 Mount your ZFS datasets anywhere you want ZFS is very flexible about mountpoints, and there are many features available to provide great flexibility. When you create zpool maintank, the default mountpoint is /maintank. You might be happy with that, but you don’t have to be content. You can do magical things. Some highlights are: mount point can be inherited not all filesystems in a zpool need to be mounted each filesystem (directory) c

Introducing funlinkat(), an OpenBSD Router with AT&T U-Verse, using NetBSD on a raspberry pi, ZFS encryption is still under development, Rump kernel servers and clients tutorial, Snort on OpenBSD 6.4, and more. Headlines Introducing funlinkat It turns out, every file you have ever deleted on a unix machine was probably susceptible to a race condition One of the first syscalls which was created in Unix-like systems is unlink. In FreeBSD this syscall is number 10 (source) and in Linux, the number is dependent on the architecture but for most of them is also the tenth syscall (source). This indicated that this is one of the primary syscalls. The unlink syscall is very simple and we provide one single path to the file that we want to remove. The “removing file” process itself is very interesting so let’s spend a moment to understand the it. First, by removing the file we are removing a link from the directory to it. In Unix-like systems we can have many links to a single file (hard links). When we remov

A PI-powered Plan 9 cluster, an SSH tarpit, rdist for when Ansible is too much, falling in love with OpenBSD again, how I created my first FreeBSD port, the Tilde Institute of OpenBSD education and more. Headlines A Pi-Powered Plan 9 Cluster Plan 9 from Bell Labs comes from the same stable as the UNIX operating system, which of course Linux was designed after, and Apple’s OS X runs on top of a certified UNIX operating system. Just like UNIX, Plan 9 was developed as a research O/S — a vehicle for trying out new concepts — with it building on key UNIX principles and taking the idea of devices are just files even further. In this post, we take a quick look at the Plan 9 O/S and some of the notable features, before moving on to the construction of a self-contained 4-node Raspberry Pi cluster that will provide a compact platform for experimentation. Endlessh: an SSH Tarpit I’m a big fan of tarpits: a network service that intentionally inserts delays in its protocol, slowing down clients by forci

This week we have a special episode with a Michael W. Lucas interview about his latest jail book that’s been released. We’re talking all things jails, writing, book sponsoring, the upcoming BSDCan 2019 conference, and more. ###Interview - Michael W. Lucas - mwl@mwl.io / @mwlauthor FreeBSD Mastery: Jails BR: Welcome back to the show and congratulations on your latest book. How many books did you have to write before you could start on FreeBSD Mastery: Jails? AJ: How much research did you have to do about jails? BR: The book talks about something called ‘incomplete’ jails. What do you mean by that? AJ: There are a lot of jail management frameworks out there. Why did you chose to write about iocage in the book? BR: How many jails do you run yourself? AJ: Can you tell us a bit about how you handle book sponsorship these days? BR: What other books (fiction and non-fiction) are you currently working on? AJ: Which talks are you looking forward to attend at the upcoming BSDCan conference? BR: How is the BSD user gr

FreeBSD Q4 2018 status report, the GhostBSD alternative, the coolest 90s laptop, OpenSSH 8.0 with quantum computing resistant keys exchange, project trident: 18.12-U8 is here, and more. ##Headlines ###AsiaBSDcon 2019 recap Both Allan and I attended AsiaBSDcon 2019 in Tokyo in mid march. After a couple of days of Tokyo sightseeing and tasting the local food, the conference started with tutorials. Benedict gave his tutorial about “BSD-based Systems Monitoring with Icinga2 and OpenSSH”, while Allan ran the FreeBSD developer summit. On the next day, Benedict attended the tutorial “writing (network) tests for FreeBSD” held by Kristof Provost. I learned a lot about Kyua, where tests live and how they are executed. I took some notes, which will likely become an article or chapter in the developers handbook about writing tests. On the third day, Hiroki Sato officially opened the paper session and then people went into individual talks. Benedict attended Adventure in DRMland - Or how to write a FreeBSD ARM64 DRM dri

Storage changing software, what makes Unix special, what you need may be “pipeline +Unix commands”, running a bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL, the ultimate guide to memorable tech talks, light-weight contexts, and more. ##Headlines ###Tracking a storage issue led to software change Early last year we completed a massive migration that moved our customers’ hosting data off of a legacy datacenter (that we called FR-SD2) onto several new datacenters (that we call FR-SD3, FR-SD5, and FR-SD6) with much more modern, up-to-date infrastructure. This migration required several changes in both the software and hardware we use, including switching the operating system on our storage units to FreeBSD. Currently, we use the NFS protocol to provide storage and export the filesystems on Simple Hosting, our web hosting service, and the FreeBSD kernel includes an NFS server for just this purpose. Problem While migrating virtual disks of Simple Hosting instances from FR-SD2, we noticed high CPU load spikes on the new stora

FreeBSD on Cavium ThunderX, looking at NetBSD as an OpenBSD user, taking time-stamped notes in vim, OpenBSD 6.5 has been tagged, FreeBSD and NetBSD in GSoC 2019, SecBSD: an UNIX-like OS for Hackers, and more. ##Headlines ###ARM’d and dangerous: FreeBSD on Cavium ThunderX (aarch64) While I don’t remember for how many years I’ve had an interest in CPU architectures that could be an alternative to AMD64, I know pretty well when I started proposing to test 64-bit ARM at work. It was shortly after the disaster named Spectre / Meltdown that I first dug out server-class ARM hardware and asked whether we should get one such server and run some tests with it. While the answer wasn’t a clear “no” it also wasn’t exactly “yes”. I tried again a few times over the course of 2018 and each time I presented some more points why I thought it might be a good thing to test this. But still I wasn’t able to get a positive answer. Finally in January 2019 year I got a definitive answer – and it was “yes, go ahead”! The fact that Am

A kernel of failure, IPv6 fragmentation vulnerability in OpenBSD’s pf, a guide to the terminal, using a Yubikey for SSH public key authentication, FreeBSD desktop series, and more. ##Headlines ###A Kernel Of Failure - How IBM bet big on the microkernel being the next big thing in operating systems back in the ’90s—and spent billions with little to show for it. Today in Tedium: In the early 1990s, we had no idea where the computer industry was going, what the next generation would look like, or even what the driving factor would be. All the developers back then knew is that the operating systems available in server rooms or on desktop computers simply weren’t good enough, and that the next generation needed to be better—a lot better. This was easier said than done, but this problem for some reason seemed to rack the brains of one company more than any other: IBM. Throughout the decade, the company was associated with more overwrought thinking about operating systems than any other, with little to show for it

Software will never fix Spectre-type bugs, a proof that sed is Turing complete, managed jails using Bastille, new version of netdata, using grep with /dev/null, using GMail with mutt, and more. ##Headlines ###Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre-type bugs Spectre is here to stay: An analysis of side-channels and speculative execution Researchers from Google investigating the scope and impact of the Spectre attack have published a paper asserting that Spectre-like vulnerabilities are likely to be a continued feature of processors and, further, that software-based techniques for protecting against them will impose a high performance cost. And whatever the cost, the researchers continue, the software will be inadequate—some Spectre flaws don’t appear to have any effective software-based defense. As such, Spectre is going to be a continued feature of the computing landscape, with no straightforward resolution. The discovery and development of the Meltdown and Spectre attacks was undoubtedl

Design and Implementation of NetBSD’s rc.d system, first impressions of Project Trident 18.12, PXE booting a FreeBSD disk image, middle mouse button pasting, NetBSD gains hardware accelerated virtualization, and more. ##Headlines ###The Design and Implementation of the NetBSD rc.d system Abstract In this paper I cover the design and implementation of the rc.d system start-up mechanism in NetBSD 1.5, which replaced the monolithic /etc/rc start-up file inherited from 4.4BSD. Topics covered include a history of various UNIX start-up mechanisms (including NetBSD prior to 1.5), design considerations that evolved over six years of discussions, implementation details, an examination of the human issues that occurred during the design and implementation, as well as future directions for the system. Introduction NetBSD recently converted from the traditional 4.4BSD monolithic /etc/rc start-up script to an /etc/rc.d mechanism, where there is a separate script to manage each service or daemon, and these scripts a

Adding glue to a desktop environment, flashing the BIOS on a PC Engine, revive a Cisco IDS into a capable OpenBSD computer, An OpenBSD WindowMaker desktop, RealTime data compression, the love for pipes, and more. ##Headlines ###Adding Glue To a Desktop Environment In this article we will put some light on a lot of tools used in the world of Unix desktop environment customization, particularly regarding wmctrl, wmutils, xev, xtruss, xwininfo, xprop, xdotools, xdo, sxhkd, xbindkeys, speckeysd, xchainkeys, alttab, triggerhappy, gTile, gidmgr, keynav, and more. If those don’t make sense then this article will help. Let’s hope this can open your mind to new possibilities. With that in mind we can wonder if what’s actually needed from a window manager, presentation and operation, can be split up and complemented with other tools. We can also start thinking laterally, the communication and interaction between the different components of the environment. We have the freedom to do so because the X protocol is transp

Strategic thinking to keep FreeBSD relevant, reflecting on the soul of a new machine, 10GbE Benchmarks On Nine Linux Distros and FreeBSD, NetBSD integrating LLVM sanitizers in base, FreeNAS 11.2 distrowatch review, and more. ##Headlines ###Strategic thinking, or what I think what we need to do to keep FreeBSD relevant Since I participate in the FreeBSD project there are from time to time some voices which say FreeBSD is dead, Linux is the way to go. Most of the time those voices are trolls, or people which do not really know what FreeBSD has to offer. Sometimes those voices wear blinders, they only see their own little world (were Linux just works fine) and do not see the big picture (like e.g. competition stimulates business, …) or even dare to look what FreeBSD has to offer. Sometimes those voices raise a valid concern, and it is up to the FreeBSD project to filter out what would be beneficial. Recently there were some mails on the FreeBSD lists in the sense of “What about going into direction X?”. Some pe

We recap FOSDEM 2019, FreeBSD Foundation January update, OPNsense 19.1 released, the hardware-assisted virtualization challenge, ZFS and GPL terror, ClonOS 19.01-RELEASE, and more. Headlines FOSDEM 2019 Recap Allan and I were at FOSDEM 2019 in Brussels, Belgium over the weekend. On the Friday before, we held a FreeBSD Devsummit in a hotel conference room, with 25 people attending. We talked about various topics of interest to the project. You can find the notes on the wiki page. Saturday was the first day of FOSDEM. The FreeBSD Project had a table next to the Illumos Project again. A lot of people visited our table, asked questions, or just said “Hi, I watch BSDNow.tv every week”. We handed out a lot of stickers, pens, swag, and flyers. There was also a full day BSD devroom, with a variety of talks that were well attended. In the main conference track, Allan held a talk explaining how the ZFS ARC works. A lot of people attended the talk and had more questions afterwards. Another well attended talk was by Jon

We’re at FOSDEM 2019 this week having fun. We’d never leave you in a lurch, so we have recorded an interview with Niclas Zeising of the FreeBSD graphics team for you. Enjoy. ##Interview - Niclas Zeising - zeising@FreeBSD.org / @niclaszeising Interview topic: FreeBSD Graphics Stack BR: Welcome Niclas. Since this is your first time on BSDNow, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you started with Unix/BSD? AJ: What made you start working in the FreeBSD graphics stack? BR: What is the current status with the FreeBSD graphics stack? AJ: What challenges do you face in the FreeBSD graphics stack? BR: How many people are working in the graphics team and what kind of help do you need there? AJ: You’re also involved in FreeBSD ports and held a poudriere tutorial at last years EuroBSDcon. What kind of feedback did you get and will you give that tutorial again? BR: You’ve been organizing the Stockholm BSD user group meeting. Can you tell us a bit about that, what’s involved, how is it structured? AJ: What confe

Project Trident 18.12 released, Spotifyd on NetBSD, OPNsense 18.7.10 is available, Ultra EPYC AMD Powered Sun Ultra 24 Workstation, OpenRsync, LLD porting to NetBSD, and more. ##Headlines ###AsiaBSDCon 2019 Call for Papers You have until Jan 30th to submit Full paper requirement is relaxed a bit this year (this year ONLY!) due to the short submission window. You don’t need all 10-12 pages, but it is still preferred. Send a message to secretary@asiabsdcon.org with your proposal. Could be either for a talk or a tutorial. Two days of tutorials/devsummit and two days of conference during Sakura season in Tokyo, Japan The conference is also looking for sponsors If accepted, flight and hotel is paid for by the conference ###Project Trident 18.12 Released Twitter account if you want to keep up on project news Screenshots Project Trident Community Telegram Channel DistroWatch Page LinuxActionNews Review RoboNuggie’s in depth review ###Building Spotifyd on NetBSD These are the steps I went through to build and

SCP client vulnerabilities, BSDs vs Linux benchmarks on a Tyan EPYC Server, fame for the Unix inventors, Die IPv4, GhostBSD 18.12 released, Unix in pictures, and more. ##Headlines ###scp client multiple vulnerabilities Overview SCP clients from multiple vendors are susceptible to a malicious scp server performing unauthorized changes to target directory and/or client output manipulation. Description Many scp clients fail to verify if the objects returned by the scp server match those it asked for. This issue dates back to 1983 and rcp, on which scp is based. A separate flaw in the client allows the target directory attributes to be changed arbitrarily. Finally, two vulnerabilities in clients may allow server to spoof the client output. Impact Malicious scp server can write arbitrary files to scp target directory, change the target directory permissions and to spoof the client output. Details The discovered vulnerabilities, described in more detail below, enables the attack described here in brief. The

A EULA in FOSS clothing, NetBSD with more LLVM support, Thoughts on FreeBSD 12.0, FreeBSD Performance against Windows and Linux on Xeon, Microsoft shipping NetBSD, and more. Headlines A EULA in FOSS clothing? There was a tremendous amount of reaction to and discussion about my blog entry on the midlife crisis in open source. As part of this discussion on HN, Jay Kreps of Confluent took the time to write a detailed response — which he shortly thereafter elevated into a blog entry. Let me be clear that I hold Jay in high regard, as both a software engineer and an entrepreneur — and I appreciate the time he took to write a thoughtful response. That said, there are aspects of his response that I found troubling enough to closely re-read the Confluent Community License — and that in turn has led me to a deeply disturbing realization about what is potentially going on here. To GitHub: Assuming that this is in fact a EULA, I think it is perilous to allow EULAs to sit in public repositories. It’s one thing to have on

The future of ZFS in FreeBSD, we pick highlights from the FreeBSD quarterly status report, flying with the raven, modern KDE on FreeBSD, many ways to launch FreeBSD in EC2, GOG installers on NetBSD, and more. Headlines The future of ZFS in FreeBSD The sources for FreeBSD’s ZFS support are currently taken directly from Illumos with local ifdefs to support the peculiarities of FreeBSD where the Solaris Portability Layer (SPL) shims fall short. FreeBSD has regularly pulled changes from Illumos and tried to push back any bug fixes and new features done in the context of FreeBSD. In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL: https://www.delphix.com/blog/kickoff-future-eko-2018 This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos. While working through the git history of ZoL I have also discovered that many races and locking bugs have been fixed in Zo

We sat down at BSDCan 2018 to interview Kirk McKusick about various topics ranging about the early years of Berkeley Unix, his continuing work on UFS, the governance of FreeBSD, and more. ##Interview - Kirk McKusick - mckusick@mckusick.com 25 years of FreeBSD How Kirk got started in BSD, at the very beginning Predicting the Future How the code and community grew The leadership of the project, and how it changed over time UFS over the years (reading disks from 1982 in 2018) Conferences The rise and fall of Linux The resurgence of FreeBSD We want to extend a big thank you to the entire BSD community for making this show possible, and to all of our viewers for watching and providing the feedback that makes this show successful. We wish you all a happy and prosperous new year, and we’ll see you next week. Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv