jueves, 6 de enero de 2011

Get Linux and FreeBSD hardware info with guide to commands

Switching between open source OSs can sometimes be confusing, since they may have different ways of doing things. A common task that may confuse some users when switching systems is getting hardware information. In the case of Linux-based OSs and FreeBSD, the following cheat sheet for figuring out how to do the same things on two different systems can ease some of the pain.



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martes, 21 de diciembre de 2010

PC-BSD 8.2 Beta 1 arrives for testing

The PC-BSD development team has announced the arrival of the first beta for version 8.2 of its BSD open source operating system aimed at desktop computers. This first beta for the second point update to PC-BSD 8.0 is based on FreeBSD 8.2 Beta 1 from earlier this month.

PC-BSD 8.2 Beta 2 features version 4.5.4 of the KDE desktop environment, as well as fixes and improvements to the Network Manager, such as 3G support and the option to enable / disable the lagg interface. The developers also note the addition of file system type selection during auto-partitioning and the option to encrypt partitions during installation – the hostname can now also be changed from the installer.


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domingo, 12 de diciembre de 2010

FreeBSD 8.2-BETA1 and 7.4-BETA1 Available

The first of the test builds for the 8.2/7.4 Release Cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP based installs through the network should be on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. MD5/SHA256 checksums of the images are at the bottom of this message.


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jueves, 2 de septiembre de 2010

HEADS UP: FreeBSD 6.4 and 8.0 EoLs coming soon

Hello Everyone,

On November 30th, FreeBSD 6.4 and FreeBSD 8.0 will have reached their End of Life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team.
Since FreeBSD 6.4 is the last remaining supported release from the FreeBSD 6.x stable branch, support for the FreeBSD 6.x stable branch will also cease at the same point. Users of either of these FreeBSD releases are strongly encouraged to upgrade to either FreeBSD 7.3 or FreeBSD 8.1 before that date.

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jueves, 26 de agosto de 2010

FreeBSD 8.1 CDs/DVDs Now Shipping from FreeBSDMall

FreeBSD Mall, Inc. is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-based products. The four CD set and DVD are now shipping to subscribers around the world.

If you haven't yet placed your order, you may do so at http://www.freebsdmall.com.

You may also elect to start your subscription with the latest release.

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PC-BSD 8.1 review

PC-BSD 8.1 was released on July 20, 2010, roughly five months after version 8.0 was released. Some of the suggestions made in the review of PC-BSD 8.0 have been carried out in this latest release. In fact, the changes were made within one month of that review being published. It is an encouraging example of how some distro developers respond to suggestions (or critical reviews).

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sábado, 24 de julio de 2010

FreeBSD 8.1 Provides Evolutionary Open Source Software Upgrade

Putting out new releases of OS software isn't always about adding major new features -- sometimes it's just about making existing features usable and stable. In the case of the open source software FreeBSD, that's certainly the case with the newly hatched 8.1 release.

FreeBSD 8.1 is the latest version of the popular BSD server operating system, an update that provides some incremental improvements over the 8.0 release, which debuted in 2009. The FreeBSD 8.1 release might also spur users of older versions of FreeBSD to migrate to the new platform.

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Stopping SSH Brute Force attacks with PF on FreeBSD

Most people know that port 22 is used for SSH communication and due to this common knowledge, you get people using scripts to test for weak passwords. If you look into your /var/log/auth.log and you see tons of fails/errors from users not on your system or from invalid passwords for root, it means you have people trying to break into your system. Truthfully, anyone that puts a system online with port 22 open will see this happen to them. It’s quite common and not direct attack against you, just scripts looking for IPs with port 22 open.

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FreeBSD 8.1 RELEASED

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:

- zfsloader added

- zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14

- NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities

- UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support

- SMP support in PowerPC G5

- BIND 9.6.2-P2

- sendmail updated to 8.14.4

- OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1

- GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5

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miércoles, 21 de julio de 2010

PC-BSD 8.1 "Hubble Edition" released

The PC-BSD development team have announced the release of version 8.1, the "Hubble Edition", of their open source operating system. According to the developers, the first point update to the 8.0 branch of PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD 8.1 and includes a number of enhancements and improvements over the previous release.

PC-BSD 8.1 features version 4.4.5 of the KDE desktop environment, several package updates and improved ZFS file system support. Other changes include support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning, various fixes to the installation back end, such as encryption pass-phrase support, and bug fixes for the desktop tools and utilities. The developers advise all users to upgrade to the latest release.


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sábado, 17 de julio de 2010

FreeBSD: Foundation Announces Resource Containers Project

Dear FreeBSD Community,

We are pleased to announce that Edward Tomasz Napierala has been awarded a grant to implement resource containers and a simple per-jail resource limits mechanism.

Unlike Solaris zones, the current implementation of FreeBSD Jails does not provide per-jail resource limits. As a result, users are often forced to replace jails with other virtualization mechanisms. The goal of this project is to create a single, unified framework for controlling resource utilisation, and to use that framework to implement per-jail resource limits. In the future, the same framework might be used to implement more sophisticated resource controls, such as Hierarchical Resource Limits, or to implement mechanisms similar to AIX WLM. It could also be used to provide precise resource usage accounting for administrative or billing purposes.


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New FreeBSD core team elected

The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of the 2010 core team election. The FreeBSD core team acts as the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for approving new src committers, resolving disputes between developers, appointing sub-committees for specific purposes (security officer, release engineering, port managers, webmaster, et cetera), and making any other administrative or policy decisions as needed. The core team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every 2 years since 2000.

The newly elected core team is:
-------------------------------
John Baldwin
Konstantin Belousov
Wilko Bulte
Brooks Davis
Warner Losh
Pav Lucistnik
Colin Percival
Hiroki Sato
Robert Watson

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ZFS version 15 committed to head

Dear community,

as you may have noticed, ZFS v15 support with many bugfixes was committed to head in revision 209962.
The commit was tagged for MFC, so if there are no stopper issues I am going to commit it to stable/8 in 2 months from today.

Here is a short summary of what we gained with this update:

1. Stability - more mature ZFS code, comparable to Solaris 10 update 8 with latest bugfixes

2. Compatibility - Solaris 10 update 8 default ZFS pools can now be imported into FreeBSD

3. Features - user and group quotas (ZFS-internal) are very useful for intranet fileservers that want to use ZFS

4. Speed - my real-world benchmarks give a 15-20% RPS yield in PHP webserver workloads with codebase on ZFS


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FreeBSD Security Advisory

FreeBSD-SA-10:07.mbuf

sábado, 3 de julio de 2010

FreeBSD 8.1-RC2 Available

The second and most likely final Release Candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP based installs through the network should be available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Checksums for the images are at the bottom of this message.

There was a recent regression fix related to Atheros AR9280 cards being detected incorrectly, making them unusable. If you were having problems with a wireless card that had worked before not working with the earlier test builds hopefully this will fix the problem. Testing of this fix would be appreciated.

At this time DVD images are not available. There was a fairly serious security issue with the png graphics package. We will generate DVD images when the rebuilt packages become available, that will be announced then the images are ready.

The target schedule for the release is available here:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/schedule.html

and the wiki page tracking the current status is here:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/8.1TODO

If you find problems you can report them through the normal Gnats based PR system or here on this mailing list.


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jueves, 1 de julio de 2010

FreeBSD supported branches update

Hello Everyone,

The branches supported by the FreeBSD Security Officer have been updated to reflect the EoL (end-of-life) of FreeBSD 7.2. The new list is below and at http://security.freebsd.org.

Users of FreeBSD 7.2 are advised to upgrade promptly to a newer release, either by downloading an updated source tree and building updates manually, or (for i386 and amd64 systems) using the FreeBSD Update utility as described in the relevant release announcement.


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