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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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).

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

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

(more...)

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

(more...)

FreeBSD Security Advisory

FreeBSD-SA-10:07.mbuf

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.

(more...)

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.

(more...)

PC-BSD 8.1-RC1 Now Available

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1-RC1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RC1, and KDE 4.4.4

Version 8.1 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

* FreeBSD 8.1-RC1
* KDE 4.4.4
* Numerous fixes to the installation backend
* Support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning
* Improved ZFS support
* Bugfixes to desktop tools / utilities

(more...)

FreeBSD 8.1-RC1 Available

The first 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.

For the amd64 and i386 architectures the DVD images have a preliminary set of packages in the ISO files. Unfortunately due to some limitations of the FTP mirroring system we are limited to images no larger than 2Gb so the packages available on the installation media is limited (almost down to just gnome/kde). We will work to remove that limitation but that won't happen before 8.1 is to become available.

(more...)

FreeBSD: Foundation Announces Jail Based Virtualization

We are pleased to announce that Bjoern A. Zeeb has been awarded a grant to improve FreeBSD's jail based virtualization infrastructure and to continue to work on the virtual network stack. His employer, CK Software GmbH is matching the Foundation's funding with hours.

FreeBSD has been well known for its jail based virtualization during the last decade. With the import of the virtual network stack, FreeBSD's operating system level virtualization has reached a new level.

This project includes cleanup of two years of import work and development and, more notably, brings the infrastructure for a network stack teardown. Cleanly shutting down a network stack in FreeBSD will be the major challenge in the virtualization area to get the new feature to production ready quality for the 9.x release
lifecycle.

Further, the project includes generalization of the virtual network stack framework, factoring out common code. This will provide an infrastructure and will ease virtualization of further subsystems like SYSV/Posix IPC with minimal overhead. All further virtualized subsystems will immediately benefit from shared debugging facilities, an essential feature for early adopters of the new technology.

(more..)

FreeBSD: ports feature freeze starts soon

In preparation for 8.1-RELEASE, the ports tree will be in feature freeze after release candidate 1 (RC1) is released, currently planned for June 11.

If you have any commits with high impact planned, get them in the tree before then and if they require an experimental build, have a request for one in portmgr@ hands within the next few days.

(more...)

FreeBSD 7.2 EoL coming soon

Hello Everyone,

On June 30th, FreeBSD 7.2 will reach its End of Life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of this release are strongly encouraged to upgrade to FreeBSD 7.3 before that date; FreeBSD 7.3 will be supported until the end of March 2012. Please note that since FreeBSD 7.1 has been designated for 'Extended' support, it will continue to be supported until the end of January 2011, i.e., FreeBSD 7.1 will be supported longer than FreeBSD 7.2.

The End of Life date for FreeBSD 7.2 was originally announced as May 31, but was delayed by one month in accordance with Security Team policy in order to allow a 3 month window between the release of FreeBSD 7.3 and the End of Life of FreeBSD 7.2 to allow time for systems to be upgraded.

The freebsd-update(8) utility can be used to upgrade i386 and amd64 systems from 7.2-RELEASE (or 7.2-RELEASE-pX for some X) to 7.3-RELEASE using binary updates (i.e., without compiling from source) as described in the 7.3-RELEASE announcement; given an adequate internet connection, this process usually takes 15 minutes or less.

(more...)

DesktopBSD lives on under new leadership

Following the September 2009 announcement that version 1.7 of DesktopBSD would be the "last and final release", a small group of German developers have signed on to continue the distributions development. DesktopBSD is based on FreeBSD using the KDE desktop environment and is similar to PC-BSD which also focuses on a desktop version of the BSD variant.

(more...)

PC-BSD 8.1-BETA1 - Now available!

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1-BETA1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-PRERELEASE, and KDE 4.4.4

Version 8.1 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog http://www.pcbsd.org/content/view/161/11/. Some of the notable changes are:

* FreeBSD 8.1-PreRelease
* KDE 4.4.4
* Numerous fixes to the installation backend
* Support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning
* Improved ZFS support
* Bugfixes to desktop tools / utilities

(more...)

FreeBSD 8.1-BETA1 Available...

The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, 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 by now. MD5/SHA256 checksums of the images are at the bottom of this message.

The ISOs for this build do not include packages other than the docs.
For amd64 and i386 "memstick" images are also available that can be copied to a USB "memory stick" (also called "thumb drive") and used for installs on machines that support booting from that type of media.

(more...)

FreeBSD Security Advisories

FreeBSD-SA-10:04.jail
FreeBSD-SA-10:06.nfsclient
FreeBSD-SA-10:05.opie

OpenBSD 4.7 Released!

We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.7.
This is our 27th release on CD-ROM (and 28th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote holes in the default install.

As in our previous releases, 4.7 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system.

(more...)

FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE Available

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.2 and introduces a few
new features. There will be one more release from this branch to allow future improvements to be made available in the 7-STABLE branch but at this point most developers are focused on 8-STABLE.

Some of the highlights:

• ZFS updated to version 13
• new boot loader gptzfsboot supports GPT and ZFS
• hwpmc(4) enhancements including support for core2/i7 processor and pmcannotate(8)
• new mfiutil and mptutil tools for widely used RAID controllers
• NULL pointer vulnerability mitigation
• bind updated to 9.4-ESV
• Gnome updated to 2.28.2
• KDE updated to 4.3.5
• Perl updated to 5.10

(more...)

Taking a look at PC-BSD 8.0

Toward the end of 2009 I took FreeBSD 8.0 for a test drive on an old PC. The experiment went so well that I was immediately looking forward to trying out PC-BSD, a desktop variant of the popular FreeBSD operating system. Unfortunately for me, the new version of PC-BSD wasn't to arrive for several weeks. Like a penniless child with his nose pressed up against the window of a candy store, I went over to the project's website.

The PC-BSD site maintains a very similar look and feel to its FreeBSD counterpart. That is to say, it's well crafted, easy to read, painless to navigate and filled with lots of useful information. The installation documentation especially is a well-done piece of work. Open source projects, and their developers, often take flak for putting so little effort into the user manual. This is not the case with PC-BSD. While browsing, I read the teaser for the upcoming release - and good things were planned. New features include better ZFS support, a live DVD, improvements to the package updating system, the ability to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit system and better binary support for Linux programs.

It felt like a long wait, but in February the PC-BSD team released their latest offering, version 8.0, and I downloaded their live DVD. It's a hefty image, weighing in at just over 3 GB. There's also a USB image file for people who like to carry their operating system in their pocket. For my PC-BSD test drive I used a desktop machine (2.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM), my HP notebook (dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM) and a virtual environment, provided by VirtualBox.

(more...)

FreeBSD 7.3-RC2 Available!

The third and what should be last of the test builds for the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, 7.3-RC2, is available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. The target schedule as well as the current status of the release is available here:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/7.3TODO

The schedule has slipped by a bit over a week so the actual target for the release announcement is really about a week and a half from now. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list.

There are known issues with the Radeon video driver that have caused some people problems. The problems have been nebulous enough that we have decided to not hold up the release due to that specific issue. At the point that driver has stabilized it will be handled as an Errata Notice. So far that is the only big problem we've been tracking as part of the release that has not been resolved in one way or another.

(more...)

PC-BSD 8.0 Released

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.0 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2, and KDE 4.3.5

PC-BSD 8.0 contains a number of enhancements and improvements over the 7.x series. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

1. FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2
2. KDE 4.3.5
3. Brand new System Installer, allows the install of PC-BSD or FreeBSD
4. Run in Live mode directly from DVD
5. Updated Software Manager, allows browsing and installing applications directly
6. Support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64

(more...)

XHP: Inline XML For PHP

Anyone developing with PHP quickly learns that PHP’s ability to generate HTML is both a blessing and a curse. While PHP supports the ability to generate dynamic websites and HTML, it often creates kludgy and difficult code. Facebook, one of the world’s largest consumers of PHP and fresh off their announcement of HipHop, has noted this problem as well, and decided to try and solve it by introducing XHP.

XHP, in a nutshell, is designed to augment the syntax of PHP to allow for inline XML to be included in PHP code. More simply put, XHP permits PHP to understand HTML syntax, eliminating the need for quotation marks, concatenation, escaping and all of the other headaches associated with including HTML directly into PHP code.

(more...)

Compiling HipHop-PHP on Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

Facebook recently open-sourced their new software, HipHop-PHP. HPHP compiles PHP source to very efficient C++, which is then compiled to an executable binary. After a few hiccups, building HPHP is surprisingly easy. HPHP must be compiled on a 64bit platform. If you only have a 32bit platform and you really want to play with it, set up a VM at Slicehost or Linode and compile it there (if you have a 32bit platform, you can’t install a 64bit VM). I eventually used my Linode account and built it there.

(more...)

HipHop for PHP finally released

An initial release of HipHop for PHP, Facebook’s PHP-to-C++ transformer, is finally available for download from Github.

HipHop comes with a number of rather specific requirements, including cmake 2.6 or higher, and several patches that need to be applied to libcurl and libevent in order for the project to compile against them.

Facebook employee (and core PHP contributor) Scott MacVicar announced the availability of the package through a post on the project’s Google group, adding that “while we’re running HipHop in production it might not yet be stable for you.”

(more...)

HipHop for PHP: First look

Just this tuesday Facebook announced a ambitious project called “HipHop for PHP”, if you missed it general opinion says you have been coding PHP in a cave. As I write this review no code has been posted yet, but Facebook has made a great move to open source the project so we can all get our hands on it, use it and contribute to it. So since the code is not out there yet, this is literally a first impression article based on the presentation made by Facebook and various posts from core PHP developers who got a first look at the technology before the release.

(more...)

FreeBSD - "The unknown giant"

FreeBSD is the most accessible and popular of the BSDs, has code at the heart of Darwin and Apple's OS X, and has powered some of the more successful sites on the Web, including Hotmail, Netcraft and Yahoo!, which before the rise of Google was the busiest site on the internet.

FreeBSD rose from the ashes of 386BSD, the original effort to port BSD to the Intel chip, and claims a code lineage that reaches back to Bill Joy's Berkeley Software Distribution of the late seventies. The 386BSD port was begun in 1989 by Bill and Lynne Jolitz, and was destined to be the original free Unix-like operating system for the IBM PC. The first public release of 386BSD (Version 0.0) was on St. Patrick's Day, 1991, accompanied by a series of articles in Dr Dobbs journal, which documented the process.

The first functional release of 386BSD was Version 0.1, which was released on Bastille Day, 1992.

FreeBSD emerged in 1993, after the self-imposed task of supporting 386BSD on their own had proved too much for Bill and Lynne Jolitz. The patchkit which had been the underpinning for the BSD port to the 386 was revived and became the basis for the first FreeBSD release.

(more...)

7.3-BETA1 Available...

7.3-BETA1, the first test build of the 7.3-RELEASE cycle, is now available for amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. The target schedule along with the current status of the release is available here:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/Releng/7.3TODO

For now we plan on BETA1 being followed by two Release Candidates, then the release itself. If you notice problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or on the freebsd-stable mailing list.

(more...)

PC-BSD 8.0-RC Released

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.0-RC (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2, and KDE 4.3.4

PC-BSD 8.0 contains a number of enhancements and improvements over the 7.x series. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

* FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2

* KDE 4.3.4

* Brand new System Installer, allows the install of PC-BSD or FreeBSD

* Run in Live mode directly from DVD

* Updated Software Manager, allows browsing and installing applications directly

* Support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64

(more...)

Accepting Travel Grant Applications for AsiaBSDCon 2010

Calling all FreeBSD developers needing assistance with travel expenses to AsiaBSDCon 2010.

The FreeBSD Foundation will be providing a limited number of travel grants to individuals requesting assistance. Please fill out and submit the Travel Grant Request Application at http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/TravelRequestForm.pdf by
January 29, 2010 to apply for this grant.

(more...)

BSD Magazine goes free!

Hello everyone!

We are happy to announce that BSD Magazine is transforming into a free monthly online publication. The online version of BSD Magazine will stay in the same quality and form. It will look like the BSD magazine one is familiar and comfortable with. Please sign up to our newsletter at www.bsdmag.org and get every issue straight to your inbox.

(more...)

FreeBSD Security Advisories

FreeBSD-SA-10:01.bind
FreeBSD-SA-10:02.ntpd
FreeBSD-SA-10:03.zfs

FreeBSD Errata Notice

Since FreeBSD 8.0 was released, several stability and performance problems have been identified. This Errata Notice describes several fixes judged to be of particular importance, but low risk, to users with specific workloads or using specific features that trigger these problems.

Areas where problems are addressed include NFS, ZFS, Multicast networking, SCTP as well as the rename(2) syscall.

(more...)

PC-BSD 8.0-BETA Released

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.0-BETA (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE, and KDE 4.3.4

Version 8.0 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

 * FreeBSD 8.0-Release

 * KDE 4.3.4

 * Brand new System Installer, allows the install 
   of PC-BSD or FreeBSD

 * Run in Live mode directly from DVD

 * Updated Software Manager, allows browsing and 
   installing applications directly

 * Support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA 
   drivers on amd64

(more...)

FreeBSD 6.3 EoL coming soon

Hi all,

On January 31st, FreeBSD 6.3 will reach its End of Life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of this release are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a newer release before that date -- more conservative users will probably wish to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.4 or FreeBSD 7.1 (which are both extended-support branches), while others will probably wish to upgrade to FreeBSD 7.2 or FreeBSD 8.0.

The freebsd-update(8) utility can be used to upgrade i386 and amd64 systems from 6.3-RELEASE (or 6.3-RELEASE-pX for some X) to 6.4-RELEASE using binary updates (i.e., without compiling from source) as described in the 6.4-RELEASE announcement; given an adequate internet connection, this process usually takes 15 minutes or less.

(more...)