FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report

Since the last Status Reports there has been interesting progress in FreeBSD Development. FreeBSD 7.2 was released just a few days ago. Some of the highlights include: Support for superpages in the FreeBSD Virtual Memory subsystem. The FreeBSD Kernel Virtual Address space has been increased to 6GB on amd64. An updated jail(8) subsystem that supports multi-IPv4/IPv6/noIP and much more. Lots of FreeBSD Developers are in Ottawa, Canada attending the FreeBSD Developer Summit that is before BSDCan. BSDCan officially starts tomorrow and should cover lots of interesting topics, see the BSDCan Website for more information.

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FreeBSD 7.2 Released!

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:

- support for fully transparent use of superpages for
application memory
- support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails
- csup(1) now supports CVSMode to fetch a complete CVS repository
- Gnome updated to 2.26, KDE updated to 4.2.2
- sparc64 now supports UltraSparc-III processors

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FreeBSD supported branches update

The branches supported by the FreeBSD Security Officer have been updated to reflect the EoL (end-of-life) of FreeBSD 7.0. The new list is below and at . Please note that FreeBSD 7.0 was originally announced with an EoL date of February 28, 2009, but the EoL was delayed by two months in order to allow a 3 month window for systems to be upgraded to FreeBSD 7.1.

Users of FreeBSD 7.0 are advised to upgrade promptly to FreeBSD 7.1, 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 FreeBSD 7.1 release announcement. Some users may wish to wait for the upcoming FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE; however, they should be aware that FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE will only receive "normal" support (i.e., support for 12 months) and consequently it will not be supported for as long as FreeBSD 7.1.

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OpenBSD 4.5 released

The OpenBSD team is pleased to announce the release of OpenBSD 4.5.

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NetBSD 5.0 Released!

On behalf of the NetBSD developers, I am proud to announce that NetBSD 5.0, the thirteenth release of the NetBSD operating system, is now available.

NetBSD 5.0 features greatly improved performance and scalability on modern multiprocessor (SMP) and multi-core systems. Multi-threaded applications can now efficiently make use of more than one CPU or core, and system performance is much better under I/O and network load.

PC-BSD: Thin Client Server update available

Version 0.9.1 of the PC-BSD Thin Client Server is now available for download!

This PBI package allows you to turn any PC-BSD 7.x system into a functional Thin Client Server, which allows network booting by clients and brings them directly to a XDMCP / KDM login prompt.

FreeBSD: Foundation Project Announcement

Dear FreeBSD Community,

The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce one of the projects from our accepted project proposals!

Rui Paulo will be implementing the forthcoming IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard for FreeBSD. Wireless mesh networks are expected to become widespread as routers and network appliances deploy them, allowing wireless networks to be built and extended dynamically. Support for the standard will allow FreeBSD consumers to take advantage of this new technology.

FreeBSD Security Advisories

FreeBSD-SA-09:08.openssl
FreeBSD-SA-09:07.libc

SysInfo: a set of scripts which document your FreeBSD system

As part of my bachelor thesis, I am developing a script that automatically documents settings of particular FreeBSD box.

The point of this script is to provide some descriptive information about unknown system’s configuration (hardware and software) for administrator who has no idea about the given system.

I would greatly appreciate if you guys could test it in your environment and provide some feedback. I would also like to hear your opinions on what kind of information would you be interested in, in the above described situation. If your ideas happen to be reasonable, I will gladly implement them and include in the next release of SysInfo.

FreeBSD 7.2-RC1 Available

The first of two planned Release Candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of some of the recent work would be particularly appreciated. This includes:

- bce(4) updated (there is a report that lagg(4) does
not work after the update, fixing that may need to be
done as an Errata Notice after the release)

- testing of the threading libraries

- amr(4) should be fixed

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PC-BSD 7.1 Galileo Edition Review

"PC-BSD 7.1 is a desktop operating system aimed at the normal user and is based on FreeBSD. It enables fast installation of software and getting a working desktop running fast. It can be installed as a Desktop or as a server, however I fail to see the point of the server install for a desktop OS."

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Combining Debian and FreeBSD

The Debian project made a splash on Sunday with the announcement that two new “architectures” had been added to the Debian FTP archive. Debian has always supported a wide range of processors, though; these architectures are different and noteworthy because instead of providing Debian on different hardware, they build the OS on a completely different kernel: FreeBSD’s. So what exactly does that mean?

PC-BSD 7.1 Released!

The PC-BSD Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD 7.1 *- Galileo Edition*!

Version 7.1 contains a number of enhancements, improvements and bugfixes from the 7.0 series.

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How to create a system call for FreeBSD kernel

"This is a short note on how to create a system call for FreeBSD. First of all, assume that you already have a kernel function that you would like to call. Let gives a more complicate example than just hello world."

Introduction to FreeBSD for Newbies

"This makes no attempt to replace the most excellent FreeBSD Handbook and simply provides a quick overview of how things work with FreeBSD for new people."

FreeBSD 7.2-BETA1 Available

The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of two recent changes to the system would be particularly valuable. The bce(4) network driver was updated a few days ago. And some significant work was done on the threading libraries a short time ago that is known to fix several major issues but testing to see if it introduced any regressions would be appreciated.

The target schedule for the release is available here:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.2R/schedule.html

So far we're just one day off target (BETA1 builds started Tuesday).

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