NOTES

This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap and the BSDNow Patreon

Headlines

Celebrating FreeBSD Day: A Journey Through 31 Years of Open Source Excellence

Proxmox vs FreeBSD: Which Virtualization Host Performs Better?

News Roundup

Upstreaming FreeBSD Code to the Linux Vector Packet Processor Project

FreeBSD Tips and Tricks: Creating Snapshots With UFS

My Concern With Rust, or a Case for the BSD's

Beastie Bits

• Install FreeBSD 14.1 and KDE Plasma 6 in QEMU VM tutorial - June 2024 - 2da0c933

• Let's Try BSD, Part 1 of 7: Introduction

• OpenBSD, the computer appliance maker's secret weapon

• FreeBSD Day: Interview with Deb Goodkin

Tarsnap

This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups.

Feedback/Questions

• Johnny - Thanks

• Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

• Join us and other BSD Fans in our BSD Now Telegram channel

NOTES
This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap and the BSDNow Patreon

Headlines

Virtualization showdown – FreeBSD’s bhyve vs. Linux’s KVM

The Birth of Standard Error

News Roundup

Investigating why Steam started picking a random font

Curious Case of Maintaining Sufficient Free Space with ZFS

Call for testing on updated Apple M1/M2 bootloader code

FreeBSD on my workstation

Tarsnap

• This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups.

Feedback/Questions

• Brad - Initial Setup
• Joseph - openbsd and postgresql

• Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv ***

NOTES
This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap

Headlines

Throw-Away Browser on FreeBSD With "pot" Within 5 Minutes

pot is a great and relatively new jail management tool. It offers DevOps style provisioning and can even be used to provide Docker-like, scalable cloud services together with nomad and consul (more about this in Orchestrating jails with nomad and pot).

OpenBSD guest with bhyve - OmniOS

Today I will be creating a OpenBSD guest via bhyve on OmniOS. I will also be adding a Pass Through Ethernet Controller so I can have a multi-homed guest that will serve as a firewall/router.
This post will cover setting up bhyve on OmniOS, so it will also be a good introduction to bhyve. As well, I look into OpenBSD’s uEFI boot loader so if you have had trouble with this, then you are in the right place.

News Roundup

BSD versus Linux distribution development

Q: Comparing-apples-to-BSDs asks: I was reading one of the old articles from the archive. One of the things mentioned was how the BSDs have a distinct approach in terms of packaging the base system relative to userland apps, and that the Linux distros at the time were not following the same practice. Are there Linux distros that have adopted the same approach in modern times? If not, are there technical limitations that are preventing them from doing so, such as some distros supporting multiple kernel versions maybe?
DistroWatch answers: In the article mentioned above, I made the observation that Linux distributions tend to take one of two approaches when it comes to packaging software. Generally a Linux distribution will either offer a rolling release, where virtually all packages are regularly upgraded to their latest stable releases, or a fixed release where almost all packages are kept at a set version number and only receive bug fixes for the life cycle of the distribution. Projects like Arch Linux and Void are popular examples of rolling, always-up-to-date distributions while Fedora and Ubuntu offer fixed platforms.

---

My FreeBSD Laptop Build

I have always liked Thinkpad hardware and when I started to do more commuting I decided I needed something that had a decent sized screen but fit well on a bus. Luckily about this time Lenovo gave me a nice gift in the Thinkpad X390. Its basically the famous X2xx series but with a 13” screen and smaller bezel.
So with this laptop I figured it was time to actually put the docs together on how I got my FreeBSD workstation working on it. I will here in the near future have another post that will cover this for HardenedBSD as well since the steps are similar but have a few extra gotchas due to the extra hardening.

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FreeBSD CURRENT Binary Upgrades

• Disclaimer This proof-of-concept is not a publication of FreeBSD.
• Description up.bsd.lv is a proof-of-concept of binary updates for FreeBSD/amd64 CURRENT/HEAD to facilitate the exhaustive testing of FreeBSD and the bhyve hypervisor and OpenZFS 2.0 specifically. Updates are based on the SVN revisions of official FreeBSD Release Engineering bi-monthly snapshots.

Tarsnap

• This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups.

Feedback/Questions

• Karl - pfsense
• Val - esxi question

• lars - openbsd router hardware

  ---

• Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

  ---

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Headlines

Bitrig 1.0 released

• If you haven't heard of it, Bitrig is a fork of OpenBSD that started a couple years ago
• According to their FAQ, some of their goals include: only supporting modern hardware and a limited set of CPU architectures, replacing nearly all GNU tools in base with BSD versions and having better virtualization support
• They've finally announced their first official release, 1.0
• This release introduces support for Clang 3.4, replacing the old GCC, along with libc++ replacing the GNU version
• It also includes filesystem journaling, support for GPT and - most importantly - a hacker-style console with green text on black background
• One of the developers answered some questions about it on Hacker News too ***

Is it time to try BSD?

• Here we get a little peek into the Linux world - more and more people are considering switching
• On a more mainstream tech news site, they have an article about people switching away from Linux and to BSD
• People are starting to get even more suspicious of systemd, and lots of drama in the Linux world is leading a whole new group of potential users over to the BSD side
• This article explores some pros and cons of switching, and features opinions of various users ***

Poudriere 3.1 released

• One of the first things we ever covered on the show was poudriere, a tool with a funny name that's used to build binary packages from FreeBSD ports
• It's come a long way since then, and bdrewery and bapt have just announced a new major version
• This new release features a redesigned web interface to check on the status of your packages
• There are lots of new bulk building options to preserve packages even if some fail to compile - this makes maintaining a production repo much easier
• It also introduces a useful new "pkgclean" subcommand to clean out your repository of packages that aren't needed anymore, and poudriere keeps it cleaner by default as well now
• Check the full release notes for all the additions and bug fixes ***

Firewalling with OpenBSD's pf and pfsync

• A talk by David Gwynne from an Australian conference was uploaded, with the subject matter being pf and pfsync
• He uses pf to manage 60 internal networks with a single firewall
• The talk gives some background on how pf originally came to be and some OpenBSD 101 for the uninitiated
• It also touches on different rulesets, use cases, configuration syntax, placing limits on connections, ospf, authpf, segregating VLANs, synproxy handling and a lot more
• The second half of the presentation focuses on pfsync and carp for failover and redundancy
• With two BSD boxes running pfsync, you can actually patch your kernel and still stay connected to IRC ***

Interview - Patrick Wildt - patrick@bitrig.org / @bitrig

The initial release of Bitrig

News Roundup

Infrastructural enhancements at NYI

• The FreeBSD foundation put up a new blog post detailing some hardware improvements they've recently done
• Their eastern US colocation is hosted at New York Internet, and is used for FTP mirrors, pkgng mirrors, and also as a place for developers to test things
• There've been fourteen machines purchased since July, and now FreeBSD boasts a total of sixty-eight physical boxes there
• This blog post goes into detail about how those servers are used and details some of the network topology ***

The long tail of MD5

• Our friend Ted Unangst is on a quest to replace all instances of MD5 in OpenBSD's tree with something more modern
• In this blog post, he goes through some of the different areas where MD5 still lives, and discovers how easy (or impossible) it would be to replace
• Through some recent commits, OpenBSD now uses SHA512 in some places that you might not expect
• Some other places require a bit more care… ***

DragonFly cheat sheet

• If you've been thinking of trying out DragonFlyBSD lately, this might make the transition a bit easier
• A user-created "cheat sheet" on the website lists some common answers to beginner questions
• The page features a walkthrough of the installer, some shell tips and workarounds for various issues
• At the end, it also has some things that new users can get involved with to help out ***

Experiences with an OpenBSD laptop

• A lot of people seem to be interested in trying out some form of BSD on their laptop, and this article details just that
• The author got interested in OpenBSD mostly because of the security focus and the fact that it's not Linux
• In this blog post, he goes through the steps of researching, installing, configuring, upgrading and finally actually using it on his Thinkpad
• He even gives us a mention as a good place to learn more about BSD, thanks! ***

PC-BSD Updates

• A call for testing of a new update system has gone out
• Conversion to Qt5 for utils has taken place ***

Feedback/Questions

• Chris writes in
• AJ writes in
• Dan writes in
• Jeff writes in ***

Mailing List Gold

• Over 440% faster
• The PF conundrum (edit: Allan misspoke about PF performance during this segment, apologies.)
• Violating bad standards
• apt-get rid of systemd ***

This episode was brought to you by

Headlines

FreeBSD 10 as a firewall

• Back in 2012, the author of this site wrote an article stating you should avoid FreeBSD 9 for a firewall and use OpenBSD instead
• Now, with the release of 10.0, he's apparently changed his mind and switched back over
• It mentions the SMP version of pf, general performance advantages and more modern features
• The author is a regular listener of BSD Now, hi Joe! ***

Network Noise Reduction Using Free Tools

• Really long blog post, based on a BSDCan presentation, about fighting spam with OpenBSD
• Peter Hansteen, author of the book of PF, goes through how he uses OpenBSD's spamd and other security features to combat spam and malware
• He goes through his experiences with content filtering and disappointment with a certain proprietary vendor
• Not totally BSD-specific, lots of people can enjoy the article - lots of virus history as well ***

FreeBSD ASLR patches submitted

• So far, FreeBSD hasn't had Address Space Layout Randomization
• ASLR is a nice security feature, see wikipedia for more information
• With a giant patch from Shawn Webb, it might be integrated into a future version (after a vicious review from the security team of course)
• We might have Shawn on the show to talk about it, but he's also giving a presentation at BSDCan about his work with ASLR ***

Old-style pkg_ tools retired

• At last the old pkg_add tools are being retired in FreeBSD
• pkgng is a huge improvement, and now portmgr@ thinks it's time to cut the cord on the legacy toolset
• Ports aren't going away, and probably never will, but for binary package fans and new users that are used to things like apt, pkgng is the way to go
• All pkg_ tools will be considered unsupported on September 1, 2014 - even on older branches ***

Interview - Luke Marsden - luke@hybridcluster.com / @lmarsden

BSD at HybridCluster

Tutorial

Filesharing with chrooted SFTP

News Roundup

FreeBSD on OpenStack

• OpenStack is a cloud computing project
• It consists of "a series of interrelated projects that control pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, able to be managed or provisioned through a web-based dashboard, command-line tools, or a RESTful API."
• Until now, there wasn't a good way to run a full BSD instance on OpenStack
• With a project in the vein of Colin Percival's AWS startup scripts, now that's no longer the case! ***

FOSDEM BSD videos

• This year's FOSDEM had seven BSD presentations
• The videos are slowly being uploaded for your viewing pleasure
• Not all of the BSD ones are up yet, but by the time you're watching this they might be!
• Check this directory for most of 'em
• The BSD dev room was full, lots of interest in what's going on from the other communities ***

The FreeBSD challenge finally returns!

• Due to prodding from a certain guy of a certain podcast, the "FreeBSD Challenge" series has finally resumed
• Our friend from the Linux foundation picks up with day 11 and day 12 on his switching from Linux journey
• This time he outlines the upgrade process of going from 9 to 10, using freebsd-update
• There's also some notes about different options for upgrading ports and some extra tips ***

PCBSD weekly digest

• After the big 10.0 release, the PCBSD crew is focusing on bug fixes for a while
• During their "fine tuning phase" users are encouraged to submit any and all bugs via the trac system
• Warden got some fixes and the package manager got some updates as well
• Huge size reduction in PBI format ***

Feedback/Questions

• Derrick writes in
• Sean writes in
• Patrick writes in
• Peter writes in
• Sean writes in ***

This episode was brought to you by

Headlines

OpenBSD automatic installation

• A CFT (call for testing) was posted for OpenBSD's new automatic installer process
• Using this new system, you can spin up fully-configured OpenBSD installs very quickly
• It will answer all the questions for you and can put files into place and start services
• Great for large deployments, help test it and report your findings ***

FreeNAS install guide and blog posts

• A multipart series on YouTube about installing FreeNAS
• In part 1, the guy (who is possibly Dracula, with his very Transylvanian accent..) builds his new file server and shows off the hardware
• In part 2, he shows how to install and configure FreeNAS, uses IPMI, sets up his pools
• He pronounces gigabytes as jiggabytes and it's hilarious
• We've also got an unrelated blog post about a very satisfied FreeNAS user who details his setup
• As well as another blog post from our old pal Devin Teske about his recent foray into the FreeNAS development world ***

FreeBSD 10.0-RC5 is out

• Another, unexpected RC is out for 10.0
• Minor fixes included, please help test and report any bugs
• You can update via freebsd-update or from source
• Hopefully this will be the last one before 10.0-RELEASE, which has tons of new features we'll talk about
• It's been tagged -RELEASE in SVN already too! ***

OpenBSD 5.5-beta is out

• Theo updated the branch status to 5.5-beta
• A list of changes
• Help test and report any bugs you find
• Lots of rapid development with signify (which we mentioned last week), the beta includes some "test keys"
• Does that mean it'll be part of the final release? We'll find out in May.. or when we interview Ted (soon) ***

Interview - Neel Natu & Peter Grehan - neel@freebsd.org & grehan@freebsd.org

BHyVe - the BSD hypervisor

Tutorial

Virtualization with bhyve

News Roundup

Hostname canonicalisation in OpenSSH

• Blog post from our friend Damien Miller
• This new feature allows clients to canonicalize unqualified domain names
• SSH will know if you typed "ssh bsdnow" you meant "ssh bsdnow.tv" with new config options
• This will help clean up some ssh configs, especially if you have many hosts
• Should make it into OpenSSH 6.5, which is "due really soon" ***

Dragonfly on a Chromebook

• Some work has been done by Matthew Dillon to get DragonflyBSD working on a Google Chromebook
• These couple of posts detail some of the things he's got working so far
• Changes were needed to the boot process, trackpad and wifi drivers needed updating...
• Also includes a guide written by Dillon on how to get yours working ***

Spider in a box

• "Spiderinabox" is a new OpenBSD-based project
• Using a combination of OpenBSD, Firefox, XQuartz and VirtualBox, it creates a secure browsing experience for OS X
• Firefox runs encapsulated in OpenBSD and doesn't have access to OS X in any way
• The developer is looking for testers on other operating systems! ***

PCBSD weekly digest

• PCBSD 10 has entered into the code freeze phase
• They're focusing on fixing bugs now, rather than adding new features
• The update system got a lot of improvements
• PBI load times reduced by up to 40%! what!!! ***

Feedback/Questions

• Scott writes in
• Chris writes in
• SW writes in
• Ole writes in
• Gertjan writes in ***