Created by three guys who love BSD, we cover the latest news and have an extensive series of tutorials, as well as interviews with various people from all areas of the BSD community. It also serves as a platform for support and questions. We love and advocate FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD and TrueOS. Our show aims to be helpful and informative for new users that want to learn about them, but still be entertaining for the people who are already pros. The show airs on Wednesdays at 2:00PM (US Eastern time) and the edited version is usually up the following day.
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381: Shell origins
The Origin of the Shell, Return to Plan 9, ArisbluBSD: Why a new BSD?, OPNsense 20.7.5 released, Midnight BSD 2.0 Release Status, HardenedBSD November 2020 Status Report, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines The Origin of the Shell (https://multicians.org/shell.html) CTSS was developed during 1963 and 64. I was at MIT on the computer center staff at that time. After having written dozens of commands for CTSS, I reached the stage where I felt that commands should be usable as building blocks for writing more commands, just like subroutine libraries. Hence, I wrote "RUNCOM", a sort of shell driving the execution of command scripts, with argument substitution. The tool became instantly most popular, as it became possible to go home in the evening while leaving behind long runcoms executing overnight. It was quite neat for boring and repetitive tasks such as renaming, moving, updating, compiling, etc. whole directories of files for system and application maintenance and monitoring. Return to Plan 9 (https://boxbase.org/entries/2020/nov/1/return-to-plan9/) Plan 9 from Bell Labs has held the same charm after my last visit that took a few days. This time I'll keep this operating system in an emulator where I can explore into it when I am distracted. News Roundup Why a new BSD? (https://blog.fivnex.co/2020/11/arisblubsd-why-new-bsd.html) This article is to explain some decisions and plans made by the ArisbluBSD team, why we are making our own thing, and what the plan is for the OS. We mainly want to talk about five things: desktop, package management, software availability, custom software, and the future of the OS. We mostly want to explain what the goal of the OS is, and how we plan to expand in the near future. Without further ado, let's explain ArisbluBSD's plan. OPNsense 20.7.5 released (https://opnsense.org/opnsense-20-7-5-released/) We return briefly for a small patch set and plan to pin the 20.1 upgrade path to this particular version to avoid unnecessary stepping stones. We wish you all a healthy Friday. And of course: patch responsibly! Midnight BSD 2.0 Release Status (https://www.justjournal.com/users/mbsd/entry/33841) We identified some issues with the 2.0 ISOs slated for release with the ZFS bootloader not working. Until this issue is resolved, we are unable to build release ISOs. We've left the old ones up as they work fine for anyone using UFS. HardenedBSD November 2020 Status Report (https://hardenedbsd.org/article/shawn-webb/2020-11-25/hardenedbsd-november-2020-status-report) We're getting close to the end of November. My wife and I have plans this weekend, so I thought I'd take the time to write November's status report today. Beastie Bits • [rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.](https://phiresky.github.io/blog/2019/rga--ripgrep-for-zip-targz-docx-odt-epub-jpg/) • [exa - A modern replacement for ls](https://the.exa.website/) • [The myriad meanings of pwd in Unix systems](https://qmacro.org/2020/11/08/the-meaning-of-pwd-in-unix-systems/) 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 - Camera Help (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/381/feedback/Karl%20-%20camera%20help.md) Alejandro - domain registrar (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/381/feedback/alejandro%20-%20domain%20registrar.md) Johnny - thoughts on 372 (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/381/feedback/Johnny%20-%20thoughts%20on%20372) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
380: Early ZFS-mas
We read FreeBSD’s 3rd quarter status report, OpenZFS 2.0, adding check-hash checks in UFS filesystem, OpenSSL 3.0 /dev/crypto issues on FreeBSD, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines 3rd Quarter FreeBSD Report (https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2020-07-2020-09.html) The call for submissions for the 4th Quarter is out (https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-quarterly-calls/2020/000007.html) OpenZFS 2.0 (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/openzfs-2-0-release-unifies-linux-bsd-and-adds-tons-of-new-features/) This Monday, ZFS on Linux lead developer Brian Behlendorf published the OpenZFS 2.0.0 release to GitHub. Along with quite a lot of new features, the announcement brings an end to the former distinction between "ZFS on Linux" and ZFS elsewhere (for example, on FreeBSD). This move has been a long time coming—the FreeBSD community laid out its side of the roadmap two years ago—but this is the release that makes it official. News Roundup Revision 367034 (https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/367034) Various new check-hash checks have been added to the UFS filesystem over various major releases. Superblock check hashes were added for the 12 release and cylinder-group and inode check hashes will appear in the 13 release. OpenSSL 3.0 /dev/crypto issues on FreeBSD (https://rubenerd.com/openssl-3-written-to-break-on-freebsd/) So, just learned that the OpenSSL devs decided to break /dev/crypto on FreeBSD. OS108-9.1 XFCE amd64 released (https://forums.os108.org/d/32-os108-91-xfce-amd64-released) OS108 is a fast, open and Secure Desktop Operating System built on top of NetBSD. > Installing OS108 to your hard drive is done by using the sysinst utility, the process is basically the same as installing NetBSD itself. Please refer to the NetBSD guide for installation details, http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/part-install.html Installation Video (https://youtu.be/cgAeY21gXR4) *** Beastie Bits OpenBGPD 6.8p1 portable: released Nov 5th, 2020 (http://www.openbgpd.org/ftp.html) IRC Awk Bot (http://kflu.github.io/2020/08/15/2020-08-15-awk-irc-bot/) Docker on FreeBSD using bhyve and sshfs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVkJZJEdZNY) The UNIX Command Language (1976) (https://github.com/susam/tucl) *** 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 santi - openrc (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/380/feedback/santi%20-%20openrc.md) trond - python2 and mailman (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/380/feedback/trond%20-%20python2%20and%20mailmane%20and%20sshfs) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
379: bhyve my guest
Adventures in Freebernetes, tracing kernel functions, The better way of building FreeBSD networks, New beginnings: CDBUG virtual meetings, LibreSSL update in DragonFly, Signal-cli with scli on FreeBSD, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines Adventures in Freebernetes: bhyve My Guest (https://productionwithscissors.run/2020/10/29/adventures-in-freebernetes-bhyve-my-guest/) Part 2 of experiments in FreeBSD and Kubernetes: Creating your first guest Tracing Kernel Functions: FBT stack() and arg (https://zinascii.com/2020/fbt-args-and-stack.html?s=03) In my previous post I described how FBT intercepts function calls and vectors them into the DTrace framework. That laid the foundation for what I want to discuss in this post: the implementation of the stack() action and built-in arg variables. These features rely on the precise layout of the stack, the details of which I touched on previously. In this post I hope to illuminate those details a bit more with the help of some visuals, and then guide you through the implementation of these two DTrace features as they relate to the FBT provider. News Roundup Dummynet: The Better Way of Building FreeBSD Networks (https://klarasystems.com/articles/dummynet-the-better-way-of-building-freebsd-networks/) Dummynet is the FreeBSD traffic shaper, packet scheduler, and network emulator. Dummynet allows you to emulate a whole set of network environments in a straight-forward way. It has the ability to model delay, packet loss, and can act as a traffic shaper and policer. Dummynet is roughly equivalent to netem in Linux, but we have found that dummynet is easier to integrate and provides much more consistent results. New beginnings: CDBUG virtual meetings (http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/cdbug-talk/2020-October/000901.html) I had overwhelmingly positive responses from the broader *BSD community about restarting CDBUG meetings as virtual, at least for now. Hopefully this works well and even when we're back to in-person meetings we can still find a way to bring in virtual attendees. LibreSSL update in DragonFly (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/11/10/25143.html) DragonFly has a new version of libressl, noting cause it has a newer TLS1.3 implementation – something that may be necessary for you. Signal-cli with scli on FreeBSD (https://antranigv.am/weblog_en/posts/freebsd-signal-cli-scli/) So couple of days ago I migrated from macOS on Macbook Pro to FreeBSD on ThinkPad T480s. Beastie Bits Firefox is not paxctl safe for NetBSD (https://anonhg.netbsd.org/pkgsrc/rev/9386adbd052e) FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE on Microsoft Azure Marketplace (https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/thefreebsdfoundation.freebsd-12_2?tab=Overview) 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 carlos - BSD Now around the world (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/379/feedback/carlos%20-%20BSD%20Now%20around%20the%20world.md) paulo - freebsd on a Bananapi (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/379/feedback/paulo%20-%20freebsd%20on%20a%20Bananapi.md) paulo - followup (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/379/feedback/paulo%20-%20followup.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
378: Networknomicon
Interview with Michael W. Lucas: SNMP and TLS book, cashflow for creators, book sale and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines Interview with Michael W. Lucas SNMP Book (https://mwl.io/nonfiction/networking#snmp) The Networknomicon (https://mwl.io/nonfiction/networking#networknomicon) Sponsor the TLS Book (https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/product-category/sponsor/) Cashflow for creators (https://mwl.io/nonfiction/biz-craft) Book sale (https://mwl.io/blog/9313) 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. Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) *** Special Guest: Michael W Lucas.
377: Firewall ban-sharing
History of FreeBD: BSDi and USL Lawsuits, Building a Website on Google Compute Engine, Firewall ban-sharing across machines, OpenVPN as default gateway on OpenBSD, Sorting out what the Single Unix Specification is, Switching from Apple to a Thinkpad for development, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines History of FreeBSD : Part 2 : BSDi and USL Lawsuits (https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-bsdi-and-usl-lawsuits/) In this second part of our series on the history of FreeBSD, we continue to trace the pre-history of FreeBSD and the events that would eventually shape the project and the future of open source software. Building a Web Site on Google Compute Engine (https://cromwell-intl.com/open-source/google-freebsd-tls/) Here's how I deployed a web site to the Google Cloud Platform. I used FreeBSD for good performance, stability, and minimal complexity. I set up HTTPS with free Let's Encrypt TLS certificates for both RSA and ECC. Then I adjusted the Apache configuration for a good score from the authoritative Qualys server analysis. News Roundup Firewall ban-sharing across machines (https://chown.me/blog/acacia) As described in My infrastructure as of 2019, my machines are located in three different sites and are loosely coupled. Nonetheless, I wanted to set things up so that if an IP address is acting maliciously toward one machine, all my machines block that IP at once so the meanie won't get to try one machine after another. OpenVPN as default gateway on OpenBSD (https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2020-10-27-openbsd-openvpn.html) If you plan to use an OpenVPN tunnel to reach your default gateway, which would make the tun interface in the egress group, and use tun0 in your pf.conf which is loaded before OpenVPN starts? Here are the few tips I use to solve the problems. Sorting out what the Single Unix Specification is and covers (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/SingleUnixSpecificationWhat) Sorting out what the Single Unix Specification is and covers October 8, 2020 I've linked to the Single Unix Specification any number of times, for various versions of it (when I first linked to it, it was at issue 6, in 2006; it's now up to a 2018 edition). But I've never been quite clear what it covered and didn't cover, and how it related to POSIX and similar things. After yesterday's entry got me looking at the SuS site again, I decided to try to sort this out once and for all. Bye-bye, Apple (http://blog.cretaria.com/posts/bye-bye-apple.html) The days of Apple products are behind me. I had been developing on a Macbook for over twelve years, but now, I’ve switched to an ever trending setup: OpenBSD on a Thinkpad. The new platform is a winner. Everything is clean, quick, and configurable. When I ps uaxww, I’m not hogging ‘gigs’ of RAM just to have things up and running. There’s no black magic that derails me at every turn. In short, my sanity has been long restored. 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 Chris - small projects (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/377/feedback/Chris%20-%20small%20projects.md) Jens - ZFS Question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/377/feedback/Jens%20-%20ZFS%20Question.md) One pool to rule them all (https://ftfl.ca/blog/2016-09-17-zfs-fde-one-pool-conversion.html) Shroyer - Dotnet on FreeBSD for Jellyfin (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/377/feedback/Shroyer%20-%20Dotnet%20on%20FreeBSD%20for%20Jellyfin.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
376: Build stable packages
FreeBSD 12.2 is available, ZFS Webinar, Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD, how the OpenBSD -stable packages are built, OPNsense 20.7.4 released, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines FreeBSD 12.2 Release (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.2R/relnotes.html) The release notes for FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 12-STABLE development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented. ZFS Webinar: November 18th (https://klarasystems.com/learning/best-practices-for-optimizing-zfs1/) Join us on November 18th for a live discussion with Allan Jude (VP of Engineering at Klara Inc) in this webinar centred on “best practices of ZFS” Building Your Storage Array – Everything from picking the best hardware to RAID-Z and using mirrors. Keeping up with Data Growth – Expanding and growing your pool, and of course, shrinking with device evacuation. Datasets and Properties – Controlling settings with properties and many other tricks! News Roundup Google Summer of Code 2020: [Final Report] Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD (https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/google_summer_of_code_20202) Sys2syz would give an extra edge to Syzkaller for NetBSD. It has a potential of efficiently automating the conversion of syscall definitions to syzkaller’s grammar. This can aid in increasing the number of syscalls covered by Syzkaller significantly with the minimum possibility of manual errors. Let’s delve into its internals. How the OpenBSD -stable packages are built (https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2020-10-29-official-openbsd-stable-architecture.html) In this long blog post, I will write about the technical details of the OpenBSD stable packages building infrastructure. I have setup the infrastructure with the help of Theo De Raadt who provided me the hardware in summer 2019, since then, OpenBSD users can upgrade their packages using pkg_add -u for critical updates that has been backported by the contributors. Many thanks to them, without their work there would be no packages to build. Thanks to pea@ who is my backup for operating this infrastructure in case something happens to me. OPNsense 20.7.4 released (https://opnsense.org/opnsense-20-7-4-released/) This release finally wraps up the recent Netmap kernel changes and tests. The Realtek vendor driver was updated as well as third party software cURL, libxml2, OpenSSL, PHP, Suricata, Syslog-ng and Unbound just to name a couple of them. Beastie Bits Binutils and linker changes (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/11/03/25120.html) 28 Years of NetBSD contributions (https://github.com/NetBSD/src/graphs/contributors) Bluetooth Audio on OpenBSD (https://ifconfig.se/bluetooth-audio-openbsd.html) K8s Bhyve (https://k8s-bhyve.convectix.com) *** 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 Sean - C Flags (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/376/feedback/Sean%20-%20C%20Flags.md) Thierry - RPI ZFS question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/376/feedback/Thierry%20-%20RPI%20ZFS%20question.md) Thierry's script (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/376/feedback/script.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
375: Virtually everything
bhyve - The FreeBSD Hypervisor, udf information leak, being a vim user instead of classic vi, FreeBSD on ESXi ARM Fling: Fixing Virtual Hardware, new FreeBSD Remote Process Plugin in LLDB, OpenBSD Laptop, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines bhyve - The FreeBSD Hypervisor (https://klarasystems.com/articles/bhyve-the-freebsd-hypervisor/) FreeBSD has had varying degrees of support as a hypervisor host throughout its history. For a time during the mid-2000s, VMWare Workstation 3.x could be made to run under FreeBSD’s Linux Emulation, and Qemu was ported in 2004, and later the kQemu accelerator in 2005. Then in 2009 a port for VirtualBox was introduced. All of these solutions suffered from being a solution designed for a different operating system and then ported to FreeBSD, requiring constant maintenance. ZFS and FreeBSD Support Klara offers flexible Support Subscriptions for your ZFS and FreeBSD infrastructure. Get a world class team of experts to back you up. Check it out on our website! (https://klarasystems.com/support/) udf info leak (https://gist.github.com/CTurt/a00fb4164e13342567830b052aaed94b) FreeBSD UDF driver info leak Analysis done on FreeBSD release 11.0 because that's what I had around. + Fix committed to FreeBSD (https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/366005) News Roundup I'm now a user of Vim, not classical Vi (partly because of windows) (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/VimNowAUser) In the past I've written entries (such as this one) where I said that I was pretty much a Vi user, not really a Vim user, because I almost entirely stuck to Vi features. In a comment on my entry on not using and exploring Vim features, rjc reinforced this, saying that I seemed to be using vi instead of vim (and that there was nothing wrong with this). For a long time I thought this way myself, but these days this is not true any more. These days I really want Vim, not classical Vi. FreeBSD on ESXi ARM Fling: Fixing Virtual Hardware (https://vincerants.com/freebsd-on-esxi-arm-fling-fixing-virtual-hardware/) With the current state of FreeBSD on ARM in general, a number of hardware drivers are either set to not auto-load on boot, or are entirely missing altogether. This page is to document my findings with various bits of hardware, and if possible, list fixes. Introduction of a new FreeBSD Remote Process Plugin in LLDB (https://www.moritz.systems/blog/introduction-of-a-new-freebsd-remote-process-plugin-in-lldb/) Moritz Systems have been contracted by the FreeBSD Foundation to modernize the LLDB debugger’s support for FreeBSD. We are writing a new plugin utilizing the more modern client-server layout that is already used by Darwin, Linux, NetBSD and (unofficially) OpenBSD. The new plugin is going to gradually replace the legacy one. OpenBSD Laptop (https://functionallyparanoid.com/2020/10/14/openbsd-laptop/) Hi, I know it’s been a while. I recently had to nuke and re-pave my personal laptop and I thought it would be a nice thing to share with the community how I set up OpenBSD on it so that I have a useful, modern, secure environment for getting work done. I’m not going to say I’m the expert on this or that this is the BEST way to set up OpenBSD, but I thought it would be worthwhile for folks doing Google searches to at least get my opinion on this. So, given that, let’s go… 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 Ethan - Linux user wanting to try out OpenBSD (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/375/feedback/Ethan%20-%20Linux%20user%20wanting%20to%20try%20out%20OpenBSD.md) iian - Learning IT (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/375/feedback/iian%20-%20Learning%20IT.md) johnny - bsd swag (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/375/feedback/johnny%20-%20bsd%20swag.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
374: OpenBSD’s 25th anniversary
OpenBSD 6.8 has been released, NetBSD 9.1 is out, OpenZFS devsummit report, BastilleBSD’s native container management for FreeBSD, cleaning up old tarsnap backups, Michael W. Lucas’ book sale, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines OpenBSD 6.8 (https://www.openbsd.org/68.html) Released Oct 18, 2020. (OpenBSD's 25th anniversary) NetBSD 9.1 Released (https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-9/NetBSD-9.1.html) The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.1, the first update of the NetBSD 9 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. OpenZFS Developer Summit 2020 (https://klarasystems.com/articles/openzfs-developer-summit-part-1/) As with most other conferences in the last six months, this year’s OpenZFS Developer’s Summit was a bit different than usual. Held via Zoom to accommodate for 2020’s new normal in terms of social engagements, the conference featured a mix of talks delivered live via webinars, and breakout sessions held as regular meetings. This helped recapture some of the “hallway track” that would be lost in an online conference. • After attending the conference, I wrote up some of my notes from each of the talks • Part 2 (https://klarasystems.com/articles/openzfs-developer-summit-part-2/) ZFS and FreeBSD Support Klara offers flexible Support Subscriptions for your ZFS and FreeBSD infrastructure, simply sign up for our monthly subscription! What's even better is that for the month of October we are giving away 3 months for free, for every yearly subscription, and one month free when you sign up for a 6-months subscription! Check it out on our website! (https://klarasystems.com/support/) News Roundup BastilleBSD - native container management for FreeBSD (https://fibric.hashnode.dev/bastillebsd-native-container-management-for-freebsd) Some time ago, I had the requirement to use FreeBSD in a project, and soon the question came up if Docker and Kubernetes can be used. On FreeBSD, Docker is not very well supported, and even if you can get it running, Linux is used in a Docker container. My experience with Docker on FreeBSD is awful, and so I started looking for alternatives. A quick search on one of the most significant online search engines led me to Jails and then to BastilleBSD. Tarsnap – cleaning up old backups (https://dan.langille.org/2020/09/10/tarsnap-cleaning-up-old-backups/) I use Tarsnap for my critical data. Case in point, I use it to backup my Bacula database dump. I use Bacula to backup my hosts. The database in question keeps track of what was backed up, from what host, the file size, checksum, where that backup is now, and many other items. Losing this data is annoying but not a disaster. It can be recreated from the backup volumes, but that is time consuming. As it is, the file is dumped daily, and rsynced to multiple locations. MWL - BookSale (https://mwl.io/archives/8009) For those interested in such things, I recently posted my 60,000th tweet. This prodded me to try an experiment I’ve been pondering for a while. Over at my ebookstore, two of my books are now on a “Name Your Own Price” sale. You can get git commit murder and PAM Mastery for any price you wish, with a minimum of $1. Beastie Bits Brian Kernighan: UNIX, C, AWK, AMPL, and Go Programming | Lex Fridman Podcast #109 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9upVbGSBFo) The UNIX Time-Sharing System - Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson - July 1974 (https://chsasank.github.io/classic_papers/unix-time-sharing-system.html#) Using a 1930 Teletype as a Linux Terminal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE) *** ###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 lars - infosec handbook (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/374/feedback/lars%20-%20infosec%20handbook.md) scott - zfs import (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/374/feedback/scott%20-%20zfs%20import.md) zhong - first episode (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/374/feedback/zhong%20-%20first%20episode.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
373: Kyle Evans Interview
We have an interview with Kyle Evans for you this week. We talk about his grep project, lua and flua in base, as well as bectl, being on the core team and a whole lot of other stuff. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Interview - Kyle Evans - kevans@freebsd.org (mailto:kevans@freebsd.org) / @kaevans91 (https://twitter.com/kaevans91) 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. Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv)
372: Slow SSD scrubs
Wayland on BSD, My BSD sucks less than yours, Even on SSDs, ongoing activity can slow down ZFS scrubs drastically, OpenBSD on the Desktop, simple shell status bar for OpenBSD and cwm, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines Wayland on BSD (https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/wayland_on_netbsd_trials_and) After I posted about the new default window manager in NetBSD I got a few questions, including "when is NetBSD switching from X11 to Wayland?", Wayland being X11's "new" rival. In this blog post, hopefully I can explain why we aren't yet! My BSD sucks less than yours (https://www.bsdfrog.org/pub/events/my_bsd_sucks_less_than_yours-full_paper.pdf) This paper will look at some of the differences between the FreeBSD and OpenBSD operating systems. It is not intended to be solely technical but will also show the different "visions" and design decisions that rule the way things are implemented. It is expected to be a subjective view from two BSD developers and does not pretend to represent these projects in any way. Video + EuroBSDCon 2017 Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhpaKuXKob4) + EuroBSDCon 2017 Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYp70KWD824) News Roundup Even on SSDs, ongoing activity can slow down ZFS scrubs drastically (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/ZFSSSDActivitySlowsScrubs) Back in the days of our OmniOS fileservers, which used HDs (spinning rust) across iSCSI, we wound up changing kernel tunables to speed up ZFS scrubs and saw a significant improvement. When we migrated to our current Linux fileservers with SSDs, I didn't bother including these tunables (or the Linux equivalent), because I expected that SSDs were fast enough that it didn't matter. Indeed, our SSD pools generally scrub like lightning. OpenBSD on the Desktop (Part I) (https://paedubucher.ch/articles/2020-09-05-openbsd-on-the-desktop-part-i.html) Let's install OpenBSD on a Lenovo Thinkpad X270. I used this computer for my computer science studies. It has both Arch Linux and Windows 10 installed as dual boot. Now that I'm no longer required to run Windows, I can ditch the dual boot and install an operating system of my choice. A simple shell status bar for OpenBSD and cwm(1) (https://www.tumfatig.net/20200923/a-simple-shell-status-bar-for-cwm/) These days, I try to use simple and stock software as much as possible on my OpenBSD laptop. I’ve been playing with cwm(1) for weeks and I was missing a status bar. After trying things like Tint2, Polybar etc, I discovered @gonzalo’s termbar. Thanks a lot! As I love scripting, I decided to build my own. Beastie Bits DragonFly v5.8.3 released to address to issues (http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2020-September/769777.html) OpenSSH 8.4 released (http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-8.4) 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 Dane - FreeBSD vs Linux in Microservices and Containters (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/372/feedback/Dane%20-%20FreeBSD%20vs%20Linux%20in%20Microservices%20and%20Containters.md) Mason - questions.md (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/372/feedback/Mason%20-%20questions.md) Michael - Tmux License.md (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/372/feedback/Michael%20-%20Tmux%20License.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
371: Wildcards running wild
New Project: zedfs.com, TrueNAS CORE Ready for Deployment, IPC in FreeBSD 11: Performance Analysis, Unix Wildcards Gone Wild, Unix Wars, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines My New Project: zedfs.com (https://www.oshogbo.vexillium.org/blog/80/) Have you ever had an idea that keeps coming back to you over and over again? For a week? For a month? I know that feeling. My new project was born from this feeling. On this blog, I mix content a lot. I have written personal posts (not many of them, but still), FreeBSD development posts, development posts, security posts, and ZFS posts. This mixed content can be problematic sometimes. I share a lot of stuff here, and readers don’t know what to expect next. I am just excited by so many things, and I want to share that excitement with you! TrueNAS CORE is Ready for Deployment (https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/truenas-12-rc-1/) TrueNAS 12.0 RC1 was released yesterday and with it, TrueNAS CORE is ready for deployment. The merger of FreeNAS and TrueNAS into a unified software image can now begin its path into mainstream use. TrueNAS CORE is the new FreeNAS and is on schedule. The TrueNAS 12.0 BETA process started in June and has been the most successful BETA release ever with more than 3,000 users and only minor issues. Ars Technica provided a detailed technical walkthrough of the original BETA. There is a long list of features and performance improvements. During the BETA process, TrueNAS 12.0 demonstrated over 1.2 Million IOPS and over 23GB/s on a TrueNAS M60. News Roundup Interprocess Communication in FreeBSD 11: Performance Analysis (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.02145.pdf) Interprocess communication, IPC, is one of the most fundamental functions of a modern operating system, playing an essential role in the fabric of contemporary applications. This report conducts an investigation in FreeBSD of the real world performance considerations behind two of the most common IPC mechanisms; pipes and sockets. A simple benchmark provides a fair sense of effective bandwidth for each, and analysis using DTrace, hardware performance counters and the operating system’s source code is presented. We note that pipes outperform sockets by 63% on average across all configurations, and further that the size of userspace transmission buffers has a profound effect on performance — larger buffers are beneficial up to a point (∼ 32-64 KiB) after which performance collapses as a result of devastating cache exhaustion. A deep scrutiny of the probe effects at play is also presented, justifying the validity of conclusions drawn from these experiments. Back To The Future: Unix Wildcards Gone Wild (https://www.defensecode.com/public/DefenseCode_Unix_WildCards_Gone_Wild.txt) First of all, this article has nothing to do with modern hacking techniques like ASLR bypass, ROP exploits, 0day remote kernel exploits or Chrome's Chain-14-Different-Bugs-To-Get-There... Nope, nothing of the above. This article will cover one interesting old-school Unix hacking technique, that will still work nowadays in 2013. Unix Wars (https://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_unix_war.htm) Dozens of different operating systems have been developed over the years, but only Unix has grown in so many varieties. There are three main branches. Four factors have facilitated this growth... 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 Chris - installing FreeBSD 13-current (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/371/feedback/Chris%20-%20installing%20FreeBSD%2013-current.md) Dane - FreeBSD History Lesson (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/371/feedback/Dane%20-%20FreeBSD%20History%20Lesson.md) Marc - linux compat (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/371/feedback/Marc%20-%20linux%20compat.md) Mason - apropos battery (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/371/feedback/Mason%20-%20apropos%20battery.md) Paul - a topic idea (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/371/feedback/Paul%20-%20a%20topic%20idea.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv)
370: Testing shutdown
The world’s first OpenZFS based live image, FreeBSD Subversion to Git Migration video, FreeBSD Instant-workstation 2020, testing the shutdown mechanism, login_ldap added to OpenBSD, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines FuryBSD 2020-Q3 The world’s first OpenZFS based live image (https://www.furybsd.org/furybsd-2020-q3-the-worlds-first-openzfs-based-live-image/) FuryBSD is a tool to test drive stock FreeBSD desktop images in read write mode to see if it will work for you before installing. In order to provide the most reliable experience possible while preserving the integrity of the system the LiveCD now leverages ZFS, compression, replication, a memory file system, and reroot (pivot root). FreeBSD Subversion to Git Migration: Pt 1 Why? (https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/09/freebsd-subversion-to-git-migration.html) FreeBSD moving to Git: Why? With luck, I'll be writing a few blogs on FreeBSD's move to git later this year. Today, we'll start with "why"? Video from Warner Losh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9lKr_M-DI) News Roundup FreeBSD Instant-workstation 2020 (https://euroquis.nl/freebsd/2020/09/17/instant-workstation.html) A little over a year ago I published an instant-workstation script for FreeBSD. The idea is to have an installed FreeBSD system, then run a shell script that uses only base-system utilities and installs and configures a workstation setup for you. nut – testing the shutdown mechanism (https://dan.langille.org/2020/09/10/nut-testing-the-shutdown-mechanism/) Following on from my recent nut setup, this is the second in a series of three posts. The next post will deal with adjusting startup and shutdown times to be sure everything proceeds as required. login_ldap added to OpenBSD -current (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20200913081040) With this commit, Martijn van Duren (martijn@) added login_ldap(8) to -current + https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=159992319027593&w=2 Beastie Bits NetBSD current now has GCC 9.3.0 for x86/ARM (https://twitter.com/netbsd/status/1305082782457245696) MidnightBSD 1.2.8 (https://www.justjournal.com/users/mbsd/entry/33802) MidnightBSD 2.0-Current (https://www.justjournal.com/users/mbsd/entry/33806) Retro UNIX 8086 v1 operating system has been developed by Erdogan Tan as a special purposed derivation of original UNIX v1 (https://www.singlix.com/runix/) *** 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 Rick - rcorder (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/370/feedback/Rick%20-%20rcorder.md) Dan - machiatto bin (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/370/feedback/dan%20-%20machiatto%20bin.md) Luis - old episodes (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/370/feedback/luis%20-%20old%20episodes.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv)
369: Where rc.d belongs
High Availability Router/Firewall Using OpenBSD, CARP, pfsync, and ifstated, Building the Development Version of Emacs on NetBSD, rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc, FreeBSD 11.3 EOL, OPNsense 20.7.1 Released, MidnightBSD 1.2.7 out, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/bsdnow) Headlines High Availability Router/Firewall Using OpenBSD, CARP, pfsync, and ifstated (https://dzone.com/articles/high-availability-routerfirewall-using-openbsd-car) I have been running OpenBSD on a Soekris net5501 for my router/firewall since early 2012. Because I run a multitude of services on this system (more on that later), the meager 500Mhz AMD Geode + 512MB SDRAM was starting to get a little sluggish while trying to do anything via the terminal. Despite the perceived performance hit during interactive SSH sessions, it still supported a full 100Mbit connection with NAT, so I wasn’t overly eager to change anything. Luckily though, my ISP increased the bandwidth available on my plan tier to 150Mbit+. Unfortunately, the Soekris only contained 4xVIA Rhine Fast Ethernet. So now, I was using a slow system and wasting money by not being able to fully utilize my connection. Building the Development Version of Emacs on NetBSD (https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2020/08/25/building-the-development-version-of-emacs-on-netbsd/) I hadn’t really planned on installing a NetBSD VM (after doing all the other two BSDs), but then a NetBSD-related Emacs bug report arrived. News Roundup rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc (https://jmmv.dev/2020/08/rcd-libexec-etc.html) Let’s open with the controversy: the scripts that live under /etc/rc.d/ in FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are in the wrong place. They all should live in /libexec/rc.d/ because they are code, not configuration. This misplacement is something that has bugged me for ages but I never had the energy to open this can of worms back when I was very involved in NetBSD. I suspect it would have been a draining discussion and a very difficult thing to change. FreeBSD 11.3 EOL (https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2020-September/001982.html) As of September 30, 2020, FreeBSD 11.3 will reach end-of-life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of FreeBSD 11.3 are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a newer release as soon as possible. OPNsense 20.7.1 Released (https://opnsense.org/opnsense-20-7-1-released/) Overall, the jump to HardenedBSD 12.1 is looking promising from our end. From the reported issues we still have more logging quirks to investigate and especially Netmap support (used in IPS and Sensei) is lacking in some areas that were previously working. Patches are being worked on already so we shall get there soon enough. Stay tuned. MidnightBSD 1.2.7 out (https://www.justjournal.com/users/mbsd/entry/33801) MidnightBSD 1.2.7 is available via the FTP/HTTP and mirrors as well as github. It includes several bug fixes and security updates over the last ISO release and is recommended for new installations. Users who don't want to updatee the whole OS, should consider at least updating libmport as there are many package management fixes Beastie Bits Tarsnap podcast (https://blog.firosolutions.com/2020/08/tarsnap-podcast/) NetBSD Tips and Tricks (http://students.engr.scu.edu/~sschaeck/netbsd/index.html) FreeBSD mini-git Primer (https://hackmd.io/hJgnfzd5TMK-VHgUzshA2g) GhostBSD Financial Reports (https://ghostbsd.org/financial_reports_from_January_to_June_2020) *** 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 Daniel - Documentation Tooling (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/369/feedback/Daniel%20-%20Documentation%20Tooling.md) Fongaboo - Where did the ZFS tutorial Go? (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/369/feedback/Fongaboo%20-%20Where%20did%20the%20ZFS%20Tutorial%20Go.md) Johnny - Browser Cold Wars (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/369/feedback/Johnny%20-%20Browser%20Cold%20Wars.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv)
368: Changing OS roles
Modernizing the OpenBSD Console, OS roles have changed, FreeBSD Cluster with Pacemaker and Corosync, Wine in a 32-bit sandbox on 64-bit NetBSD, Find package which provides a file in OpenBSD, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines Modernizing the OpenBSD Console (https://www.cambus.net/modernizing-the-openbsd-console/) At the beginning were text mode consoles. Traditionally, *BSD and Linux on i386 and amd64 used text mode consoles which by default provided 25 rows of 80 columns, the "80x25 mode". This mode uses a 8x16 font stored in the VGA BIOS (which can be slightly different across vendors). OpenBSD uses the wscons(4) console framework, inherited from NetBSD OS roles have changed (https://rubenerd.com/the-roles-of-oss-have-changed/) Though I do wonder sometimes, with just a slight tweak to history, how things might have been different. In another dimension somewhere, I’m using the latest BeOS-powered PowerPC laptop, and a shiny new Palm smartphone. Both of these represented the pinnacle of UI design in the 1990s, and still in the 2020s have yet to be surpassed. People call me an Apple fanboy, but I’d drop all of it in a second for that gear. News Roundup FreeBSD Cluster with Pacemaker and Corosync (https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/freebsd-cluster-with-pacemaker-and-corosync/) I always missed ‘proper’ cluster software for FreeBSD systems. Recently I got to run several Pacemaker/Corosync based clusters on Linux systems. I thought how to make similar high availability solutions on FreeBSD and I was really shocked when I figured out that both Pacemaker and Corosync tools are available in the FreeBSD Ports and packages as net/pacemaker2 and net/corosync2 respectively. Wine in a 32-bit sandbox on 64-bit NetBSD (https://washbear.neocities.org/wine-sandbox.html) "Mainline pkgsrc" can't do strange multi-arch Wine builds yet, so a 32-bit sandbox seems like a reasonable way to use 32-bit Wine on amd64 without resorting to running real Windows in NVMM. We'll see if this was a viable alternative to re-reviewing the multi-arch support in pkgsrc-wip... We're using sandboxctl, which is a neat tool for quickly shelling into a different NetBSD userspace. Maybe you also don't trust the Windows applications you're running too much - sandboxctl creates a chroot based on a fresh system image, and chroot on NetBSD is fairly bombproof. Find package which provides a file in OpenBSD (https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2020-09-04-pkglocate-openbsd.html) There is one very handy package on OpenBSD named pkglocatedb which provides the command pkglocate. If you need to find a file or binary/program and you don’t know which package contains it, use pkglocate. Beastie Bits OpenBSD for 1.5 Years: Confessions of a Linux Heretic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTShQIXSdqM) OpenBSD 6.8 Beta Tagged (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20200831192811) Hammer2 and growth (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/09/08/24933.html) Understanding a FreeBSD kernel vulnerability (https://www.thezdi.com/blog/2020/9/1/cve-2020-7460-freebsd-kernel-privilege-escalation) *** 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 Rob - 7 years (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/368/feedback/Bruce%20-%207%20years.md) Kurt - Microserver (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/368/feedback/Kurt%20-%20Microserver.md) Rob - Interviews (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/368/feedback/Rob%20-%20Interviews.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
367: Changing jail datasets
A 35 Year Old Bug in Patch, Sandbox for FreeBSD, Changing from one dataset to another within a jail, You don’t need tmux or screen for ZFS, HardenedBSD August 2020 Status Report and Call for Donations, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines A 35 Year Old Bug in Patch (http://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-35-year-old-bug-in-patch-found-in.html) Larry Wall posted patch 1.3 to mod.sources on May 8, 1985. A number of versions followed over the years. It's been a faithful alley for a long, long time. I've never had a problem with patch until I embarked on the 2.11BSD restoration project. In going over the logs very carefully, I've discovered a bug that bites this effort twice. It's quite interesting to use 27 year old patches to find this bug while restoring a 29 year old OS... Sandbox for FreeBSD (https://www.relkom.sk/en/fbsd_sandbox.shtml) A sandbox is a software which artificially limits access to the specific resources on the target according to the assigned policy. The sandbox installs hooks to the kernel syscalls and other sub-systems in order to interrupt the events triggered by the application. From the application point of view, application working as usual, but when it wants to access, for instance, /dev/kmem the sandbox software decides against the assigned sandbox scheme whether to grant or deny access. In our case, the sandbox is a kernel module which uses MAC (Mandatory Access Control) Framework developed by the TrustedBSD team. All necessary hooks were introduced to the FreeBSD kernel. Source Code (https://gitlab.com/relkom/sandbox) Documentation (https://www.relkom.sk/en/fbsd_sandbox_docs.shtml) News Roundup Changing from one dataset to another within a jail (https://dan.langille.org/2020/08/16/changing-from-one-dataset-to-another-within-a-freebsd-iocage-jail/) ZFS has a the ability to share itself within a jail. That gives the jail some autonomy, and I like that. I’ve written briefly about that, specifically for iocage. More recently, I started using a zfs snapshot for caching clearing. The purpose of this post is to document the existing configuration of the production FreshPorts webserver and outline the plan on how to modify it for more zfs-snapshot-based cache clearing. You don’t need tmux or screen for ZFS (https://rubenerd.com/you-dont-need-tmux-or-screen-for-zfs/) Back in January I mentioned how to add redundancy to a ZFS pool by adding a mirrored drive. Someone with a private account on Twitter asked me why FreeBSD—and NetBSD!—doesn’t ship with a tmux or screen equivilent in base in order to daemonise the process and let them run in the background. ZFS already does this for its internal commands. HardenedBSD August 2020 Status Report and Call for Donations (https://hardenedbsd.org/article/shawn-webb/2020-08-15/hardenedbsd-august-2020-status-report-and-call-donations) This last month has largely been a quiet one. I've restarted work on porting five-year-old work from the Code Pointer Integrity (CPI) project into HardenedBSD. Chiefly, I've started forward-porting the libc and rtld bits from the CPI project and now need to look at llvm compiler/linker enhancements. We need to be able to apply SafeStack to shared objects, not just application binaries. This forward-porting work I'm doing is to support that effort. The infrastructure has settled and is now churning normally and happily. We're still working out bandwidth issues. We hope to have a new fiber line ran by the end of September. As part of this status report, I'm issuing a formal call for donations. I'm aiming for $4,000.00 USD for a newer self-hosted Gitea server. I hope to purchase the new server before the end of 2020. Important parts of Unix's history happened before readline support was common (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/TimeBeforeReadline) Unix and things that run on Unix have been around for a long time now. In particular, GNU Readline was first released in 1989 (as was Bash), which is long enough ago for it (or lookalikes) to become pretty much pervasive, especially in Unix shells. Today it's easy to think of readline support as something that's always been there. But of course this isn't the case. Unix in its modern form dates from V7 in 1979 and 4.2 BSD in 1983, so a lot of Unix was developed before readline and was to some degree shaped by the lack of it. 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 Mason - mailserver (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/367/feedback/Mason%20-%20mailserver.md) casey - freebsd on decline (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/367/feedback/casey%20-%20freebsd%20on%20decline.md) denis - postgres (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/367/feedback/denis%20-%20postgres.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***