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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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) ***
366: Bootloader zpool checkpoints
OpenZFS with ZSTD lands in FreeBSD 13, LibreSSL doc status update, FreeBSD on SPARC64 (is dead), Bringing zpool checkpoints to a FreeBSD bootloader, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines OpenZFS with ZSTD land in FreeBSD 13 (https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=364746) ZStandard Compression for OpenZFS (https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/commit/10b3c7f5e424f54b3ba82dbf1600d866e64ec0a0) > The primary benefit is maintaining a completely shared code base with the community allowing FreeBSD to receive new features sooner and with less effort. > I would advise against doing 'zpool upgrade' or creating indispensable pools using new features until this change has had a month+ to soak. Rebasing FreeBSD’s OpenZFS on the new upstream was sponsored by iXsystems The competition of ZSTD support for OpenZFS was sponsored by the FreeBSD Foundation *** LibreSSL documentation status update (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20200817063735) More than six years ago, LibreSSL was forked from OpenSSL, and almost two years ago, i explained the status of LibreSSL documentation during EuroBSDCon 2018 in Bucuresti. So it seems providing an update might be in order. Note that this is not an update regarding LibreSSL status in general because i'm not the right person to talk about the big picture of working on the LibreSSL code, my work has been quite focussed on documentation. All the same, it is fair to say that even though the number of developers working on it is somewhat limited, the LibreSSL project is quite alive, typically having a release every few months. Progress continues being made with respect to porting and adding new functionality (for example regarding TLSv1.3, CMS, RSA-PSS, RSA-OAEP, GOST, SM3, SM4, XChaCha20 during the last two years), OpenSSL compatibility improvements (including providing additional OpenSSL-1.1 APIs), and lots of bug fixes and code cleanup. FreeBSD on SPARC64 (is dead) (https://eerielinux.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/freebsd-on-sparc64-is-dead/) ’m coming pretty late to the party, because SPARC64 support in FreeBSD is apparently doomed: After the POWER platform made the switch to a LLVM/Clang-based toolchain, SPARC64 is one of the last ones that still uses the ancient GCC 4.2-based toolchain that the project wants to finally get rid off (it has already happened as I was writing this – looks like the firm plan was not so firm after all, since they killed it off early). And compared to the other platforms it has seen not too much love in recent times… SPARC64 being a great platform, I’d be quite sad to see it go. But before that happens let’s see what the current status is and what would need to be done if it were to survive, shall we? News Roundup Bringing zpool checkpoints to a FreeBSD bootloader (https://www.oshogbo.vexillium.org/blog/79/) Almost two years ago I wrote a blog post about checkpoints in ZFS. I didn’t hide that I was a big fan of them. That said, after those two years, I still feel that there are underappreciated features in the ZFS world, so I decided to do something about that. Currently, one of the best practices for upgrading your operating system is to use boot environments. They are a great feature for managing multiple kernels and userlands. They are based on juggling which ZFS datasets are mounted. Each dataset has its own version of the system. Unfortunately, boot environments have their limitations. If we, for example, upgrade our ZFS pool, we may not be able to use older versions of the system anymore. The big advantage of boot environments is that they have very good tools. Two main tools are beadm (which was created by vermaden) and bectl (which currently is in the FreeBSD base system). These tools allow us to create and manage boot environments. Beastie Bits The First Unix Port (https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@inf/@scsse/documents/doc/uow103747.pdf) TLS Mastery updates, August 2020 (https://mwl.io/archives/7346) What is the Oldest BSD Distribution still around today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww60o940kEk) 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 ben - zfs send questions (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/366/feedback/ben%20-%20zfs%20send%20questions.md) lars - zfs pool question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/366/feedback/lars%20-%20zfs%20pool%20question.md) neutron - bectl vs beadm (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/366/feedback/neutron%20-%20bectl%20vs%20beadm.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv)
365: Whole year round
FreeBSD USB Audio, Kyua: An introduction for NetBSD users, Keeping backup ZFS on Linux kernel modules around, CLI Tools 235x Faster than Hadoop, FreeBSD Laptop Battery Life Status Command, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines FreeBSD USB Audio (https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/freebsd-usb-audio) I recently got a Behringer UMC22 sound card for video conferencing and DJing. This page documents what I’ve learned about using this sound card, and USB audio in general, on FreeBSD. tl;dr: Everything works as long as the sound card follows the USB audio device class specification. Kyua: An introduction for NetBSD users (https://wiki.netbsd.org/kyua/) Kyua's current goal is to reimplement only the ATF tools while maintaining backwards compatibility with the tests written with the ATF libraries (i.e. with the NetBSD test suite). Because Kyua is a replacement of some ATF components, the end goal is to integrate Kyua into the NetBSD base system (just as ATF is) and remove the deprecated ATF components. Removing the deprecated components will allow us to make the above-mentioned improvements to Kyua, as well as many others, without having to deal with the obsolete ATF code base. Discussing how and when this transition might happen is out of the scope of this document at the moment. News Roundup Keeping backup ZFS on Linux kernel modules around (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/ZFSOnLinuxModuleBackups) I'm a long term user of ZFS on Linux and over pretty much all of the time I've used it, I've built it from the latest development version. Generally this means I update my ZoL build at the same time as I update my Fedora kernel, since a ZoL update requires a kernel reboot anyway. This is a little bit daring, of course, although the ZoL development version has generally been quite solid (and this way I get the latest features and improvements long before I otherwise would). Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html) As I was browsing the web and catching up on some sites I visit periodically, I found a cool article from Tom Hayden about using Amazon Elastic Map Reduce (EMR) and mrjob in order to compute some statistics on win/loss ratios for chess games he downloaded from the millionbase archive, and generally have fun with EMR. Since the data volume was only about 1.75GB containing around 2 million chess games, I was skeptical of using Hadoop for the task, but I can understand his goal of learning and having fun with mrjob and EMR. Since the problem is basically just to look at the result lines of each file and aggregate the different results, it seems ideally suited to stream processing with shell commands. I tried this out, and for the same amount of data I was able to use my laptop to get the results in about 12 seconds (processing speed of about 270MB/sec), while the Hadoop processing took about 26 minutes (processing speed of about 1.14MB/sec). FreeBSD Laptop Find Out Battery Life Status Command (https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/freebsd-finding-out-battery-life-state-on-laptop/) I know how to find out battery life status using Linux operating system. How do I monitor battery status on a laptop running FreeBSD version 9.x/10.x/11.x/12.x? You can use any one of the following commands to get battery status under FreeBSD laptop including remaining battery life and more. Beastie Bits BSD Beer (https://i.redd.it/hlh8luidzgg51.jpg) Awk for JSON (https://github.com/mohd-akram/jawk) Drawing Pictures The Unix Way - with pic and troff (https://youtu.be/oG2A_1vC6aM) Refactoring the FreeBSD Kernel with Checked C (https://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jzhou41/papers/freebsd_checkedc.pdf) 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 Jason - German Locales (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/365/jason%20-%20german%20locale.md) pcwizz - Router Style Device (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/365/pcwizz%20-%20router%20style%20device.md) predrag - OpenBSD Router Hardware (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/365/predrag%20-%20openbsd%20router%20hardware.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
364: FreeBSD Wireless Grind
FreeBSD Qt WebEngine GPU Acceleration, the grind of FreeBSD’s wireless stack, thoughts on overlooking Illumos's syseventadm, when Unix learned to reboot, New EXT2/3/4 File-System driver in DragonflyBSD, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines FreeBSD Qt WebEngine GPU Acceleration (https://euroquis.nl/freebsd/2020/07/21/webengine.html) FreeBSD has a handful of Qt WebEngine-based browsers. Falkon, and Otter-Browser, and qutebrowser and probably others, too. All of them can run into issues on FreeBSD with GPU-accelerated rendering not working. Let’s look at some of the workarounds. NetBSD on the Nanopi Neo2 (https://www.cambus.net/netbsd-on-the-nanopi-neo2/) The NanoPi NEO2 from FriendlyARM has been serving me well since 2018, being my test machine for OpenBSD/arm64 related things. As NetBSD/evbarm finally gained support for AArch64 in NetBSD 9.0, released back in February, I decided to give it a try on this device. The board only has 512MB of RAM, and this is where NetBSD really shines. Things have become a lot easier since jmcneill@ now provides bootable ARM images for a variety of devices, including the NanoPi NEO2. I'm back into the grind of FreeBSD's wireless stack and 802.11ac (https://adrianchadd.blogspot.com/2020/07/im-back-into-grind-of-freebsds-wireless.html) Yes, it's been a while since I posted here and yes, it's been a while since I was actively working on FreeBSD's wireless stack. Life's been .. well, life. I started the ath10k port in 2015. I wasn't expecting it to take 5 years, but here we are. My life has changed quite a lot since 2015 and a lot of the things I was doing in 2015 just stopped being fun for a while. But the stars have aligned and it's fun again, so here I am. News Roundup Some thoughts on us overlooking Illumos's syseventadm (https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/OverlookingSyseventadm) In a comment on my praise of ZFS on Linux's ZFS event daemon, Joshua M. Clulow noted that Illumos (and thus OmniOS) has an equivalent in syseventadm, which dates back to Solaris. I hadn't previously known about syseventadm, despite having run Solaris fileservers and OmniOS fileservers for the better part of a decade, and that gives me some tangled feelings. When Unix learned to reboot (https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/07/when-unix-learned-to-reboot2.html) Recently, a friend asked me the history of halt, and when did we have to stop with the sync / sync / sync dance before running halt or reboot. The two are related, it turns out. DragonFlyBSD Lands New EXT2/3/4 File-System Driver (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DragonFlyBSD-New-EXT2FS) While DragonFlyBSD has its own, original HAMMER2 file-system, for those needing to access data from EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 file-systems, there is a brand new "ext2fs" driver implementation for this BSD operating system. DragonFlyBSD has long offered an EXT2 file-system driver (that also handles EXT3 and EXT4) while hitting their Git tree this week is a new version. The new sys/vfs/ext2fs driver, which will ultimately replace their existing sys/gnu/vfs/ext2fs driver is based on a port from FreeBSD code. As such, this driver is BSD licensed rather than GPL. But besides the more liberal license to jive with the BSD world, this new driver has various feature/functionality improvements over the prior version. However, there are some known bugs so for the time being both file-system drivers will co-exist. Beastie Bits LibreOffice 7.0 call for testing (https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-office/2020-July/005822.html) More touchpad support (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/07/15/24747.html) 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 Casey - openbsd wirewall (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/364/feedback/casey%20-%20openbsd%20wirewall.md) Daryl - zfs (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/364/feedback/daryl%20-%20zfs.md) Raymond - hpe microserver (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/364/feedback/raymond%20-%20hpe%20microserver.md) - Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
363: Traditional Unix toolchains
FreeBSD Q2 Quarterly Status report of 2020, Traditional Unix Toolchains, BastilleBSD 0.7 released, Finding meltdown on DragonflyBSD, and more NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines FreeBSD Quarterly Report (https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2020-04-2020-06.html) This report will be covering FreeBSD related projects between April and June, and covers a diverse set of topics ranging from kernel updates over userland and ports, as well to third-party work. Some highlights picked with the roll of a d100 include, but are not limited to, the ability to forcibly unmounting UFS when the underlying media becomes inaccessible, added preliminary support for Bluetooth Low Energy, a introduction to the FreeBSD Office Hours, and a repository of software collections called potluck to be installed with the pot utility, as well as many many more things. As a little treat, readers can also get a rare report from the quarterly team. Finally, on behalf of the quarterly team, I would like to extend my deepest appreciation and thank you to salvadore@, who decided to take down his shingle. His contributions not just the quarterly reports themselves, but also the surrounding tooling to many-fold ease the work, are immeasurable. Traditional Unix Toolchains (https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/07/traditional-unix-toolchains.html?m=1) Older Unix systems tend to be fairly uniform in how they handle the so-called 'toolchain' for creating binaries. This blog will give a quick overview of the toolchain pipeline for Unix systems that follow the V7 tradition (which evolved along with Unix, a topic for a separate blog maybe). Unix is a pipeline based system, either physically or logically. One program takes input, process the data and produces output. The input and output have some interface they obey, usually text-based. The Unix toolchain is no different. News Roundup Bastille Day 2020 : v0.7 released (https://github.com/BastilleBSD/bastille/releases/tag/0.7.20200714) This release matures the project from 0.6.x -> 0.7.x. Continued testing and bug fixes are proving Bastille capable for a range of use-cases. New (experimental) features are examples of innovation from community contribution and feedback. Thank you. Beastie Bits Finding meltdown on DragonFly (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/07/28/24787.html) NetBSD Server Outage (https://mobile.twitter.com/netbsd/status/1286898183923277829) *** 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 Vincent - Gnome 3 question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/363/feedback/vincent%20-%20gnome3.md) Malcolm - ZFS question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/363/feedback/malcolm%20-%20zfs.md) Hassan - Video question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/363/feedback/hassan%20-%20video.md) For those that watch on youtube, don’t forget to subscribe to our new YouTube Channel if you want updates when we post them on YT (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/363/feedback/new-bsdnow-youtube-channel.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***
362: 2.11-BSD restoration
Interview with Warner Losh about Unix history, the 2.11-BSD restoration project, the Unix heritage society, proper booting, and what devmatch is. Interview - Warner Losh - imp@freebsd.org (mailto:imp@freebsd.org) / @bsdimp (https://twitter.com/bsdimp) BSD 2.11 restoration project 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: Warner Losh.
361: Function-based MicroVM
Emulex: The Cheapest 10gbe for Your Homelab, In Search of 2.11BSD, as released, Fakecracker: NetBSD as a Function Based MicroVM, First powerpc64 snapshots available for OpenBSD, OPNsense 20.1.8 released, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines Emulex: The Cheapest 10gbe for Your Homelab (https://vincerants.com/emulex-the-cheapest-10gbe/) Years ago, the hunt for the cheapest 10gbe NICs resulted in buying Mellanox ConnectX-2 single-port 10gbe network cards from eBay for around $10. Nowadays those cards have increased in cost to around $20-30. While still cheap, not quite the cheapest. There are now alternatives! Before diving into details, let’s get something very clear. If you want the absolute simplest plug-and-play 10gbe LAN for your homelab, pay the extra for Mellanox. If you’re willing to go hands-on, do some simple manual configuration and installation, read on for my experiences with Emulex 10gbe NICs. Emulex NICs can often be had for around $15 on eBay, sometimes even cheaper. I recently picked up a set of 4 of these cards, which came bundled with 6 SFP+ 10g-SR modules for a grand total of $47.48. Considering I can usually find SFP+ modules for about $5/ea, these alone were worth $30. + I have also tried some Solarflare cards that I found cheap, they work ok, but are pickier about optics, and tend to be focused on low-latency, so often don’t manage to saturate the full 10 gbps, topping out around 8 gbps. + I have been using fs.com for optics, patch cables, and DACs. I find DACs are usually cheaper if you are just going between a server and a switch in the same rack, or direct between 2 servers. In Search of 2.11BSD, as released (https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/07/211bsd-original-tapes-recreation.html) Almost all of the BSD releases have been well preserved. If you want to find 1BSD, or 2BSD or 4.3-TAHOE BSD you can find them online with little fuss. However, if you search for 2.11BSD, you'll find it easily enough, but it won't be the original. You'll find either the latest patched version (2.11BSD pl 469), or one of the earlier popular version (pl 430 is popular). You can even find the RetroBSD project which used 2.11BSD as a starting point to create systems for tiny mips-based PIC controllers. You'll find every single patch that's been issued for the system. News Roundup Fakecracker: NetBSD as a Function Based MicroVM (https://imil.net/blog/posts/2020/fakecracker-netbsd-as-a-function-based-microvm/) In November 2018 AWS published an Open Source tool called Firecracker, mostly a virtual machine monitor relying on KVM, a small sized Linux kernel, and a stripped down version of Qemu. What baffled me was the speed at which the virtual machine would fire up and run the service. The whole process is to be compared to a container, but safer, as it does not share the kernel nor any resource, it is a separate and dedicated virtual machine. If you want to learn more on Firecracker‘s internals, here’s a very well put article. First powerpc64 snapshots available for OpenBSD (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20200707001113) Since we reported the first bits of powerpc64 support going into the tree on 16 May, work has progressed at a steady pace, resulting in snapshots now being available for this platform. So, if you have a POWER9 system idling around, go to your nearest mirror and fetch this snapshot. Keep in mind that as this is still very early days, very little handholding is available - you are basically on your own. OPNsense 20.1.8 released (https://opnsense.org/opnsense-20-1-8-released/) Sorry about the delay while we chased a race condition in the updates back to an issue with the latest FreeBSD package manager updates. For now we reverted to our current version but all relevant third party packages have been updated as updates became available over the last weeks, e.g. cURL and Python, and hostapd / wpa_supplicant amongst others. Beastie Bits Old School Disk Partitioning (https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/07/old-school-disk-partitioning.html) Nomad BSD 1.3.2 Released (http://nomadbsd.org/index.html#1.3.2) Chai-Fi (https://github.com/gonzoua/chaifi) 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 Poojan - ZFS Question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/361/feedback/Poojan%20-%20ZFS%20question.md) graceon - supermicro (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/361/feedback/graceon%20-%20supermicro.md) zenbum - groff (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/361/feedback/zenbum%20-%20groff.md) Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) *** Special Guest: Warner Losh.
360: Full circle
Chasing a bad commit, New FreeBSD Core Team elected, Getting Started with NetBSD on the Pinebook Pro, FreeBSD on the Intel 10th Gen i3 NUC, pf table size check and change, and more. NOTES This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) Headlines Chasing a bad commit (https://vishaltelangre.com/chasing-a-bad-commit/) While working on a big project where multiple teams merge their feature branches frequently into a release Git branch, developers often run into situations where they find that some of their work have been either removed, modified or affected by someone else's work accidentally. It can happen in smaller teams as well. Two features could have been working perfectly fine until they got merged together and broke something. That's a highly possible case. There are many other cases which could cause such hard to understand and subtle bugs which even continuous integration (CI) systems running the entire test suite of our projects couldn't catch. We are not going to discuss how such subtle bugs can get into our release branch because that's just a wild territory out there. Instead, we can definitely discuss about how to find a commit that deviated from an expected outcome of a certain feature. The deviation could be any behaviour of our code that we can measure distinctively — either good or bad in general. New FreeBSD Core Team Elected (https://www.freebsdnews.com/2020/07/14/new-freebsd-core-team-elected/) The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of the 2020 Core Team election. Active committers to the project have elected your Eleventh FreeBSD Core Team.! Baptiste Daroussin (bapt) Ed Maste (emaste) George V. Neville-Neil (gnn) Hiroki Sato (hrs) Kyle Evans (kevans) Mark Johnston (markj) Scott Long (scottl) Sean Chittenden (seanc) Warner Losh (imp) *** News Roundup Getting Started with NetBSD on the Pinebook Pro (https://bentsukun.ch/posts/pinebook-pro-netbsd/) If you buy a Pinebook Pro now, it comes with Manjaro Linux on the internal eMMC storage. Let’s install NetBSD instead! The easiest way to get started is to buy a decent micro-SD card (what sort of markings it should have is a science of its own, by the way) and install NetBSD on that. On a warm boot (i.e. when rebooting a running system), the micro-SD card has priority compared to the eMMC, so the system will boot from there. + A FreeBSD developer has borrowed some of the NetBSD code to get audio working on RockPro64 and Pinebook Pro: https://twitter.com/kernelnomicon/status/1282790609778905088 FreeBSD on the Intel 10th Gen i3 NUC (https://adventurist.me/posts/00300) I have ended up with some 10th Gen i3 NUC's (NUC10i3FNH to be specific) to put to work in my testbed. These are quite new devices, the build date on the boxes is 13APR2020. Before I figure out what their true role is (one of them might have to run linux) I need to install FreeBSD -CURRENT and see how performance and hardware support is. pf table size check and change (https://www.dragonflydigest.com/2020/06/29/24698.html) Did you know there’s a default size limit to pf’s state table? I did not, but it makes sense that there is one. If for some reason you bump into this limit (difficult for home use, I’d think), here’s how you change it (http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2020-June/381261.html) There is a table-entries limit specified, you can see current settings with 'pfctl -s all'. You can adjust the limits in the /etc/pf.conf file containing the rules with a line like this near the top: set limit table-entries 100000 + In the original mail thread, there is mention of the FreeBSD sysctl net.pf.request_maxcount, which controls the maximum number of entries that can be sent as a single ioctl(). This allows the user to adjust the memory limit for how big of a list the kernel is willing to allocate memory for. Beastie Bits tmux and bhyve (https://callfortesting.org/tmux/) Azure and FreeBSD (https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/thefreebsdfoundation.freebsd-12_1) Groff Tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvkmnK6-qao&feature=youtu.be) *** ###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. Tarsnap Mastery (https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#tarsnap) Feedback/Questions Chris - ZFS Question (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/360/feedback/Chris%20-%20zfs%20question.md) Patrick - Tarsnap (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/360/feedback/Patrick%20-%20Tarsnap.md) Pin - pkgsrc (https://github.com/BSDNow/bsdnow.tv/blob/master/episodes/360/feedback/pin%20-%20pkgsrc.md) *** Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv (mailto:feedback@bsdnow.tv) ***