FreeBSD 10.1-BETA3 Now Available

The third BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

This is expected to be the final BETA release of the 10.1-RELEASE cycle.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Changes between 10.1-BETA2 and 10.1-BETA3 include:

• Support for serial and null console has been added to the UEFI boot loader.
• A potential panic triggered by referencing a device that has been renamed has been fixed in the cam(4) subsystem.
• OpenPAM has been updated to the Ourouparia (20140912) release.
• New sysctls have been added to vt(4) to enable or disable potentially dangerous key combinations (such as reboot, halt, and break to debugger).
• The mkimg(1) utility has been updated to allow creating empty partition entries.
• The GEOM_ELI class will now cache passphrases for disk decryption, which allows the system to boot after the first passphrase entry if the remaining disks on the system use the same passphrase.
• Support for controlling mfi(4) controller properties has been added to mfiutil(8).
• The /usr/lib32/compat shared library directory has been added to the default ld-elf32.so.1 path.
• Use of "no" for a Norwegian keymap file is now permitted in rc.conf(5).
• Several bug fixes to autofs(5) have been implemented.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA3 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg bootstrap

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install Gnome and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 10.1-BETA3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
performed merging was done correctly.

# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:

# freebsd-update install
It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
FreeBSD 8.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-BETA2 Now Available

The second BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Changes between 10.1-BETA1 and 10.1-BETA2 include:

• UEFI-capable memory stick images and CDROM/DVDROM images are now build by default for the 10.1-RELEASE cycle.
• The gssapi_krb5 library is now included in the gssapi(3) build.
• The default motd(5) text has been changed to clarify the included information and including references to additional resources.
• A potential crash in ctld(8) has been fixed when a getaddrinfo(3) call fails.
• Fix Denial of Service in TCP packet processing.  [SA-14:19.tcp]
• Support for Promise TX8660 8-port 3Gbps HBA has been added.
• A crash in clang(1) triggered by debuginfo has been fixed.
• The kern.features sysctl(8) will now report if SCTP is available in the running kernel.
• Parsing IPv6 nameserver lines in unbound(8) has been fixed.
• A crash in pam(3) has been fixed if neither PAM_RHOST or PAM_TTY are set.
• Several bug fixes and improvements to the vt(4) driver have been merged from FreeBSD-Current.
• The bsdinstall(8) screen prompting if the user would like to use a chroot(8) shell within the newly-installed system for further configuration now defaults to 'No.'
• Several optimizations to the math(3) library have been merged, including new implementations for C99 functions expl(), coshl(), sinhl(), tanhl(), erfl() and erfcl().

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA2 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add \
  /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/All/pkg-*.txz

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install the Subversion, Gnome, and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg install \
  xorg-server xorg gnome2 [...]

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 10.1-BETA2

During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
performed merging was done correctly.

# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:

# freebsd-update install
It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
FreeBSD 8.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 Now Available

The first BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

The image checksums follow are included in the original announcement email.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "stable/10" branch.

A list of changes since 10.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes page.

Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-BETA1 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures.  The images are located here.

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20GB sparse image.

The partition layout is:

• 512k - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
• 1GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
• ~17GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

Note to consumers of the dvd1.iso image: The packages included on the dvd do not have a corresponding pkg(8) repository due to an incompatibility with pkg-1.2.x and pkg-1.3.x.  This will be fixed for BETA2.

The packages will not be recognized by bsdconfig(8), however can be  installed manually.

To install packages from the dvd1.iso installer, create and mount the /dist directory:

# mkdir -p /dist
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /dist

Next, install pkg(8) from the DVD:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add \
  /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/All/pkg-*.txz

At this point, pkg-add(8) can be used to install additional packages from the DVD.  Please note, the REPOS_DIR environment variable should be used each time using the DVD as the package repository, otherwise conflicts with packages from the upstream mirrors may occur when they are fetched.  For example, to install the Subversion, Gnome, and Xorg, run:
 
# env REPOS_DIR=/dist/packages/repos pkg add \
  /dist/packages/freebsd:10:*:*/subversion [...]

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 10.1-BETA1

During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
performed merging was done correctly.

# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:

# freebsd-update install
It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
FreeBSD 8.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat9x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:

# freebsd-update install

Love FreeBSD?  Support this and future releases with a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation!

BSDDay Argentina Trip Report: Damian Vicino

The Foundation recently sponsored Damian Vicino to attend BSDDay Argentina. Here is his trip report:

BSDday is the only BSD conference in South America as far as I know. The event's inception was in 2008 by 2 BSD Users Groups in Buenos Aires City. participated as part of the organisation committee from 2009 - 2012. In 2013, the event had no edition because of some big changes in the livesof the people participating in the organisation committee. In my case, I moved out of the country (and the continent). Thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation, I was able to return to South America for a few weeks this year to re-float the committee and the event, making possible the run of a 5th edition.

We started the preparation a few months before by coordinating remotely, but there was a lot of stuff to be done in-place, so I traveled 10 days earlier. In the days before the event, I coordinated with Universidad de Buenos Aires to finish the arrangements for the space to run the event and the supplies needed for the event. I worked as the main contact for the university and dealt with all the paperwork; being the largest university in Argentina, there is a lot of paperwork for everything. An interesting institutional plus this year is that the Faculty of Science and Department of Computer Science of Universidad de Buenos Aires declared officially the BSDday as an Event of Interest. Simultaneously, Hernan Constante and Matias Celani were coordinating accommodations for one of the speakers who traveled from Mar del Plata and making arrangements to have food & coffee for the event. Thanks for their help and also to Alejandro Lazaro who was helping in all he could remotely since he also moved out of Buenos Aires.

The quantity of proposals for talks received this year was about half the usual. We contacted previous speakers for feedback and we decided to include discussion spaces to find out why and how we can make it better for next year. On August 9th, a few minutes before the event started, the first speaker had family emergency. We decided to delay the opening talk and use the time for a first open discussion about the event and its future. The attendance was the lowest ever, so we focused the first discussion space on this topic. It appears to be a consensus that August is not a good month for the conference, because of the power outages in Buenos Aires in summer. From previous years, we knew that November is not good either. Another apparent reason is the break in continuity of the event (in 2013). Everyone in the room actively participated in the open discussion spaces. We noticed from discussions that the demographics of the event had changed. This time, we had a group of desktop users, mostly from FreeBSD, while in previous years we had mostly sysadmins from OpenBSD working in large companies or ISPs.

After the discussion, I did the opening talk with the help of Hernan Constante. The talk was also open to discussion so it extended a little longer than programmed; lucky for us, having only 1 track, it didn't affect the schedule much. The second talk was for 40 minutes, but was extended up to 2 hours and ended up in a different topic than the one it started with. We were tempted to stop it, but people were asking so many questions that we let it flow. We then had 4 more talks (including mine) and 2 more spaces for open discussion about anything-BSD where we collected opinions about the event, about BSD in Argentina, and the future of BSD advocacy actions. Since we didn't have sponsors for the food/coffee/supplies, we asked if anyone wanted to contribute at the end of the event. We were glad to see that everyone in the room put in money and we almost covered every expense for the event in this way. After the event, about 90% of the people moved to the bar across the street to share some beers and we kept discussing until the bar closed and kicked us out.

The week after the event, I met again with some organisers to discuss ideas for next year and do some analysis of what happened this year. One week later, I met with some companies and professionals to check sponsoring possibilities for next year's edition.

Last week, I collected and processed the materials we obtained from the event: videos, photos, and slides from every presentation. I still need to recover a few videos that we had to download to one of the organiser's computer (who left the country before me). In the following weeks, we will upload the videos, slides and pictures and formally close this year's event in order to start working for the 6th edition, expected to happen in 2016.

Once again, thank you very much to the FreeBSD Foundation for helping me with the expenses for this trip, to the University of Buenos Aires Faculty of Science and Computer Science department for giving us the space and support, to Hernan Constante, Alejandro Lazaro, Matias Celani, the speakers, and all those who helped to make this event possible once again.