I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server, Owning the Stack: Infrastructure Independence with FreeBSD and ZFS, Optimisation of parallel TCP input, Chosing between "it works for now" and "it works in the long term", Losing one of my evenings after an OpenBSD upgrade, What drive did I just remove from the system?, and more.
The FreeBSD Q1 2025 Status Report highlights significant progress and updates across various teams and projects within the FreeBSD community. The FreeBSD Core Team is drafting a project roadmap and working on policies for generative AI and community surveys. The FreeBSD Foundation reported substantial fundraising and numerous software development projects, including improvements to the audio stack, DRM drivers, and wireless support. Notable achievements include the release of FreeBSD 13.5, advancements in the Laptop Support and Usability project, and the introduction of new tools like the automatic pkgbase conversion tool. The report also details updates from teams such as Release Engineering, Cluster Administration, and Continuous Integration, as well as various userland and kernel improvements. Additionally, the report covers updates from third-party projects and community initiatives, reflecting the ongoing efforts to enhance FreeBSD's capabilities and community engagement.
The article discusses the misconception that FreeBSD is dying, debunking it with evidence of its steady growth and increasing interest. The author attributes this misconception to the "availability heuristic," where people assume FreeBSD is less relevant due to its lower visibility compared to Linux. The article highlights FreeBSD's quiet but significant role in powering parts of the internet and its permissive license, which allows companies to use and build upon it without publicizing their use. The author encourages companies using FreeBSD to share their experiences and challenges to foster a stronger community and improve hardware support.
The May 2025 status report details the progress of optional Rust support in FreeBSD, focusing on userland components. A feature branch has been created for this work, with a new BSD makefile introduced to enable building Rust applications during buildworld. The current patchset supports building and installing Rust applications but not yet library crates or kernel support. Several example components have been imported for testing, and next steps include supporting library crates, multiple Rust applications in a single Makefile, and developing guidelines for vendor imports of crates. Upstreaming to Phabricator is planned once the approach is finalized.
The article details the author's experience setting up FreeBSD on the StarFive VisionFive v2 board. The process involved downloading a FreeBSD snapshot, writing it to a micro-SD card, and booting the board. However, the author encountered issues due to a mislabeled CPU core in the FDT, which required manual intervention to disable the problematic core. Despite following documentation and community advice, the setup faced challenges with storage options and booting. The author also explored OpenBSD as an alternative, which proved more successful in detecting storage devices.
OpenBSD users with low-power devices like PC Engines APU2 are called to test a new diff by Darren Tucker for em(4) TX interrupt mitigation. The update aims to improve network performance by adjusting interrupt timers, potentially increasing TX throughput by 25% and reducing CPU usage by 60%. The diff addresses issues with the current settings, which may cause excessive interrupts, especially with jumbo packets. Users are encouraged to test the diff and provide feedback to the OpenBSD community.
The Valuable News weekly series provides a summary of news, articles, and other interesting content related to UNIX/BSD/Linux systems. This edition includes various topics such as managing disk partitions in FreeBSD, the release of GNU Screen 5.0.1, and the benefits of FreeBSD for embedded devices.
The third BETA build for the FreeBSD 14.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpc64le, powerpcspe, armv6, armv7, aarch64, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.
FreeBSD has introduced new package repositories for kernel modules, supporting various releases and branches. Since 14.2-RELEASE, packages have been available for all supported architectures. With the upcoming 14.3-RELEASE, the infrastructure has been extended to cover releng/14.2, releng/14.3, stable/14, and main branches. The repositories can be configured by adding specific settings to /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/kmods.conf. Different repositories are available for ports main and ports quarterly, with specific naming conventions for each release and branch.
This article details configuring OpenBSD on an EdgeRouter 4 as a home router with private DNS and failover WAN. It covers installation, network design, failover implementation, NAT configuration, and performance benchmarks. The setup uses distinct routing domains and interfaces for WAN failover, with ifstated managing connectivity checks. NAT performance is evaluated using iperf3, showing significant throughput and CPU utilization. Comparative benchmarks with a UniFi Security Gateway highlight performance differences.
GhostBSD: From Usability to Struggle and Renewal, Why You Can’t Trust AI to Tune ZFS, Introducing bpflogd(8): capture packets via BPF to log files, What I'd do as a College Freshman in 2025, FreeBSD and KDE Plasma generations, Improvements to the FreeBSD CI/CD systems, FreeBSD as a Workstation, and more.
The NetBSD Foundation will hold its 2025 Annual General Meeting on May 17th at 21:00 UTC in the netbsd-agm channel on irc.libera.chat. The event will include presentations about NetBSD, followed by a moderated Q&A session. The tentative agenda covers various topics such as foundation administrivia, technical direction, project servers, and publicity. A full transcript will be recorded for those unable to attend.
The ERSPAN collection driver, erspan(4), created by David Gwynne, has been committed to OpenBSD -current. ERSPAN is a GRE protocol used for network packet capture, implemented as an Ethernet tunnel interface. It reuses BPF infrastructure, allowing it to send packets and act as a collector. The tool is now available for testing and feedback from -current users, with development continuing in-tree.