April 09, 2020

345: Switchers to BSD

47 minutes

NetBSD 8.2 is available, NextCloud on OpenBSD, X11 screen locking, NetBSD and RISC OS running parallel, community feedback about switching to BSD, and more.

Headlines

NetBSD 8.2 is available!

The third release in the NetBSD-8 is now available.

This release includes all the security fixes in NetBSD-8 up until this point, and other fixes deemed important for stability.

Some highlights include:

x86: fixed regression in booting old CPUs

x86: Hyper-V Gen.2 VM framebuffer support

httpd(8): fixed various security issues

ixg(4): various fixes / improvements

x86 efiboot: add tftp support, fix issues on machines with many memory segments, improve graphics mode logic to work on more machines.

Various kernel memory info leaks fixes

Update expat to 2.2.8

Fix ryzen USB issues and support xHCI version 3.10.

Accept root device specification as NAME=label.

Add multiboot 2 support to x86 bootloaders.

Fix for CVE-2019-9506: 'Key Negotiation of Bluetooth' attack.

nouveau: limit the supported devices and fix firmware loading.

radeon: fix loading of the TAHITI VCE firmware.

named(8): stop using obsolete dnssec-lookaside.

NextCloud on OpenBSD

NextCloud and OpenBSD are complementary to one another. NextCloud is an awesome, secure and private alternative for proprietary platforms, whereas OpenBSD forms the most secure and solid foundation to serve it on. Setting it up in the best way isn’t hard, especially using this step by step tutorial.

Preface

Back when this tutorial was initially written, things were different. The OpenBSD port relied on PHP 5.6 and there were no package updates. But the port improved (hats off, Gonzalo!) and package updates were introduced to the -stable branch (hats off, Solene!).

A rewrite of this tutorial was long overdue. Right now, it is written for 6.6 -stable and will be updated once 6.7 is released. If you have any questions or desire some help, feel free to reach out.

News Roundup

X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach

For years I’ve been using XScreenSaver as a default, but I recently learned about xsecurelock and re-evaluated my screen-saving requirements

NetBSD and RISC OS running parallel

I have been experimenting with running two systems at the same time on the RK3399 SoC.

It all begun when I figured out how to switch to the A72 cpu for RISC OS. When the switch was done, the A53 cpu just continued to execute code.

OK I thought why not give it something to do!

My first step was to run some small programs.

It worked!

Thanks to Tom Jones for the pointer to this article

Several weeks ago we covered a story about switching from Linux to BSD. Benedict and JT asked for community feedback as to their thoughts on the matter. Allan was out that week, so this will give him an opportunity to chime in with his thoughts as well.

Jamie - Dumping Linux for BSD

Matt - BSD Packaging

Brad - Linux vs BS

MJ - Linux vs BSD Feedback

Ben - Feedback for JT

Henrik - Why you should migrate everything to BSD

Beastie Bits

ssh-copy-id now included

OPNsense 20.1.3 released

A Collection of prebuilt BSD Cloud Images

Instant terminal sharing

Feedback/Questions

Ales - Manually verify signature files for pkg package

Shody - Yubikey

Mike - Site for hashes from old disks

Answer: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19FmLs0jXxLkxAr0zwgdrXQd1qhbwvNHH6NvolvXKWTM/edit?usp=sharing

Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to [email protected]

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By JT Pennington

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