Coming up this time on the show, we'll be talking to Sean Bruno. He's been using poudriere and QEMU to cross compile binary packages, and has some interesting stories to tell about it. We've also got answers to viewer-submitted questions and all this week's news, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
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Headlines
AsiaBSDCon 2015 schedule
Almost immediately after we finished recording an episode last week, the 2015 AsiaBSDCon schedule went upThis year's conference will be between 12-15 March at the Tokyo University of Science in JapanThe first and second days are for tutorials, as well as the developer summit and vendor summitDays four and five are the main event with the presentations, which Kris and Allan both made the cut for once againNot counting the ones that have yet to be revealed (as of the day we're recording this), there will be thirty-six different talks in all - four BSD-neutral, four NetBSD, six OpenBSD and twenty-two FreeBSDSummaries of all the presentations are on the timetable page if you scroll down a bit***
FreeBSD foundation updates and more
The FreeBSD foundation has posted a number of things this week, the first of which is their February 2015 status updateIt provides some updates on the funded projects, including PCI express hotplugging and FreeBSD on the POWER8 platformThere's a FOSDEM recap and another update of their fundraising goal for 2015They also have two new blog posts: a trip report from SCALE13x and a featured "FreeBSD in the trenches" article about how a small typo caused a lot of ZFS chaos in the cluster"Then panic ensued. The machine didn't panic -- I did."***
OpenBSD improves browser security
No matter what OS you run on your desktop, the most likely entry point for an exploit these days is almost certainly the web browserTed Unangst writes in to the OpenBSD misc list to introduce a new project he's working on, simply titled "improving browser security"He gives some background on the WX memory protection in the base system, but also mentions that some applications in ports don't adhere to itFor it to be enforced globally instead of just recommended, at least one browser (or specifically, one JIT engine) needs to be fixed to use it"A system that is 'all WX except where it's not' is the same as a system that's not WX. We've worked hard to provide a secure foundation for programs; we'd like to see them take advantage of it."The work is being supported by the OpenBSD foundation, and we'll keep you updated on this undertaking as more news about it is releasedThere's also some discussion on Hacker News and Undeadly about it***
NetBSD at Open Source Conference 2015 Tokyo
The Japanese NetBSD users group has once again invaded a conference, this time in TokyoThere's even a spreadsheet of all the different platforms they were showing off at the booth (mostly ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and Landisk this time around)If you just can't get enough strange devices running BSD, check the mailing list post for lots of picturesTheir next target is, as you might guess, AsiaBSDCon 2015 - maybe we'll run into them***
Interview - Sean Bruno -
[email protected] / @franknbeans
Cross-compiling packages with poudriere and QEMU
News Roundup
The Crypto Bone
The Crypto Bone is a new device that's aimed at making encryption and secure communications easier and more accessibleUnder the hood, it's actually just a Beaglebone board, running stock OpenBSD with a few extra packagesIt includes a web interface for configuring keys and secure tunnelsThe source code is freely available for anyone interested in hacking on it (or auditing the crypto), and there's a technical overview of how everything works on their siteIf you don't want to teach your mom how to use PGP, buy her one of these(?)***
BSD in the 2015 Google Summer of Code
For those who don't know, GSoC is a way for students to get paid to work on a coding project for an open source organizationGood news: both FreeBSD and OpenBSD were accepted for the 2015 eventFreeBSD has a wiki page of ideas for people to work onOpenBSD also has an ideas page where you can see some of the initial things that might be interestingIf you're a student looking to get involved with BSD development, this might be a great opportunity to even get paid to do itWho knows, you may even end up on the show if you work on a cool projectGSoC will be accepting idea proposals starting March 16th, so you have some time to think about what you'd like to hack on***
pfSense 2.3 roadmap
The pfSense team has posted a new blog entry, detailing some of their plans for future versionsPPTP will finally be deprecated, PHP will be updated to 5.6 and other packages will also get updated to newer versionsPBIs are scheduled to be replaced with native pkgng packagesVersion 3.0, something coming much later, will be a major rewrite that gets rid of PHP entirelyTheir ultimate goal is for pfSense to be a package you can install atop of a regular FreeBSD install, rather than a repackaged distribution***
PCBSD 10.1.2 security features
PCBSD 10.1.2 will include a number of cool security features, some of which are detailed in a new blog postA new "personacrypt" utility is introduced, which allows for easy encryption and management of external drives for your home directoryGoing along with this, it also has a "stealth mode" that allows for one-time temporary home directories (but it doesn't self-destruct, don't worry)The LibreSSL integration also continues, and now packages will be built with it by defaultIf you're using the Life Preserver utility for backups, it will encrypt the remote copy of your files in the next updateThey've also been working on introducing some new options to enable tunneling your traffic through TorThere will now be a fully-transparent proxy option that utilizes the switch to IPFW we mentioned last weekA small disclaimer: remember that many things can expose your true IP when using Tor, so use this option at your own risk if you require full anonymityLook forward to Kris wearing a Tor shirt in future episodes***
Feedback/Questions
Antonio writes inChris writes inVan writes inStu writes in***
Mailing List Gold
HPay up, mister FreeHeritage protectedBlind leading the blindWhat are the chances***
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