Coming up this week, we'll be chatting with Bernard Spil about wider adoption of LibreSSL in other communities. He's been doing a lot of work with FreeBSD ports specifically, but also working with upstream projects. As usual, all this weeks news and answers to your questions, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
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Headlines
EuroBSDCon 2015 call for papers
The call for papers has been announced for the next EuroBSDCon, which is set to be held in Sweden this yearAccording to their site, the call for presentation proposals period will start on Monday the 23rd of March until Friday the 17th of AprilIf giving a full talk isn't your thing, there's also a call for tutorials - if you're comfortable teaching other people about something BSD-related, this could be a great thing tooYou're not limited to one proposal - several speakers gave multiple in 2014 - so don't hesitate if you've got more than one thing you'd like to talk aboutWe'd like to see a more balanced conference schedule than BSDCan's having this year, but that requires effort on both sides - if you're doing anything cool with any BSD, we'd encourage you submit a proposal (or two)Check the announcement for all the specific details and requirementsIf your talk gets accepted, the conference even pays for your travel expenses***
Making security sausage
Ted Unangst has a new blog post up, detailing his experiences with some recent security patches both in and out of OpenBSD"Unfortunately, I wrote the tool used for signing patches which somehow turned into a responsibility for also creating the inputs to be signed. That was not the plan!"The post first takes us through a few OpenBSD errata patches, explaining how some can get fixed very quickly, but others are more complicated and need a bit more reviewIt also covers security in upstream codebases, and how upstream projects sometimes treat security issues as any other bugFollowing that, it leads to the topic of FreeType - and a much more complicated problem with backporting patches between versionsThe recent OpenSSL vulnerabilities were also mentioned, with an interesting story to go along with themJust 45 minutes before the agreed-upon announcement, OpenBSD devs found a problem with the patch OpenSSL planned to release - it had to be redone at the last minuteIt was because of this that FreeBSD actually had to release a security update to their security updateHe concludes with "My number one wish would be that every project provide small patches for security issues. Dropping enormous feature releases along with a note 'oh, and some security too' creates downstream mayhem."***
Running FreeBSD on the server, a sysadmin speaks
More BSD content is appearing on mainstream technology sites, and, more importantly, BSD Now is being mentionedITWire recently did an interview with Allan about running FreeBSD on servers (possibly to go with their earlier interview with Kris about desktop usage)They discuss some of the advantages BSD brings to the table for sysadmins that might be used to Linux or some other UNIX flavorIt also covers specific features like jails, ZFS, long-term support, automating tasks and even… what to name your computersIf you've been considering switching your servers over from Linux to FreeBSD, but maybe wanted to hear some first-hand experience, this is the article for you***
NetBSD ported to Hardkernel ODROID-C1
In their never-ending quest to run on every new board that comes out, NetBSD has been ported to the Hardkernel ODROID-C1This one features a quad-core ARMv7 CPU at 1.5GHz, has a gig of ram and gigabit ethernet... all for just $35There's a special kernel config file for this board's hardware, available in both -current and the upcoming 7.0More info can be found on their wiki pageAfter this was written, basic framebuffer console support was also committed, allowing a developer to run XFCE on the device***
Interview - Bernard Spil -
[email protected] / @sp1l
LibreSSL adoption in FreeBSD ports and the wider software ecosystem
News Roundup
Monitoring pf logs with Gource
If you're using pf on any of the BSDs, maybe you've gotten bored of grepping logs and want to do something more fancyThis article will show you how to get set up with Gource for a cinematic-like experienceIf you've never heard of Gource, it's "an OpenGL-based 3D visualization tool intended for visualizing activity on source control repositories"When you put all the tools together, you can end up with some pretty eye-catching animations of your firewall trafficOne of our listeners wrote in to say that he set this up and, almost immediately, noticed his girlfriend's phone had been compromised - graphical representations of traffic could be useful for detecting suspicious network activity***
pkgng 1.5.0 alpha1 released
The development version of pkgng was updated to 1.4.99.14, or 1.5.0 alpha1This update introduces support for provides/requires, something that we've been wanting for a long timeIt will also now print which package is the reason for direct dependency changeAnother interesting addition is the "pkg -r" switch, allowing cross installation of packagesRemember this isn't the stable version, so maybe don't upgrade to it just yet on any production systemsDragonFly will also likely pick up this update once it's marked stable***
Welcome to OpenBSD
We mentioned last week that our listener Brian was giving a talk in the Troy, New York areaThe slides from that talk are now online, and they've been generating quite a bit of discussion onlineIt's simply titled "Welcome to OpenBSD" and gives the reader an introduction to the OS (and how easy it is to get involved with contributing)Topics include a quick history of the project, who the developers are and what they do, some proactive security techniques and finally how to get involvedAs you may know, NetBSD has almost 60 supported platforms and their slogan is "of course it runs NetBSD" - Brian says, with 17 platforms over 13 CPU architectures, "it probably runs OpenBSD"No matter which BSD you might be interested in, these slides are a great read, especially for any beginners looking to get their feet wetTry to guess which font he used...***
BSDTalk episode 252
And somehow Brian has snuck himself into another news item this weekHe makes an appearance in the latest episode of BSD Talk, where he chats with Will about running a BSD-based shell providerIf that sounds familiar, it's probably because we did the same thing, albeit with a different member of their teamIn this interview, they discuss what a shell provider does, hardware requirements and how to weed out the spammers in favor of real peopleThey also talk a bit about the community aspect of a shared server, as opposed to just running a virtual machine by yourself***
Feedback/Questions
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Mailing List Gold
Accidental supportLarry's tearsThe boy who sailed with BSD***
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