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BSD Now episodes

May 01, 2014 Puffy Firewall | BSD Now 35
We're back again! On this week's packed show, we've got one of the biggest tutorials we've done in a while. It's an in-depth look at PF, OpenBSD's firewall, with some practical examples and different use cases.
We'll also be talking to Peter Hansteen about the new edition of "The Book of PF." Of course, we've got news and answers to your emails too, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
1 hr 20 min
April 30, 201435: Puffy Firewall
We're back again! On this week's packed show, we've got one of the biggest tutorials we've done in a while. It's an in-depth look at PF, OpenBSD's firewall, with some practical examples and different use cases. We'll also be talking to Peter Hansteen about the new edition of "The Book of PF." Of course, we've got news and answers to your emails too, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
ALTQ removed from PF
Kicking off our big PF episode...
The classic packet queueing system, ALTQ, was recently removed from OpenBSD -current
There will be a transitional phase between 5.5 and 5.6 where you can still use it by replacing the "queue" keyword with "oldqueue" in your pf.conf
As of 5.6, due about six months from now, you'll have to change your ruleset to the new syntax if you're using it for bandwidth shaping
After more than ten years, bandwidth queueing has matured quite a bit and we can finally put ALTQ to rest, in favor of the new queueing subsystem
This doesn't affect FreeBSD, PCBSD, NetBSD or DragonflyBSD since all of their PFs are older and maintained separately.
***
FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report
The quarterly status report from FreeBSD is out, detailing some of the project's ongoing tasks
Some highlights include the first "stable" branch of ports, ARM improvements (including SMP), bhyve improvements, more work on the test suite, desktop improvements including the new vt console driver and UEFI booting support finally being added
We've got some specific updates from the cluster admin team, core team, documentation team, portmgr team, email team and release engineering team
LOTS of details and LOTS of topics to cover, give it a read
***
OpenBSD's OpenSSL rewrite continues with m2k14
A mini OpenBSD hackathon begins in Morocco, Africa
You can follow the changes in the -current CVS log, but a lot of work is mainly going towards the OpenSSL cleaning
We've got two trip reports so far, hopefully we'll have some more to show you in a future episode
You can see some of the more interesting quotes from the tear-down or see everything
Apparently they are going to call the fork "LibreSSL" ....
What were the OpenSSL developers thinking? The RSA private key was used to seed the entropy!
We also got some mainstream news coverage and another post from Ted about the history of the fork
Definitely consider donating to the OpenBSD foundation, this fork will benefit all the other BSDs too
***
NetBSD 6.1.4 and 6.0.5 released
New updates for the 6.1 and 6.0 branches of NetBSD, focusing on bugfixes
The main update is - of course - the heartbleed vulnerability
Also includes fixes for other security issues and even a kernel panic... on Atari
Patch your Ataris right now, this is serious business
***
Interview - Peter Hansteen - [email protected] / @pitrh
The Book of PF: 3rd edition
Tutorial
BSD Firewalls: PF
News Roundup
New Xorg now the default in FreeBSD
For quite a while now, FreeBSD has had two versions of X11 in ports
The older, stable version was the default, but you could install a newer one by having "WITH_NEW_XORG" in /etc/make.conf
They've finally made the switch for 10-STABLE and 9-STABLE
Check this wiki page for more info
***
GSoC-accepted BSD projects
The Google Summer of Code team has got the list of accepted project proposals uploaded so we can see what's planned
OpenBSD's list includes DHCP configuration parsing improvements, systemd replacements, porting capsicum, GPT and UEFI support, and modernizing the DHCP daemon
The FreeBSD list was also posted
Theirs includes porting FreeBSD to the Android emulator, CTF in the kernel debugger, improved unicode support, converting firewall rules to a C module, pkgng improvements, MicroBlaze support, PXE fixes, bhyve caching, bootsplash and lots more
Good luck to all the students participating, hopefully they become full time BSD users
***
Complexity of FreeBSD VFS using ZFS as an example
HybridCluster posted the second part of their VFS and ZFS series
This new post has lots of technical details once again, definitely worth reading if you're a ZFS guy
Of course, also watch episode 24 for our interview with HybridCluster - they do really interesting stuff
***
PCBSD weekly digest
Preload has been ported over, it's a daemon that prefetches applications
PCBSD is developing their own desktop environment, Lumina (there's also an FAQ)
It's still in active development, but you can try it out by installing from ports
We'll be showing a live demo of it in a few weeks (when development settles down a bit)
Some kid in Australia subjects his poor mother to being on camera while she tries out PCBSD and gives her impressions of it
***
1 hr 20 min
April 23, 2014 34: It's Gonna Get NASty
This week, Allan's at a conference so we've got a short episode for you. We sat down with John Hixson to discuss FreeNAS development and all their future plans. The show will be back next week with a normal episode.
This episode was brought to you by
Interview - John Hixson - [email protected] / @bsdwhore
FreeNAS development
23 min
April 16, 201433: Certified Package Delivery
This week, we sit down with Jim Brown from the BSD Certification group to talk about the BSD exams. Following that, we'll be showing you how to build OpenBSD binary packages in bulk, a la poudriere. There's a boatload of news and we've got answers to your questions, coming up on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
BSDCan schedule, speakers and talks
This year's BSDCan will kick off on May 14th in Ottawa
The list of speakers is also out
And finally the talks everyone's looking forward to
Lots of great tutorials and talks, spanning a wide range of topics of interest
Be sure to come by so you can and meet Allan and Kris in person and get BSDCan shirts
***
NYCBSDCon talks uploaded
The BSD TV YouTube channel has been uploading recordings from the 2014 NYCBSDCon
Jeff Rizzo's talk, "Releasing NetBSD: So Many Targets, So Little Time"
Dru Lavigne's talk, "ZFS Management Tools in FreeNAS and PC-BSD"
Scott Long's talk, "Serving one third of the Internet via FreeBSD"
Michael W. Lucas' talk, "BSD Breaking Barriers"
***
FreeBSD Journal, issue 2
The bi-monthly FreeBSD journal's second issue is out
Topics in this issue include pkg, poudriere, the PBI format, hwpmc and journaled soft-updates
In less than two months, they've already gotten over 1000 subscribers! It's available on Google Play, iTunes, Amazon, etc
"We are also working on a dynamic version of the magazine that can be read in many web browsers, including those that run on FreeBSD"
Check our interview with GNN for more information about the journal
***
OpenSSL, more like OpenSS-Hell
We mentioned this huge OpenSSL bug last week during all the chaos, but the aftermath is just as messy
There's been a pretty vicious response from security experts all across the internet and in all of the BSD projects - and rightfully so
We finally have a timeline of events
Reactions from ISC, PCBSD, Tarsnap, the Tor project, FreeBSD, NetBSD, oss-sec, PHK, Varnish and Akamai
pfSense released a new version to fix it
OpenBSD disabled heartbeat entirely and is very unforgiving of the IETF
Ted Unangst has two good write-ups about the issue and how horrible the OpenSSL codebase is
A nice quote from one of the OpenBSD lists: "Given how trivial one-liner fixes such as #2569 have remained unfixed for 2.5+ years, one can only assume that OpenSSL's bug tracker is only used to park bugs, not fix them"
Sounds like someone else was having fun with the bug for a while too
There's also another OpenSSL bug that OpenBSD patched - it allows an attacker to inject data from one connection into another
OpenBSD has also imported the most current version of OpenSSL and are ripping it apart from the inside out - we're seeing a fork in real time
***
Interview - Jim Brown - [email protected]
The BSD Certification exams
Tutorial
Building OpenBSD binary packages in bulk
News Roundup
Portable signify
Back in episode 23 we talked with Ted Unangst about the new "signify" tool in OpenBSD
Now there's a (completely unofficial) portable version of it on github
If you want to verify your OpenBSD sets ahead of time on another OS, this tool should let you do it
Maybe other BSD projects can adopt it as a replacement for gpg and incorporate it into their base systems
***
Foundation goals and updates
The OpenBSD foundation has reached their 2014 goal of $150,000
You can check their activities and goals to see where the money is going
Remember that funding also goes to OpenSSH, which EVERY system uses and relies on everyday to protect their data
The FreeBSD foundation has kicked off their spring fundraising campaign
There's also a list of their activities and goals available to read through
Be sure to support your favorite BSD, whichever one, so they can continue to make and improve great software that powers the whole internet
***
PCBSD weekly digest
New PBI runtime that fixes stability issues and decreases load times
"Update Center" is getting a lot of development and improvements
Lots of misc. bug fixes and updates
***
Feedback/Questions
There's a reddit thread we wanted to highlight - a user wants to show his friend BSD and why it's great
Brad writes in
Sha'ul writes in
iGibbs writes in
Matt writes in
***
1 hr 21 min
April 09, 201432: PXE Dust
This week on the big show we'll be showing off OpenBSD's new "autoinstall" feature to do completely automatic, unattended installations. We also have an interview with Dru Lavigne about all the writing work she does for FreeBSD, PCBSD and FreeNAS. The latest headlines and answers to your emails, on BSD Now - it's the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
FreeBSD ASLR status update
Shawn Webb gives us a little update on his address space layout randomization work for FreeBSD
He's implemented execbase randomization for position-independent executables (which OpenBSD also just enabled globally in 5.5 on i386)
Work has also started on testing ASLR on ARM, using a Raspberry Pi
He's giving a presentation at BSDCan this year about his ASLR work
While we're on the topic of BSDCan...
***
BSDCan tutorials, improving the experience
Peter Hansteen writes a new blog post about his upcoming BSDCan tutorials
The tutorials are called "Building the network you need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter" and "Transitioning to OpenBSD 5.5" - both scheduled to last three hours each
He's requesting anyone that'll be there to go ahead and contact him, telling him exactly what you'd like to learn
There's also a bit of background information about the tutorials and how he's looking to improve them
If you're interested in OpenBSD and going to BSDCan this year, hit him up
***
pkgsrc-2014Q1 released
The new stable branch of pkgsrc packages has been built and is ready
Python 3.3 is now a "first class citizen" in pkgsrc
14255 packages for NetBSD-current/x86_64, 11233 binary packages built with clang for FreeBSD 10/x86_64
There's a new release every three months, and remember pkgsrc works on MANY operating systems, not just NetBSD - you could even use pkgsrc instead of pkgng or ports if you were so inclined
They're also looking into signing packages
***
Only two holes in a heck of a long time, who cares?
A particularly vocal Debian user, a lost soul, somehow finds his way to the misc@ OpenBSD mailing list
He questions "what's the big deal" about OpenBSD's slogan being "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!"
Luckily, the community and Theo set the record straight about why you should care about this
Running insecure applications on OpenBSD is actually more secure than running them on other systems, due to things like ASLR, PIE and all the security features of OpenBSD
It spawned a discussion about ease of management and Linux's poor security record, definitely worth reading
***
Interview - Dru Lavigne - [email protected] / @bsdevents
FreeBSD's documentation printing, documentation springs, various topics
Tutorial
Automatic, unattended OpenBSD installs with PXE
News Roundup
pfSense 2.1.1 released
A new version of pfSense is released, mainly to fix some security issues
Tracking some recent FreeBSD advisories, pfSense usually only applies the ones that would matter on a firewall or router
There are also some NIC driver updates and other things
Of course if you want to learn more about pfSense, watch episode 25
2.1.2 is already up for testing too
***
FreeBSD gets UEFI support
It looks like FreeBSD's battle with UEFI may be coming to a close?
Ed Maste committed a giant list of patches to enable UEFI support on x86_64
Look through the list to see all the details and information
Thanks FreeBSD foundation!
***
Ideas for the next DragonflyBSD release
Mr. Dragonfly release engineer himself, Justin Sherrill posts some of his ideas for the upcoming release
They're aiming for late May for the next version
Ideas include better support for running in a VM, pkgng fixes, documentation updates and PAM support
Gasp, they're even considering dropping i386
***
PCBSD weekly digest
Lots of new PBI updates for 10.0, new runtime implementation
New support for running 32 bit applications in PBI runtime
New default CD and DVD player, umplayer
Latest GNOME 3 and Cinnamon merged, new edge package builds
***
Feedback/Questions
Remy writes in
Jan writes in
Eddie writes in
Zen writes in
Sean writes in
***
1 hr 17 min
April 03, 2014 Edgy BSD Users | BSD Now 31
This week we’ll be talking to Richard Stallman about the upcoming GPLv4 and how it will protect our software from being stolen. After that, we’ll show you how to recover from those pesky ZFS on Linux corruption issues, as well as some tips on how to explain to your boss that all the production boxes were compromised. Your questions and all the latest GNUs, on Linux Now – the place to Lin.. ux.
1 hr 10 min
April 01, 201431: Edgy BSD Users
This week we'll be talking to Richard Stallman about the upcoming GPLv4 and how it will protect our software from being stolen. After that, we'll show you how to recover from those pesky ZFS on Linux corruption issues, as well as some tips on how to explain to your boss that all the production boxes were compromised. Your questions and all the latest GNUs, on Linux Now - the place to Lin.. ux.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
Preorders for cool BSD stuff
The 2nd edition of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System is up for preorder
We talked to GNN briefly about it, but he and Kirk have apparently finally finished the book
"For many years, The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System has been recognized as the most complete, up-to-date, and authoritative technical guide to FreeBSD's internal structure. Now, this definitive guide has been extensively updated to reflect all major FreeBSD improvements between Versions 5 and Versions 11"
OpenBSD 5.5 preorders are also up, so you can buy a CD set now
You can help support the project, and even get the -release of the OS before it's available publicly
5.5 is a huge release with lots of big changes, so now is the right time to purchase one of these - tell Austin we sent you!
***
pkgsrcCon 2014 CFP
This year's pkgsrcCon is in London, on June 21st and 22nd
There's a Call For Papers out now, so you can submit your talks
Anything related to pkgsrc is fine, it's pretty informal
Does anyone in the audience know if the talks will be recorded? This con is relatively unknown
***
BSDMag issue for March 2014
The monthly BSD magazine releases its newest issue
Topics this time include: deploying NetBSD using AWS EC2, creating a multi-purpose file server with NetBSD, DragonflyBSD as a backup server, more GIMP lessons, network analysis with wireshark and a general security article
The Linux article trend seems to continue... hmm
***
Non-ECC RAM in FreeNAS
We've gotten a few questions about ECC RAM with ZFS
Here we've got a surprising blog post about why someone did not go with ECC RAM for his NAS build
The article mentions the benefits of ECC and admits it is a better choice in nearly all instances, but unfortunately it's not very widespread in consumer hardware motherboards and it's more expensive
Regular RAM also has "special" issues with ZFS and pool corruption
Long post, so check out the whole thing if you've been considering your memory options and weighing the benefits
***
Interview - Pierre Pronchery - [email protected] / @khorben
EdgeBSD (slides)
Tutorial
Building an OpenBSD desktop
News Roundup
Getting to know your portmgr-lurkers
This week we get to hear from Frederic Culot, colut@
Originally an OpenBSD user from France, Frederic joined as a ports committer in 2010 and recently joined the portmgr lurkers team
"FreeBSD is also one of my sources of inspiration when it comes to how
organizations behave and innovate, and I find it very interesting to compare FreeBSD with
the for-profit companies I work for"
We get to find out a little bit about him, why he loves FreeBSD and what he does for the project
***
NetBSD on the Playstation 2
Who doesn't want to run NetBSD on their old PS2?
The PS2 port of NetBSD was sadly removed in 2009, but it has been revived
It's using a slightly unusual MIPS CPU that didn't have much GCC support
Hopefully a bootable kernel will be available soon
***
The FreeBSD Challenge update
Our friend from the Linux Foundation continues his FreeBSD switching journey
This time he starts off by discovering virtual machines suck at keeping accurate time, and some ports weren't working because of his clock being way off
After polling the IRC for help, he finally learns the difference between ntpdate and ntpd and both of their use cases
Maybe he should've just read our NTP tutorial!
***
PCBSD weekly digest
The mount tray icon got lots of updates and fixes
The faulty distribution server has finally been tracked down and... destroyed
New language localization project is in progress
Many many updates to ports and PBIs, new -STABLE builds
***
Feedback/Questions
Antonio writes in
Patrick writes in
Chris writes in
Ron writes in
Tyler writes in
***
1 hr 10 min
March 26, 201430: Documentation is King
Finally hit 30 episodes! Today we'll be chatting with Warren Block to discuss BSD documentation efforts and future plans. If you've ever wondered about the scary world of mailing lists, today's tutorial will show you the basics of how to get help and contribute back. There's lots to get to today, so sit back and enjoy some BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
OpenBSD on a Sun T5120
Our buddy Ted Unangst got himself a cool Sun box
Of course he had to write a post about installing and running OpenBSD on it
The post goes through some of the quirks and steps to go through in case you're interested in one of these fine SPARC machines
He's also got another post about OpenBSD on a Dell CS24-SC server
***
Bhyvecon 2014 videos are up
Like we mentioned last week, Bhyvecon was an almost-impromptu conference before AsiaBSDCon
The talks have apparently already been uploaded!
Subjects include Bhyve's past, present and future, OSv on Bhyve, a general introduction to the tool, migrating those last few pesky Linux boxes to virtualization
Lots more detail in the videos, so check 'em all out
***
Building a FreeBSD wireless access point
We've got a new blog post about creating a wireless access point with FreeBSD
After all the recent news of consumer routers being pwned like candy, it's time for people to start building BSD routers
The author goes through a lot of the process of getting one set up using good ol' FreeBSD
Using hostapd, he's able to share his wireless card in hostap mode and offer DHCP to all the clients
Plenty of config files and more messy details in the post
***
Switching from Synology to FreeNAS
The author has been considering getting a NAS for quite a while and documents his research
He was faced with the compromise of convenience vs. flexibility - prebuilt or DIY
After seeing the potential security issues with proprietary NAS devices, and dealing with frustration with trying to get bugs fixed, he makes the right choice
The post also goes into some detail about his setup, all the things he needed a NAS to do as well as all the advantages an open source solution would give
***
Interview - Warren Block - [email protected]
FreeBSD's documentation project, igor, doceng
Tutorial
The world of BSD mailing lists
News Roundup
HAMMER2 work and notes
Matthew Dillon has posted some updated notes about the development of the new HAMMER version
The start of a cluster API was committed to the tree
There are also links to design document, a freemap design document, a changes list and a todo list
***
BSD Breaking Barriers
Our friend MWL gave a talk at NYCBSDCon about BSD "breaking barriers"
"What makes the BSD operating systems special? Why should you deploy your applications on BSD? Why does the BSD community keep growing, and why do Linux sites like DistroWatch say that BSD is where the interesting development work is happening? We'll cover the not-so-obvious reasons why BSD still stands tall after almost 40 years."
He also has another upcoming talk, (or "webcast") called "Beyond Security: Getting to Know OpenBSD's Real Purpose"
"OpenBSD is frequently billed as a high-security operating system. That's true, but security isn't the OpenBSD Project's main goal. This webcast will introduce systems administrators to OpenBSD, explain the project's mission, and discuss the features and benefits."
It's on May 27th and will hopefully be recorded
***
FreeBSD in a chroot
Finch, "FreeBSD running IN a CHroot," is a new project
It's a way to extend the functionality of restricted USB-based FreeBSD systems (FreeNAS, etc.)
All the details and some interesting use cases are on the github page
He really needs to change the project name though
***
PCBSD weekly digest
Lots of bugfixes for PCBSD coming down the tubes
LZ4 compression is now enabled by default on the whole pool
The latest 10-STABLE has been imported and builds are going
Also the latest GNOME and Cinnamon builds have been imported and much more
***
Feedback/Questions
Bostjan writes in (IRC suggests md5deep)
Don writes in
kaltheat writes in (We use R0DE Podcast microphones and Logitech C920 HD webcams)
Harri writes in
***
1 hr 23 min
March 19, 201429: P.E.F.S.
We're back from AsiaBSDCon! This week we'll be chatting with Gleb Kurtsou about some a filesystem-level encryption utility called PEFS. After that, we'll give you a step by step guide on how to actually use it. There's also the usual round of your questions and we've got a lot of news to catch up on, so stay tuned to BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
Using OpenSSH Certificate Authentication
SSH has a not-so-often-talked-about authentication option in addition to passwords and keys: certificates - you can add certificates to any current authentication method you're using
They're not really that complex, there just isn't a lot of documentation on how to use them - this post tries to solve that
There's the benefit of not needing a known_hosts file or authorized_users file anymore
The post goes into a fair amount of detail about the differences, advantages and implications of using certificates for authentication
***
Back to FreeBSD, a new series
Similar to the "FreeBSD Challenge" blog series, one of our listeners will be writing about his switching BACK to FreeBSD journey
"So, a long time ago, I had a box which was running FreeBSD 4, running on a Pentium. 14 years later, I have decided to get back into FreeBSD, now at FreeBSD 10"
He's starting off with PCBSD since it's easy to get working with dual graphics
Should be a fun series to follow!
***
OpenBSD's recent experiments in package building
If you'll remember back to our poudriere tutorial, it lets you build FreeBSD binary packages in bulk - OpenBSD's version is called dpb
Marc Espie recently got some monster machines in russia to play with to help improve scaling of dpb on high end hardware
This article goes through some of his findings and plans for future versions that increase performance
We'll be showing a tutorial of dpb on the show in a few weeks
***
Securing FreeBSD with 2FA
So maybe you've set up two-factor authentication with gmail or twitter, but have you done it with your BSD box?
This post walks us through the process of locking down an ssh server with 2FA
With just a mobile phone and a few extra tools, you can enable two-factor auth on your BSD box and have just that little extra bit of protections
***
Interview - Gleb Kurtsou - [email protected]
PEFS (security audit results here)
Tutorial
Filesystem-based encryption with PEFS
News Roundup
BSDCan 2014 registration
Registration is finally open!
The prices are available along with a full list of presentations
Tutorial sessions for various topics as well
You have to go
***
Big changes for OpenBSD 5.6
Although 5.5 was just frozen and the release process has started, 5.6 is already looking promising
OpenBSD has, for a long time, included a heavily-patched version of Apache based on 1.3
They've also imported nginx into base a few years ago, but now have finally removed Apache
Sendmail is also no longer the default MTA, OpenSMTPD is the new default
Will BIND be removed next? Maybe so
They've also discontinued the hp300, mvme68k and mvme88k ports
***
Getting to know your portmgr lurkers
The "getting to know your portmgr" series makes its return
This time we get to talk with danfe@ (probably most known for being the nVidia driver maintainer, but he does a lot with ports)
How he got into FreeBSD? He "wanted a unix system that I could understand and that would not get bloated as time goes by"
Mentions why he's still heavily involved with the project and lots more
***
PCBSD weekly digest
Work has started to port Pulseaudio to PCBSD 10.0.1
There's a new "pc-mixer" utility being worked on for sound management as well
New PBIs, GNOME/Mate updates, Life Preserver fixes and a lot more
PCBSD 10.0.1 was released too
***
Feedback/Questions
Alex writes in
Ben writes in
Nick writes in
Sami writes in
Christopher writes in
***
1 hr 55 min
March 12, 201428: Ghost of Partition
This week we're at AsiaBSDCon, so it'll be a shorter episode. We've got an interview with Eric Turgeon, founder of the desktop-focused GhostBSD project. Haven't heard of GhostBSD? Well stay tuned then. There's also a really interesting tutorial on how to serially concatenate disks in NetBSD. We'll be back next week with a normal episode.
This episode was brought to you by
Interview - Eric Turgeon - [email protected] / @GhostBSD1
GhostBSD
Tutorial
Serially concatenating disks in NetBSD
Feedback/Questions
Dave writes in
Shane writes in
Rob writes in
Predrag writes in
***
34 min

About BSD Now

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Created by three guys who love BSD, we cover the latest news and have an extensive series of tutorials, as well as interviews with various people from all areas of the BSD community. It also serves as…