BSD Now

By JT PenningtonNews Education How To Tech News

BSD Now episodes

January 01, 201418: Eclipsing Binaries
Put away the Christmas trees and update your ports trees! We're back with the first show of 2014, and we've got some catching up to do. This time on the show, we have an interview with Baptiste Daroussin about the future of FreeBSD binary packages. Following that, we'll be highlighting a cool script to do binary upgrades on OpenBSD. Lots of holiday news and listener feedback, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
Faces of FreeBSD continues
Our first one details Shteryana Shopova, the local organizer for EuroBSDCon 2014 in Sophia
Gives some information about how she got into BSD
"I installed FreeBSD on my laptop, alongside the Windows and Slackware Linux I was running on it at the time. Several months later I realized that apart from FreeBSD, I hadn't booted the other two operating systems in months. So I wiped them out."
She wrote bsnmpd and extended it with the help of a grant from the FreeBSD Foundation
We've also got one for Kevin Martin
Started off with a pinball website, ended up learning about FreeBSD from an ISP and starting his own hosting company
"FreeBSD has been an asset to our operations, and while we have branched out a bit, we still primarily use FreeBSD and promote it whenever possible. FreeBSD is a terrific technology with a terrific community."
***
OpenPF?
A blog post over at the Dragonfly digest
What if we had some cross platform development of OpenBSD's firewall?
Similar to portable OpenSSH or OpenZFS, there could be a centrally-developed version with compatibility glue
Right now FreeBSD 9's pf is old, FreeBSD 10's pf is old (but has the best performance of any implementation due to custom patches), NetBSD's pf is old (but they're working on a fork) and Dragonfly's pf is old
Further complicated by the fact that PF itself doesn’t have a version number, since it was designed to just be ‘the pf that came with OpenBSD 5.4’
Not likely to happen any time soon, but it's good food for thought
***
Year of BSD on the server
A good blog post about switching servers from Linux to BSD
2014 is going to be the year of a lot of switching, due to FreeBSD 10's amazing new features
This author was particularly taken with pkgng and the more coherent layout of BSD systems
Similarly, there was also a recent reddit thread, "Why did you choose BSD over Linux?"
Both are excellent reads for Linux users that are thinking about making the switch, send 'em to your friends
***
Getting to know your portmgr
This time in the series they interview Bryan Drewery, a fairly new addition to the team
He started maintaining portupgrade and portmaster, and eventually ended up on the ports management team
Believe it or not, his wife actually had a lot to do with him getting into FreeBSD full-time
Lots of fun trivia and background about him
Speaking of portmgr, our interview for today is...
***
Interview - Baptiste Daroussin - [email protected]
The future of FreeBSD's binary packages, ports' features, various topics
News Roundup
pfSense december hang out
Interview/presentation from pfSense developer Chris Buechler with an accompanying blog post
"This is the first in what will be a monthly recurring series. Each month, we’ll have a how to tutorial on a specific topic or area of the system, and updates on development and other happenings with the project. We have several topics in mind, but also welcome community suggestions on topics"
Speaking of pfSense, they recently opened an online store
We're planning on having a pfSense episode next month!
***
BSDMag December issue is out
The free monthly BSD magazine gets a new release for December
Topics include CARP on FreeBSD, more BSD programming, "unix basics for security professionals," some kernel introductions, using OpenBSD as a transparent proxy with relayd, GhostBSD overview and some stuff about SSH
***
OpenBSD gets tmpfs
In addition to the recently-added FUSE support, OpenBSD now has tmpfs
To get more testing, it was enabled by default in -current
Should make its way into 5.5 if everything goes according to plan
Enables lots of new possibilities, like our ccache and tmpfs guide
***
PCBSD weekly digests
Catching up with all the work going on in PCBSD land..
10.0-RC2 is now available
The big pkgng 1.2 problems seem to have been worked out
***
Feedback/Questions
Remy writes in
Jason writes in
Rob writes in
John writes in
Stuart writes in
***
1 hr 11 min
December 25, 2013 17: The Gift of Giving
Merry Christmas everyone! We're taking the holiday off and just have an interview for you today. We sat down with Scott Long to discuss using FreeBSD at Netflix and lots of other things. Next week we will return with the normal round of news and tutorials.
This episode was brought to you by
Interview - Scott Long - [email protected]
FreeBSD at Netflix, OpenConnect, network performance, various topics
19 min
December 18, 201316: Cryptocrystalline
This time on the show, we'll be showing you how to do a fully-encrypted installation of FreeBSD and OpenBSD. We also have an interview with Damien Miller - one of the lead developers of OpenSSH - about some recent crypto changes in the project. If you're into data security, today's the show for you. The latest news and all your burning questions answered, right here on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
Secure communications with OpenBSD and OpenVPN
Starting off today's theme of encryption...
A new blog series about combining OpenBSD and OpenVPN to secure your internet traffic
Part 1 covers installing OpenBSD with full disk encryption (which we'll be doing later on in the show)
Part 2 covers the initial setup of OpenVPN certificates and keys
Parts 3 and 4 are the OpenVPN server and client configuration
Part 5 is some updates and closing remarks
***
FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter
The December 2013 semi-annual newsletter was sent out from the foundation
In the newsletter you will find the president's letter, articles on the current development projects they sponsor and reports from all the conferences and summits they sponsored
The president's letter alone is worth the read, really amazing
Really long, with lots of details and stories from the conferences and projects
***
Use of NetBSD with Marvell Kirkwood Processors
Article that gives a brief history of NetBSD and how to use it on an IP-Plug computer
The IP-Plug is a "multi-functional mini-server was developed by Promwad engineers by the order of AK-Systems. It is designed for solving a wide range of tasks in IP networks and can perform the functions of a computer or a server. The IP-Plug is powered from a 220V network and has low power consumption, as well as a small size (which can be compared to the size of a mobile phone charger)."
Really cool little NetBSD ARM project with lots of graphs, pictures and details
***
Experimenting with zero-copy network IO
Long blog post from Adrian Chadd about zero-copy network IO on FreeBSD
Discusses the different OS' implementations and options
He's able to get 35 gbit/sec out of 70,000 active TCP sockets, but isn't stopping there
Tons of details, check the full post
***
Interview - Damien Miller - [email protected] / @damienmiller
Cryptography in OpenBSD and OpenSSH
Tutorial
Full disk encryption in FreeBSD & OpenBSD
News Roundup
OpenZFS office hours
Our buddy George Wilson sat down to take some ZFS questions from the community
You can see more info about it here
***
License summaries in pkgng
A discussion between Justin Sherill and some NYCBUG guys about license frameworks in pkgng
Similar to pkgsrc's "ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES" setting, pkgng could let the user decide which software licenses he wants to allow
Maybe we could get a "pkg licenses" command to display the license of all installed packages
Ok bapt, do it
***
The FreeBSD challenge continues
Checking in with our buddy from the Linux foundation...
The switching from Linux to FreeBSD blog series continues for his month-long trial
Follow up from last week: "As a matter of fact, I did check out PC-BSD, and wanted the challenge. Call me addicted to pain and suffering, but the pride and accomplishment you feel from diving into FreeBSD is quite rewarding."
Since we last mentioned it, he's decided to go from a VM to real hardware, got all of his common software installed, experimented with the Linux emulation, set up virtualbox, learned about slices/partitions/disk management, found BSD alternatives to his regularly-used commands and lots more
***
Ports gets a stable branch
For the first time ever, FreeBSD's ports tree will have a maintained "stable" branch
This is similar to how pkgsrc does things, with a rolling release for updated software and stable branch for only security and big fixes
All commits to this branch require approval of portmgr, looks like it'll start in 2014Q1
***
Feedback/Questions
John writes in
Spencer writes in
Campbell writes in
Sha'ul writes in
Clint writes in
***
1 hr 51 min
December 11, 201315: Kickin' NAS
This time on the show, we'll be looking at the new version of FreeNAS, a BSD-based network attached storage solution, as well as talking to Josh Paetzel - one of the key developers of FreeNAS. Actually, he's on the FreeBSD release engineering team too, and does quite a lot for the project. We've got answers to your viewer-submitted questions and plenty of news to cover, so get ready for some BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
This episode was brought to you by
Headlines
More faces of FreeBSD
Another installment of the FoF series
This time they talk with Reid Linnemann who works at Spectra Logic
Gives a history of all the different jobs he's done, all the programming languages he knows
Mentions how he first learned about FreeBSD, actually pretty similar to Kris' story
"I used the system to build and install ports, and explored, getting actively involved in the mailing lists and forums, studying, passing on my own limited knowledge to those who could benefit from it. I pursued my career in the open source software world, learning the differences in BSD and GNU licensing and the fragmented nature of Linux distributions, realizing the FreeBSD community was more mature and well distributed about industry, education, and research. Everything steered me towards working with and on FreeBSD."
Now works on FreeBSD as his day job
The second one covers Brooks Davis
FreeBSD committer since 2001 and core team member from 2006 through 2012
He's helped drive our transition from a GNU toolchain to a more modern LLVM-based toolchain
"One of the reasons I like FreeBSD is the community involved in the process of building a principled, technically-advanced operating system platform. Not only do we produce a great product, but we have fun doing it."
Lots more in the show notes
***
We cannot trust Intel and Via’s chip-based crypto
We woke up to see FreeBSD on the front page of The Register, Ars Technica, Slashdot and Hacker News for their strong stance on security and respecting privacy
At the EuroBSDCon dev summit, there was some discussion about removing support for hardware-based random number generators.
FreeBSD's /dev/random got some updates and, for 10.0, will no longer allow the use of Intel or VIA's hardware RNGs as the sole point of entropy
"It will still be possible to access hardware random number generators, that is, RDRAND, Padlock etc., directly by inline assembly or by using OpenSSL from userland, if required, but we cannot trust them any more"
***
OpenSMTPD 5.4.1 released
The OpenBSD developers came out with major a new version
Improved config syntax (please check your smtpd.conf before upgrading)
Adds support for TLS Perfect Forward Secrecy and custom CA certificate
MTA, Queue and SMTP server improvements
SNI support confirmed for the next version
Check the show notes for the full list of changes, pretty huge release
Watch Episode 3 for an interview we did with the developers
***
More getting to know your portmgr
The portmgr secretary, Thomas Abthorpe, interviews... himself!
Joined as -secretary in March 2010, upgraded to full member in March 2011
His inspiration for using BSD is "I wanted to run a webserver, and I wanted something free. I was going to use something linux, then met up with a former prof from university, and shared my story with him. He told me FreeBSD was the way to go."
Mentions how he loves that anyone can contribute and watch it "go live"
The second one covers Baptiste Daroussin
The reason for his nick, bapt, is "Baptiste is too long to type"
There's even a video of bapt joining the team!
***
Interview - Santa Clause - [email protected] / @freenasteam
FreeNAS 9.2.0
Note: we originally scheduled the interview to be with Josh Paetzel, but Santa showed up instead.
Tutorial
FreeNAS walkthrough
News Roundup
Introducing configinit
CloudInit is "a system originally written for Ubuntu which performs configuration of a system at boot-time based on user-data provided via EC2"
Wasn't ideal for FreeBSD since it requires python and is designed around the concept of configuring a system by running commands (rather than editing configuration files)
Colin Percival came up with configinit, a FreeBSD alternative
Alongside his new "firstboot-pkgs" port, it can spin up a webserver in 120 seconds from "launch" of the EC2 instance
Check the show notes for full blog post
***
OpenSSH support for Ed25519 and bcrypt keys
New Ed25519 key support (hostkeys and user identities) using the public domain ed25519 reference code
SSH private keys were encrypted with a symmetric key that's just an MD5 of their password
Now they'll be using bcrypt by default
We'll get more into this in next week's interview
***
The FreeBSD challenge
A member of the Linux foundation blogs about using FreeBSD
Goes through all the beginner steps, has to "unlearn" some of his Linux ways
Only a few posts as of this time, but it's a continuing series that may be helpful for switchers
***
PCBSD weekly digest
GNOME3, cinnamon and mate desktops are in the installer
Compat layer updated to CentOS 6, enables newest Skype
Looking for people to test printers and hplip
Continuing work on grub, but the ability to switch between bootloaders is back
***
Feedback/Questions
Bostjan writes in
Jason writes in
John writes in
Kjell-Aleksander writes in
Alexy writes in
***
1 hr 49 min
December 04, 201314: Zettabytes for Days
This week is the long-awaited episode you've been asking for! We'll be giving you a crash course on becoming a ZFS wizard, as well as having a chat with George Wilson about the OpenZFS project's recent developments. We have answers to your feedback emails and there are some great news items to get caught up on too, so stay tuned to BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
Headlines
pkgng 1.2 released
bapt and bdrewery from the portmgr team released pkgng 1.2 final
New features include an improved build system, plugin improvements, new bootstrapping command, SRV mirror improvements, a new "pkg config" command, repo improvements, vuXML is now default, new fingerprint features and much more
Really simple to upgrade, check our pkgng tutorial if you want some easy instructions
It's also made its way into Dragonfly
See the show notes for the full list of new features and fixes
***
ChaCha20 and Poly1305 in OpenSSH
Damien Miller recently committed support for a new authenticated encryption cipher for OpenSSH, chacha20-poly1305
Long blog post explaining what these are and why we need them
This cipher combines two primitives: the ChaCha20 cipher and the Poly1305 MAC
RC4 is broken, we needed an authenticated encryption mode to complement AES-GCM that doesn't show the packet length in cleartext
Great explanation of the differences between EtM, MtE and EaM and their advantages
"Both AES-GCM and the EtM MAC modes have a small downside though: because we no longer desire to decrypt the packet as we go, the packet length must be transmitted in plaintext. This unfortunately makes some forms of traffic analysis easier as the attacker can just read the packet lengths directly."
***
Is it time to dump Linux and move to BSD
ITworld did an article about switching from Linux to BSD
The author's interest was sparked from a review he was reading that said "I feel the BSD communities, especially the FreeBSD-based projects, are where the interesting developments are happening these days. Over in FreeBSD land we have efficient PBI bundles, a mature advanced file system in the form of ZFS, new friendly and powerful system installers, a new package manager (pkgng), a powerful jail manager and there will soon be new virtualization technology coming with the release of FreeBSD 10.0"
The whole article can be summed up with "yes" - ok, next story!
***
OpenZFS devsummit videos
The OpenZFS developer summit discussion and presentation videos are up
People from various operating systems (FreeBSD, Mac OS X, illumos, etc.) were there to discuss ZFS on their platforms and the challenges they faced
Question and answer session from representatives of every OS - had a couple FreeBSD guys there including one from the foundation
Presentations both about ZFS itself and some hardware-based solutions for implementing ZFS in production
TONS of video, about 6 hours' worth
This leads us into our interview, which is...
***
Interview - George Wilson - [email protected] / @zfsdude
OpenZFS
Tutorial
A crash course on ZFS
News Roundup
ruBSD 2013 information
The ruBSD 2013 conference will take place on Saturday December 14, 2013 at 10:30 AM in Moscow, Russia
Speakers include three OpenBSD developers, Theo de Raadt, Henning Brauer and Mike Belopuhov
Their talks are titled "The bane of backwards compatibility," "OpenBSD's pf: Design, Implementation and Future" and "OpenBSD: Where crypto is going?"
No word on if there will be video recordings, but we'll let you know if that changes
***
DragonFly roadmap, post 3.6
John Marino posted a possible roadmap for DragonFly, now that they're past the 3.6 release
He wants some third party vendor software updated from very old versions (WPA supplicant, bmake, binutils)
Plans to replace GCC44 with Clang, but GCC47 will probably be the primary compiler still
Bring in fixes and new stuff from FreeBSD 10
***
BSDCan 2014 CFP
BSDCan 2014 will be held on May 16-17 in Ottawa, Canada
They're now accepting proposals for talks
If you are doing something interesting with a BSD operating system, please submit a proposal
We'll be getting lots of interviews there
***
casperd added to -CURRENT
"It (and its services) will be responsible forgiving access to functionality that is not available in capability modes and box. The functionality can be precisely restricted."
Lists some sysctls that can be controlled
***
ZFS corruption bug fixed in -CURRENT
Just a quick follow-up from last week, the ZFS corruption bug in FreeBSD -CURRENT was very quickly fixed, before that episode was even uploaded
***
Feedback/Questions
Chris writes in
SW writes in
Jason writes in
Clint writes in
Chris writes in
***
1 hr 19 min
November 27, 201313: Bridging the Gap
This week on the show, we sit down for an interview with Jordan Hubbard, one of the founders of the FreeBSD project - and the one who invented ports! Later in the show, we'll be showing you some new updates to the OpenBSD router tutorial from a couple weeks ago. We've also got news, your questions and even our first viewer-submitted video, right here on BSD Now.. the place to B.. SD.
Headlines
Getting to know your portmgr
In this interview they talk to one of the "Annoying Reminder Guys" - Erwin Lansing, the second longest serving member of FreeBSD's portmgr (also vice-president of the FreeBSD Foundation)
He actually maintains the .dk ccTLD
Describes FreeBSD as "the best well-hidden success story in operating systems, by now in the hands of more people than one can count and used by even more people, and not one of them knows it! It’s not only the best operating system currently around, but also the most supportive and inspiring community."
In the next one they speak with Martin Wilke (miwi@)
The usual, "what inspires you about FreeBSD" "how did you get into it" etc.
***
vBSDCon wrap-up compilation
Lots of write-ups about vBSDCon gathered in one place
Some from OpenBSD guys
Some from FreeBSD guys
Some from RootBSD
Some from iXsystems
Some from Verisign
And of course our own wrap-up chat in BSD Now Episode 009
***
Faces of FreeBSD
This week they talk to Gábor Páli from Hungary
Talks about his past as a game programmer and how it got involved with FreeBSD
"I met János Háber, who admired the technical merits of FreeBSD and recommended it over the popular GNU/Linux distributions. I downloaded FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE, found it reliable, consistent, easy to install, update and use."
He's been contributing since 2008 and does lots of work with Haskell in ports
He also organizes EuroBSDCon and is secretary of the FreeBSD Core Team
***
Dragonfly 3.6 released
dports now default instead of pkgsrc
Big SMP scaling improvements
Experimental i915 and KMS support
See our interview with Justin Sherrill if you want to hear (a lot) more about it - nearly an hour long
***
Interview - Jordan Hubbard - [email protected] / @omgjkh
FreeBSD's founding and future
Tutorial
Building an OpenBSD router, part 2
Note: there was a mistake in the video version of the tutorial, please consult the written version for the proper instructions.
***
News Roundup
pfSense 2.1 on AWS EC2
We now have pfSense 2.1 available on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
In keeping with the community spirit, they’re also offering a free "public" AMI
Check the FAQ and User Guide on their site for additional details
Interesting possibilities with pfSense in the cloud
***
Puffy on the desktop
Distrowatch, a primarily Linux-focused site, features an OpenBSD 5.4 review
They talk about using it on the desktop, how to set it up
Very long write-up, curious Linux users should give it a read
Ends with "Most people will still see OpenBSD as an operating system for servers and firewalls, but OpenBSD can also be used in desktop environments if the user doesn't mind a little manual work. The payoff is a very light, responsive system that is unlikely to ever misbehave"
***
Two-factor authentication with SSH
Blog post about using a yubikey with SSH public keys
Uses a combination of a OTP, BSDAuth and OpenBSD's login.conf, but it can be used with PAM on other systems as well
Allows for two-factor authentication (a la gmail) in case your private key is compromised
Anyone interested in an extra-hardened SSH server should give it a read
***
PCBSD weekly digest
10.0 has approximately 400 PBIs for public consumption
They will be merging the GNOME3, MATE and Cinnamon desktops into the 10.0 ports tree - please help test them, this is pretty big news in and of itself!
PCDM is coming along nicely, more bugs are getting fixed
Added ZFS dataset options to PCBSD’s new text installer front-end
***
Feedback/Questions
Ben writes in
Florian writes in
Zach writes in
Addison writes in
Adam writes in
Adam's BSD Router Project tutorial can be downloaded here.
***
1 hr 9 min
November 20, 201312: Collecting SSHells
This week we'll be talking to Amitai Schlair of the NetBSD foundation about pkgsrc, NetBSD's future plans and much more. After that, if you've ever wondered what all this SSH stuff is about, today's tutorial has got you covered. We'll be showing you the basics of SSH, as well as how to combine it with tmux for persistent sessions. News, feedback and everything else, right here on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
Headlines
Faces of FreeBSD
The FreeBSD foundation is publishing articles on different FreeBSD developers
This one is about Colin Percival (cperciva@), the ex-security officer
Tells the story of how he first found BSD, what he contributed back, how he eventually became the security officer
Running series with more to come
***
Lots of BSD presentation videos uploaded
EuroBSDCon 2013 dev summit videos, AsiaBSDCon 2013 videos, MWL's presentation video
Most of us never get to see the dev summit talks since they're only for developers
AsiaBSDCon 2013 videos also up finally
List of AsiaBSDCon presentation topics here
Our buddy Michael W Lucas gave an "OpenBSD for Linux users" talk at a Michigan Unix Users Group.
He says "Among other things, I compare OpenBSD to Richard Stallman and physically assault an audience member. We also talk long long time, memory randomization, PF, BSD license versus GPL, Microsoft and other OpenBSD stuff"
Really informative presentation, pretty long, answers some common questions at the end
***
Call for Presentations: FOSDEM 2014 and NYCBSDCon 2014
FOSDEM 2014 will take place on 1–2 February, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium
Just like in the last years, there will be both a BSD booth and a developer's room
The topics of the devroom include all BSD operating systems. Every talk is welcome, from internal hacker discussion to real-world examples and presentations about new and shiny features.
If you are in the area or want to go, check the show notes for details
NYCBSDCon is also accepting papers.
It'll be in New York City at the beginning of February 2014
If anyone wants to give a talk at one of these conferences, go ahead and send in your stuff!
***
FreeBSD foundation's year-end fundraising campaign
The FreeBSD foundation has been supporting the FreeBSD project and community for over 13 years
As of today they have raised about half a million dollars, but still have a while to go
Donations go towards new features, paying for the server infrastructure, conferences, supporting the community, hiring full-time staff members and promoting FreeBSD at events
They are preparing the debut of a new online magazine, the FreeBSD Journal
Typically big companies make their huge donations in December, like a couple of anonymous donors that gave around $250,000 each last year
Make your donation today over at freebsdfoundation.org, every little bit helps
Everyone involved with BSD Now made a donation last year and will do so again this year
***
Interview - Amitai Schlair - [email protected] / @schmonz
The NetBSD Foundation, pkgsrc, future plans
Tutorial
Combining SSH and tmux
Note: there was a mistake in the video version of the tutorial, please consult the written version for the proper instructions.
***
News Roundup
PS4 released
Sony's Playstation 4 is finally released
As previously thought, its OS is heavily based on FreeBSD and uses the kernel among other things
Link in the show notes contains the full list of BSD software they're using
Always good to see BSD being so widespread
***
BSD Mag November issue
Free monthly BSD magazine publishes another issue
This time their topics include: Configuring a Highly Available Service on FreeBSD, IT Inventory & Asset Management Automation, more FreeBSD Programming Primer, PfSense and Snort and a few others
PDF linked in the show notes
***
pbulk builds made easy
NetBSD's pbulk tool is similar to poudriere, but for pkgsrc
While working on updating the documentation, a developer cleaned up quite a lot of code
He wrote a script that automates pbulk deployment and setup
The whole setup of a dedicated machine has been reduced to just three commands
***
PCBSD weekly digest
Over 200 PBIs have been populated in to the PC-BSD 10 Stable Appcafe
Many PC-BSD programs received some necessary bug fixes and updates
Some include network detection in the package and update managers, nvidia graphic detection, security updates for PCDM
***
Feedback/Questions
Peter writes in
Kjell-Aleksander writes in
Jordan writes in
Christian writes in
entransic writes in
***
1 hr 9 min
November 13, 201311: The Gateway Drug
This time on the show, we sit down to chat with Justin Sherrill of the DragonflyBSD project about their new 3.6 release. Later on, we'll be showing you a huge tutorial that's been baking for over a month - how to build an OpenBSD router that'll destroy any consumer router on the market! There's lots of news to get caught up on as well, so sit back and enjoy some BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.
Headlines
OpenSSH 6.4 released
Security fixes in OpenSSH don't happen very often
6.4 fixes a memory corruption problem, no new features
If exploited, this vulnerability might permit code execution with the privileges of the authenticated user and may therefore allow bypassing restricted shell/command configurations.
Disabling AES-GCM in the server configuration is a workaround
Only affects 6.2 and 6.3 if compiled against a newer OpenSSL (so FreeBSD 9's base OpenSSL is unaffected, for example)
Full details here
***
Getting to know your portmgr-lurkers
Next entry in portmgr interview series
This time they chat with Mathieu Arnold, one of the portmgr-lurkers we mentioned previously
Lots of questions ranging from why he uses BSD to what he had for breakfast
Another one was since released, with Antoine Brodin aka antoine@
***
FUSE in OpenBSD
As we glossed over last week, FUSE was recently added to OpenBSD
Now the guys from the OpenBSD Journal have tracked down more information
This version is released under an ISC license
Should be in OpenBSD 5.5, released a little less than 6 months from now
Will finally enable things like SSHFS to work in OpenBSD
***
Automated submission of kernel panic reports
New tool from Colin Percival
Saves information about kernel panics and emails it to FreeBSD
Lets you review before sending so you can edit out any private info
Automatically encrypted before being sent
FreeBSD never kernel panics so this won't get much use
***
Interview - Justin Sherrill - [email protected] / @dragonflybsd
DragonflyBSD 3.6 and the Dragonfly Digest
Tutorial
Building an OpenBSD Router
News Roundup
BSD router project 1.5 released
Nice timing for our router tutorial; TBRP is a FreeBSD distribution for installing on a router
It's an alternative to pfSense, but not nearly as well known or popular
New version is based on 9.2-RELEASE, includes lots of general updates and bugfixes
Fits on a 256MB Compact Flash/USB drive
***
Curve25519 now default key exchange
We mentioned in an earlier episode about a patch for curve25519
Now it's become the default for key exchange
Will probably make its way into OpenSSH 6.5, would've been in 6.4 if we didn't have that security vulnerability
It's interesting to see all these big changes in cryptography in OpenBSD lately
***
FreeBSD kernel selection in boot menu
Adds a kernel selection menu to the beastie menu
List of kernels is taken from 'kernels' in loader.conf as a space or comma separated list of names to display (up to 9)
From our good buddy Devin Teske
***
PCBSD weekly digest
PCDM has officially replaced GDM as the default login manager
New ISO build scripts (we got a sneak preview last week)
Lots of bug fixes
Second set of 10-STABLE ISOs available with new artwork and much more
***
Theo de Raadt speaking at MUUG
Theo will be speaking at Manitoba UNIX User Group in Winnipeg
On Friday, Nov 15, 2013 at 5:30PM (see show notes for the address)
If you're watching the show live you have time to make plans, if you're watching the downloaded version it might be happening right now!
No agenda, but expect some OpenBSD discussion
***
Feedback/Questions
Dave writes in
James writes in
Allen writes in
Chess writes in
Frank writes in
***
1 hr 50 min
November 06, 201310: Year of the BSD Desktop
Headlines
OpenBSD 5.4 released
The usual 6 month release cycle continues with 5.4
People who bought the CD get the release very early, but now it's on the public FTP
New platforms "octeon" and "beagle"
Improved Intel DRM, reworked checksumming for network protocols, ECDHE support in httpd, inetd no longer started by default, DHCP improvements, lots of new OpenSMTPD work, OpenSSH 6.3
Over 7,800 ports available, comes with another new song and fun artwork, lots of new features - check out the full release notes
A special thanks to Nick Holland and Bob Beck for their behind-the-scenes work
Experimental FUSE support was enabled shortly after the release, so look forward to that in the future
***
FreeBSD pkgng repos are official
Built weekly from a snapshot of the Ports Collection every Wednesday
Signed packages coming soon with pkg 1.2
Added official public key to -STABLE and -CURRENT
New "pkg+http" protocol identifier for SRV records
If you need something more up to date or with custom options, it's easy to make your own with just the packages you want using our tutorial
If you need a guide on how to use pkgng itself, check our tutorial for that too!
What does this mean for PCBSD repo users? Should they switch? Differences?
***
DragonflyBSD 3.6 branched
SMP improvements and GCC changes are all in, so it's time to branch
Release planned for a little under 2 weeks from today
Features will include i915 support, mdocml imported, crazy SMP improvements, dports being default
We're hoping to get someone from Dragonfly on the show next week to talk about the final release
***
FreeBSD portmgr lurkers
Over the course of the next two years, volunteers from a group of ports committers will participate in portmgr activities
At four month intervals, two committers at a time will be brought in to work on various projects and learn the inner workings of the team
The first two -lurkers are Mathieu Arnold (mat@) and Antoine Brodin (antoine@).
***
Interview - Michael W. Lucas - [email protected] / @mwlauthor
Sudo Mastery
Video: DNSSec in 55 Minutes
***
Tutorial
Configuring FreeBSD as a desktop system
News Roundup
Capsicum in DragonflyBSD
Dragonfly has no security framework yet besides the traditional unix DAC model
Port of Capsicum to Dragonfly has begun
Quite a bit of technical detail in the show notes
***
NYCBSDCon 2014
After a three year hiatus, NYCBSDCon is back on February 8, 2014
Theme of "The BSDs in Production" this year
Held in New York City, more information to come as the time draws closer
***
FreeBSD newcons progress update
This project will provide a replacement for the legacy syscons system console
Newcons provides a number of improvements, including better integration with graphics modes, and broader character set support
More details on the project can be found on the FreeBSD wiki
***
Weekly PCBSD feature digest
PBI 10 format is about ready and they'll begin populating the 10.0 appcafe starting next week
PCDM login manager is back and is ready to be tested
New PC-BSD Disk Manager Utility with lots of features
***
Feedback/Questions
Alptekin writes in
[Gertjan writes in[(http://slexy.org/view/s2k4C2Ryo9)
Kevin writes in
Kjell-Aleksander writes in
Michael writes in
***
1 hr 33 min
October 30, 20139: CURRENT Events
Headlines
Managed services using FreeBSD
New York Internet, a huge ISP and service provider, details how they use FreeBSD
Mentions using BSD technologies: pf, pfsync, carp, haproxy, zfs, jails and more
Explains FreeBSD's role in commercial workloads on a massive scale
Lots of cool graphs and info, check out the full write-up
***
OpenBSD boot support for keydisk-based crypto volumes
So far, only passphrase-based crypto volumes were bootable
Full disk encryption with key disks required a non-crypto partition to load the kernel
The bootloader now scans all BIOS-visible disks for RAID partitions and automatically associates key disk partitions with their crypto volume
No need to re-create existing volumes. Moving the root partition onto the crypto disk and running "installboot" is all that's needed
***
More Dragonfly SMP speedups
Matthew Dillon has been committing lots of various SMP improvements
Using dports builds on a 48-processor machine as a test
The machine’s now building more than 1000 packages an hour
Super technical details in the show notes, check 'em out
***
Getting to know portmgr
Start of an ongoing series profiling members of the FreeBSD Ports Management Team
In the first interview, they talk to longest serving member of the team, Joe Marcus Clarke
In the second, Bernhard Frölich (who's also the creator of redports.org)
Future segments will include the other members
Topics include their inspiration for using FreeBSD, first time using it, lots of other interesting stuff
***
BSD Now at the top of iTunes
BSD Now is on the front-and-center page of iTunes' technology podcast section
***
Interview - Henning Brauer - [email protected] / @henningbrauer
OpenBSD's pf firewall, privilege separation, various topics
Tutorial
Tracking -STABLE and -CURRENT
News Roundup
OpenBSD gets XBox360 controller support
Adds support for Microsoft XBox 360 controller as a uhid
Will make things easier for emulators in OpenBSD
Are there people who regularly play games on BSD? Email us, might do a segment on it
***
PCBSD 10-STABLE ISOs available
Early cut of the new stable/10 branch, not recommended for everyone
A pkgng repository is available, but is missing a number of packages
AMD KMS, new text installer, UEFI loader support, much more
***
Switching from Linux to BSD
Yet another Linux user switching to BSD makes a thread about it
Asks the community what some differences and advantages are
Good response from the community, worth reading if you're a Linux guy
***
Unattended OpenBSD installations
Unattended installations possible using DHCP and a "response" file
The system gets an IP via DHCP, then fetches a config file with key=value pairs
Can do automatic network setup, SSH, passwords, etc
Still a work in progress
***
Feedback/Questions
Kjell-Aleksander writes in
Alex writes in
Chad writes in
Joshua writes in
Craig writes in
We want to especially thank Chris for his huge feedback emails with lots of show ideas.
***
1 hr 17 min

About BSD Now

From the publisher's feed

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…