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FreeBSD Changelog

What's new in FreeBSD 12.0

Dec 12, 2018
  • OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1a (LTS).
  • Unbound has been updated to version 1.8.1, and DANE-TA has been enabled by default.
  • OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.8p1.
  • Additonal capsicum(4) support has been added to sshd(8).
  • Clang, LLVM, LLD, LLDB, compiler-rt and libc++ has been updated to version 6.0.1.
  • The vt(4) Terminus BSD Console font has been updated to version 4.46.
  • The bsdinstall(8) utility now supports UEFI+GELI as an installation option.
  • The VIMAGE kernel configuration option has been enabled by default.
  • The NUMA option has been enabled by default in the amd64 GENERIC and MINIMAL kernel configurations.
  • The netdump(4) driver has been added, providing a facility through which kernel crash dumps can be transmitted to a remote host after a system panic.
  • The vt(4) driver has been updated with performance improvements, drawing text at rates ranging from 2- to 6-times faster.
  • Various improvements to graphics support for current generation hardware.
  • Support for capsicum(4) has been enabled on armv6 and armv7 by default.
  • The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to consolidate TRIM/BIO_DELETE commands, reducing read/write requests due to fewer TRIM messages being sent simultaneously.
  • The NFS version 4.1 server has been updated to include pNFS server support.
  • The pf(4) packet filter is now usable within a jail(8) using vnet(9).
  • The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add NVMe device emulation.
  • The bhyve(8) utility is now able to be run within a jail(8).
  • Various Lua loader(8) improvements.
  • KDE has been updated to version 5.12.5.
  • And more...

New in FreeBSD 11.1 (Jul 26, 2017)

  • Clang, LLVM, LLD, LLDB, and libc++ have been updated to version 4.0.0.
  • Many third-party (contributed) software updates, such as the Elf Tool Chain, ACPICA, libarchive(3), ntpd(8), unbound(8), and more.
  • Support for blacklistd(8) has been added to OpenSSH.
  • The zfsbootcfg(8) utility has been added, providing one-time boot.config(5)-style options for zfsboot(8).
  • The efivar(8) utility has been added, providing an interface to manage UEFI variables.
  • Support for Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Generation 2 virtual machines has been added.
  • The ena(4) driver has been added, providing support for "next generation" Enhanced Networking on the Amazon® EC2™ platform.
  • The NFS client now supports the Amazon® Elastic File System™ (EFS).
  • The EFI loader can now access remote files via TFTP in addition to NFS as a runtime configuration option.
  • ZFS now stores compressed data in cache, improving cache hit rates and performance.
  • Several updates to provide build reproducibility.

New in FreeBSD 11.0 RC3 (Sep 18, 2016)

  • A boot issue affecting booting from large volumes has been fixed.
  • A boot issue affecting powerpc/powerpc has been fixed.
  • Debugging options have been turned off for arm64/aarch64.
  • The libarchive(3) library has been updated.
  • The cron(8) utility has been updated to include a bug fix.
  • An ipfw(4) 'set enable/disable' bug has been fixed.
  • The arm64/aarch64 kernel has been updated to print a warning when running on pass 1.1 hardware.

New in FreeBSD 11.0 RC2 (Aug 28, 2016)

  • Support for 'nat global' has been restored in ipfw(4).
  • A hang in vtnet(4) when max_virtqueue_pairs > VTNET_MAX_QUEUE_PAIR has been fixed.
  • Detection bridges that are not really HotPlug capable has been fixed.
  • Various clang fixes.
  • L2 caching for UDP over IPv6 has been disabled.
  • Various build fixes.
  • Various other fixes since RC1.

New in FreeBSD 11.0 RC1 (Aug 16, 2016)

  • A NULL pointer dereference in IPSEC has been fixed.
  • Support for SSH Protocol 1 has been removed.
  • OpenSSH DSA keys have been disabled by default. Users upgrading from prior FreeBSD versions are urged to update their SSH keys to DSA or ECDSA keys before upgrading to 11.0-RC1.
  • PCI-e hotplug on bridges with power controllers has been disabled.
  • A loader tunable (hw.pci.enable_pcie_hp) to disable PCI-e HotPlug has been added.
  • A VESA panic on suspend has been fixed.
  • Google Compute Engine image publication has been fixed.
  • An AES-ICM heap corruption typo bug has been fixed.
  • A regression in pf.conf while parsing the 'interval' keyword has been fixed.
  • A ZFS/VFS deadlock has been fixed.

New in FreeBSD 10.3 (Apr 4, 2016)

  • The UEFI boot loader received several improvements: It now follows /boot/config and /boot.config files, multi-device boot support works and command line arguments are parsed. Additionally, its framebuffer driver has been enhanced with GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) and UGA (Universal Graphics Adapter) handling, allowing to set the current graphics mode on systems using one of these methods. Moreover, ZFS boot capability has been added to the UEFI boot loader, including support for multiple ZFS Boot Environments (BEs), e. g. those provided by sysutils/beadm.
  • The CAM Target Layer ctl(4) now supports High Availability setups.
  • The Linux® compatibility layer has been substantially improved and now is capable of running 64-bit applications on amd64 (x86_64), 1:1 threading, VDSO and subset of the epoll(7) family sufficient for the majority of programs.
  • The em(4) and igb(4) drivers have been updated to version 7.6.1 and 2.5.3 respectively. Among others, this brings support for i219/i219(2)/i219(3) hardware found with Intel® Skylake generation and newer chipsets.
  • p(4) driver has been updated and improved: It now also supports 16 Gbps Fibre Channel adapters, has improved target mode support and completed Multi-ID (NPIV) functionality.
  • The ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to Intel® FreeBSD Networking Group version 3.1.13-k and support for X552 and X550T was added.
  • The initial implementation of reroot support has has been added to the reboot(8) utility, allowing the root file system to be mounted from a temporary source file system without requiring a full system reboot.
  • The bsdinstall(8) utility has been updated to allow for creating root-on-ZFS installations on UEFI-based systems in automatic mode.
  • The ifconfig(8) utility now reports SFP/SFP+ optics module data when the -v flag is specified and a NIC driver provides such information, i. e. for cxgbe(4), ixgbe(4), mlx5en(4) and sfxge(4).
  • The jail(8) utility has been updated to include a new flag, -l, which ensures a clean environment in the target jail. Additionally, jail(8) now runs a shell within the target jail by default when no command was given.
  • The mkimg(1) utility has been updated to support NTFS file systems in both GPT and MBR partitioning schemes.
  • The xz(1) utility has been updated to version 5.2.2, which provides support for multi-threaded compression.
  • GNOME has been updated to version 3.16.2.
  • TeXLive has been updated to TL2015.
  • Xorg-Server has been updated to version 1.17.4.

New in FreeBSD 10.2 (Aug 16, 2015)

  • The resolvconf(8) utility has been updated to version 3.7.0, with improvements to protect DNS privacy.
  • The ntp suite has been updated to version 4.2.8p3.
  • A new rc(8) script, growfs, has been added, which will resize the root filesystem on boot if the /firstboot file exists.
  • The Linux® compatibility version has been updated to support Centos™ 6 ports.
  • The drm code has been updated to match Linux® version 3.8.13, allowing running multiple X servers simultaneously.
  • Several enhancements and updates for improved FreeBSD/arm support.
  • Several ZFS performance and reliability improvements.
  • GNOME has been updated to version 3.14.2.
  • KDE has been updated to version 4.14.3.

New in FreeBSD 10.2 RC3 (Aug 8, 2015)

  • An issue with mlock(2) and truncation of file backing the wired regions was fixed.
  • An error that would cause bsdinstall(8) to improperly validate the checksums of remote distribution sets has been corrected.
  • The pms(4) driver has been updated to prevent attaching to invalid devices, which would lead to a system panic on boot.
  • An error resulting in the kern.racct.enable tunable not taking effect has been corrected.
  • A patch(1) shell vulnerability has been fixed. [FreeBSD-SA-15:18]
  • A routed(8) remote denial of service vulnerability has been fixed. [FreeBSD-SA-15:19]
  • A segmentation fault in pw(8) when changing the UID of a user has been fixed.

New in FreeBSD 10.2 RC2 (Aug 3, 2015)

  • The pkg(8) repository configuration file used to populate the /packages directory on the dvd1.iso for amd64 and i386 has been corrected to use the 'quarterly' branch for RC2.
  • ntpd(8) has been updated to use a static build date for reproducibility, as well as no longer links against libmd.
  • The nvme(4) driver has been updated to fix an issue where ZFS TRIM on pool initialization would appear to hang the system, with several additional updates.
  • An issue where the UEFI loader would create an invalid device path has been fixed.
  • A bug in the pre-8.x F_GETLK command for fcntl(2) emulation of advisory locks was fixed.
  • A shell injection vulnerability in patch(1) has been fixed. [FreeBSD-SA-15:14]
  • An issue with TCP reassembly leading to mbuf(9) exhaustion has been fixed. [FreeBSD-SA-15:15]
  • OpenSSH has been updated to address multiple vulnerabilities. [FreeBSD-SA-15:16]
  • A regression related to suspend and resume for several laptops has been fixed.
  • Several issues have been fixed in pf(4).
  • The VHD-formatted virtual machine disk images have changed to use the fixed-size format instead of the dynamic-size format.
  • An issue related to UDP checksum offloading has been fixed for Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 and earlier.
  • A locking issue that could cause FreeBSD/sparc64 systems to panic has been fixed.
  • An issue in the uart(4) driver that could trigger a system panic has been fixed.
  • tar(1) has been updated to address an issue when compressing sparse files.
  • The pms(4) driver for PMC Sierra SAS/SATA HBA controllers has been removed from the GENERIC kernel configuration. In order to use the driver, add pmspcv_load="YES" to loader.conf(5) or at the loader(8) prompt, run 'load pmspcv.ko'. Note, there is an issue with the driver where it will attempt to attach to controllers it should not. At present, a post-release Errata Notice is planned for this issue, to allow time for the issue to be properly resolved in 11-CURRENT and 10-STABLE.

New in FreeBSD 10.2 RC1 (Jul 24, 2015)

  • tcpdump(8) has been updated to obtain capsicum(4) rights for dump file rotation.
  • The ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to fix setting sysctl(8) tunable entries in loader.conf(5).
  • The ZFS txg_quiesce() function has been updated to use __noinline(), allowing DTrace monitoring for txg_quiesce() calls.
  • bsdinstall(8) has been updated to align partitions on 1MB boundaries when ZFS is the selected filesystem, as well as a number of other changes, including detecting BIOS versions to determine when the 'active' flag should be set on the boot partition.
  • The quota(1) utility has been updated to support IPv6.
  • The xen(4) netfront interface has been updated to preserve configurations across virtual machine migrations.
  • The ggatec(8) and ggatel(8) utilities have been fixed for the i386 architecture, as well as a bug in ggated(8) that would prevent the client from receiving a notice of a connection failure.
  • ssh(1) has been updated to canonicalize hostnames before attempting to locate it in the hosts file.
  • Changes to the kernel timecounter introduced earlier in stable/10 have been reverted.
  • The kernel DTrace has been updated to ensure locstat_nsecs() has no effect if lockstat probes are not enabled or when the profiled lock carries the LO_NOPROFILE flag.
  • Resource exhaustion due to sessions stuck in LAST_ACK state has been fixed, as well as a number of additional TCP fixes. [FreeBSD-SA-15:13]
  • The PMC Sierra SAS/SATA driver has been merged from 11-CURRENT.
  • The ichwd(4) driver has been updated to recognize additional Intel Lynx Point devices.
  • The sfxge(4) driver has been updated to support firmware versions earlier than 4.2.1.
  • The ping6(8) utility has been updated to include the '-x' and '-X' options in the ping(8) utility.
  • A bug preventing the ND6_IFF_IFDISABLED flag from clearing when the newly-added IPv6 address was /128 has been fixed.
  • The gif_interfaces and gifconfig examples have been removed from the default rc.conf(5).
  • Group membership of a cloned device when the device is moved has been fixed.
  • Offset calculation in variable substitution in jail.conf(5) has been fixed.
  • The default pkg(8) configuration file (/etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf) has been updated to use the packages built on the quarterly branch instead of head.

New in FreeBSD 10.2 Beta 2 (Jul 18, 2015)

  • [arm] The missing GEOM_LABEL in the GUMSTIX and PANDABOARD kernel configuration files that prevented the '/dev/ufs/rootfs' fstab(5) entry to mount the root filesystem has been fixed.
  • Correctly handle rare events of transient write errors to the cylinder group blocks.
  • An incorrect implementation of kvasprintf() in the Linux compatibility and emulation code has been fixed.
  • Setting the initial system clock time for systems with a CMOS clock set before the year 2000 has been fixed.
  • The pw(8) utility has been updated to allow creating users with UID 0, in addition to other miscellaneous updates.
  • The MIB names in the 'user' sysctl(3) tree have been fixed to no longer return '0' or empty values.
  • The lo(4) driver has been updated to fix an issue where pcap(3) and bpf(4) would fail when writing to the interface.
  • The watchdog(4) device has been fixed to print to the correct buffer.
  • [arm] The '/var/log' and '/var/tmp' directories are no longer mounted as md(4)-backed devices, which would cause messages from syslogd(8) and other applications from retaining log files after reboot(8).
  • A kernel bug that would cause various issues on systems without a battery-backed clock has been fixed.
  • The ntp suite has been updated to version 4.2.8p3.
  • The port and protocol information for IPSEC are now included in the SADB_ACQUIRE message as required by RFC 2367.
  • Fix the issue with devices requiring memory below 4G (such as USB controllers), unable to initialize on very large memory machines (64G or more).

New in FreeBSD 10.1 (Nov 14, 2014)

  • The new console driver, vt(4), has been added.
  • Support for FreeBSD/i386 guests has been added to bhyve(4).
  • The bhyve(4) hypervisor now supports booting from a zfs(8) filesystem.
  • Support for SMP was added to the armv6 kernels and enabled by default in the configuration files for all platforms that contain multi-core CPUs.
  • Initial support for UEFI boot has been added for the FreeBSD/amd64 architecture.
  • Support has been added to cache geli(8) passphrases during system boot.
  • Support for the UDP-Lite protocol (RFC 3828) has been added to the IPv4 and IPv6 stacks.
  • The new filesystem automount facility, autofs(5), has been added.
  • The sshd(8) rc.d(8) startup script now generates ED25519 sshd(8) host keys if keys do not already exist when ssh_keygen_alg() is invoked.
  • OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.6p1.
  • The nc(1) utility has been updated to match the version in OpenBSD 5.5.
  • Sendmail has been updated to 8.14.9.
  • The unbound(8) caching resolver and ldns have been updated to version 1.4.22.
  • OpenPAM has been updated to Ourouparia (20140912).
  • OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.1j.
  • The pkg(8) package management utility has been updated to version 1.3.8.

New in FreeBSD 10.1 RC3 (Oct 23, 2014)

  • Several fixes to the UDPLite protocol implementation.
  • The vt(4) driver has been updated to save and restore keyboard mode and LED states when switching windows.
  • Several fixes to the SCTP protocol implementation.
  • A potential race condition in obtaining a file pointer has been corrected.
  • Fix ZFS ZVOL deadlock and rename issues.
  • Restore libopie.so ABI compatibility with 10.0-RELEASE.
  • Removed the last vestige of MD5 password hashes.
  • Several rc(8) script updates and fixes.
  • bsdinstall(8) has been updated to allow selecting local_unbound in the default services to enable at first boot.
  • Prevent ZFS leaking pool free space.
  • Fix rtsold(8) remote buffer overflow vulnerability. [SA-14:20]
  • Fix routed(8) remote denial of service vulnerability. [SA-14:21]
  • Fix memory leak in sandboxed namei lookup. [SA-14:22]
  • OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.1j. [SA-14:23]
  • Fix an issue where a FreeBSD virtual machine provisioned in the Microsoft Azure service does not recognize the second attached disk on the system.

New in FreeBSD 10.1 RC2 (Oct 13, 2014)

  • Fix XHCI driver for devices which have more than 15 physical root HUB ports.
  • Fix old iSCSI initiator to work with new CAM locking.
  • Fix page length reported for Block Limits VPD page.
  • Add QCOW v1 & v2 support to mkimg(1).

New in FreeBSD 10.1 RC1 (Oct 5, 2014)

  • A bug that would cause all processes to appear to have the parent PID of '1' has been fixed.
  • Various updates to bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8).
  • The Hyper-V KVP (key-value pair) driver has been added, and enabled by default on amd64 and i386 architectures.

New in FreeBSD 10.1 Beta 3 (Sep 28, 2014)

  • Support for serial and null console has been added to the UEFI boot loader.
  • A potential panic triggered by referencing a device that has been renamed has been fixed in the cam(4) subsystem.
  • OpenPAM has been updated to the Ourouparia (20140912) release.
  • New sysctls have been added to vt(4) to enable or disable potentially dangerous key combinations (such as reboot, halt, and break to debugger).
  • The mkimg(1) utility has been updated to allow creating empty partition entries.
  • The GEOM_ELI class will now cache passphrases for disk decryption, which allows the system to boot after the first passphrase entry if the remaining disks on the system use the same passphrase.
  • Support for controlling mfi(4) controller properties has been added to mfiutil(8).
  • The /usr/lib32/compat shared library directory has been added to the default ld-elf32.so.1 path.
  • Use of "no" for a Norwegian keymap file is now permitted in rc.conf(5).
  • Several bug fixes to autofs(5) have been implemented.

New in FreeBSD 10.0 (Jan 20, 2014)

  • GCC is no longer installed by default on architectures where clang is the default compiler.
  • Unbound has been imported to the base system as the local caching DNS resolver.
  • BIND has been removed from the base system.
  • make has been replaced with bmake, obtained from the NetBSD Project.
  • pkg is now the default package management utility.
  • pkg_add(1), pkg_delete, and related tools have been removed.
  • Major enhancements in virtualization, including the addition of bhyve(8), virtio(4), and native paravirtualized drivers providing support for FreeBSD as a guest operating system on Microsoft Hyper-V.
  • TRIM support for Solid State Drives has been added to ZFS.
  • Support for the high-performance LZ4 compression algorithm has been added to ZFS.

New in FreeBSD 10.0 RC4 (Jan 3, 2014)

  • Tighten default restrictions for ntpd(8) server.
  • Fix kernel crash discovered with recent Java port update.

New in FreeBSD 10.0 Beta 4 (Dec 4, 2013)

  • Add preliminary support for RTL8106E, RTL8168G, RTL8168GU, RTL8411B, and RTL8168EP.
  • Enable fingerprint checking in pkg(8) for FreeBSD-provided binary packages.
  • Remove the WITH_LIBICONV_COMPAT build option.
  • Update nvi to 2.1.2.
  • Various iconv(3) fixes.
  • Fix mergemaster -U by forcing FreeBSD 9 compatiblity in mtree when mtree is nmtree.
  • Fix to freebsd-update(8) in generating the list of old files/directories versus new files/directories (FreeBSD-EN-13:05.freebsd-update).

New in FreeBSD 9.2 (Oct 1, 2013)

  • The ZFS filesystem now supports TRIM when used on solid state drives.
  • The virtio(4) drivers have been added to the GENERIC kernel configuration for amd64 and i386 architectures.
  • The ZFS filesystem now supports lz4 compression.
  • OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8y.
  • DTrace hooks have been enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel.
  • DTrace has been updated to version 1.9.0.
  • Sendmail has been updated to version 8.14.7.
  • OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.2p2.
  • Import unmapped I/O support from head/.

New in FreeBSD 10.0 Alpha 2 (Sep 19, 2013)

  • Add -stdlib=libstdc++ to CXXFLAGS when building libstdc++ and libsupc++ with clang.
  • Fix an issue that caused Integrated RAID volumes on LSI mps(4) controllers to not get scanned on boot.
  • Fix a panic during pageout observed on some powerpc64 systems.
  • Import Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers from projects/hyperv branch.
  • Add the new iSCSI target an initiator (iscsictl(8)).
  • Add the vmx(4) driver to amd64 and i386 GENERIC kernels.
  • Various fixes to the drm/radeon driver.
  • Various updates to the unbound import.

New in FreeBSD 9.2 Beta 2 (Jul 30, 2013)

  • Fix an interoperability problem between FreeBSD NFS Server (version 4) and Linux NFS (version 4) clients.
  • Fix nvme(4) and nvd(4) to support non 512-byte sector sizes.
  • Fix freebsd-update(8) for -BETA2 by removing a file with non-POSIX characters in its name. This file is not needed for FreeBSD builds, and caused freebsd-update(8) to error on -BETA1.
  • Fix an XHCI regression.
  • Fix a bug in ipv6_prefix_IF.
  • Fix address range specification with various ifconfig(8) options.
  • Fix Denial of Service vulnerability in named(8). (SA FreeBSD-SA-13:07.bind)

New in FreeBSD 9.0 (Jan 13, 2012)

  • The FreeBSD kernel now supports Capsicum Capability Mode. Capsicum is a set of features for sandboxing support, using a capability model in which the capabilities are file descriptors. Two new kernel options CAPABILITIES and CAPABILITY_MODE have been added to the GENERIC kernel. For more information about Capsicum, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/.[r219129]
  • The hhook(9) (Helper Hook) and khelp(9) (Kernel Helpers) KPIs have been implemented. These are a kind of superset of pfil(9) framework for more general use in the kernel. The hhook(9) KPI provides a way for kernel subsystems to export hook points that khelp(9) modules can hook to provide enhanced or new functionality to the kernel. The khelp(9) KPI provides a framework for managing khelp(9) modules, which indirectly use the hhook(9) KPI to register their hook functions with hook points of interest within the kernel. These allow a structured way to dynamically extend the kernel at runtime in an ABI preserving manner.[r216758, r216615]
  • A new resource accounting API has been implemented. It can keep per-process, per-jail, and per-loginclass resource accounting information. Note that this is not built nor installed by default. To build and install them, specify options RACCT in the kernel configuration file and rebuild the base system as described in the FreeBSD Handbook.[r220137]
  • A new resource-limiting API has been implemented. It works in conjunction with the RACCT resource accounting implementation and takes user-configurable actions based on the set of rules it maintains and the current resource usage. The rctl(8) utility has been added to manage the rules in userland. Note that this is not built nor installed by default. To build and install them, specify options RCTL in the kernel configuration file and rebuild the base system as described in the FreeBSD Handbook.[r220163]
  • [powerpc] FreeBSD/powerpc now supports Sony Playstation 3 using the OtherOS feature available on firmwares 3.15 and earlier.[r217044]
  • [amd64, i386] The FreeBSD usb(4) subsystem now supports USB 3.0 by default.[r223098]
  • The FreeBSD usb(4) subsystem now supports USB packet filter. This allows to capture packets which go through each USB host controller. The implementation is almost based on bpf(4) code. The userland program usbdump(8) has been added.[r215649]
  • A bxe(4) driver for Broadcom NetXtreme II 10GbE controllers (BCM57710, BCM57711, BCM57711E) has been added.[r219647]
  • A cxgbe(4) driver for Chelsio T4 (Terminator 4) based 10Gb/1Gb adapters has been added.[r218794]
  • The em(4) driver has been updated to version 7.3.2.[r219753]
  • The igb(4) driver has been updated to version 2.2.5.[r223350]
  • The igb(4) driver now supports Intel I350 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controllers.[r218530]
  • The ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to version 2.3.8.[r217593]
  • The re(4) driver now supports RTL8168E/8111E-VL PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controllers and RTL8401E PCIe Fast Ethernet controllers.[r217498, r218760]
  • A vte(4) driver for RDC R6040 Fast Ethernet controllers, which are commonly found on the Vortex86 System On a Chip, has been added.[r216829]
  • A vxge(4) driver for the Neterion X3100 10GbE Server/Storage adapter has been added.[r221167]
  • ipfw(8) now supports IPv6 in the fwd action.[r225044]
  • ipfw(8) now supports the call and return actions. Upon the call number action, the current rule number is saved in the internal stack and ruleset processing continues with the first rule numbered number or higher. The return action takes the rule number saved to internal stack by the latest call action and returns ruleset processing to the first rule with number greater than that saved number.[r223666]
  • For Infiniband support, OFED (OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution) version 1.5.3 has been imported into the base system. Note that this is not built nor installed by default. To build and install them, specify WITH_OFED=yes in /etc/src.conf and rebuild the base system as described in the FreeBSD Handbook.[r219820]
  • The FreeBSD TCP/IP network stack now supports IPv4 prefixes with /31 as described in RFC 3021, “Using 31-Bit Prefixes on IPv4 Point-to-Point Links”.[r226572]
  • The FreeBSD TCP/IP network stack now supports the mod_cc(9) pluggable congestion control framework. This allows TCP congestion control algorithms to be implemented as dynamically loadable kernel modules. The following kernel modules are available as of 9.0-RELEASE: cc_chd(4) for the CAIA-Hamilton-Delay algorithm, cc_cubic(4) for the CUBIC algorithm, cc_hd(4) for the Hamilton-Delay algorithm, cc_htcp(4) for the H-TCP algorithm, cc_newreno(4) for the NewReno algorithm, and cc_vegas(4) for the Vegas algorithm. The default algorithm can be set by a new sysctl(8) variable net.inet.tcp.cc.algorithm. The value must be set to one of the names listed by net.inet.tcp.cc.available, and newreno is the default set at boot time. For more detail, see the mod_cc(4) and mod_cc(9) manual pages.[r216109, r216114, r216115, r218152, r218153, r218155]
  • An h_ertt(4) (Enhanced Round Trip Time) khelp(9) module has been added. This module allows per-connection, low noise estimates of the instantaneous RTT in the TCP/IP network stack with a robust implementation even in the face of delayed acknowledgments and/or TSO (TCP Segmentation Offload) being in use for a connection.[r217806]
  • A new tcp(4) socket option TCP_CONGESTION has been added. This allows to select or query the congestion control algorithm that the TCP/IP network stack will use for connections on the socket.[r218912]
  • The ng_netflow(4) netgraph(4) node now supports NetFlow version 9. A new export9 hook has been added for NetFlow v9 data. Note that data export can be done simultaneously in both version 5 and version 9.[r219183]
  • The geom_map(4) GEOM class has been added. This allows to generate multiple geom providers based on a hard-coded layout of a device with no explicit partition table such as embedded flash storage. For more information, see the geom_map(4) manual page.[r220559]
  • The graid(8) GEOM class has been added. This is a replacement of the ataraid(4) driver supporting various BIOS-based software RAID.[r219974]
  • A tws(4) driver for 3ware 9750 SATA+SAS 6Gb/s RAID controllers has been added.[r226115]
  • The FreeBSD Fast File System now supports softupdates journaling. It introduces a intent log into a softupdates-enabled file system which eliminates the need for background fsck(8) even on unclean shutdown. This can be enabled in a per-filesystem basis by using the -j flag of the newfs(8) utility or the -j enable option of the tunefs(8) utility. Note that the 9.0-RELEASE installer automatically enables softupdates journaling for newly-created UFS file systems.[r207141, r218726]
  • The FreeBSD Fast File System now supports the TRIM command when freeing data blocks. A new flag -t in the newfs(8) and tunefs(8) utilities sets the TRIM-enable flag for a file system. The TRIM-enable flag makes the file system send a delete request to the underlying device for each freed block. The TRIM command is specified as a Data Set Management Command in the ATA8-ACS2 standard to carry the information related to deleted data blocks to a device, especially for a SSD (Solid-State Drive) for optimization.[r216796]
  • The FreeBSD NFS subsystem has been updated. The new implementation supports NFS version 4 in addition to 2 and 3. The kernel options for the NFS server and client are changed from NFSSERVER and NFSCLIENT to NFSD and NFSCL. sysctl(8) variables which start with vfs.nfssrv. have been renamed to vfs.nfsd.. The NFS server now supports vfs.nfsd.server_max_nfsvers and vfs.nfsd.server_min_nfsvers sysctl(8) variables to specify the maximum and the minimum NFS version number which the server accepts. The default value is set to 3 and 2, respectively.[r221124]
  • The FreeBSD ZFS subsystem has been updated to the SPA (Storage Pool Allocator, also known as zpool) version 28. It now supports data deduplication, triple parity RAIDZ (raidz3), snapshot holds, log device removal, zfs diff, zpool split, zpool import -F, and read-only zpool import.[r219089]
  • An implementation of iconv() API libraries and utilities which are standardized in Single UNIX Specification has been imported. These are based on NetBSD's Citrus implementation. Note that these are not built nor installed by default. To build and install them, specify WITH_ICONV=yes in /etc/src.conf and rebuild the base system as described in the FreeBSD Handbook.[r219019]
  • A readline(3) API set has been imported into libedit. This is based on NetBSD's implementation and BSD licensed utilities now use it instead of GNU libreadline.[r220370]
  • The rtsold(8) and rtadvd(8) daemons now support the RDNSS and DNSSL options described in RFC 6106, “IPv6 Router Advertisement Options for DNS Configuration”. A rtadvctl(8) utility to control the rtadvd(8) daemon has been added.[r222732, r224006]
  • The rtld(1) runtime linker now supports shared objects as filters in ELF shared libraries. Both standard and auxiliary filtering have been supported. The rtld(1) linker's processing of a filter defers loading a filtee until a filter symbol is referenced unless the LD_LOADFLTR environment variable is defined or a -z loadfltr option was specified when the filter was created.[r216695]
  • A bug in the tftpd(8) daemon has been fixed. It had an interoperability issue when transferring a large file.[r224536]
  • The utmp(5) user accounting database has been replaced by utmpx(3). User accounting utilities will now use utmpx database files exclusively. The wtmpcvt(1) utility can be used to convert wtmp files to the new format, making it possible to read them using the updated utilities.[r202188]
  • The zpool(8): utility now supports a zpool labelclear command. This allows to wipe the label data from a drive that is not active in a pool.[r224171]

New in FreeBSD 8.1 (Jul 24, 2010)

  • zfsloader added
  • zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14
  • NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities
  • UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support
  • SMP support in PowerPC G5
  • BIND 9.6.2-P2
  • sendmail updated to 8.14.4
  • OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1
  • GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5

New in FreeBSD 7.2 RC1 (Apr 18, 2009)

  • The first of two planned release candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of some of the recent work would be particularly appreciated. This includes: bce(4) updated (there is a report that lagg(4) does not work after the update, fixing that may need to be done as an errata notice after the release); testing of the threading libraries; amr(4) should be fixed. A fix for the 'vm_page_insert: page already inserted' panics has been committed to RELENG_7_1 this morning so it missed the 7.2-RC1 builds. If you wind up being hit by that you can try a normal source based update to the current state of RELENG_7_1 and that problem should go away.

New in FreeBSD 7.2 Beta 1 (Apr 3, 2009)

  • Testing of two recent changes to the system would be particularly valuable. The bce(4) network driver was updated a few days ago. And some significant work was done on the threading libraries a short time ago that is known to fix several major issues but testing to see if it introduced any regressions would be appreciated.

New in FreeBSD 7.1 RC1 (Dec 10, 2008)

  • FreeBSD 7.1-RC1 is now available, the first of the release candidates. There will be at least one more release candidate before the release so the release itself is likely around three weeks from now - if no new show-stoppers are uncovered during testing. In addition to general testing, we're looking for information about potential problems with the boot loader. And a late arrival that's not possible to test without the packages, sysinstall's issues with excessive disc swapping when installing large sets of packages off the CDROMs should be fixed. Testing to make sure that's working would be appreciated.

New in FreeBSD 7.1 Beta 2 (Oct 20, 2008)

  • As the next step in the release cycle for FreeBSD 7.1 builds for FreeBSD 7.1-BETA2 are now available for testing. The ISO images and FTP install trees are available on the FreeBSD mirror sites. The amd64 and i386 sets include a preliminary set of packages, not what is expected to be included with the release itself. The biggest change is that kde-lite was used this time, while the full kde3 will most likely be used for the release. If you would like to do a source-based update to 7.1-BETA2 from an already installed machine you can update your tree to RELENG_7 using normal cvsup/csup methods. The freebsd-update utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.