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    Gadgets

    BSD Now

    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 a platform for support and questions. We love and advocate FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD and TrueOS. Our show aims to be helpful and informative for new users that want to learn about them, but still be entertaining for the people who are already pros. The show airs on Wednesdays at 2:00PM (US Eastern time) and the edited version is usually up the following day.

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    Latest Episodes:
    57: The Daemon's Apprentice Oct 01, 2014
    Show notes

    We're back from EuroBSDCon! This week we'll be talking with Steve Wills about mentoring new BSD developers. If you've ever considered becoming a developer or helping out, it's actually really easy to get involved. We've also got all the BSD news for the week and answers to your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    NetBSD at Hiroshima Open Source Conference

    • NetBSD developers are hard at work, putting NetBSD on everything they can find
    • At a technology conference in Hiroshima, some developers brought their exotic machines to put on display
    • As usual, there are lots of pictures and a nice report from the conference ***

    FreeBSD's Linux emulation overhaul

    • For a long time, FreeBSD's emulation layer has been based on an ancient Fedora 10 system
    • If you've ever needed to install Adobe Flash on BSD, you'll be stuck with all this extra junk
    • With some recent work, that's been replaced with a recent CentOS release
    • This opens up the door for newer versions of Skype to run on FreeBSD, and maybe even Steam someday ***

    pfSense 2.2-BETA

    • Big changes are coming in pfSense land, with their upcoming 2.2 release
    • We talked to the developer a while back about future plans, and now they're finally out there
    • The 2.2 branch will be based on FreeBSD 10-STABLE (instead of 8.3) and include lots of performance fixes
    • It also includes some security updates, lots of package changes and updates and much more
    • You can check the full list of changes on their wiki ***

    NetBSD on the Raspberry Pi

    • This article shows how you can install NetBSD on the ever-so-popular Raspberry Pi
    • As of right now, you'll need to use a -CURRENT snapshot to do it
    • It also shows how to grow the filesystem to fill up an SD card, some pkgsrc basics and how to get some initial things set up
    • Can anyone find something that you can't install NetBSD on? ***

    Interview - Steve Wills - swills@freebsd.org / @swills

    Mentoring new BSD developers

    News Roundup

    MidnightBSD 0.5 released

    • We don't hear a whole lot about MidnightBSD, but they've just released version 0.5
    • It's got a round of the latest FreeBSD security patches, driver updates and various small things
    • Maybe one of their developers could come on the show sometime and tell us more about the project ***

    BSD Router Project 1.52 released

    • The newest update for the BSD Router Project is out
    • This version is based on a snapshot of 10-STABLE that's very close to 10.1-RELEASE
    • It's mostly a bugfix release, but includes some small changes and package updates ***

    Configuring a DragonFly BSD desktop

    • We've done tutorials on how to set up a FreeBSD or OpenBSD desktop, but maybe you're more interested in DragonFly
    • In this post from Justin Sherrill, you'll learn some of the steps to do just that
    • He pulled out an old desktop machine, gave it a try and seems to be pleased with the results
    • It includes a few Xorg tips, and there are some comments about the possibility of making a GUI DragonFly installer ***

    Building a mini-ITX pfSense box

    • Another week, another pfSense firewall build post
    • This time, the author is installing to a Jetway J7F2, a mini-ITX device with four LAN ports
    • He used to be a m0n0wall guy, but wanted to give the more modern pfSense a try
    • Lots of great pictures of the hardware, which we always love ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Damian writes in
    • Jan writes in
    • Dale writes in
    • Joe writes in
    • Bostjan writes in ***
    56: Beastly Infrastructure Sep 24, 2014
    Show notes

    This week we're on the other side of the Atlantic, attending EuroBSDCon. For now, we've got an awesome interview with Peter Wemm about the FreeBSD web cluster and infrastructure. It's an inside look that you probably won't hear about anywhere else! We'll also get to a couple of your emails today, and be back next week with all the usual goodies, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Interview - Peter Wemm - peter@freebsd.org / @karinjiri

    The FreeBSD web cluster and infrastructure

    Feedback/Questions

    • Todd writes in
    • Brandon writes in ***
    55: The Promised WLAN Sep 17, 2014
    Show notes

    Coming up this week, we'll be talking with Adrian Chadd about all things wireless, his experience with FreeBSD on various laptop hardware and a whole lot more. As usual, we've got the latest news and answers to all your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 is out

    • The first maintenance update in the 10.x series of FreeBSD is on its way
    • Since we can't see a changelog yet, the 10-STABLE release notes offer a glimpse at some of the new features and fixes that will be included in 10.1
    • The vt driver was merged from -CURRENT, lots of drivers were updated, lots of bugs were fixed and bhyve also got many improvements from 11
    • Initial UEFI support, multithreaded softupdates for UFS and many more things were added
    • You can check the release schedule for the planned release dates
    • Details for the various forms of release media can be found in the announcement ***

    Remote headless OpenBSD installation

    • A lot of server providers only offer a limited number of operating systems to be easily installed on their boxes
    • Sometimes you'll get lucky and they'll offer FreeBSD, but it's much harder to find ones that natively support other BSDs
    • This article shows how you can use a Linux-based rescue system, a RAM disk and QEMU to install OpenBSD on the bare metal of a server, headlessly and remotely
    • It required a few specific steps you'll want to take note of, but is extremely useful for those pesky hosting providers ***

    Building a firewall appliance with pfSense

    • In this article, we learn how to easily set up a gateway and wireless access point with pfSense on a Netgate ALIX2C3 APU
    • After the author's modem died, he decided to look into a more do-it-yourself option with pf and a tiny router board
    • The hardware he used has gigabit ports and a BSD-compatible wireless card, as well as enough CPU power for a modest workload and a few services (OpenVPN, etc.)
    • There's a lot of great pictures of the hardware and detailed screenshots, definitely worth a look ***

    Receive Side Scaling - UDP testing

    • Adrian Chadd has been working on RSS (Receive Side Scaling) in FreeBSD, and gives an update on the progress
    • He's using some quad core boxes with 10 gigabit ethernet for the tests
    • The post gives lots of stats and results from his network benchmark, as well as some interesting workarounds he had to do
    • He also provides some system configuration options, sysctl knobs, etc. (if you want to try it out)
    • And speaking of Adrian Chadd... ***

    Interview - Adrian Chadd - adrian@freebsd.org / @erikarn

    BSD on laptops, wifi, drivers, various topics

    News Roundup

    Sendmail removed from OpenBSD

    • Mail server admins around the world are rejoicing, because sendmail is finally gone from OpenBSD
    • With OpenSMTPD being a part of the base system, sendmail became largely redundant and unneeded
    • If you've ever compared a "sendmail.cf" file to an "smtpd.conf" file... the different is as clear as night and day
    • 5.6 will serve as a transitional release, including both sendmail and OpenSMTPD, but 5.7 will be the first release without it
    • If you still need it for some reason, sendmail will live in ports from now on
    • Hopefully FreeBSD will follow suit sometime in the future as well, possibly including DragonFly's mail transfer agent in base (instead of an entire mail server) ***

    pfSense backups with pfmb

    • We've mentioned the need for a tool to back up pfSense configs a number of times on the show
    • This script, hosted on github, does pretty much exactly that
    • It can connect to one (or more!) pfSense installations and back up the configuration
    • You can roll back or replace failed hardware very easily with its restore function
    • Everything is done over SSH, so it should be pretty secure ***

    The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System

    • We mentioned when the pre orders were up, but now "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, 2nd edition" seems to be shipping out
    • If you're interested in FreeBSD development, or learning about the operating system internals, this is a great book to buy
    • We've even had all three authors on the show before! ***

    OpenBSD's systemd replacement updates

    • We mentioned last week that the news of OpenBSD creating systemd wrappers was getting mainstream attention
    • One of the developers writes in to Undeadly, detailing what's going on and what the overall status is
    • He also clears up any confusion about "porting systemd to BSD" (that's not what's going on) or his code ever ending up in base (it won't)
    • The top comment as of right now is a Linux user asking if his systemd wrappers can be ported back to Linux... poor guy ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Brad writes in
    • Ben writes in
    • Mathieu writes in
    • Steve writes in ***
    54: Luminary Environment Sep 10, 2014
    Show notes

    This week on the show, it's all about Lumina. We'll be giving you a visual walkthrough of the new BSD-exclusive desktop environment, as well as chatting with the main developer. There's also answers to your emails and all the latest news, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    Portscout ported to OpenBSD

    • Portscout is a popular utility used in the FreeBSD ports infrastructure
    • It lets port maintainers know when there's a new version of the upstream software available by automatically checking the distfile mirror
    • Now OpenBSD porters can enjoy the same convenience, as it's been ported over
    • You can view the status online to see how it works and who maintains what
    • The developer who ported it is working to get all the current features working on OpenBSD, and added a few new features as well
    • He decided to fork and rename it a few days later ***

    Sysadmins and systemd refugees flocking to BSD

    • With all the drama in Linux land about the rapid changes to their init system, a lot of people are looking at BSD alternatives
    • This "you got your Windows in my Linux" article (and accompanying comments) give a nice glimpse into the minds of some of those switchers
    • Both server administrators and regular everyday users are switching away from Linux, as more and more distros give them no choice but to use systemd
    • Fortunately, the BSD communities are usually very welcoming of switchers - it's pretty nice on this side! ***

    OpenBSD's versioning schemes

    • Ted Unangst explains the various versioning systems within OpenBSD, from the base to libraries to other included software
    • In contrast to FreeBSD's release cycle, OpenBSD isn't as concerned with breaking backwards compatibility (but only if it's needed to make progress)
    • This allows them to innovate and introduce new features a lot more easily, and get those features in a stable release that everyone uses
    • He also details the difference between branches, their errata system and lack of "patch levels" for security
    • Some other things in OpenBSD don't have version numbers at all, like tmux
    • "Every release adds some new features, fixes some old bugs, probably adds a new bug or two, and, if I have anything to say about it, removes some old features." ***

    VAXstation 4000 Model 90 booting NetBSD

    • We found a video of NetBSD booting on a 22 year old VAX workstation, circa 1992
    • This system has a monstrous 71 MHz CPU and 128MB of ECC RAM
    • It continues in part two, where we learn that it would've cost around $25,000 when it was released!
    • The uploader talks about his experiences getting NetBSD on it, what does and doesn't work, etc
    • It's interesting to see that such old hardware isn't necessarily obsolete just because newer things have come out since then (but maybe don't try to build world on it...) ***

    Interview - Ken Moore - ken@pcbsd.org

    The Lumina desktop environment

    Special segment

    Lumina walkthrough

    News Roundup

    Suricata for IDS on pfSense

    • While most people are familiar with Snort as an intrusion detection system, Suricata is another choice
    • This guide goes through the steps of installing and configuring it on a public-facing pfSense box
    • Part two details some of the configuration steps
    • One other cool thing about Suricata - it's compatible with Snort rules, so you can use the same updates
    • There's also another recent post about snort as well, if that's more your style
    • If you run pfSense (or any BSD) as an edge router for a lot of users, this might be worth looking into ***

    OpenBSD's systemd API emulation project

    • This story was pretty popular in the mainstream news this week
    • For the Google Summer of Code, a student is writing emulation wrappers for some of systemd's functions
    • There was consideration from some Linux users to port over the finished emulation back to Linux, so they wouldn't have to run the full systemd
    • One particularly interesting Slashdot comment snippet: "We are currently migrating a large number (much larger than planned after initial results) of systems from RHEL to BSD - a decision taken due to general unhappiness with RHEL6, but SystemD pushed us towards BSD rather than another Linux distro - and in some cases are seeing throughput gains of greater than 10% on what should be equivalent Linux and BSD server builds. The re-learning curve wasn't as steep as we expected, general system stability seems to be better too, and BSD's security reputation goes without saying."
    • It will NOT be in the base system - only in ports, and only installed as a dependency for things like newer GNOME that require such APIs
    • In the long run, BSD will still be safe from systemd's reign of terror, but will hopefully still be compatible with some third party packages like GNOME that insist on using it ***

    GhostBSD 4 previewed

    • The GhostBSD project is moving along, slowly getting closer to the 4 release
    • This article shows some of the progress made, and includes lots of screenshots and interesting graphical frontends
    • If you're not too familiar with GhostBSD, we interviewed the lead developer a little while back ***

    NetBSD on the Banana Pi

    • The Banana Pi is a tasty alternative to the Raspberry Pi, with similar hardware specs
    • In this blog post, a NetBSD developer details his experiences in getting NetBSD to run on it
    • After studying how the prebuilt Linux image booted, he made some notes and started hacking
    • Ethernet, one of the few things not working, is being looked into and he's hoping to get it fully supported for the upcoming NetBSD 7.0
    • They're only about $65 as of the time we're recording this, so it might be a fun project to try ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Antonio writes in
    • Garegin writes in
    • Erno writes in
    • Brandon writes in ***
    53: It's HAMMER Time Sep 03, 2014
    Show notes

    It's our one year anniversary episode, and we'll be talking with Reyk Floeter about the new OpenBSD webserver - why it was created and where it's going. After that, we'll show you the ins and outs of DragonFly's HAMMER FS. Answers to viewer-submitted questions and the latest headlines, on a very special BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    FreeBSD foundation's new IPSEC project

    • The FreeBSD foundation, along with Netgate, is sponsoring some new work on the IPSEC code
    • With bandwidth in the 10-40 gigabit per second range, the IPSEC stack needs to be brought up to modern standards in terms of encryption and performance
    • This new work will add AES-CTR and AES-GCM modes to FreeBSD's implementation, borrowing some code from OpenBSD
    • The updated stack will also support AES-NI for hardware-based encryption speed ups
    • It's expected to be completed by the end of September, and will also be in pfSense 2.2 ***

    NetBSD at Shimane Open Source Conference 2014

    • The Japanese NetBSD users group held a NetBSD booth at the Open Source Conference 2014 in Shimane on August 23
    • One of the developers has gathered a bunch of pictures from the event and wrote a fairly lengthy summary
    • They had NetBSD running on all sorts of devices, from Raspberry Pis to Sun Java Stations
    • Some visitors said that NetBSD had the most chaotic booth at the conference ***

    pfSense 2.1.5 released

    • A new version of the pfSense 2.1 branch is out
    • Mostly a security-focused release, including three web UI fixes and the most recent OpenSSL fix (which FreeBSD has still not patched in -RELEASE after nearly a month)
    • It also includes many other bug fixes, check the blog post for the full list ***

    Systems, Science and FreeBSD

    • Our friend George Neville-Neil gave a presentation at Microsoft Research
    • It's mainly about using FreeBSD as a platform for research, inside and outside of universities
    • The talk describes the OS and its features, ports, developer community, documentation, who uses BSD and much more ***

    Interview - Reyk Floeter - reyk@openbsd.org / @reykfloeter

    OpenBSD's HTTP daemon

    Tutorial

    A crash course on HAMMER FS

    News Roundup

    OpenBSD's rcctl tool usage

    • OpenBSD recently got a new tool for managing /etc/rc.conf.local in -current
    • Similar to FreeBSD's "sysrc" tool, it eliminates the need to manually edit rc.conf.local to enable or disable services
    • This blog post - from a BSD Now viewer - shows the typical usage of the new tool to alter the startup services
    • It won't make it to 5.6, but will be in 5.7 (next May) ***

    pfSense mini-roundup

    • We found five interesting pfSense articles throughout the week and wanted to quickly mention them
    • The first item in our pfSense mini-roundup details how you can stream Netflix to in non-US countries using a "smart" DNS service
    • The second post talks about setting ip IPv6, in particular if Comcast is your ISP
    • The third one features pfSense on Softpedia, a more mainstream tech site
    • The fourth post describes how to filter HTTPS traffic with Squid and pfSense
    • The last article describes setting up a VPN using the "tinc" daemon and pfSense
    • It seems to be lesser known, compared to things like OpenVPN or SSH tunnels, so it's interesting to read about
    • This pfSense HQ website seems to have lots of other cool pfSense items, check it out ***

    OpenBSD's new buffer cache

    • OpenBSD has traditionally used the tried-and-true LRU algorithm for buffer cache, but it has a few problems
    • Ted Unangst has just switched to a new algorithm in -current, partially based on 2Q, and details some of his work
    • Initial tests show positive results in terms of cache responsiveness
    • Check the post for all the fine details ***

    BSDTalk episode 244

    • Another new BSDTalk is up and, this time around, Will Backman interviews Ken Moore, the developer of the new BSD desktop environment
    • They discuss the history of development, differences between it and other DEs, lots of topics
    • If you're more of a visual person, fear not, because...
    • We'll have Ken on next week, including a full "virtual walkthrough" of Lumina and its applications ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Ghislain writes in
    • Raynold writes in
    • Van writes in
    • Sean writes in
    • Stefan writes in ***
    52: Reverse Takeover Aug 27, 2014
    Show notes

    Coming up this week, we'll be chatting with Shawn Webb about his recent work with ASLR and PIE in FreeBSD. After that, we'll be showing you how you can create a reverse SSH tunnel to a system behind a firewall... how sneaky. Answers to your emails plus the latest news, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    FreeBSD foundation August update

    • The foundation has published a new PDF detailing some of their recent activities
    • It includes project development updates, the 10.1-RELEASE schedule and some of its new features
    • There is also a short interview with Dru Lavigne in the "voices from the community" section
    • If you're into hardware, there's another section about some new FreeBSD server equipment
    • In closing, there's an update on funding too ***

    NSD for an authoritative nameserver

    • With BIND having been removed from FreeBSD 10.0, you might be looking to replace your old DNS setup
    • This article shows how to use NSD for an authoritative DNS nameserver
    • It's also got a link to a similar article on Unbound, the new favorite recursive and caching resolver (they work great together)
    • All the instructions are presented very neatly, with all the little details included
    • Less BIND means less vulnerabilities, everybody's happy ***

    BIND and Nginx removed from OpenBSD

    • While we're on the topic of DNS servers, BIND was finally removed from OpenBSD as well
    • The base system contains both NSD and Unbound, so users can transition over between 5.6 (November of this year) and 5.7 (May of next year)
    • They've also removed nginx from the base system, in favor of the new custom HTTP daemon
    • BIND and Nginx are still available in ports if you don't want to switch
    • We're hoping to have Reyk Floeter on the show next week to talk about it, but scheduling might not work out, so it may be a little later on
    • With Apache gone in the upcoming 5.6, It's also likely that sendmail will be removed before 5.7 - hooray for modern alternatives ***

    NetBSD demo videos

    • A Japanese NetBSD developer has been uploading lots of interesting videos
    • Unsurprisingly, they're all featuring NetBSD running on exotic and weird hardware
    • Most of them are demoing sound or running a modern Twitter client on an ancient computer
    • They're from the same guy that did the conference wrap-up we mentioned recently ***

    Interview - Shawn Webb - shawn.webb@hardenedbsd.org / @lattera

    Address space layout randomization in FreeBSD

    Tutorial

    Reverse SSH tunneling

    News Roundup

    Puppet master-agent installation on FreeBSD

    • If you've got a lot of BSD boxes under your control, or if you're just lazy, you've probably looked into Puppet before
    • The author claims a lack of BSD-specific Puppet documentation, so he decided to write up some notes of his own
    • He goes through some advantages of using this type of tool for deployments, even when you don't have a huge number of systems
    • The rest of the post explains how to set up both the master and the agent configurations ***

    Misc. pfSense items

    • We found a few miscellaneous pfSense articles this past week
    • The first one is about the hunt for the "ultimate" free open source firewall, where pfSense is obviously a strong contender
    • The second one shows how to log NAT firewall states (a good way to find out which family member has been torrenting!)
    • In the third, you can see how to automatically back up your configuration files
    • The fourth item shows how to set up PXE booting with pfSense, similar to one of our tutorials ***

    Time Machine backups on ZFS

    • If you've got a Mac you need to keep backed up, a FreeBSD server with ZFS can take the place of an expensive "time capsule"
    • This post walks you through setting up netatalk and mDNS for a very versatile Time Machine backup system
    • With a single command on the OS X side, you can write to and read from the BSD box just like a regular external drive
    • Surprisingly simple to do, recommended for anyone with Macs on their network ***

    Lumina desktop preview

    • Lumina, the BSD-exclusive desktop environment, seems to be coming along nicely
    • The main developer has posted an update on the PCBSD blog with some screenshots
    • Lots of new features have been added, many of which are documented in the post
    • There just might be a BSD Now episode about Lumina coming up.. (cough cough) ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Gary writes in
    • Cedric writes in
    • Caldwell writes in
    • Cary writes in ***
    51: Engineering Nginx Aug 20, 2014
    Show notes

    Coming up on the show, we'll be showing you how to set up a secure, SSL-only webserver. There's also an interview with Eric Le Blan about community participation and FreeBSD's role in the commercial server space. All that and more, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    Password gropers take spamtrap bait

    • Our friend Peter Hansteen, who keeps his eyes glued to his log files, has a new blog post
    • He seems to have discovered another new weird phenomenon in his pop3 logs
    • "yes, I still run one, for the same bad reasons more than a third of my readers probably do: inertia"
    • Someone tried to log in to his service with an address that was known to be invalid
    • The rest of the post goes into detail about his theory of why someone would use a list of invalid addresses for this purpose ***

    Inside the Atheros wifi chipset

    • Adrian Chadd - sometimes known in the FreeBSD community as "the wireless guy" - gave a talk at the Defcon Wireless Village 2014
    • He covers a lot of topics on wifi, specifically on Atheros chips and why they're so popular for open source development
    • There's a lot of great information in the presentation, including cool (and evil) things you can do with wireless cards
    • Very technical talk; some parts might go over your head if you're not a driver developer
    • The raw video file is also available to download on archive.org
    • Adrian has also recently worked on getting Kismet and Aircrack-NG to work better with FreeBSD, including packet injection and other fun things ***

    Trip report and hackathon mini-roundup

    • A few more (late) reports from BSDCan and the latest OpenBSD hackathon have been posted
    • Mark Linimon mentions some of the future plans for FreeBSD's release engineering and ports
    • Bapt also has a BSDCan report detailing his work on ports and packages
    • Antoine Jacoutot writes about his work at the most recent hackathon, working with rc configuration and a new /etc/examples layout
    • Peter Hessler, a latecomer to the hackathon, details his experience too, hacking on the installer and built-in upgrade function
    • Christian Weisgerber talks about starting some initial improvements of OpenBSD's ports infrastructure ***

    DragonFly BSD 3.8.2 released

    • Although it was already branched, the release media is now available for DragonFly 3.8.2
    • This is a minor update, mostly to fix the recent OpenSSL vulnerabilities
    • It also includes some various other small fixes ***

    Interview - Eric Le Blan - info@xinuos.com

    Xinuos' recent FreeBSD integration, BSD in the commercial server space

    Tutorial

    Building a hardened, feature-rich webserver

    News Roundup

    Defend your network and privacy, FreeBSD version

    • Back in episode 39, we covered a blog post about creating an OpenBSD gateway - partly based on our tutorial
    • This is a follow-up post, by the same author, about doing a similar thing with FreeBSD
    • He mentions some of the advantages and disadvantages between the two operating systems, and encourages users to decide for themselves which one suits their needs
    • The rest is pretty much the same things: firewall, VPN, DHCP server, DNSCrypt, etc. ***

    Don't encrypt all the things

    • Another couple of interesting blog posts from Ted Unangst about encryption
    • It talks about how Google recently started ranking sites with HTTPS higher in their search results, and then reflects on how sometimes encryption does more harm than good
    • After heartbleed, the ones who might be able to decrypt your emails went from just a three-letter agency to any script kiddie
    • He also talks a bit about some PGP weaknesses and a possible future replacement
    • He also has another, similar post entitled "in defense of opportunistic encryption" ***

    New automounter lands in FreeBSD

    • The work on the new automounter has just landed in 11-CURRENT
    • With help from the FreeBSD Foundation, we'll have a new "autofs" kernel option
    • Check the SVN viewer online to read over the man pages if you're not running -CURRENT
    • You can also read a bit about it in the recent newsletter ***

    OpenSSH 6.7 CFT

    • It's been a little while since the last OpenSSH release, but 6.7 is almost ready
    • Our friend Damien Miller issued a call for testing for the upcoming version, which includes a fair amount of new features
    • It includes some old code removal, some new features and some internal reworkings - we'll cover the full list in detail when it's released
    • This version also officially supports being built with LibreSSL now
    • Help test it out and report any findings, especially if you have access to something a little more exotic than just a BSD system ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • David writes in
    • Lachlan writes in
    • Francis writes in
    • Frank writes in
    • Sean writes in ***
    50: VPN, My Dear Watson Aug 13, 2014
    Show notes

    It's our 50th episode, and we're going to show you how to protect your internet traffic with a BSD-based VPN. We'll also be talking to Robert Watson, of the FreeBSD core team, about security research, exploit mitigation and a whole lot more. The latest news and answers to all of your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    MeetBSD 2014 is approaching

    • The MeetBSD conference is coming up, and will be held on November 1st and 2nd in San Jose, California
    • MeetBSD has an "unconference" format, which means there will be both planned talks and community events
    • All the extra details will be on their site soon
    • It also has hotels and various other bits of useful information - hopefully with more info on the talks to come
    • Of course, EuroBSDCon is coming up before then ***

    First experiences with OpenBSD

    • A new blog post that leads off with "tired of the sluggishness of Windows on my laptop and interested in experimenting with a Unix-like that I haven't tried before"
    • The author read the famous "BSD for Linux users" series (that most of us have surely seen) and decided to give BSD a try
    • He details his different OS and distro history, concluding with how he "eventually became annoyed at the poor quality of Linux userland software"
    • From there, it talks about how he used the OpenBSD USB image and got a fully-working system
    • He especially liked the simplicity of OpenBSD's "hostname.if" system for network configuration
    • Finally, he gets Xorg working and imports all his usual configuration files - seems to be a happy new user! ***

    NetBSD rump kernels on bare metal (and Kansai OSC report)

    • When you're developing a new OS or a very specialized custom solution, working drivers become one of the hardest things to get right
    • However, NetBSD's rump kernels - a very unique concept - make this process a lot easier
    • This blog post talks about the process of starting with just a rump kernel and expanding into an internet-ready system in just a week
    • Also have a look back at episode 8 for our interview about rump kernels and what exactly they do
    • While on the topic of NetBSD, there were also a couple of very detailed reports (with lots of pictures!) of the various NetBSD-themed booths at the 2014 Kansai Open Source Conference that we wanted to highlight ***

    OpenSSL and LibreSSL updates

    • OpenSSL pushed out a few new versions, fixing multiple vulnerabilities (nine to be precise!)
    • Security concerns include leaking memory, possible denial of service, crashing clients, memory exhaustion, TLS downgrades and more
    • LibreSSL released a new version to address most of the vulnerabilities, but wasn't affected by some of them
    • Whichever version of whatever SSL you use, make sure it's patched for these issues
    • DragonFly and OpenBSD are patched as of the time of this recording but, even after a week, NetBSD and FreeBSD are not (outside of -CURRENT) ***

    Interview - Robert Watson - rwatson@freebsd.org

    FreeBSD architecture, security research techniques, exploit mitigation

    Tutorial

    Protecting traffic with a BSD-based VPN

    News Roundup

    A FreeBSD-based CGit server

    • If you use git (like a certain host of this show) then you've probably considered setting up your own server
    • This article takes you through the process of setting up a jailed git server, complete with a fancy web frontend
    • It even shows you how to set up multiple repos with key-based user separation and other cool things
    • The author of the post is also a listener of the show, thanks for sending it in! ***

    Backup devices for small businesses

    • In this article, different methods of data storage and backup are compared
    • After weighing the various options, the author comes to an obvious conclusion: FreeNAS is the answer
    • He praises FreeNAS and the FreeNAS Mini for their tight integration, rock solid FreeBSD base and the great ZFS featureset that it offers
    • It also goes over some of the hardware specifics in the FreeNAS Mini ***

    A new Xenocara interview

    • As a follow up to last week's OpenSMTPD interview, this Russian blog interviews Matthieu Herrb about Xenocara
    • If you're not familiar with Xenocara, it's OpenBSD's version of Xorg with some custom patches
    • In this interview, he discusses how large and complex the upstream X11 development is, how different components are worked on by different people, how they test code (including a new framework) and security auditing
    • Matthieu is both a developer of upstream Xorg and an OpenBSD developer, so it's natural for him to do a lot of the maintainership work there ***

    Building a high performance FreeBSD samba server

    • If you've got to PXE boot several hundred Windows boxes to upgrade from XP to 7, what's the best solution?
    • FreeBSD, ZFS and Samba obviously!
    • The master image and related files clock in at over 20GB, and will be accessed at the same time by all of those clients
    • This article documents that process, highlighting some specific configuration tweaks to maximize performance (including NIC bonding)
    • It doesn't even require the newest or best hardware with the right changes, pretty cool ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • An interesting Reddit thread (or two)
    • PB writes in
    • Sean writes in
    • Steve writes in
    • Lachlan writes in
    • Justin writes in ***
    49: The PC-BSD Tour Aug 06, 2014
    Show notes

    Coming up this week on the show, we've got something special for you! We'll be giving you an in-depth look at all of the graphical PC-BSD utilities. That's right, BSD doesn't have to be commandline-only anymore! There's also the usual round of answers to your emails and all the latest headlines, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    FreeBSD foundation semi-annual newsletter

    • The FreeBSD foundation published their semi-annual newsletter, complete with a letter from the president of the foundation
    • "In fact after reading [the president's] letter, I was motivated to come up with my own elevator pitch instead of the usual FreeBSD is like Linux, only better!"
    • It talks about the FreeBSD journal as being one of the most exciting things they've launched this year, conferences they funded and various bits of sponsored code that went into -CURRENT
    • The full list of funded projects is included, also with details in the financial reports
    • There are also a number of conference wrap-ups: NYCBSDCon, BSDCan, AsiaBSDCon and details about the upcoming EuroBSDCon
    48: Liberating SSL Jul 30, 2014
    Show notes

    Coming up in this week's episode, we'll be talking with one of OpenBSD's newest developers - Brent Cook - about the portable version of LibreSSL and how it's developed. We've also got some information about the FreeBSD port of LibreSSL you might not know. The latest news and your emails, on BSD Now - the place to B.. SD.

    This episode was brought to you by

    iXsystems - Enterprise servers and storage for open sourceTarsnap - online backups for the truly paranoid

    Headlines

    FreeBSD quarterly status report

    • FreeBSD has gotten quite a lot done this quarter
    • Changes in the way release branches are supported - major releases will get at least five years over their lifespan
    • A new automounter is in the works, hoping to replace amd (which has some issues)
    • The CAM target layer and RPC stack have gotten some major optimization and speed boosts
    • Work on ZFSGuru continues, with a large status report specifically for that
    • The report also mentioned some new committers, both source and ports
    • It also covers GNATS being replaced with Bugzilla, the new core team, 9.3-RELEASE, GSoC updates, UEFI booting and lots of other things that we've already mentioned on the show
    • "Foundation-sponsored work resulted in 226 commits to FreeBSD over the April to June period" ***

    A new OpenBSD HTTPD is born

    • Work has begun on a new HTTP daemon in the OpenBSD base system
    • A lot of people are asking "why?" since OpenBSD includes a chrooted nginx already - will it be removed? Will they co-exist?
    • Initial responses seem to indicate that nginx is getting bloated, and is a bit overkill for just serving content (this isn't trying to be a full-featured replacement)
    • It's partially based on the relayd codebase and also comes from the author of relayd, Reyk Floeter
    • This has the added benefit of the usual, easy-to-understand syntax and privilege separation
    • There's a very brief man page online already
    • It supports vhosts and can serve static files, but is still in very active development - there will probably be even more new features by the time this airs
    • Will it be named OpenHTTPD? Or perhaps... LibreHTTPD? (I hope not) ***

    pkgng 1.3 announced

    • The newest version of FreeBSD's second generation package management system has been released, with lots of new features
    • It has a new "real" solver to automatically handle conflicts, and dynamically discover new ones (this means the annoying -o option is deprecated now, hooray!)
    • Lots of the code has been sandboxed for extra security
    • You'll probably notice some new changes to the UI too, making things more user friendly
    • A few days later 1.3.1 was released to fix a few small bugs, then 1.3.2 shortly thereafter and 1.3.3 yesterday ***

    FreeBSD after-install security tasks

    • A number of people have written in to ask us "how do I secure my BSD box after I install it?"
    • With this blog post, hopefully most of their questions will finally be answered in detail
    • It goes through locking down SSH with keys, patching the base system for security, installing packages and keeping them updated, monitoring and closing any listening services and a few other small things
    • Not only does it just list things to do, but the post also does a good job of explaining why you should do them
    • Maybe we'll see some more posts in this series in the future ***

    Interview - Brent Cook - bcook@openbsd.org / @busterbcook

    LibreSSL's portable version and development

    News Roundup

    FreeBSD Mastery - Storage Essentials

    • MWL's new book about the FreeBSD storage subsystems now has an early draft available
    • Early buyers can get access to an in-progress draft of the book before the official release, but keep in mind that it may go through a lot of changes
    • Topics of the book will include GEOM, UFS, ZFS, the disk utilities, partition schemes, disk encryption and maximizing I/O performance
    • You'll get access to the completed (e)book when it's done if you buy the early draft
    • The suggested price is $8 ***

    Why BSD and not Linux?

    • Yet another thread comes up asking why you should choose BSD over Linux or vice-versa
    • Lots of good responses from users of the various BSDs
    • Directly ripping a quote: "Features like Ports, Capsicum, CARP, ZFS and DTrace were stable on BSDs before their Linux versions, and some of those are far more usable on BSD. Features like pf are still BSD-only. FreeBSD has GELI and ipfw and is "GCC free". DragonflyBSD has HAMMER and kernel performance tuning. OpenBSD have upstream pf and their gamut of security features, as well as a general emphasis on simplicity."
    • And "Over the years, the BSDs have clearly shown their worth in the nix ecosystem by pioneering new features and driving adoption of others. The most recent on OpenBSD were 2038 support and LibreSSL. FreeBSD still arguably rules the FOSS storage space with ZFS."
    • Some other users share their switching experiences - worth a read ***

    More g2k14 hackathon reports

    • Following up from last week's huge list of hackathon reports, we have a few more
    • Landry Breuil spent some time with Ansible testing his infrastructure, worked on the firefox port and tried to push some of their patches upstream
    • Andrew Fresh enjoyed his first hackathon, pushing OpenBSD's perl patches upstream and got tricked into rewriting the adduser utility in perl
    • Ted Unangst did his usual "teduing" (removing of) old code - say goodbye to asa, fpr, mkstr, xstr, oldrdist, fsplit, uyap and bluetooth
    • Luckily we didn't have to cover 20 new ones this time! ***

    BSDTalk episode 243

    • The newest episode of BSDTalk is out, featuring an interview with Ingo Schwarze of the OpenBSD team
    • The main topic of discussion is mandoc, which some users might not be familiar with
    • mandoc is a utility for formatting manpages that OpenBSD and NetBSD use (DragonFlyBSD and FreeBSD include it in their source tree, but it's not built by default)
    • We'll catch up to you soon, Will! ***

    Feedback/Questions

    • Thomas writes in
    • Stephen writes in
    • Sha'ul writes in
    • Florian writes in
    • Bob Beck writes in - and note the "Caution" section that was added to libressl.org ***
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