FreeBSD bug backlog resolution, OpenBSD syscall demo improvements, and FreeBSD 14.1 EoL announcement and more.
Releases
No releases.
BSDSec
OpenBSD Errata: March 18, 2025 (expat): Errata patches for libexpat have been released for OpenBSD 7.6 and 7.5. Binary updates for the amd64, arm64 and i386 platform are available via the syspatch utility.
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News
From Chaos to Clarity: How We Tackled FreeBSD’s 7,000 Bug Backlog: The FreeBSD team got on top of a huge backlog problem with help from data visualization tools. They set up dashboards to track and sort over 7,000 old bugs. Now they fix bugs twice as fast as new ones come in and respond to users more quickly.
Valuable News 2025/03/17: TheValuable News series provides a weekly summary of news and articles related to UNIX/BSD/Linux systems. This edition highlights key updates such as the release of FreeBSD 13.5, hardware reviews, and community projects.
Video: New GhostBSD versioning Scheme & Overview: In this video you can take a quick look at what GhostBSD offers - be advised that this is via VirtualBox.
BSD Now 602: Wildcard Gotchas: I Tried FreeBSD as a Desktop in 2025. Here’s How It Went, Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets, The first perfect computer, Find Name Wildcard Gotcha, and more.
Improvements to the FreeBSD CI/CD systems: FreeBSD’s continuous integration system enables developers to discover regressions automatically through comprehensive tests. This effort aims to make adoption by new developers less cumbersome and reduce the time and effort required for new contributions to be developed.
Improving OpenBSD Raw Syscall Demo: A Robust Approach: The article discusses improvements to a raw OpenBSD syscall demo, addressing fragility and manual address requirements in the original implementation. It provides a detailed walkthrough of fixing issues such as stack alignment, register clobbering, and syscall table management using inline assembly and proper compiler flags. The author demonstrates the robustness of the updated demo by porting a real application, u-config, to use raw OpenBSD syscalls, resulting in a functional and optimized static binary. The article also explores alternatives for handling string functions and optimizing binary size.
FreeBSD 14.1 End-of-Life Announced for March 31, 2025: FreeBSD 14.1 will reach its end-of-life (EoL) on March 31, 2025, and will no longer receive support from the FreeBSD Security Team. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to a newer release, such as FreeBSD 14.2 or another supported branch. The announcement also provides a list of currently supported releases and their expected EoL dates.
Tutorials
ZFS Replication Strategies: Efficient Backup and Failover Solutions: ZFS replication is a critical process for ensuring efficient backups and failover readiness by leveraging snapshots and optimized data transfer. This guide explores ZFS replication strategies, tools, configurations, and key features such as compression, encryption, and snapshot management. Key points include the comparison between push and pull replication methods, transfer steps using tools like Syncoid, and advanced features like bandwidth limiting and logging. The guide also covers connection methods, security implications, and best practices for configuration, helping users choose the right tool for their needs. Additionally, it discusses snapshot management, including the use of holds and bookmarks, and provides insights into resuming interrupted transfers and optimizing performance.
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