Category Archives: FreeBSD

vBSDcon 2015 Recap

Date published: October 5th, 2015
Posted in Announcements, Events, FreeBSD, RootBSD | No Comments »

Wow – Verisign gets HUGE props from RootBSD for vBSDcon 2015

Marketers: want a clinic in how to roll out the red carpet and run a technical event like a Rolex? Go to the next one.

BSD hackers: if you missed it, you missed a 5-star event – but don’t worry too much – they rocked the cameras and all the talks are on YouTube

Instead of a long written blog, we’re going to let our pics, tweets and retweets do the talking.

Look carefully – you might find a special hosting offer in here 🙂

 


Silicon Valley Data Center Pre-Launch Promotion

FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE Available

Date published: August 19th, 2015
Posted in Announcements, FreeBSD | No Comments »

The FreeBSD Foundation recently released version 10.2-RELEASE for download which improves upon the stability of FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE and introduces an array of new features. A few highlights of this new release include:

* 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.

To see the FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE release notes in full, head on over to the FreeBSD.org page detailing all the changes, additions, and improvements made.

We at RootBSD would like to inform you that as of today, this new release is now available as an install option for all of our VPS and Dedicated Server packages. If you would like to start fresh with a new FreeBSD 10.2 server, we do offer the ability for us to provision you an entirely new server with FreeBSD 10.2 pre-installed and grant you a week’s worth of time to migrate all existing data from your old server to the new one. If this is something that interests you, please open a ticket and we will be happy to assist.

FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE now available

Date published: June 13th, 2013
Posted in Announcements, FreeBSD | No Comments »

The FreeBSD Foundation has just recently released version 8.4-RELEASE which featured an array of security advisories, kernel changes, hardware support fixes and updates to contributed software. The entire release notes are available at the FreeBSD Foundation website.  We have added 8.4-RELEASE to our signup form, and is now available as an install option for all of our VPS and Dedicated Server packages.

The major question most face is, do I need to upgrade? The answer depends on what you are using your system for and what subsystems you are using. If you have a highly customized FreeBSD configuration, it will be far more important that you read through all of the release notes. If you’re considering migrating to FreeBSD 9.0 or 9.1 you might want to wait until 9.2 is released, especially if you’re using ZFS pools with feature flags (see below). Version 9.x does offer some major changes from 8.x including high performance SSH, ZFS v28, updated ATA/SATA drivers with AHCI support and the NFS system is upgraded to support NFSv4.  Version 9.2 could be available as early as December (unconfirmed) as for end of life on the current versions, 8.3 and 8.4 are extended (24 month security officer support) while 9.0 and 9.2 are slated to be normal (12 month). That also puts 9.1 and 9.3 at extended with 9.1 being supported until Dec. 31, 2014.

In FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE there were a lot of bug fixes in the network interface support area as well as some new hardware support. Network protocols also had a major list of updates including some bug fixes to IPv6. FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE also includes updates to major contributed software like OpenSSH, OpenSSL, and sendmail and the KDE desktop environment.

As security is always a major concern, here is a quick overview of what was fixed in FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE based on previous security advisories. The oldest and most outstanding of these are the OpenSSL vulnerabilities that were fixed which dated back to May 2012 (SA-12:01.openssl and SA-13:03.openssl). Other security updates including changes to crypt(), named, bind, and input validation for the NFS server which could potentially have been exploited to allow arbitrary code to be run in kernel context.

In terms of the kernel itself, several bugs were fixed including those dealing with CPU affinity, VIMAGE and mmap. Other changes include some workarounds dealing with old versions of QEMU and Xen, and big changes to the FreeBSD sched_ule scheduler in terms of CPU selection in systems with symmetrical multithreading (or hyperthreading for Intel CPUs).

It you are considering migrating to FreeBSD 9.0 or 9.1 and are using the ZFS subsystem it’s important to note that FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE can now support feature flags in ZFS pools, but the default version number will still be 28. FreeBSD 9.0 and 9.1 do not support these feature flags and so they cannot be used but a version 8.x system can be upgraded to version 9.0 or 9.1 without problem provided the ZFS pools are v28. If a ZFS pool is upgraded from v28 it would then prevent upgrade. However, FreeBSD 9.2 and later are slated to support ZFS pools with feature flags.

 

FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE now available

Date published: December 31st, 2012
Posted in FreeBSD | No Comments »

The FreeBSD Project officially announced the availability of FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE. New features include the following:

  • New Intel GPU driver with GEM/KMS support
  • netmap(4) fast userspace packet I/O framework
  • ZFS improvements from illumos project
  • CAM Target Layer, a disk and processor device emulation subsystem
  • Optional new C++11 stack including LLVM libc++ and libcxxrt
  • Jail devfs, nullfs, zfs mounting and configuration file support
  • POSIX2008 extended locale support including compatibility with Darwin extensions
  • oce(4) driver for Emulex OneConnect 10Gbit Ethernet card
  • sfxge(4) driver for 10Gb Ethernet adapters based on Solarflare SFC9000 controller
  • Xen Paravirtualized Backend Ethernet Driver (netback) improvement
  • hpt27xx(4) driver for HighPoint RocketRAID 27xx-based SAS 6Gb/s HBA
  • GEOM multipath class improvement
  • GEOM raid class is enabled by default supporting software RAID by deprecated ataraid(8)
  • kernel support for the AVX FPU extension
  • Numerous improvements in IPv6 hardware offload support

 

Any new VPS or Dedicated Server can have 9.1-RELEASE installed on it.

We recommend that any current customers that wish to upgrade use freebsd-update unless you have compiled FreeBSD from source. Please follow the normal upgrade procedures recommended here: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/installation.html

To celebrate the release, we are offering 20% off your first payment for any new order with any billing cycle. Be sure to use the coupon code 91RELEASE!