PC-BSD 10.2-RELEASE Announced

The PC-BSD team, announced release of PC-BSD 10.2 stable, which is latest update to PC-BSD 10.x series. PC-BSD 10.x users can directly update into this system through update manager utility of `pc-updatemanager` command.

According to release announcement made by PC-BSD team in official blog following are major highlights of new release.

• FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE base system
• Many bugfixes and enhancements to installer to dual-boot setups
• New CD-sized network installation media, with Wifi Configuration via GUI
• Switched to “iocage” for jail management backend
• Disk Manager GUI now available via installer GUI
• Bug-fixes and improvements to Life-Preserver replications
• Improved localization options for login manager
• Options to Enable / Disable SSHD or IPv6 at installation
• New “Plugins” system for AppCafe, allowing download of pre-built jail environments
• Improvements to look-n-feel of AppCafe for package management
• Improved fonts and better support for 4K monitor setups
• Enterprise package repo, which only has security updates, allowing users to run a server / desktop or jail with fairly consistent package versions.
• Firefox 40.0_1,1
• Chromium 44.0.2403.130
• Thunderbird 38.1.0
• Lumina 0.8.6
• GNOME 3.16.2

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Download PC-BSD 10.2-RELEASE

PC-BSD Desktop - 4.1GB - (HTTP)
PC-BSD Desktop - 4.1GB - (TORRENT)
PC-BSD Desktop - SHA256

TrueOS Server - 763MB (HTTP)
TrueOS Server - 763MB (TORRENT)
TrueOS Server - SHA256

3rd Release Candidate is Available for NetBSD 7.0

The NetBSD engineering team through Soren Jacobsen announced availability of 3rd release candidate for NetBSD 7.0, an independently developed BSD distribution. It is expected that NetBSD 7.0 RC3 will be final release candidate prior to release of NetBSD 7.0 stable.

According to release announcement published in netbsd official blog, following are some major changes after release of NetBSD 7.0 RC2.

• Add a resize_root boot operation (disabled by default). If resize_root=YES in rc.conf then the system attempts to resize the root file system to fill its partition prior to mounting read-write.
• Enable SMP on Raspberry Pi 2.
• evbarm: Rename beagleboard.img to armv7.img. The new image includes the same kernels as beagleboard.img plus support for Raspberry Pi 2, ODROID-C1, Cubieboard2, Cubietruck, Hummingbird A31, and Banana Pi.
• evbarm: For armv7.img and rpi.img, enable support for auto-growing the SD card root filesystem.
• Various DRMKMS stability improvements.
• Avoid kernel panic on starting X on Intel 855GM machines. PR kern/49875.
• Fix an uninitalized lock panic when trying to start a Xen kernel with LOCKDEBUG and more than one vcpu.
• Fix an issue where x86 microcode updates could fail if memory was not 16 byte aligned.
• Fix an IPFilter panic.
• macppc: Fix ofwboot failure on PowerPC 603 machines.
• OpenSSH: Apply fix for CVE-2015-5600.
• Fix an issue where fsck_ffs didn't properly handle replaying a WAPBL journal on disks with non-DEV_BSIZE sectors.
• Fix error in the setlist scripts that resulted in /bin/[ being missing from the base set. PR bin/50109.

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Download NetBSD 7.0 RC3

FreeBSD 10.2 Released

The FreeBSD Release Engineering team announced release of FreeBSD 10.2, latest stable release of BSD distribution that can work in wide variety of platforms like Desktops, servers and embedded systems.

FreeBSD 10.2 is third stable release in FreeBSD 10.x branch. It has got multiple bug fixes and has better stability over previous release. FreeBSD 10.2 also introduces several improvements and features.

According to official release announcement, following are major highlights of FreeBSD 10.2-Release.

• 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.
  

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FreeBSD 10.2 RC3 Released

FreeBSD team announced availability of FreeBSD 10.2 RC3, the second release candidate for upcoming stable FreeBSD 10.2 release. FreeBSD is a modern BSD distribution that run on wide range of devices like servers, desktops and embedded systems.

It is expected that FreeBSD 10.2 RC3 will be final release candidate prior to release of FreeBSD 10.2 stable.

According to official release announcement, following are major changes made in FreeBSD after previous release candidate.

• 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.

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Download FreeBSD 10.2 RC3 

PC-BSD 10.2 RC1 Released

The PC-BSD team announced immediate availability of PC-BSD 10.2 RC1, development release of upcoming FreeBSD based BSD distribution.

According to official release announcement published in PC-BSD blog, following are new features introduced in this release.

• FreeBSD 10.2 base system
• Many bugfixes and enhancements to installer to dual-boot setups
• New CD-sized network installation media, with Wifi Configuration via GUI
• Switched to “iocage” for jail management backend
• Disk Manager GUI now available via installer GUI
• Bug-fixes and improvements to Life-Preserver replications
• Improved localization options for login manager
• Options to Enable / Disable SSHD or IPv6 at installation
• New “Plugins” system for AppCafe, allowing download of pre-built jail environments
• Improvements to look-n-feel of AppCafe for package management
• Improved fonts and better support for 4K monitor setups
• Enterprise package repo, which only has security updates, allowing users to run a server / desktop or jail with fairly consistent package versions.
• FireFox 39.0
• Chromium 43.0.2357.134
• Thunderbird 38.1.0
• Lumina 0.8.6

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Download PC-BSD 10.2 RC1

FreeBSD 10.2 RC2 Released

FreeBSD team announced availability of FreeBSD 10.2 RC2, the second release candidate for upcoming stable FreeBSD 10.2 release. FreeBSD is a modern BSD distribution that is capable of powering various devices like servers, desktops and embedded systems.

According to release announcement, following are major changes introduced in this release candidate.

• 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.

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NetBSD 7.0 RC2 Released

NetBSD developers announced release of second release candidate for NetBSD 7.0. NetBSD is a free, fast, secure and portable Unix like GNU/Linux distribution that can power a wide range of devices.

According to official release announcement, following are some changes introduced in this release.

• OpenSSL updated to 1.0.1p
• BIND updated to 9.10.2-P2
• IPSEC support is now included by default in Xen kernels
• Fix several security issues in calendar(1)
• installboot(8) now supports wedge names
• Fix a quota panic when using WAPBL (PR 49948)
• Fix a memory leak in the drm2 code
• Avoid an X crash on i915 DRMKMS
• Add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/man.conf reflects the modern mandoc world (PR 50020)
• Add a postinstall(8) check to ensure that /etc/fonts/fonts.conf is up to date
• tset(1): Fix handling of the erase character

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FreeBSD 10.2 RC1 Is Available Now

FreeBSD developers announced availability of first release candidate of upcoming FreeBSD 10.2 release. FreeBSD is a modern operating system that can power up high performance servers, desktops and even embedded systems.

According to official mail regarding availability of FreeBSD 10.2 RC1, following are major changes introduced in this release.

• 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.

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FreeBSD 10.2 Beta 2 Released

FreeBSD developers announced release of FreeBSD 10.2 Beta 2, the second beta release of upcoming FreeBSD 10.2, an advance BSD operating system capable of powering servers, desktops and embedded sytems.

According to release announcement, following are some changes introduced after release of FreeBSD 10.2 Beta 1.

•  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. o 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. o [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. o 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).

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An Interview with Kris Moore, The PC-BSD Lead

An interview with Kris Moore, the PC-BSD project lead is published in PC-BSD blog. In this interview, Kris Moore mainly talks about recently released PC-BSD 10.1.2.

Q: What new features and improvements are available in PC-BSD 10.1.2?

This quarterly update got a LOT of new features, partly so we would have time to really play with them before the 10.2 release later this summer.  Most of them are security and privacy focused, but there are some other neat things as well.  In no particular order, these are some of the best ones:

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