1. Developers Corner
2012: BSD Year in
Review
This article looks back on 2012 and provides an overview of what
occurred in the BSD world.
TM dergoing a complete review and redesign. This means
FreeBSD that the only packages available for 9.1 are those con-
The FreeBSD Project had three tained on the installation DVD. The Project will make an
releases in 2012: announcement once the rest of the packages become
available.
9.0 The FreeBSD ports collection now contain 24,047 ports.
Was released on January 6. The FreeBSD Project held DevSummits at the following
Some of the highlights of this 2012 events: AsiaBSDCon in Tokyo, BSDCan in Ottawa,
release include: a new installer, The University of Cambridge in August, EuroBSDCon in
SUJ (soft-updates journaling), Warsaw, and MeetBSD California in Sunnyvale. The doc-
Z F S v 2 8 which adds RAIDZ3 and deduplication, the umentation team organized several IRC doc sprints as
HAST (highly available storage) framework, the Capsi- well as Documentation Working Groups during BSDCan,
cum framework for sandboxing applications with minimal the Cambridge DevSummit, OpenHelp in Cincinnati, and
code changes, user-level DTrace, pluggable TCP conges- EuroBSDCon.
tion control framework with five new algorithms, NFSv4,
high-performance SSH, LLVM and clang, and support for NetBSD
the Sony Playstation 3. The NetBSD Project also had
three releases in 2012:
8.3
Was released on April 11. This is the fourth release from 5.1.2
the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functional- Was released on February 2.
ity of FreeBSD 8.2. It introduced some 9.0 features to this This release was the second
branch (ZFSv28 and the pluggable TCP congestion con- critical security update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch
trol framework), provided updated drivers, and addressed and represented a subset of fixes deemed critical for se-
several security advisories. curity or stability reasons.
9.1 6.0.1
Was released on December 30. Some of its new fea- Was released on October 17 and is considered to be the
tures include: Intel GPU driver with GEM/KMS sup- current release. It is the first security bugfix update of the
port, netmap(4) fast userspace packet I/O framework, NetBSD 6.0 release branch and represents the subset of
POSIX2008 extended locale support, kernel support for fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons.
the AVX FPU extension, and numerous improvements
in IPv6 hardware offload support. Due to the November 5.2
intrusion on the FreeBSD package building cluster, the Was released on December 3. This release provides bug
FreeBSD Project's package building infrastructure is un- and security fixes as well as updated drivers.
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2. 2012: BSD Year in Review
Contents
pkgsrc currently contains over 13,000 packages. The 3.0.2
pkgsrc team released pkgsrc-2012Q1 in April, pkgsrc- Was released on August 29.
2012Q2 in July, and pkgsrc-2012Q3 in October.
3.1.1
OpenBSD Was released on November 2.
Right on schedule, the
OpenBSD Project had two 3.2.2
releases in 2012. Each re- Was released on December 16. This release added per-
lease includes its own art- formance improvements under database load, using post-
work and theme song. gres benchmarking as a measure. FreeBSD's USB stack
is available, but is not built by default.
5.1 Work on HAMMER2 continues, though it is not yet ready
Was released on May 1. This release included: improved for production use. An update on its features and what still
hardware support, network stack improvements, rout- needs to be done can be found at http://lists.dragonflybsd.
ing and PF improvements, improved locale support, org/pipermail/users/2012-December/017716.html.
OpenSSH 6.0, major performance and stability improve-
ments in the package build process, and improved man
pages and documentation.
5.2
Was released on November 1. The most significant change PC-BSD
in this release is the replacement of the user-level uthreads The PC-BSD project had two releases in 2012:
by kernel-level rthreads, allowing multithreaded programs
to utilize multiple CPUs/cores. Other features include the 9.0
addition of nginx(8), and OpenSSH 6.1 which turns on pre- Was released on January 10. This release added sup-
auth sandboxing sshd by default for new installs. port for multiple window managers, a new Control Panel
The OpenBSD ports collection now contains over 7,600 so that common administrative graphical tools are avail-
ports. The OpenBSD developers organized several hack- able from any desktop, support for freebsd-update us-
athons in 2012: an rthreads hackathon in Paris, a gener- ing a graphical Update Manager, an improved graphical
al hackathon in Budapest, a network hackathon in Starn- networking utility, an enhanced Life Preserver utility for
berg, Germany, a ports hackathon in Budapest, and a scheduling backups, support for BootCamp partitions,
hackathon in Coimbra, Portugal. and pre-installed virtualbox and vmware images.
DragonFly BSD 9.1
The DragonFly BSD Project Was released on December 18. This release added the
had several point releases following features: a newly designed installer to separate
and two release branches in pre- and post-installation configuration tasks, many ZFS
2012: improvements in the installer, a newly designed Warden
for managing FreeBSD, ports, and Linux jails, multiple
3.0.1 boot environment support for ZFS, the ability to install a
Was released on February 22. The giant kernel lock was vanilla FreeBSD or TrueOS server, a new About utility, a
removed from much of the system, increasing perfor- new GDM configuration utility, a new sound configuration
mance significantly on multi-core systems. Other features GUI, a new hardware compatibility GUI, a new Bluetooth
include: significant improvement in HAMMER throughput pairing management utility, a new mount tray utility, an
under heavy storage loads due to a new time domain mul- improved EasyPBI utility for converting FreeBSD ports to
tiplexing method, and a BSD-licensed tcplay(8) tool for PBIs, a newly designed thinclient script for creating PXE
creating and managing encrypted disk volumes which are boot servers or PXE installation servers, and USB live
100% TrueCrypt compatible. mode is now read-writable.
AppCafe now contains over 1,050 PBIs. pbidir.com has
3.0.2 been deprecated and a new FreshPBIs.org website is being
Was released on March 26. created to make it easy for users to track PBI information.
www.bsdmag.org 9

3. Developers Corner
• IPv6 Performance Analysis: this project will carry out
a detailed performance analysis, benchmarking IPv6
to IPv4. It will identify the origins of differences in per-
formance, and where possible, directly address them
or identify areas of future work. Having initial bench-
mark numbers will allow changes to be evaluated by
re-running the measurements and quantifying the
improvements.
• Implementing auditdistd: the goal of this project is to
FreeBSD Foundation securely and reliably distribute audit records over the
The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3), US based, non- TCP/IP network from a local auditdistd daemon to
profit organization dedicated to supporting and build- a remote auditdistd daemon. In case of source sys-
ing the FreeBSD Project and community worldwide. The tem compromise, the attacker's activity can be an-
Foundation accepts donations, using them to fund and alysed using data collected by the remote system,
manage projects, sponsor FreeBSD events, and provide as only the remote system's audit logs can still be
travel grants to FreeBSD developers and contributors. trusted.
The Foundation sponsored the following conferences • NAND Flash Support: this project will enable FreeB-
in 2012: AsiaBSDCon, BSDCan, including its Developer SD to natively manage NAND flash devices, satisfy-
Summit and Vendor Summit, BSDDay in Vienna, EuroB- ing a crucial requirement for many applications need-
SDCon, the Cambridge Developer Summit, and the Bay ing access to fast, reliable, non-volatile storage.
Area Vendor Summit. • Porting FreeBSD to Efika ARM platform: this project
The Foundation sponsored the travel of twelve people will make it possible to run X11 applications on Free-
to BSDCan, four to EuroBSDCon, one to OpenHelp, and BSD on the Efika MX SmartBook laptop and Smart-
one to MeetBSD California. Trip reports describing the Top nettop devices, with full support for sound and
benefits of sponsorship can be found at freebsdfounda- networking. It will also make it much easier to support
tion.blogspot.com. other devices, such as some Android tablets, that
The Foundation provided financial grants to the follow- ship with the i.MX515 SoC.
ing development projects in 2012:
The Foundation's fund-raising goal for 2012 was
• iSCSI Target project: the goal of this project is to cre- $500,000. Thanks in part to a slashdot post, donations
ate a native, high performance, iSCSI target facility from companies and users of FreeBSD blew away that
for FreeBSD. While configuration and connection set- goal. As of this writing, the donations are still being
up and teardown will still be handled by a userland logged, but it is expected that the final total will be over
daemon, all data movement will be performed in the $700,000.
kernel. The iSCSI target will be fully integrated with
the CAM target layer meaning that volumes can be NetBSD Foundation
backed by files or any block device. The hardware The NetBSD Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) non-
offload capabilities of modern network adapters will profit organization which serves as the legal entity which
also be supported. owns several of the NetBSD Project servers, handles do-
• Capsicum Component Framework: this project will nations of money, services, hardware or time to the proj-
develop a comprehensive userspace framework for ect, and administers NetBSD copyrights.
writing Capsicum-based applications. It will include a Donations to the Foundation allow the NetBSD Proj-
Capsicum runtime linker and component library pro- ect to make major improvements to the code base. The
viding sandboxed versions of key higher-level system NetBSD 6.0 Fund Drive is targeting $60,000 and will be
libraries. used to fund development in various areas of the system,
• Growing Filesystems Online: this project adds including:
GEOM and filesystem changes that are necessary
to increase the size of both UFS and ZFS filesystems • Improving network stack concurrency and perfor-
while the filesystem is mounted read-write. This proj- mance.
ect will provide the additional benefit of online provi- • Development of modern file systems and improve-
sioning of virtual instances. ment of existing ones.
10 01/2013

4. 2012: BSD Year in Review
Contents
• Features which are useful in embedded environ- NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. DVD sales are
ments, for example, high resolution timers and exe- used to fund the ongoing psychometric work required by
cute in place (XIP) support. the BSDA certification.
• Automatic testing and quality assurance.
Books
As of this writing, the Foundation still needs help in The following books were published in 2012:
meeting this goal. See www.netbsd.org/donations/ if you
would like to assist the NetBSD Project financially. • FreeBSD Device Drivers by Joseph Kong: nostarch.
com/bsddrivers.htm.
bsdevents.org • SSH Mastery: OpenSSH, PuTTY, Tunnels and Keys
bsdevents.org launched this year. This website provides by Michael W. Lucas: www.amazon.com/SSH-Mas-
the following features: tery-OpenSSH-PuTTY-Tunnels/dp/1470069717.
• The Kindle version of the FreeNAS 8.3.0 Users Guide
• Blog: announces CFPs, upcoming conferences, pre- is available for purchase. This Guide is also freely
sentations, and user group meetings about a week in available in several formats at doc.freenas.org.
advance. Blog posts are also tweeted to bsdevents@. • The PC-BSD 9.0 Users Handbook is available in
• Calendar: lists upcoming conferences with BSD relat- book format from FreeBSD Mall as well as in Kindle
ed presentations and/or booths. format. The Handbook is also freely available in sev-
• Presentations: known BSD presentations are orga- eral formats at wiki.pcbsd.org.
nized by year and event. Uses icons to indicate at a
glance the type of presentation media. The following books are in the pipeline for 2013:
• User groups: list of known BUGs (or UUGs) catego-
rized by country, state/province, and city. • Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition by Michael W. Lucas.
This book will become available in April and pre-or-
The website contains a submission form if you have in- ders are available now from nostarch.com/obenbsd2e.
formation about a missing user group or presentation or • The FreeBSD documentation team is working hard to
if you would like to submit the details for an upcoming update the FreeBSD Handbook so that an up-to-date
presentation or BSD booth. A subscribe button is provid- version can be published in book format. The cur-
ed for receiving updates in various formats. rent goal is to have a publishable edition by BSDCan
2013 with the book format available from the FreeB-
SD Mall. An epub format will also be available, with
sales going directly to the FreeBSD Foundation.
• The Best of FreeBSD Basics by Dru Lavigne is cur-
rently being re-written for FreeBSD 9.x. The new edi-
tion should be available by end of 2013.
BSD Certification
The BSD Certification Group organized 27 paper-based
exam events in 14 countries in 2012. Computer-based Dru Lavigne
exams are also available in 20 countries throughout the Dru Lavigne is author of BSD Hacks, The Best of FreeBSD Basics,
world. There are currently 187 certified BSDAs in 25 and The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD. As Director of Communi-
countries. ty Development for the PC-BSD Project, she leads the documen-
The Group released the details for the BSDA re-certifi- tation team, assists new users, helps to find and fix bugs, and
cation policy: http://www.bsdcertification.org/certification/ reaches out to the community to discover their needs. She is the
certification/recertification-policy. Certificants who expire former Managing Editor of the Open Source Business Resource,
in 2013 will also receive an email in January reminding a free monthly publication covering open source and the com-
them of the re-certification policy. mercialization of open source assets. She is founder and cur-
The latest release of the BSDA Study DVD was re- rent Chair of the BSD Certification Group Inc., a non-profit orga-
leased on December 10. Even if you are not planning on nization with a mission to create the standard for certifying BSD
taking the BSDA exam, the DVD provides a handy instal- system administrators, and serves on the Board of the FreeBSD
lation media and documentation reference for FreeBSD, Foundation.
www.bsdmag.org 11