[HN Gopher] FreeBSD 13.1
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FreeBSD 13.1
Author : SpaceInvader
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-05-16 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.freebsd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.freebsd.org)
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| After dealing with Ubuntu all day at work it's such a breath of
| fresh air when I finally get to use FreeBSD at home. Thank you
| FreeBSD community for building and maintaining such a gem of an
| OS. Sincerely, happy user for 21 years now.
| whitepoplar wrote:
| What do you like most about FreeBSD over Ubuntu?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Note that since FreeBSD 13, FreeBSD has been rebased and now uses
| ZFS on Linux rather than its own, separately developed and
| maintained ZFS stack. FreeBSD 13.1 upgrades to a newer release of
| ZoL, which is very important to note since the version that
| shipped with FreeBSD 13 had some notorious corruption bugs
| surrounding some of the newer ZoL features when sending/receiving
| snapshots with unmatched ZFS dataset record sizes or with native
| ZFS encryption (previously altogether unavailable for FreeBSD ZFS
| users) in use.
|
| ZoL is still ironing out the remaining corruption bugs in these
| features, but the snapshot in FreeBSD 13.1 is a much more
| reliable option than the one that shipped with v13.
|
| Note that users are _not_ locked into the version that FreeBSD
| shipped with; you can actually installing rolling ZoL releases
| via ports /pkg and even use them for the system volume but that
| requires some reconfiguration (installing the port/pkg plus a
| minor conf file change to load the desired version of the ZFS
| kernel module) - but since most users don't do that, this should
| be a welcome upgrade.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Are there any plans for a "minimal" version of FreeBSD?
|
| (similar in concept to what various linux distros release,
| allowing for super slim servers OS)
| cperciva wrote:
| That's one of the motivations for pkgbase. Which will land...
| _checks notes_... any decade now?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| What do you consider to be minimal? The base installation is
| slim enough that people have been using an install-per-jail for
| a long time. There are just a few problematic ports that need
| to pull in huge dependencies, but if you're not installing a
| web browser, the dependencies aren't usually a huge issue.
| cperciva wrote:
| My contribution: FreeBSD 13.1 boots significantly faster than
| FreeBSD 13.0; in EC2 it's over a 2x speedup.
|
| I'll be talking about this at BSDCan in a few weeks. (Virtual
| conference, so it's not too late to sign up!)
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Nice work, you are a champ. Anything fun and new planned with
| tarsnap by any chance?
| cperciva wrote:
| Lots of things planned. Unfortunately my schedule got rather
| derailed after a very demanding baby arrived last year -- in
| a sense the FreeBSD work is thanks to her since I couldn't
| focus enough to do tricky tarsnap coding. Now that she's over
| a year old and the FreeBSD boot speedup work is mostly
| wrapping up I'm hoping to get back to more tarsnap coding
| soon.
| rwaksmunski wrote:
| Thank you for what you do.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Awesome, how did you do that?
|
| We use plenty of short-lived FreeBSD agents for our (AWS-
| hosted) CI builds, so a 2x speed up would be very welcome!
| loeg wrote:
| Identifying slow pieces of boot:
| https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/search?q=TSENTER ,
| etc: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-
| src/blob/main/sys/sys/tsl... , and then eliminating low
| hanging fruit (many, but not all of his recent commits): http
| s://freshbsd.org/freebsd/src/branch/main?merge=false&aut...
| cperciva wrote:
| As loeg says, profiling and then working my way through the
| list of places we're spending a lot of time.
|
| I'd love to hear more about how you're using FreeBSD/EC2; can
| you send me an email?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Boot Loader Changes
|
| This section covers the boot loader, boot menu, and other
| boot-related changes.
|
| Boot Loader Changes
|
| UEFI boot is improved for amd64. The loader detects whether
| the loaded kernel can handle the in-place staging area (non-
| copying mode). The default is copy_staging auto. Auto-
| detection can be overridden, for example: with copy_staging
| enable, the loader will unconditionally copy the staging area
| to 2M, regardless of kernel capabilities. Also, the code to
| grow the staging area is more robust; for growth to occur,
| it's no longer necessary to hand-tune and recompile the
| loader. (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
|
| boot1 and loader have been fixed on powerpc64le. 8a62b07bce7
|
| Other Boot Changes
|
| Performance improvements have been made to loader(8),
| nvme(4), random(4), rtsold(8), and x86 clock calibration,
| which collectively yield a significant speedup in system boot
| time. Configuration changes on the EC2 platform provide
| additional benefits, resulting in 13.1-RELEASE booting over
| twice as fast as 13.0-RELEASE. (Sponsored by
| https://www.patreon.com/cperciva)
|
| EC2 images are now built by default to boot using UEFI
| instead of legacy BIOS. Note that UEFI is not supported by
| Xen-based EC2 instances or by "bare metal" EC2 instances.
| 65f22ccf8247 (Sponsored by https://www.patreon.com/cperciva)
|
| Support was added for recording EC2 AMI Ids in the AWS
| Systems Manager Parameter Store. FreeBSD will be using the
| public prefix /aws/service/freebsd, resulting in parameter
| names which look like
| /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/base/ufs/13.1/RELEASE.
| 242d1c32e42c (Sponsored by https://www.patreon.com/cperciva)
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Also, for IPv6 users:
|
| > The -i flag is now added to rtsol(8) and rtsold(8) by
| default in /etc/defaults/rc.conf. a0fc5094bf4c
|
| > ...
|
| > The -i option has been added to rtsol(8) and rtsold(8) to
| disable the random delay between zero and one seconds,
| speeding up the boot process. 8056b73ea163
| smm11 wrote:
| This is Unix I know this.
| copperx wrote:
| I had never been as excited in a movie theater as when I heard
| that quote at 12.
| spyremeown wrote:
| I like FreeBSD. It makes me happy. Thank you, FreeBSD
| contributors.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I love me some FreeBSD.
|
| I wish FreeBSD had something at the OS-level like NixOS.
|
| (yes I'm aware that nix packages exists)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Once nix works well we could just ("just") write nix packages
| for FreeBSD base, do... _something_ for service management
| (openrc?), and then we have NixOS /FreeBSD. Not trivial, but
| doable.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I switched one of my important boxes to FreeBSD a couple of weeks
| ago after chatting with an HN poster here. Foray into new lands
| for me. So far a very much simpler and pleasant experience from
| some of the more "fuller" (bloated) Linux distros of late. I may
| become a convert.
|
| One of the nice surprises was spinning up a couple of VMs using
| bhyve instead of qemu or vbox. Worked first time.
|
| Only one gripe - apparently really crap ext3/4 filesystem
| support. I still haven't managed to mount some important disks
| despite playing around with fusefs and all that. I'll crack it
| with time though.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It's a kludge, but for pulling data off ext* you could run
| Linux in bhyve, pass in the device/partition, and then NFS
| mount back to the host.
| jedberg wrote:
| Congrats to the team! And a special thanks to cperciva for all
| the work he's done specifically for BSD in EC2.
|
| It's hard to imagine that my FreeBSD journey started with 3.1,
| and I'm glad to see it's still going strong (and why I keep
| donating to the project).
| Klonoar wrote:
| I know there's effort ongoing, and I'm sure it's a tired question
| at this point, but I have to ask: what is the deal with (the lack
| of) 802.11ac wifi in FreeBSD?
| loeg wrote:
| Same as last time: implementing it is non-trivial and very few
| people are working on it.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| FreeBSD isn't really the most suitable choice for a laptop,
| which should be the only place you need to deal with wi-fi (and
| I say this as someone that's been using FreeBSD on the desktop
| and on servers for longer than I care to remember).
|
| Anyway, if you read the release notes this release uses the
| new/recent linux KPI infrastructure to use the Linux wi-fi
| drivers and stack via a shim, so presumably this will take care
| of all your kernel-resident problems (userland support is still
| a question mark)! See man pages below:
|
| > The iwlwifi(4) driver along with a LinuxKPI 802.11
| compatibility layer was added to supplement iwm(4) for newer
| Intel Wireless chipsets. (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
|
| https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwlwifi&apropos=0&...
|
| https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwm&apropos=0&sekt...
| mulmen wrote:
| I'm not sure that wifi = laptop. FreeBSD is an appealing
| choice as a firewall for example. I can imagine standardizing
| on FreeBSD across my networking devices and creating some
| kind of wifi AP using FreeBSD.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I've been running a FreeBSD-based network at home, at work,
| and at several other sites - one with hundreds of APs. The
| software infrastructure isn't there to run the entire WiFi
| backend off of FreeBSD and lack of 802.11ac or WiFi 6 isn't
| the biggest problem; the right solution is to deploy
| separate WiFi infra (sans any dhcp/routing/firewall/etc)
| hanging off the FreeBSD-powered LAN.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I did read the release notes, but I nonetheless appreciate
| you re-highlighting that bit.
|
| >FreeBSD isn't really the most suitable choice for a laptop,
| which should be the only place you need to deal with wi-fi
|
| I don't find this attitude towards the situation productive.
| It's reasonable to want to have modern wifi speeds in 2022,
| and being dismissive of this when FreeBSD does in fact have
| support for running as a desktop OS is just odd to me.
|
| That all said, I'm just gonna take the L and acknowledge that
| my comment on FreeBSD/802.11ac was badly constructed. If I
| could go back in time, I'd probably re-word it to be: what
| needs to happen to speed up 802.11ac support in FreeBSD? Is
| it simply a money thing to get the right people on it with
| fewer distractions? Is it testing infrastructure?
| tedunangst wrote:
| Just run your wifi driver in a Linux vm.
| https://github.com/pgj/freebsd-wifibox
| Klonoar wrote:
| I'm beginning to think I should've coached my comment with
| lines acknowledging the basic responses like this.
|
| I'm aware of that project, though I appreciate the response
| nonetheless.
| infinet wrote:
| I was hoping 13.1 has wireguard. Cannot find it.
| crest wrote:
| The wireguard kernel module is available from ports and the
| 13.1 kernel should include the open crypto framework changes
| required allow if_wg(4) to make use of its fast SIMD-enabled
| multithreaded ChaCha20+Poly1305. Let's hope the next wireguard
| (for FreeBSD) release makes use of the new kernel features.
| ashton314 wrote:
| The very first computer I used was a FreeBSD machine sitting in a
| small dark closet of my parents' house. Now that I'm all grown
| up, I run it on a Raspberry Pi and it makes me very very happy.
|
| Such a joy to setup--so simple, so stable. Really happy to see
| that it keeps getting some love. :)
| efortis wrote:
| Anyone knows if the pf syncookie made it to 13.1?
|
| https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Por...
| sehro wrote:
| Matching releng/13.1 source to D31138, it did.
|
| Source:
| https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/sys/modules/pf/Makefile?h=...
|
| D31138: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D31138
| efortis wrote:
| Thank you
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(page generated 2022-05-16 23:00 UTC)