BSD Weekly - Issue 100

Published January 19, 2022

Best articles of the last year plus all the latest from BSD world.

2021 Top DiscoverBSD and BSDSec articles

That time of year again :) I took articles based on the number of visits, so there are also older articles.

DiscoverBSD

BSD Sec

Releases

GhostBSD 22.01.12 ISO is now available: This new ISO contains fixes, improvements, and software updates. Finally, the installer hanging at the cleaning stage for ZFS installation got fixed, and OpenRC and dhcpcd were removed from the base code. Furthermore, automation configuration for HD 7000 series and older GPUs has been added. Also added was the support for os-release to show GhostBSD name and GhostBSD version in applications like mate-system-monitor, python distros, pfetch, and neofetch and added a new set of wallpapers for 2022 and removed p7zip from the default selection since it is vulnerable and unmaintained.

BSDSec

FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-22:01.vt: FreeBSD’s system console is provided by the vt(4) virtual terminal console driver. Under certain conditions involving use of the highlight buffer while text is scrolling on the console, console data may overwrite data structures associated with the system console or other kernel memory. Users with access to the system console may be able to cause system misbehaviour.

FreeBSD Errata Notices:

As always, it’s worth following BSDSec. RSS feed and Twitter account available.

News

“The early days of Unix at Bell Labs” - Brian Kernighan (LCA 2022 Online): In barely 50 years, the Unix operating system has gone from a tiny two-⁠person experiment in a New Jersey attic to a multi-⁠billion dollar industry whose products and services are an integral part of the world’s computing infrastructure. Along the way, there have been many changes, but a surprisingly large amount is much the same as when it started. How did this come about? What are the good ideas in Unix that have been preserved and even spread? What are the good ideas that have fallen by the wayside? What are the not so good ideas that have prospered? And what might the future hold?

GhostBSD 22.01.12 Full Tour: The GhostBSD project has published an update to their FreeBSD-based, rolling release desktop system. The project’s new snapshot fixes a number of issues and removes an unmaintained package from the default install.

Suyimazu - Wine-based Game Launcher for FreeBSD: Suyimazu is a launcher that makes it easy to run Windows games/launcher easily on FreeBSD by providing/applying the required fixes and workarounds. - The Windows emulation is provided by Wine. - The launcher menus are provided by Zenity - The most fixes that gets applied are provided by Winetricks

Tutorials

Local authoritative DNS on OpenBSD using dhcpd(8) and unbound(8): One meaningful addition to home networks is the ability to refer to devices using domain names instead of IP addresses. Domain names are more memorable and human readable. Local authoritative DNS allows things like this to work

Bastille Template Examples: AdGuard Home Prometheus Exporter: Add a Prometheus exporter to the AdGuard Home DNS container created in the previous example. This exports full metrics on AdGuard service status, average processing time, number of queries made, number of blocked domains, top clients, top queries and more.

Did we miss anything?

This newsletter is made from your content on DiscoverBSD and BSDSec. Submit the stuff we missed so it can appear next time.

Do you have an OSS BSD-related project that you would like to showcase in BSD Weekly? Reply to sender and we can showcase you as a sponsor of an issue (for free).

Do you know anyone who would like this newsletter? Consider forwarding and tell them to subscribe.

Thanks for reading and see you next week! Take a vaccine and stay safe!