NixBSD fork for FreeBSD, GhostBSDCon 2025 announced, new FreeBSD Journal and more.
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News
An unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel: NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution.
BSD Desktop Conference 2025 Announced: A new BSD desktop conference, GhostBSDCon 2025, has been announced for March 29, 2025. This virtual event, hosted by the GhostBSD project, focuses on developing and using desktop systems based on any BSD variant. GhostBSD, a FreeBSD-derived OS with the MATE desktop, aims to provide a user-friendly BSD desktop experience. The conference is a significant event for BSD enthusiasts, offering a platform to discuss and advance desktop BSD technologies. More details can be found in the official Call For Papers.
Valuable News – 2025/01/20: The Valuable News weekly series is dedicated to provide summary about news, articles and other interesting stuff mostly but not always related to the UNIX/BSD/Linux systems.
FreeBSD Myths 2025 - a personal opinion: It’s 2025 and there are a few Myths around FreeBSD that still persist, so here are some of authors personal thoughts to counter them.
FreeBSD Journal: Virtualization Edition: The FreeBSD Journal’s Virtualization edition for November/December 2024 is now available in both HTML and PDF formats. This issue covers a range of topics including tutorials on character device drivers, introductions to bhyve and Xen for FreeBSD, and discussions on embedded virtualized systems. Experienced BSD users will find valuable insights into advanced virtualization techniques and real-world applications. The journal also includes community contributions and event calendars, making it a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in FreeBSD and virtualization technologies.
BSD Now 594: Name that Domain: Security Audit of the Capsicum and bhyve Subsystems, ZFS on Linux and block IO limits show some limits of being out of the kernel, NetBSD on a ROCK64 Board, Domain Naming, BSDCan 2025 CFP, The Internet Gopher from Minnesota, and more.
OpenZFS 2.3.0 Release: OpenZFS 2.3.0 introduces several key features, including RAIDZ expansion, fast deduplication, direct IO, JSON output for commands, support for long file names, and numerous performance improvements. This release also addresses critical bug fixes and supports FreeBSD releases 13.3 and 14.0 to 14.2.
Tutorials
My Battle with Netcup, IPv6 and FreeBSD (Other BSDs may also benefit, or help): The article details the challenges faced while setting up IPv6 on FreeBSD with Netcup as the VPS provider. The author migrated to Netcup for its performance and cost benefits but encountered issues with IPv6 connectivity. Despite initial success with manual configurations, the IPv6 connection dropped after about 10 minutes. Various troubleshooting steps, including disabling the firewall and adjusting subnet prefixes, were attempted. The author found partial solutions by switching gateways dynamically, but the setup remains unstable. The post invites further comments and suggestions for improvement. This resource is valuable for BSD users experiencing similar networking issues, offering insights into potential fixes and ongoing troubleshooting efforts.
Hands-on graphics without X11: This article provides a comprehensive guide to rendering graphics on a NetBSD system without using X11. It begins by comparing the NetBSD console with the EndBASIC console, highlighting the latter’s ability to mix textual and graphical elements. The article then delves into the wscons framework, which abstracts hardware display and input devices, allowing for uniform treatment across different platforms. The wsdisplay and wskbd devices are explored in detail, explaining how to query framebuffer properties and draw to the framebuffer. The article also covers handling keyboard input using the wskbd device and the wsmux multiplexer.
Analyzing Storage Performance Bottlenecks with ZFS Tools: Learn how to identify and resolve storage performance issues using tools like iostat, zpool iostat, ztop, and ioztat. This article covers essential tools for sysadmins to manage and optimize ZFS storage systems, providing insights into storage bottlenecks and system reliability across FreeBSD and Linux platforms. Key tools include iostat for low-level storage analysis, zpool iostat for ZFS pool insights, ztop for dataset-level monitoring, and ioztat for flexible dataset-level tracking. These tools help sysadmins diagnose and address storage bottlenecks, ensuring efficient and reliable system performance.
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