FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA5 released, EoL for FreeBSD 14.2 announced, and ZFS tuning guide with ARC/L2ARC/SLOG insights and more.
Releases
FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA5 Available: The fifth ALPHA build for the FreeBSD 15.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv7, aarch64, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.
BSDSec
FreeBSD 14.2 End-of-Life Announced: Upgrade Before October 1, 2025: FreeBSD 14.2 reached end-of-life (EoL) on October 1, 2025, ceasing security updates from the FreeBSD Security Team.
As always, it’s worth following BSDSec. RSS feed available.
News
Valuable news 10-06: The Valuable News series curates key updates in UNIX/BSD/Linux ecosystems, hardware innovations, and tech trends. This week’s highlights include FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA5 with release build improvements, OpenSSH 10.1p1 entering testing, and Cosmopolitan’s cross-platform “build once, run anywhere” approach. Notable projects like Chimera NAS (high-performance storage) and BastilleBSD 1.1.0.251001 (container management) were released.
BSD Now 630: FreeBSD Foundation Q2 2025 Status Update, Keeping Data Safe with OpenZFS, Ollama on FreeBSD Using GPU Passthrough, ClonOS, Preliminary support for Raspberry Pi 5, Sylve: Manage bhyve VMs and Clusters on FreeBSD, Preventing Systemd DHCP RELEASE Behavior, Call for testing - Samba 4.22, and more.
Tutorials
Fixing FreeBSD Netgraph Crashes with vtnet Interfaces: A workaround is provided for preventing FreeBSD 14.3 kernel panics when restarting Netgraph VNET jails bridged to vtnet interfaces in Proxmox VE. The issue occurs due to improper shutdown sequencing, causing crashes when jails are stopped. The solution involves modifying the jail’s jail.conf to detach the VNET interface before shutdown by adding exec.prestop commands to stop services and shut down Netgraph. This ensures the host remains stable by avoiding race conditions during jail termination. The fix is verified to resolve crashes in the described environment.
Practical ZFS Performance Tuning: ARC, L2ARC, and SLOG Explained: This article provides a detailed guide on ZFS performance tuning, focusing on ARC, L2ARC, and SLOG—key components for optimizing caching and latency. It emphasizes workload-specific adjustments while warning against reckless tuning, which can destabilize systems or degrade performance.
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