FreeBSD 14.5 release, a new parallel service manager rcd and more.
Releases
No releases.
BSDSec
OpenSMTPD 7.9.0p0: This release incorporates OpenBSD 7.9 errata patches along with hardened privilege separation IPC, restricted MDA variable expansion characters, memory leak fixes, and RFC 5321 compliance updates.
OpenBSD Errata: September 14, 2026 (smtpd nfs wscons shmat expat xserver ldapd): OpenBSD has released errata patches for smtpd, the kernel, libexpat, X server, and ldapd on versions 7.8 and 7.9, available as binary updates via syspatch on amd64, arm64, and i386.
As always, it’s worth following BSDSec. RSS feed available.
News
FreeBSD Foundation Intern Nimish Jain on Exploring the FreeBSD Codebase: FreeBSD Foundation intern Nimish Jain reflects on his summer work, which included upgrading virtualization drivers, networking filesystems, and porting a Raspberry Pi installer. He also shares his experiences with code reviews, navigating the FreeBSD codebase, and attending BSDCan.
Valuable News - 2026/09/14: This week’s roundup highlights the release of FreeBSD 14.5, Klara Systems’ analysis of why organizations still run FreeBSD 13, and NetBSD GSoC progress on Linux compatibility testing. Other topics cover 40ms boot times for NetBSD guests, FreeBSD jail management tools such as jstats and Fjord, and a look back at 20 years of pf.
BSD Now 680: What FS?: Episode 680 covers BSD Part Deux, the code that built the internet, and an interview with JT about WebZFS.
FreeBSD Working on New Service Manager: Baptiste Daroussin is developing rcd, a parallel service manager and supervision daemon for FreeBSD that reads UCL unit files and maintains full backward compatibility with existing rc.d scripts. It builds a dependency graph to start services in parallel and stays running in the background to automatically restart failed services.
Why Is Everyone Stuck on FreeBSD 13?: With FreeBSD 13 past its end-of-life date, many production deployments and appliances remain on the branch due to substantial upgrade hurdles. Klara Systems breaks down the friction in jumping to FreeBSD 14 and 15, from OpenSSL 3.0 transitions and removed drivers to multi-major version jumps and fleet management constraints.
FreeBSD 14.5 Released: Security Fixes, inotify Support, and Updated Toolchain: FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE is out with dozens of security fixes, Linux-compatible inotify APIs, LLVM 21.1.8, OpenSSL 3.0.21, and UEFI boot fixes.
Tutorials
(Video) FreeBSD - debugging program starts with extrace: extrace is a nice little tool that allows to monitor program starts in FreeBSD. If you are trying to track down which programs are executed on your system, extrace is for you.
Gershwin on GhostBSD and FreeBSD: Gershwin is a desktop environment based on GNUstep with a not unfamiliar feel for Apple users. In this video they are installing Gershwin on a Mate GhostBSD install, and looking at a FreeBSD Live USB demo install.
jstats 0.2, MariAdmin and OpenBSD on OVHcloud: Özgür Konstantin Kazanççı shares the latest improvements to jstats, his FreeBSD jail resource monitor, and introduces MariAdmin, a simple terminal menu for managing MariaDB/MySQL databases and users. He also presents openbsd-setup-ovh, a script that prepares a Debian or Ubuntu VPS to boot the OpenBSD installer through GRUB, with BIOS and UEFI support. The article includes console examples and his experience running OpenBSD on an OVHcloud VPS-4 from the 2027 range, with both IPv4 and IPv6 working successfully.
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