A tutorial on pkgng, we talk with the developers of OpenSMTPD about running a mail server OpenBSD-style, answer YOUR questions and, of course, discuss all the latest news.

All that and more on BSD Now! The place to B… SD.

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– Show Notes: –

Headlines

pfSense 2.1-RELEASE is out

• Now based on FreeBSD 8.3
• Lots of IPv6 features added
• Security updates, bug fixes, driver updates
• PBI package support
• Way too many updates to list, see the full list

New kernel based iSCSI stack comes to FreeBSD

• Brief explanation of iSCSI
• This work replaces the older userland iscsi target daemon and improves the in-kernel iscsi initiator
• Target layer consists of:
• ctld(8), a userspace daemon responsible for handling configuration, listening for incoming connections, etc, then handing off connections to the kernel after the iSCSI Login phase
• iSCSI frontend to CAM Target Layer, which handles Full Feature phase.
• The work is being sponsored by FreeBSD Foundation
• Commit here

MTier creates openup utility for OpenBSD

• MTier provides a number of things for the OpenBSD community
• For example, regularly updated (for security) stable packages from their custom repo
• openup is a utility to easily check for security updates in both base and packages
• It uses the regular pkg tools, nothing custom-made
• Can be run from cron, but only emails the admin instead of automatically updating

OpenSSH in FreeBSD -CURRENT supports DNSSEC

• OpenSSH in base is now compiled with DNSSEC support
• In this case the default setting for ‘VerifyHostKeyDNS’ is yes
• OpenSSH will silently trust DNSSEC-signed SSHFP records
• It is the secteam’s opinion that this is better than teaching users to blindly hit “yes” each time they encounter a new key

Interview – Gilles Chehade & Eric Faurot – gilles@openbsd.org / @poolpOrg & eric@openbsd.org

OpenSMTPD

• Q: Could you tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you got involved with OpenBSD?
• Q: What exactly is OpenSMTPD and why was it created?
• Q: How big is your team of developers? Who’s doing what?
• Q: How compatible is it with things like dovecot, spamassassin, etc?
• Q: Are there any advantages over the other mail servers like Postfix or Exim?
• Q: If someone wanted to switch from them, is it an easy replacement?
• Q: The config syntax is very nice and easy to grasp. Was inspired from PF’s at all?
• Q: What made you decide to develop a portable version, a la OpenSSH?
• Q: Tell us some cool, upcoming features in a future release
• Q: Anything else you’d like to mention about the project?
• Q: Where can people find more info and help with development if they want?

Tutorial

Using pkgng for binary package management

• Live demo
• pkgng is the replacement for the old pkg_add tools
• Much more modern, supports an array of features that the old system didn’t
• Works on DragonflyBSD as well

News Roundup

New progress with Newcons

• Newcons is a replacement console driver for FreeBSD
• Supports unicode, better graphics modes and bigger fonts
• Progress is being made, but it’s not finished yet

relayd gets PFS support

• relayd is a load balancer for OpenBSD which does protocol layers 3, 4, and 7
• Currently being ported to FreeBSD. There is a WIP port
• Works by negotiating ECDHE (Elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman) between the remote site and relayd to enable TLS/SSL Perfect Forward Secrecy, even when the client does not support it

OpenZFS Launches

• Slides from LinuxCon
• Will feature ‘Office Hours’ (Ask an Expert)
• Goal is to reduce the differences between various open source implementations of ZFS, both user facing and pure lines of code

FreeBSD 10-CURRENT becomes 10.0-ALPHA

• Glen Barber tagged the -CURRENT branch as 10.0-ALPHA
• In preparation for 10.0-RELEASE, ALPHA2 as of 9/18
• Everyone was rushing to get their big commits in before 10-STABLE, which will be branched soon
• 10 is gonna be HUGE

September issue of BSD Mag

• BSD Mag is a monthly online magazine about the BSDs
• This month’s issue has some content written by Kris
• Topics include MidnightBSD live cds, server maintenance, turning a Mac Mini into a wireless access point with OpenBSD, server monitoring, FreeBSD programming, PEFS encryption and a brief introduction to ZFS

The FreeBSD IRC channel is official

• For many years, the FreeBSD freenode channel has been “unofficial” with a double-hash prefix
• Finally it has freenode’s blessing and looks like a normal channel!
• The old one will forward to the new one, so your IRC clients don’t need updating

OpenSSH 6.3 released

• After a big delay, Damien Miller announced the release of 6.3
• Mostly a bugfix release, with a few new features
• Of note, SFTP now supports resuming failed downloads via -a

Feedback/Questions

• A couple people wrote in to tell us not only OpenBSD have 64bit time. We misspoke.
• James writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2wBbbSWGz
• Elias writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2LMDF3PYx
• Gabor writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2aCodo65X
• Possibly the coolest feedback we’ve gotten thus far: Baptiste Daroussin, leader of the FreeBSD ports management team and author of poudriere and pkgng, has put up the BSD Now poudriere tutorial on the official documentation!
• We always want more feedback, especially tutorial ideas and show topics you want to see

• Big thanks to TJ for writing most of the show notes and the tutorials, as well as handling most of your feedback
• All the tutorials are posted in their entirety at bsdnow.tv
• Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, etc to feedback@bsdnow.tv
• We don’t check YouTube comments, JB comments, Reddit, etc. If you want us to see it, send it via email (the preferred way) or Twitter (also acceptable)
• Watch live Wednesdays at 2:00PM Eastern (18:00 UTC)