PXE Dust | BSD Now 32

PXE Dust | BSD Now 32

We show off OpenBSD\’s new \”autoinstall\” feature to do completely automatic, unattended installations. We also have an interview with Dru Lavigne about all the writing work she does for FreeBSD, PCBSD and FreeNAS. The latest headlines and answers to your emails, on BSD Now – it\’s the place to B.. SD.

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\"iXsystems\"

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– Show Notes: –

Headlines

FreeBSD ASLR status update

  • Shawn Webb gives us a little update on his address space layout randomization work for FreeBSD
  • He\’s implemented execbase randomization for position-independent executables (which OpenBSD also just enabled globally in 5.5 on i386)
  • Work has also started on testing ASLR on ARM, using a Raspberry Pi
  • He\’s giving a presentation at BSDCan this year about his ASLR work
  • While we\’re on the topic of BSDCan…

BSDCan tutorials, improving the experience

  • Peter Hansteen writes a new blog post about his upcoming BSDCan tutorials
  • The tutorials are called \”Building the network you need with PF, the OpenBSD packet filter\” and \”Transitioning to OpenBSD 5.5\” – both scheduled to last three hours each
  • He\’s requesting anyone that\’ll be there to go ahead and contact him, telling him exactly what you\’d like to learn
  • There\’s also a bit of background information about the tutorials and how he\’s looking to improve them
  • If you\’re interested in OpenBSD and going to BSDCan this year, hit him up

pkgsrc-2014Q1 released

  • The new stable branch of pkgsrc packages has been built and is ready
  • Python 3.3 is now a \”first class citizen\” in pkgsrc
  • 14255 packages for NetBSD-current/x86_64, 11233 binary packages built with clang for FreeBSD 10/x86_64
  • There\’s a new release every three months, and remember pkgsrc works on MANY operating systems, not just NetBSD – you could even use pkgsrc instead of pkgng or ports if you were so inclined
  • They\’re also looking into signing packages

Only two holes in a heck of a long time, who cares?

  • A particularly vocal Debian user, a lost soul, somehow finds his way to the misc@ OpenBSD mailing list
  • He questions \”what\’s the big deal\” about OpenBSD\’s slogan being \”Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!\”
  • Luckily, the community and Theo set the record straight about why you should care about this
  • Running insecure applications on OpenBSD is actually more secure than running them on other systems, due to things like ASLR, PIE and all the security features of OpenBSD
  • It spawned a discussion about ease of management and Linux\’s poor security record, definitely worth reading

Interview – Dru Lavigne – dru@freebsd.org / @bsdevents

FreeBSD\’s documentation printing, documentation springs, various topics


Tutorial

Automatic, unattended OpenBSD installs with PXE


News Roundup

pfSense 2.1.1 released

  • A new version of pfSense is released, mainly to fix some security issues
  • Tracking some recent FreeBSD advisories, pfSense usually only applies the ones that would matter on a firewall or router
  • There are also some NIC driver updates and other things
  • Of course if you want to learn more about pfSense, watch episode 25
  • 2.1.2 is already up for testing too

FreeBSD gets UEFI support

  • It looks like FreeBSD\’s battle with UEFI may be coming to a close?
  • Ed Maste committed a giant list of patches to enable UEFI support on x86_64
  • Look through the list to see all the details and information
  • Thanks FreeBSD foundation!

Ideas for the next DragonflyBSD release

  • Mr. Dragonfly release engineer himself, Justin Sherrill posts some of his ideas for the upcoming release
  • They\’re aiming for late May for the next version
  • Ideas include better support for running in a VM, pkgng fixes, documentation updates and PAM support
  • Gasp, they\’re even considering dropping i386

PCBSD weekly digest

  • Lots of new PBI updates for 10.0, new runtime implementation
  • New support for running 32 bit applications in PBI runtime
  • Autodetection for DVD / Audio CD insertion / plus playback
  • Latest GNOME 3 and Cinnamon merged, new edge package builds

Feedback/Questions


  • BSD Now has an official IRC channel now. #bsdnow on irc.freenode.net
  • All the tutorials are posted in their entirety at bsdnow.tv
  • Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv
  • If you\’ve got something cool to talk about and want to come on for an interview, shoot us an email
  • Also if you have any tutorial requests, we\’d be glad to show whatever the viewers want to see
  • Watch live Wednesdays at 2:00PM Eastern (18:00 UTC)
  • Just a quick reminder: If you\’re running OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f please update it and regenerate, rotate and revoke your keys if you run a server with HTTPS, IMAPS, etc – huge security hole! (Also DES offers some insight on the FreeBSD security process)
  • We\’re lucky it wasn\’t OpenSSH

Question? Comments? Contact us here!