FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE Release Notes
Abstract
The release notes for FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 12-STABLE development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.
Table of Contents
Introduction
This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.
The release distribution to which these release notes apply represents the latest point along the 12-STABLE development branch since 12-STABLE was created. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
The release distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the 12-STABLE development branch between 11.2-RELEASE and the future 13.0-RELEASE. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
This distribution of FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE is a release distribution. It can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/ or any of its mirrors. More information on obtaining this (or other) release distributions of FreeBSD can be found in the Obtaining FreeBSD' appendix to the FreeBSD Handbook.
All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing FreeBSD. The errata document is updated with "late-breaking" information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 11.2-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 12-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as MERGED features.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 11.2-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.
Upgrading from Previous Releases of FreeBSD
[amd64,i386] Binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the freebsd-update(8) utility. The binary upgrade procedure will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity.
Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the FreeBSD
base system from source code) from previous versions are supported,
according to the instructions in
/usr/src/UPDATING.
|
Important
|
Upgrading FreeBSD should only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files. |
Security and Errata
This section lists the various Security Advisories and Errata Notices since 11.2-RELEASE.
Security Advisories
| Advisory | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
|
No advisories. |
Errata Notices
| Errata | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
|
No errata notices. |
Userland
This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.
Userland Configuration Changes
Group permissions on /dev/acpi have been changed to
allow users in the operator GID to invoke
acpiconf(8) to suspend the system.
[r335864] (Sponsored by DARPA,
AFRL)
The default devfs.rules(5) configuration has been updated to allow mount_fusefs(8) with jail(8) . [r336565]
The newsyslog(8) utility has been updated to reject configuration entries that specify setuid(2) or executable log files. [r338165] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)
The WITH_REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD
src.conf(5) knob has been enabled by default.
[r338642] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD
Foundation)
LDNS now enables DANE-TA, and GOST has
been removed.
[r339303]
A new
src.conf(5) knob, WITH_RETPOLINE, has been added
to enable the retpoline mitigation for userland builds.
[r340773] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD
Foundation)
Userland Application Changes
xlint and the ability to build lint libraries or lint source code has been removed.
The legacy
gdb(1) utility included in the base system is now installed to
/usr/libexec for use with
crashinfo(8) . The gdbserver and gdbtui utilities are no longer
installed. For interactive debugging,
lldb(1) or a modern version of
gdb(1) from devel/gdb should be used. A new
src.conf(5) knob, WITHOUT_GDB_LIBEXEC has been
added to disable building
gdb(1) . The
gdb(1) utility is still installed in /usr/bin on
sparc64.
[r317416]
The
setfacl(1) utility has been updated to include a new flag,
-R, used to operate recursively on directories.
[r332396] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD
Foundation)
The
cat(1) utility has been updated to print output aligned the
same regardless of if invoked with -ne or
-be.
[r323865]
The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for amd64. [r334391] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The
dhclient(8) utility has been updated to add a configuration
knob to allow superseding the interface-mtu option
provided by an incorrectly-configured DHCP server.
[r334443]
The asf(8) utility has been removed, as kgdb(1) now handles kernel module state internally. [r335222] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The sha224(1) utility has been added.
[r336126]
The geli(8) utility has been updated to provide support for initializing multiple providers at once when they use the same passphrase and/or key. [r336659]
The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for i386. [r336901] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for armv7. [r337057] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The
dd(1) utility has been updated to add the
status=progress option, which prints the status of its
operation on a single line once per second, similar to GNU
dd(1) .
[r337505]
The
date(1) utility has been updated to include a new flag,
-I, which prints its output in ISO 8601 formatting.
[r337332]
The
bectl(8) utility has been added, providing an administrative
interface for managing ZFS boot environments, similar to
sysutils/beadm.
[r337663]
The
ls(1) utility has been updated to include a new
--color=when flag, where when can be one of
always, auto (default), or
never.
[r337956]
The
bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add a new subcommand to
the -l and -s flags, help,
which when used, prints a list of supported LPC and PCI devices,
respectively.
[r338210] (Sponsored by
iXsystems)
The tftp(1) utility has been updated to change the default transfer mode from ASCII to binary. [r338258]
The lastlogin(8) utility has been updated to include libxo(3) support. [r338353]
Contributed Software
The ELF Tool Chain has been updated to version r3614. [r333063] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The vt(4) Terminus BSD Console font has been updated to version 4.46. [r332452] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 6.0.1. [r335799]
The bsnmp utility has been updated to version 1.13. [r335885]
The WPA utilities have been updated to version 2.6. [r336203]
Note:
Source-based upgrades from FreeBSD 11.x and earlier require the
ntpd UID (123) and GID (123) to exist before the
installworld target is run. See the "rebuild
everything and install" section of UPDATING for the
documented procedure for source-based upgrades for more
details.
Support for UDP-lite has been added to dtrace_udplite(4) . [r337018]
The lua utility has been updated to version 5.3.5. [r337810]
Support for send, receive, and state-change providers have been added to dtrace_sctp(4) . [r338213]
OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.8p1. [r338561]
Additional capsicum(4) support has been added to sshd(8) . [r339216]
Serf has been updated to version 1.3.9. [r339256]
ACPICA has been updated to version 20181003. [r339262]
Unbound has been updated to version 1.8.1. [r339278]
The timezone database files have been updated to version 2018g. [r339937]
OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1a. [r340711]
Installation and Configuration Tools
The bsdinstall(8) installer and zfsboot(8) boot code have been updated to allow an UEFI+GELI installation option. [r338282] (Sponsored by Klara Systems)
/etc/rc.d Scripts
A new rc(8) has been added to create cfumass(4) LUNs. [r332857] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The
geli(8)
rc(8) script has been updated to include support for a new
variable, geli_groups, which provides support to
attach multiple providers when set in
rc.conf(5) .
[r335673]
The
rc(8) subsystem has been updated to support new keywords in
rc.conf(5) , enable, disable, and
delete with
rc.d(8) scripts and the
service(8) utility. See
rc.conf(5) for usage information.
[r340348] (Sponsored by Smule,
Inc.)
Runtime Libraries and API
The getrandom(2) system call and getentropy(3) library have been added, compatible with Linux® and OpenBSD implementations. [r331279]
The arc4random(3) library has been updated to match the OpenBSD version 1.35. [r338059]
The libarchive(3) library has been updated to version 3.3.3. [r338600]
ABI Compatibility
get_s(3) has been added.
[r331936]
The pthread(3) library has been updated to incorporate POSIX/SUSv4-2018 compliance improvements. [r337992]
The
arc4random(3) library has been updated to remove
arc4random_stir() and
arc4random_addrandom().
[r338331]
Kernel
This section covers changes to kernel configurations, system tuning, and system control parameters that are not otherwise categorized.
Kernel Bug Fixes
The ACPI subsystem has been updated to implement
Device object types for ACPI 6.0 support, required for
some Dell, Inc. Poweredge™ AMD® Epyc™ systems.
[r326956] (Sponsored by Dell EMC
Isilon)
An issue with IPv6-AH IPSEC padding has been fixed to match RFC4302. [r334625] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)
The amdsmn(4) and amdtemp(4) drivers have been updated to attach to AMD® Ryzen 2™ host bridges. [r340446]
The amdtemp(4) driver has been updated to fix temperature reporting for AMD® 2990WX CPUs. [r340447]
Kernel Configuration
The VIMAGE kernel configuration option has been
enabled by default.
[r324810]
The
dumpon(8) utility has been updated to add support for
compressed kernel crash dumps when the kernel configuration file
includes the GZIO option. See
rc.conf(5) and
dumpon(8) for additional information.
[r324965] (Sponsored by Dell EMC
Isilon)
The pmtimer device has been removed from the i386
GENERIC kernel configuration. Its functionality is now
part of
apm(4) .
[r327774]
The
dumpon(8) utility has been updated to add support for
zstd(1) -compressed kernel crash dumps when the kernel
configuration file includes the ZSTDIO option. See
rc.conf(5) and
dumpon(8) for additional information.
[r329240] (Sponsored by Dell EMC
Isilon)
A new
src.conf(5) knob, WITH_KERNEL_RETPOLINE, has been
added to enable the retpoline mitigation for kernel builds.
[r330110] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD
Foundation)
The EKCD, GZIO, ZSTDIO,
and NETDUMP kernel configuration options have been
enabled by default for amd64, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64,
and sparc64 architectures.
[r333890]
A new kernel configuration option,
KASSERT_PANIC_OPTIONAL, has been added that allows
runtime
KASSERT(9) behavior changes without necessarily invoking
panic(9) . The option is disabled by default.
[r338214] (Sponsored by Dell EMC
Isilon)
The NUMA option has been enabled by default in the
amd64 GENERIC and MINIMAL kernel
configurations.
[r338602] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon,
Netflix)
Devices and Drivers
This section covers changes and additions to devices and device drivers since 11.2-RELEASE.
Device Drivers
The
random(4) device has been updated to allow terminating large
reads with ^C.
[r331070] (Sponsored by Dell EMC
Isilon)
Support for the Microchip® LAN78xx™ USB3-GigE controller has been added. [r333713] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
A new multifunction device has been added to
usb_template(4) , providing mass storage, CDC ACM (serial), and
CDC ECM (ethernet) simultaneously.
[r333760] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD
Foundation)
The random(4) driver has been updated to remove the Yarrow algorithm. The Fortuna algorithm remains the default, and now only, available algorithm. [r338324]
The netdump(4) driver has been added, providing a facility through which kernel crash dumps can be transmitted to a remote host after a system panic. See netdump(4) and dumpon(8) for more information and configuration details. [r333283] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)
The random(4) driver has been updated to fix excessive activity during pseudo-random number generation. [r338292]
Network Drivers
The
cxgbe(4) driver has been updated to provide hardware support
for the SO_MAX_PACING_RATE
setsockopt(2) option when the kernel configuration contains the
RATELIMIT option.
[r334143] (Sponsored by Chelsio
Communications)
Deprecated Drivers
The jedec_ts(4) driver has been removed in 12.0-RELEASE, and its functionality replaced by jedec_dimm(4) . [r337033]
The DRM driver for modern graphics chipsets has been marked
deprecated and marked for removal in FreeBSD 13. The DRM kernel
modules are available from graphics/drm-stable-kmod or
graphics/drm-legacy-kmod in the Ports Collection as
well as via
pkg(8) . Additionally, the kernel modules have been added to
the lua
loader.conf(5) module_blacklist, as installation
from the Ports Collection or
pkg(8) is strongly recommended.
[r339218]
Hardware Support
This section covers general hardware support for physical machines, hypervisors, and virtualization environments, as well as hardware changes and updates that do not otherwise fit in other sections of this document.
Hardware Support
Support for powernv POWER9 MMU initialization has been added. [r333273]
Graphics Support
FreeBSD has changed the way graphics drivers are handled on amd64 and i386. Graphics drivers for modern ATI/AMD® and Intel® graphics cards are now available in the Ports Collection. The base drivers are still available and will be installed by default, but they lack support for current generation laptop and desktop systems.
In most cases it is enough to install
graphics/drm-kmod from ports or packages to install a
driver appropriate for the system, then adding the appropriate
driver to kld_list in
rc.conf(5) .
For Intel® (i915) systems after Broadwell™, the rc.conf(5) entry is:
kld_list="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
Systems with ATI/AMD® graphics cards have two options. Modern systems starting with the HD7000 series GPU should use:
kld_list="/boot/modules/amdgpu.ko"
Systems with cards released before the HD7000 GPU use:
kld_list="/boot/modules/radeonkms.ko"
Note:
Users must be added to the video GID after installing
graphics/drm-kmod in order for X to start
properly.
Note:
There are known issues with the xserver driver
provided by x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati when using
graphics drivers from the base system;
x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-legacy should be used
instead.
Note:
There is a known issue where booting with UEFI and using the
ATI/AMD® graphics driver may cause the screen to be garbled before
the appropriate driver is loaded. For additional information
regarding graphics support on FreeBSD, please see the Graphics Wiki Page.
Virtualization Support
Amazon® EC2™ AMI instances now have
sysutils/amazon-ssm-agent installed by default, though
the service is not enabled by default in
rc.conf(5) . To enable the service, add:
[r325254]
>>/etc/rc.conf
amazon_ssm_agent_enable="YES"to the EC2™ user-data.
Amazon® EC2™ AMI instances now disable
ChallengeResponseAuthentication in
sshd_config(5) by default.
[r326564]
Amazon® EC2™ AMI instances now use the Amazon® internal NTP service by default. [r326565]
The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add virtio_scsi(4) storage support. [r334940] (Sponsored by iXsystems)
The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add NVMe device emulation. [r335974] (Sponsored by iXsystems)
A new
sysctl(8) , security.jail.vmm_allowed, has been
added, which when set to 1 allows
bhyve(8) use within a
jail(8) .
[r337023] (Sponsored by HardenedBSD, G2,
Inc.)
Amazon® EC2™ AMI instances now disable the PS/2 keyboard and mouse devices by default, reducing overall boot time by 2.5 seconds. [r338321]
ARM Support
Support for the USB OTG serial terminal has been enabled on arm systems by default. [r335004] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The armv6 and armv7 images now default to boot with EFI. [r336998]
Support has been added for building aarch64 images for the
PINE64-LTS system.
[r337000]
Support for capsicum(4) has been enabled on armv6 and armv7 by default. [r338666] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Storage
This section covers changes and additions to file systems and other storage subsystems, both local and networked.
General Storage
The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to support check hashes to cylinder-group maps. Support for check hashes is available only for UFS2. [r323923]
The CAM Target Layer (CTL) frontend and backend options have been overhauled to use nv(3) allowing creating multiple ioctl(2) frontend ports. [r333446] (Sponsored by iXsystems)
The default
auto_master(5) configuration has been updated to add the
noautoro
automont(8) flag to the /media mount point
(commented by default).
[r337749] (Sponsored by DARPA,
AFRL)
The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to consolidate
TRIM/BIO_DELETE commands, reducing read/write requests
due to fewer TRIM messages being sent simultaneously.
[r338056] (Sponsored by
Netflix)
TRIM consolidation support has been enabled by default in the
UFS/FFS filesystem. TRIM consolidation can be disabled by setting
the vfs.ffs.dotrimcons
sysctl(8) to 0, or adding
vfs.ffs.dotrimcons=0 to
sysctl.conf(5) .
[r338517] (Sponsored by
Netflix)
Networked Storage
The NFS version 4.1 server has been updated to include pNFS server support. [r335012]
Boot Loader Changes
This section covers the boot loader, boot menu, and other boot-related changes.
Boot Loader Changes
The lua loader(8) has been updated to detect a list of installed kernels to boot. [r329501] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)
The loader(8) has been updated to support geli(8) for all architectures and all disk-like devices. [r336252] (Sponsored by Microchip Technology, Inc.)
The init(8) utility has been updated to be able to run an executable written in languages other than sh(1) , such as Python, for example. [r337321] (Sponsored by DARPA, AFRL)
The loader(8) has been updated to add support for loading Intel® microcode updates early during the boot process. [r337715] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
A new
kenv(1) variable, init_exec, has been added to
loader(8) which allows
init(8) to execute a file after opening the console, replacing
init(8) as PID 1.
[r337740] (Sponsored by DARPA,
AFRL)
The default libstand(3) interpreter has been changed to Lua. [r338050]
The default lua
loader.conf(5) has been updated to include the
kernels_autodetect option, which defaults to
YES, supplementing the
loader(8) support to list available kernels to boot introduced
in revision 329501.
[r339308]
Networking
This section describes changes that affect networking in FreeBSD.
General Network
The
carp(4) interface has been updated to keep the state as
INIT instead of MASTER when the
net.inet.carp.allow
sysctl(8) is set to 0.
[r333322] (Sponsored by
iXsystems)
The pf(4) packet filter has been updated to use rmlock(9) instead of rwlock(9) , resulting in significant performance improvements. [r334375]
The SO_REUSEPORT_LB option has been added to the
network stack, allowing multiple programs or threads to bind to the
same port, and incoming connections load balanced using a hash
function.
[r334719] (Sponsored by Limelight
Networks)
The
pf(4) ioctl interface and
pfctl(8) now support
altq(4) bandwidth parameters of 2^32 bps or
greater. The HFSC discipline has been upgraded to operate correctly
with bandwidth parameters up to 100 Gbps, and bandwidth parameters
supplied to the non-upgraded disciplines will now be saturated at
the prior 32-bit limit.
[r338253]
Ports Collection and Package Infrastructure
This section covers changes to the FreeBSD Ports Collection, package infrastructure, and package maintenance and installation tools.
Packaging Changes
The pkg(8) utility has been updated to verson 1.10.5_5.
KDE has been updated to version 5.12.5.
Perl has been updated to version 5.26.2.
Python has been updated to version 2.7.
Documentation
Release Engineering and Integration
This section convers changes that are specific to the FreeBSD Release Engineering processes.
Integration Changes
The FreeBSD/i386 memory stick installation images have been changed to use the MBR partitioning scheme instead of GPT to address boot issues with some BIOSes. [r332446] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The FreeBSD/amd64 memory stick installation images have been changed to use the MBR partitioning scheme instead of GPT to address boot issues with some BIOSes. [r334337] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Last modified on: June 19, 2021 by Danilo G. Baio