FreeBSD The Power to Serve

FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE Release Notes

Abstract

The release notes for FreeBSD 12.2-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.

Introduction

This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 12.2-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 12.1-RELEASE and the future 12.3-RELEASE. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.

This distribution of FreeBSD 12.2-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 12.2-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.

This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 12.1-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 12.1-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

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.

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 12.1-RELEASE.

Security Advisories

Advisory Date Topic

FreeBSD-SA-19:25.mcepce

12 November 2019

Machine Check Exception on Page Size Change

FreeBSD-SA-19:26.mcu

12 November 2019

Intel CPU Microcode Update

FreeBSD-SA-20:01.libfetch

28 January 2020

fetch(3) buffer overflow

FreeBSD-SA-20:03.thrmisc

28 January 2020

Kernel stack data disclosure

FreeBSD-SA-20:04.tcp

18 March 2020

TCP IPv6 SYN cache kernel information disclosure

FreeBSD-SA-20:05.if_oce_ioctl

18 March 2020

Insufficient ioctl(2) privilege checking

FreeBSD-SA-20:06.if_ixl_ioctl

18 March 2020

Insufficient ioctl(2) privilege checking

FreeBSD-SA-20:07.epair

18 March 2020

Incorrect user-controlled pointer use

FreeBSD-SA-20:08.jail

18 March 2020

Kernel memory disclosure with nested jails

FreeBSD-SA-20:09.ntp

18 March 2020

Multiple denial of service

FreeBSD-SA-20:10.ipfw

21 April 2020

Invalid mbuf(9) handling

FreeBSD-SA-20:11.openssl

21 April 2020

Remote denial of service

FreeBSD-SA-20:12.libalias

12 May 2020

Insufficient packet length validation

FreeBSD-SA-20:13.libalias

12 May 2020

Memory disclosure vulnerability

FreeBSD-SA-20:15.cryptodev

12 May 2020

Use-after-free condition

FreeBSD-SA-20:16.cryptodev

12 May 2020

Insufficient MAC key length check

FreeBSD-SA-20:17.usb

9 June 2020

HID descriptor parsing error

FreeBSD-SA-20:19.unbound

8 July 2020

Multiple vulnerabilities

FreeBSD-SA-20:20.ipv6

8 July 2020

Race condition and use-after-free

FreeBSD-SA-20:21.usb_net

5 August 2020

Memory corruption

FreeBSD-SA-20:22.sqlite

5 August 2020

Multiple vulnerabilities

FreeBSD-SA-20:23.sendmsg

5 August 2020

Privilege escalation

FreeBSD-SA-20:25.sctp

2 September 2020

Use-after-free bug

FreeBSD-SA-20:26.dhclient

2 September 2020

Heap overflow

FreeBSD-SA-20:27.ure

15 September 2020

Packet-in-packet attack

FreeBSD-SA-20:28.bhyve_vmcs

15 September 2020

Privilege escalation via VMCS

FreeBSD-SA-20:29.bhyve_svm

15 September 2020

SVM guest escape

FreeBSD-SA-20:30.ftpd

15 September 2020

Privilege escalation

Errata Notices

Errata Date Topic

FreeBSD-EN-19:19.loader

12 November 2019

UEFI Loader Memory Fragmentation

FreeBSD-EN-20:01.ssp

28 January 2020

Imprecise orderring of canary initialization

FreeBSD-EN-20:03.sshd

18 March 2020

Misleading log messages upon successful login

FreeBSD-EN-20:05.mlx5en

18 March 2020

Fix packet forwarding performance

FreeBSD-EN-20:06.ipv6

18 March 2020

Incorrect checksum calculations

FreeBSD-EN-20:07.quotad

21 April 2020

Regression with certain NFS servers

FreeBSD-EN-20:08.tzdata

12 May 2020

Timezone database update

FreeBSD-EN-20:09.igb

12 May 2020

Fix failure to switch to inactive state

FreeBSD-EN-20:10.build

12 May 2020

Incorrect build host clang version detection

FreeBSD-EN-20:11.ena

9 June 2020

Stability issues in ena(4)

FreeBSD-EN-20:12.iflib

9 June 2020

Watchdog timeout resetting idle queues

FreeBSD-EN-20:13.bhyve

8 July 2020

Crash with PCI device passthrough

FreeBSD-EN-20:14.linuxkpi

8 July 2020

Kernel panic

FreeBSD-EN-20:15.mps

8 July 2020

Kernel panic

FreeBSD-EN-20:16.vmx

5 August 2020

Packet loss and degraded performance

FreeBSD-EN-20:17.linuxthread

2 September 2020

Kernel panic

Userland

This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.

Userland Configuration Changes

A new rc.conf(5) variable has been added, linux_mounts_enable, which controls if Linux®-specific filesystems are mounted in /compat/linux if linux_enable is set to YES. [r364883] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The devd(8) utility has been updated to change the default syslogd(8) notification for resume from kern to kernel. [r365540]

Userland Application Changes

The cron(8) utility has been updated to support two new flags in crontab(5), -n and -q, which suppress mail on successful runs and suppress logging of command execution, respectively. [r353134]

The dd(1) utility has been updated to include new operands: [r355520]

  • conv=fsync

  • conf=fdatasync

  • oflag=fsync

  • oflag=sync

  • iflag=fullblock

See dd(1) for usage details.

The fsck_msdosfs(8) utility has been updated to include a variety of enhancements, including reducing the memory footprint, a new flag, -M, which disables the use of mmap(2), and others. [r357568]

The showmount(8) utility has been updated to implement support for long options. [r357078]

The man:certctl.8; utility has been added. [r357082]

The syslogd(8) utility has been updated to add property-based filters. [r359739]

The mountd(8) utility has been updated to fix incorrect group listing under certain conditions when -maproot or -mapall is used for exports. [r362602]

The sed(1) utility has been updated to read commands from stdin(4) when “-f -” is specified. [r362687]

The hostapd(8) and wpa_supplicant(8) utilities have been updated to support 802.11n, 802.11w, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax. [r363441]

The sesutil(8) utility has been updated to include a show subcommand to print output in a user-friendly way. [r364115]

The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to support setting additional AHCI controller parameters. [r364334]

The jail(8) utility has been updated to allow running Linux® in a jailed environment.

Contributed Software

The tcsh(1) utility has been updated to version 6.21.00. [r354191] (Sponsored by DARPA, AFRL)

The less(1) utility has been updated to version v551. [r355503]

The libbsdxml(3) library has been updated to version 2.2.9. [r355603]

The resolvconf(8) utility has been updated to version 3.9.2. [r355745]

The pcap(3) library has been updated to version 1.9.1. [r356340]

The tcpdump(1) utility has been updated to version 4.9.3. [r356340]

The mtree(8) utility has been updated to address an issue with -f not considering type changes, fix username logic with -c when getlogin(2) fails, and to fix -O not descending when a hash collision occurs. [r356532]

The Elf Tool Chain has been updated to upstream revision r3769. [r358779] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The xz(1) utility has been updated to version 5.2.5. [r359635]

OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.9p1. [r360313] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The timezone database files have been updated to version 2020a. [r360361]

The unbound(8) utility has been updated to version 1.10.1. [r361435]

The libarchive(3) library has been updated to version 3.4.3. [r362132]

The private apr library has been updated to version 1.7.0. [r362180]

The svn{,lite} utility has been updated to version 1.14.0 LTS. [r362180]

The ntpd(8) suite of utilities have been updated to version 4.2.8p15. [r362716]

The file(1) utility has been updated to version 5.39. [r362842]

The bc(1) utility has been updated to version 3.1.1. [r362987]

The private sqlite3 utility has been updated to version 3.32.3. [r363179]

The BSD make(1) utility has been updated to version 20200719. [r363352]

The Sendmail utility has been updated to version 8.16.1. [r363465]

The nc(1) utility has been updated to include a new --sctp flag. [r363474]

The clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 10.0.1. [r363494]

OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1h. [r366177]

Deprecated Applications

The amd(8) utility has been marked as deprecated, and targeted for removal in FreeBSD 13.0. [r355075]

Runtime Libraries and API

The ifconfig library has been updated to report the status of a bridge(4) interface, similarly to lagg(4). [r363037]

Kernel

This section covers changes to kernel configurations, system tuning, and system control parameters that are not otherwise categorized.

General Kernel Changes

The read(2) system call has been changed to disable read() calls on directories by default. A new sysctl(8) has been added, security.bsd.allow_read_dir, which when set to 1 will restore the previous behavior. [r363017]

The ixl(4) driver has now been enabled by default for FreeBSD/powerpc64. [r363712]

The machdep.kdb_on_nmi sysctl(8) has been removed. The machdep.panic_on_nmi sysctl(8) tunable has changed to directly enter the debugger. [r364002]

Support for APEI (ACPI Platform Error Interfaces) has been added. [r364003] (Sponsored by iXsystems)

Devices and Drivers

This section covers changes and additions to devices and device drivers since 12.1-RELEASE.

Device Drivers

The ubsec(4) driver has been marked as deprecated, and will be removed in FreeBSD 13.0. [r361044]

The ufm(4) driver has been marked as deprecated, and will be removed in FreeBSD 13.0. [r364431]

The apm(4) driver has been marked as deprecated, and will be removed in FreeBSD 13.0. [r365542]

The ctau(4) and cx(4) drivers have been marked as deprecated, and will be removed in FreeBSD 13.0. [r365542] (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 mps(4) driver has been removed from the 32-bit GENERIC kernel configuration. [r352741]

The virtio_blk(4) driver has been updated to support TRIM. [r365702] (Sponsored by Klara Systems)

The ZFS file system has been updated to include read/write kstat output per dataset. [r365917] (Sponsored by Klara Systems)

Boot Loader Changes

This section covers the boot loader, boot menu, and other boot-related changes.

Boot Loader Changes

The console is now displayed within the boot loader, allowing to toggle between available console devices. [r366691]

Networking

This section describes changes that affect networking in FreeBSD.

General Network

The tap(4) and tun(4) devices have been updated to create /dev aliases when they are renamed. [r354060]

The ipfw(4) driver has been updated to support RFC6598/Carrier Grade NAT subnets. [r359694]

The ng_nat(4) driver has been updated to allow attaching to an ethernet interface. [r359697]

The ixl(4) driver has been updated to version 1.11.29. [r363876] (Sponsored by Intel Corporation)

The ena(4) driver has been updated to version 2.2.0. [r365381] (Sponsored by Amazon, Inc.)

Updates to the wireless networking stack and various drivers have been introduced to provide better 802.11n and 802.11ac support. [r365670] (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC (Netgate))

The ice(4) driver has been added, supporting Intel® 100Gb ethernet cards. [r365733] (Sponsored by Intel Corporation)

The cxgbe(4) driver has been updated to version 1.25.0.0. [r365961] (Sponsored by Chelsio Communications)

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 version 1.15.10.

General Notes Regarding Future FreeBSD Releases

Default CPUTYPE Change

Starting with FreeBSD-13.0, the default CPUTYPE for the i386 architecture will change from 486 to 686.

This means that, by default, binaries produced will require a 686-class CPU, including but not limited to binaries provided by the FreeBSD Release Engineering team. FreeBSD 13.0 will continue to support older CPUs, however users needing this functionality will need to build their own releases for official support.

As the primary use for i486 and i586 CPUs is generally in the embedded market, the general end-user impact is expected to be minimal, as new hardware with these CPU types has long faded, and much of the deployed base of such systems is nearing retirement age, statistically.

There were several factors taken into account for this change. For example, i486 does not have 64-bit atomics, and while they can be emulated in the kernel, they cannot be emulated in the userland. Additionally, the 32-bit amd64 libraries have been i686 since their inception.

As the majority of 32-bit testing is done by developers using the lib32 libraries on 64-bit hardware with the COMPAT_FREEBSD32 option in the kernel, this change ensures better coverage and user experience. This also aligns with what the majority of Linux® distributions have been doing for quite some time.

This is expected to be the final bump of the default CPUTYPE in i386.

This change does not affect the FreeBSD 12.x or 11.x series of releases.


Last modified on: June 19, 2021 by Danilo G. Baio