FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE Release Notes
Abstract
The release notes for FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 13-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 13.2-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 13-STABLE development branch since 13-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 13-STABLE development branch between 13.1-RELEASE and the future 13.3-RELEASE. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
This distribution of FreeBSD 13.2-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 13.2-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 13.1-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 13-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as MERGED features.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 13.1-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.
Users of all PowerPC architectures, after successful kernel and
world installation, must run kldxref /boot/kernel
manually.
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Upgrading FreeBSD should only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files. |
|
After installing the new userland software, running daemons are
still from the previous version. After installing the user-level
components with the second invocation of freebsd-update, or via an
upgrade from source with |
Userland
This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.
Userland Configuration Changes
The
growfs(7) startup script will now add a swap partition while
expanding the root file system if possible, and if one did not
previously exist. This is primarily useful when installing on an SD
card using a raw image. A new
rc.conf(5) variable has been added,
growfs_swap_size, which can control the addition if
necessary. See
growfs(7) for details.
The zfskeys startup script supports autoloading of
keys stored on ZFS. 2411090f6940
(Sponsored by Klara Inc.)
A new RC script, zpoolreguid has been added, which
will assign a new GUID to one or more zpools, useful for
virtualization environments when sharing datasets.
The hostid startup script will now generate a
random (version 4) UUID if there is no /etc/hostid file and no valid UUID from hardware.
Also, if there is no /etc/machine-id
file, the hostid_save script will store a compact
version of the hostid (one without hyphens) in /etc/machine-id. This file is used by libraries
such as GLib. 17333d92643d
a379d5c5efb2
71d88613d129
It is now possible to add default routes for FIBs other than the
primary by using the defaultrouter_fibN and
ipv6_defaultrouter_fibN
rc.conf(5) variables. c6ec1b441ad3
(Sponsored by ScaleEngine Inc.)
Userland Application Changes
The
bhyve(8) utility has gained virtio-input device emulation
support. This will be used to inject keyboard/mouse input events
into a guest. The command line syntax is: -s
<slot>,virtio-input,/dev/input/eventX. 6192776124c5
The kdump(1) utility has gained support for decoding Linux system calls.
The
killall(1) utility now allows sending signals to processes with
their controlling terminal on
pts(4) using the syntax -t pts/N. a76fa7bb6cb7
An nproc(1) utility has been added, compatible with the Linux program of the same name.
The timeout(1) utility has been moved from /usr/bin to /bin.
The pciconf(8) utility has added support for decoding ACS extended capability. dde4103a465b (Sponsored by Chelsio Communications)
The
procstat(1) utility can now print information about advisory
locks on files with the newly added advlock command.
f9daaf452a8a
The pwd_mkdb(8) utility no longer copies comments from /etc/master.passwd to /etc/passwd. 3e955733117d
MSS clamping has been improved for ppp(8). 301bff9bdd62
Metric aliasing has been changed in
prometheus_sysctl_exporter(8) to avoid confusing Prometheus
server due to conflicting metric names. The
tcp_log_bucket UMA zone has been renamed to
tcp_log_id_bucket, and tcp_log_node was
renamed to tcp_log_id_node for consistency. Sysctl
variables with (LEGACY) in their descriptions are no
longer being exported, these are used by ZFS sysctls that have been
replaced by others, many of which alias to the same Prometheus
metric name (like vfs.zfs.arc_max and
vfs.zfs.arc.max). e4f508d5a211
(Sponsored by Axcient)
The
uuidgen(1) utility has a new option -r to generate
a random UUID, version 4. 8fd1953b7eb2
When invoked by
inetd(8), ctlstat -P will now produce output
suitable for ingestion into Prometheus; see
ctlstat(8). f7896015fcde
(Sponsored by Axcient)
Contributed Software
Gavin Howard’s bc has been upgraded to version
6.2.4.
expat (libbsdxml) has been upgraded to
version 2.5.0.
file has been upgraded to version 5.43.
less has been upgraded to version 608.
libarchive has been upgraded to version 3.6.2 with
many reliability fixes. Release notes are available at https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/releases.
libedit has been upgraded to version
2022-04-11.
LLVM and the clang compiler have been
upgraded to version 14.0.5.
Supported LLVM sanitizers are now enabled on
powerpc64 and variants.
mandoc has been upgraded to version 1.14.6.
OpenSSH has been upgraded to version 9.3p1.
OpenSSL has been upgraded to version 1.1.1t.
sendmail has been upgraded to version 8.17.1.
68e86d5265bc
sqlite3 has been upgraded to version 3.40.1.
tzcode has been upgraded to version 2022g with
improved timezone change detection and reliability fixes.
tzdata has been upgraded to version 2023c.
unbound has been upgraded to version 1.17.1.
xz has been upgraded to version 5.4.1.
xz-embedded has been upgraded to
3f438e15109229bb14ab45f285f4bff5412a9542.
zlib has been upgraded to version 1.2.13.
Runtime Libraries and API
Support of SHA-512/224 has been added to libmd.
e04ee7d95ef6
(Sponsored by Klara, Inc.)
Linux-style system call tracing is now supported by sysdecode(3) and kdump(1).
The native pthread library functions can now support Linux semantics.
Kernel
This section covers changes to kernel configurations, system tuning, and system control parameters that are not otherwise categorized.
General Kernel Changes
The
bhyve(8) hypervisor and kernel module
vmm(4) now support more than 16 vCPUs in a guest. By default
bhyve permits each guest to create the same number of vCPUs as the
count of physical CPUs on the host. This limit can be adjusted via
the loader tunable hw.vmm.maxcpu. 3e02f8809aec
Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is enabled for 64-bit
executables by default. It can be disabled as needed if
applications fail unexpectedly, for example with segmentation
faults. To disable for a single invocation, use the
proccontrol(1) command: proccontrol -m aslr -s disable
command. To disable ASLR for all invocations of a binary,
use the
elfctl(1) command: elfctl -e +noaslr file.
Problems should be reported via the problem reporting system,
https://bugs.freebsd.org, or posting to the
freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org mailing list. 10192e77cfac
(Sponsored by Stormshield)
A workaround has been implemented for a hardware page invalidation problem on Intel Alder Lake (twelfth generation) and Raptor Lake (thirteenth generation) hybrid CPUs. The bug can lead to file system corruption with UFS and MSDOSFS, and probably other memory corruption. The slower cores (E-cores) automatically use a slower method of page invalidation with the workaround. 567cc4e6bfd9 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
A new kernel configuration knob is available,
SPLIT_KERNEL_DEBUG, which controls splitting of kernel
and module debug data into separate standalone files. This
interacts with the WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS option,
which operates differently than in 13.0-RELEASE and 13.1-RELEASE,
but similarly to prior releases; it now controls only installation
of the debug data. The defaults are
WITH_KERNEL_SYMBOLS and
WITH_SPLIT_KERNEL_DEBUG, allowing the kernel and
modules without debug data to be installed in /boot, and standalone debugging files to be
installed in /usr/lib/debug, as was
done by default in releases before 13.0-RELEASE. Using
WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS and
WITH_SPLIT_KERNEL_DEBUG, standalone debugging files
are generated but not installed, as when using
WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS in releases before
13.0-RELEASE. Finally, using WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS
and WITHOUT_SPLIT_KERNEL_DEBUG installs the kernel and
modules with built-in debugging information in /boot, as in 13.1-RELEASE using
WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS. 0c4d13c521aa
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
On the PowerPC, a radix pmap in pseries is supported for ISA 3.0. This should make pseries significantly faster on POWER9 instances, as fewer hypercalls are needed to manage pmap now. c74c77531248
Support for ptrace(2) is now available for Linux processes on arm64. 99950e8beb72
In order to facilitate ABI compatibility of stable
branches, the CPU affinity system calls are now more tolerant of
CPU sets that are smaller than used by the kernel. This will
facilitate increases to the size of the kernel set,
MAXCPU. 72bc1e6806cc
64-bit linux(4) ABI support was added for saving CPU floating point state across signal delivery. 0b82c544de58, 20d601714206
vDSO (virtual dynamic shared object) support has been nearly completed in the linux(4) ABI. a340b5b4bd48
The state of the arm64 linux(4) ABI was brought to parity with the amd64 linux(4) ABI. 0b82c544de58, a340b5b4bd48
Devices and Drivers
This section covers changes and additions to devices and device drivers since 13.1-RELEASE.
Device Drivers
The em(4) driver now correctly supports the full range of receive buffer sizes available on newer chips 82580 and i350. 3f8306cf8e2d
The ena(4) driver has been upgraded to version 2.6.2. (Sponsored by Amazon, Inc.)
Basic support for Intel Alder Lake CPUs has been implemented for hwpmc(4). b8ef2ca9eae9
The ice(4) driver has been updated to version 1.37.7-k.
The irdma(4) RDMA driver was introduced for the Intel E810 Ethernet Controller, supporting both RoCEv2 and iWARP protocols in per-PF manner, RoCEv2 being the default, and was upgraded to version 1.1.5-k. 42bad04a2156 (Sponsored by Intel Corporation)
Initial support is now available for DPAA2 (second generation
Data Path Acceleration Architecture – a hardware-level networking
architecture found in some NXP SoCs). It runs NXP-supplied firmware
which provides DPAA2 objects as an abstraction layer, and provides
a dpni network interface. d5a64a935bc9
(Sponsored by Bare Enthusiasm :) and Traverse Technologies)
The iwlwifi(4) driver for Intel wireless interfaces was updated. (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The rtw88(4) driver was added to support several Realtek wireless PCI interfaces. It is currently limited to 802.11 a/b/g operation. See https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Rtw88 for additional information.
There were many additions and improvements to the KPI for support of Linux device drivers. (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Storage
This section covers changes and additions to file systems and other storage subsystems, both local and networked.
NFS Changes
A problem causing NFS server hangs has been fixed; the problem was caused by a bug with SACK handling in TCP.
UFS Changes
It is now possible to take snapshots on UFS filesystems when
running with journaled soft updates. Thus it is now possible to do
background dumps on live filesystems running with journaled soft
updates. Background dumps are requested by using the
-L flag to
dump(8). (In previous releases UFS snapshots were incompatible
with journaled soft updates.) 3f908eed27b4
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Boot Loader Changes
This section covers the boot loader, boot menu, and other boot-related changes.
Boot Loader Changes
The teken.fg_color and teken.bg_color
loader.conf(5) variables now accept a bright or
light prefix (and color numbers 8 through 15) to
select bright colors. 1dcb6002c500
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation). See also 233ab015c0d7
Several bugs have been fixed in loader(8) that caused the video console output to disappear. These appeared to be hangs after the boot loader starts the kernel. (Sponsored by Netflix)
Networking
This section describes changes that affect networking in FreeBSD.
General Network
The kernel wg(4) WireGuard driver has been reintegrated; it provides Virtual Private Network (VPN) interfaces using the WireGuard protocol. 5ae69e2f10da (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") and The FreeBSD Foundation)
KTLS (the kernel TLS implementation) has added receive offload support for TLS 1.3. Receive offload is now supported for TLS 1.1 through 1.3; send offload is supported for TLS 1.0 through 1.3. 1462dc95f796 (Sponsored by Netflix)
The netlink(4) network configuration protocol is now available. It is a communication protocol defined in RFC 3549, and uses a raw socket to exchange configuration information between user space and kernel. It is used by third-party routing programs and by the linux(4) ABI. The netlink(4) protocol is not included in the GENERIC configuration in 13.2-RELEASE, but is available as a kernel module. 6058f6cc48f5
Radix tables and lookups are now supported for MAC addresses in ipfw(4). This allows MAC address tables to be constructed and used for filtering. c31f8b7bd895
Kernel modules dpdk_lpm4 and dpdk_lpm6 are now available and can be loaded via loader.conf(5). They provide optimized routing functions for hosts with a very large amount of routing tables. They can be configured via route(8) and are part of the modular FIB lookup mechanism. 0ca122044369
There are numerous bug fixes in TCP and SCTP.
General Notes Regarding Future FreeBSD Releases
OPIE has been deprecated and will be removed in
FreeBSD 14.0.
The ce(4) and cp(4) synchronous serial drivers have been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0.
Drivers for ISA sound cards have been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0. d7620b6ec941 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The mergemaster(8) utility has been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0. Its replacement is etcupdate(8). 5fa16e3c50c5 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The minigzip(1) utility has been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0. 84d3fc26e3a2
The remaining components of ATM in netgraph (NgATM) have been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0. Support for ATM NICs was removed previously.
The Telnet daemon, telnetd(8), has been deprecated and will be removed in FreeBSD 14.0. The Telnet client is not affected.
The VINUM class in geom(8) has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
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.x 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.
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This change does not affect the FreeBSD 12.x series of releases. |
Last modified on: June 4, 2023 by Colin Percival