FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE Release Notes
Abstract
The release notes for FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 14-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 14.2-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 14-STABLE development branch since 14-STABLE was created. Information regarding pre-built, binary "release" distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
This distribution of FreeBSD 14.2-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 14.2-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 14.1-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 14-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as MERGED features.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 14.1-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. See the release-specific upgrade procedure, FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE upgrade information, with more details in the FreeBSD handbook binary upgrade procedure. This 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 14.1-RELEASE.
Security Advisories
Advisory | Date | Topic |
---|---|---|
01 July 2024 |
OpenSSH pre-authentication remote code execution |
|
07 August 2024 |
pf incorrectly matches different ICMPv6 states in the state table |
|
07 August 2024 |
ktrace(2) fails to detach when executing a setuid binary |
|
07 August 2024 |
NFS client accepts file names containing path separators |
|
07 August 2024 |
OpenSSH pre-authentication async signal safety issue |
|
04 September 2024 |
Multiple vulnerabilities in libnv |
|
04 September 2024 |
bhyve(8) privileged guest escape via TPM device passthrough |
|
04 September 2024 |
Multiple issues in ctl(4) CAM Target Layer |
|
04 September 2024 |
bhyve(8) privileged guest escape via USB controller |
|
04 September 2024 |
Possible DoS in X.509 name checks in OpenSSL |
|
04 September 2024 |
umtx Kernel panic or Use-After-Free |
|
19 September 2024 |
bhyve(8) out-of-bounds read access via XHCI emulation |
|
19 September 2024 |
Integer overflow in libnv |
|
29 October 2024 |
Multiple issues in the bhyve hypervisor |
|
29 October 2024 |
Unbounded allocation in ctl(4) CAM Target Layer |
|
29 October 2024 |
Certificate revocation list fetch(1) option fails |
Errata Notices
Errata | Date | Topic |
---|---|---|
19 June 2024 |
Kernel memory leak in ZFS |
|
19 June 2024 |
LDNS uses nameserver commented out in resolv.conf |
|
19 June 2024 |
Lock order reversal in killpg causing livelock |
|
19 June 2024 |
Incorrect size passed to heap allocated std::string delete |
|
07 August 2024 |
Incorrect ifconfig netmask assignment |
|
04 September 2024 |
cron(8) / periodic(8) session login |
|
19 September 2024 |
Incorrect ICMPv6 state handling in pf |
|
29 October 2024 |
XDG runtime directory’s file descriptor leak at login |
Userland
This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.
Userland Application Changes
An option has been added to change the directory in env(1) which closely resembles the feature in the GNU version of env although it does not support long options. 08e8554c4a39 (Sponsored by Klara, Inc.)
Contributed Software
bc
has been upgraded to 7.0.2. 90ea553a0d30
libarchive
has been upgraded to 3.7.7. 2ae238160f20
libcbor
has been upgraded to 0.11.0. 1755b9daa693
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
libcxxrt
has been upgraded to vendor snapshot
6f2fdfebcd62. d0dcee46d971
libfido2
has been upgraded to 1.14.0. 128bace5102e
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
libpcap
has been upgraded to 1.10.5. 26f21a6494b4
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
llvm
has been upgraded to 18.1.6. f1e3279983d6
openssl
has been upgraded to 3.0.15. cc43f991ab3e
tcpdump
has been upgraded to 4.99.5. ec3da16d8bc1
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
unbound
has been upgraded to 1.22.0. 0a096a7b3ae8
Runtime Libraries and API
fma(3) now returns correctly-signed zero when provided certain small inputs (as observed in the Python test suite). dc39004bc670 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The cap_rights_is_empty
function has been added. It
reports whether a cap_rights_t
has no rights set.
e77813f7e4a3
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Deprecated Applications
fdisk(8) has been deprecated in favor of gpart(8) for a long time but has not been removed, running this application will show a warning to migrate to gpart(8). 3958be5c29da (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The accuracy of asinf(3) and acosf(3) has improved. 33c82f11c267
Cloud Support
This section covers changes in support for cloud environments.
The nuageinit
startup script now supports OpenStack
network config. ea310d18b222
(Sponsored by OVHCloud)
The FreeBSD project is now publishing OCI-compatible container images. 8a688fcc242e
The FreeBSD project is now publishing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure images. See the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FreeBSD Listing for more information. 77b296a2582b
The "shutdown" and "reboot" API in the Amazon EC2 cloud now work
for arm64 instances. Older instances upgraded to FreeBSD
14.2-RELEASE will need to have debug.acpi.quirks="8"
set in /boot/loader.conf
. 28b881840df7
(Sponsored by Amazon)
The FreeBSD projects now publishes "small" EC2 images; these are the "base" images minus debug symbols, tests, 32-bit libraries, the LLDB debugger, the Amazon SSM Agent, and the AWS CLI. 953142d6baf3 (Sponsored by Amazon)
Devices and Drivers
This section covers changes and additions to devices and device drivers since 14.1-RELEASE.
Device Drivers
ena
has been upgraded to 2.8.0. 6bf02434bd9a
(Sponsored by Amazon, Inc.)
ice
has been upgraded to 1.43.2-k. 38a1655adcb3
(Sponsored by Intel Corporation)
ice_ddp
has been upgraded to 1.3.41.0. a9d78bb714e3
(Sponsored by Intel Corporation)
Tiger Lake-H support has been added to the hda(4) driver. dbb6f488df6e
Meteor Lake support has been added to the ichsmb(4) driver. 14c22e28e4ee (Sponsored by Framework Computer Inc) (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Meteor Lake support has been added to the ig4(4) driver. 56f0fc0011c2
A new wireless driver supporting some Realtek chipsets is available: rtw89(4). a2d1e07f6451 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Support for Realtek 8156/8156B has been moved from from cdce(4) to ure(4) for improved performance and reliability. 630077a84186 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Support for ACPI GPIO _AEI objects has been added. 1db6ffb2a482 (Sponsored by Amazon)
nvme(4) and nvmecontrol(8) have been enabled on all architectures. 24687a65dd7f, aba2d7f89dcf (Sponsored by Chelsio Communications and Netflix)
Deprecated and Removed Drivers
agp(4) has been planned for removal in FreeBSD 15.0, and the man page now states that it is deprecated. 92af7c97e197
syscons(4) has been planned for removal in future releases, and has been noted as deprecated in the man pages to notify users to migrate to vt(4). 2bc5b1d60512 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Storage
This section covers changes and additions to file systems and other storage subsystems, both local and networked.
ZFS
OpenZFS has been upgraded to version 2.2.6. 755e773877e9
Boot Loader Changes
This section covers the boot loader, boot menu, and other boot-related changes.
Boot Loader Changes
The BIOS boot loader added back support for gzip and bzip2, but removed support for graphics mode (by default) to address size problems. (The EFI boot loader is unchanged with support for all of those.) 4d3b05a8530e (Sponsored by Netflix)
Networking
This section describes changes that affect networking in FreeBSD.
Network Protocols
Lots of improvements to the network stack, including performance improvements and bug fixes for the sctp(4) stack.
Descriptors returned by sctp_peeloff(2) now inherit capabilities from the parent socket. ae3d7e27abc9 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
General Network
AIM(Adaptive Interrupt Moderation) support has been added to the igc(4) driver. 472a0ccf847a (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") and BBOX.io)
This feature has also been added to the lem(4), em(4) and igb(4) drivers. A major regression in UDP performance introduced in FreeBSD 12.0, including NFS over UDP, is believed to be fixed with this change. 49f12d5b38f6 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") and BBOX.io)
Wireless Networking
The LinuxKPI, particularly for 802.11, has been enhanced to improve the stability of wireless drivers such as iwlwifi(4). (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
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.
Please see the list of hardware supported by 14.2-RELEASE, as well as the platforms page for the complete list of supported CPU architectures.
Processor Support
The maximum IOAPIC ID has been increased to 255, fixing a boot failure on certain high-core-count AMD CPUs. 18119e711f1c (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Nominal support for POWER10 and POWER11 has been added. f9f006df1535
Virtualization Support
The NVMM hypervisor is now detected. 34f40baca641
The VNC server in bhyve(8) will now show the correct colors when using the www/novnc client. f9e09dc5b1d5
Under Hyper-V, TLB flushes are now performed using hypercalls rather than IPIs, providing up to a 40% improvement in TLB performance. 7ece5993b787 (Sponsored by Microsoft)
Linux Binary Compatibility
The AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT
flag is now ignored for all
Linuxulator stat() variants (as the behavior specified by the flag
already matches FreeBSD’s), improving Linux application
compatibility. 99d3ce80ba07
(Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Multimedia
Many improvements to the audio stack including support for hot-swapping in mixer(8), and the addition of mididump(1). cf9d2fb18433 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation) 7224e9f2d4af (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Ports Collection and Package Infrastructure
This section covers changes to the FreeBSD Ports Collection, package infrastructure, and package maintenance and installation tools.
Installer
The FreeBSD installer, bsdinstall(8), now supports downloading and installing firmware packages after the FreeBSD base system installation is complete. 03c07bdc8b31 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
Packaging Changes
The net/wifi-firmware-kmod@release package has been added to the DVD package set in order to provide necessary firmware for wifi drivers. 8c6df7ead19c (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
General Notes Regarding Future FreeBSD Releases
FreeBSD 15.0 is not expected to include support for 32-bit platforms other than armv7. The armv6, i386, and powerpc platforms are deprecated and will be removed. 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit binaries.
The FreeBSD Project expects to support armv7 as a Tier 2 architecture in FreeBSD 15.0 and stable/15. However, the Project also anticipates that armv7 may be removed in FreeBSD 16.0. The Project will provide an update on the status of armv7 for both 15.x and 16.x at the time of 15.0 release.
Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via
the COMPAT_FREEBSD32
option will continue for at least
the stable/15 and stable/16 branches. Support for compiling
individual 32-bit applications via cc -m32
will also
continue for at least the stable/15 branch, which includes suitable
headers in /usr/include and libraries
in /usr/lib32.
Ports will not include support for deprecated 32-bit platforms for FreeBSD 15.0 and later releases. These future releases will not include binary packages or support for building packages from ports for deprecated 32-bit platforms.
The FreeBSD stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit kernel and world support. Ports will retain existing support for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14 and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported by the ports system. However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2 or Tier-3, and support for individual ports should be expected to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms.
With the current support schedule, stable/14 will reach end of life (EOL) around 5 years after the release of FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE. The EOL of stable/14 will mark the end of support for deprecated 32-bit platforms, including source releases, pre-built packages, and support for building applications from ports. With the release of 14.0-RELEASE in November 2023, support for deprecated 32-bit platforms will end in November 2028.
The Project may choose to alter this approach when FreeBSD 15.0 is released by extending some level of support for one or more of the deprecated platforms in 15.0 or later. Any alterations will be driven by community feedback and committed efforts to support these platforms.
Last modified on: December 4, 2024 by Dave Cottlehuber