FreeBSD pkgbase Minor Upgrades

The pkgbase way of things on FreeBSD is still not fully mature (and officially marked as experimental). I tried to cover all pkgbase things in the Brave New PKGBASE World article but I need to add one another thing…

• https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/05/10/freebsd-pkgbase-minor-upgrades/

ping: https://mastodon.social/@vermaden/116547440312687324

(06/10)

⇒ A Final Return for OpenBSD Anti-Return-Oriented Programming Mitigations

Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) continues to be a serious attack taking advantage of flaws in memory unsafe languages, particularly buffer overflows, to launch arbitrary code execution attacks by chaining together pieces of already existing code in loaded binaries and shared libraries, called gadgets. With the continued reliance on x86_64 CPUs in cloud and personal servers, mitigations that can meaningfully reduce the success of ROP attacks without significant overhead continue to be attractive. We propose the porting of one such software-based anti-ROP mitigation proposed by OpenBSD: compile-time instruction rewriting to avoid opportunities for ROP exploitation. We bring this mitigation, originally developed for the custom OpenBSD implementation of the LLVM compiler suite, to GCC by way of a standalone utility that sits in between the compiler and the assembler and rewrites potential gadget instructions before assembly into object code. Our utility provides a minimal reduction in gadgets with some penalties in binary sizes and performance impacts. We compare our GCC-ported standalone utility to the original OpenBSD LLVM mitigation and discovered that our standalone utility is weaker compared to the original LLVM-based mitigation. However, due to the overall weak reduction in gadgets for both the LLVM-based and GCC-based implementations, we conclude that seemingly obvious mitigations may prove to be anything but, and caution providing security improvements without significant testing and evaluation.

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/405728967_A_Final_Return_for_OpenBSD_Anti-Return-Oriented_Programming_Mitigations

ping: https://bsd.network/@bcallah/116725877009964245

It seems to be my 200th post here…

@CiotBSD said:

… my newsletters… …

Thanks. I'm curious, are some of those news items aggregated from another area in which you post?

framapiaf.org, maybe?

A semi-active web forum for DOS users and developers

26/08/03

⇒ Show memory information on OpenBSD

Finding memory information and usage on OpenBSD requires a few commands and the right places to look. If you are used to Linux, then commands like free are no longer available. Let’s have a look at memory details on OpenBSD.

• https://bsd-audit.com/openbsd/memory-information-on-openbsd/

26/08/05

⇒ Running your own mail server with OpenBSD and OpenSMTPD

Self-hosting your own services such as a blog, website, or email is a valuable skill. It gives you a better understanding in the technology and usually also fun to do. With privacy under pressure and Big Tech continuing to store our data, this might be a good time to host your own mail server.

• https://bsd-audit.com/self-hosting/running-your-own-mailserver/

⇒ NetBSD Foundation 2026 Annual General Meeting: Board, Core, and Team Reports

The NetBSD Foundation’s 2026 AGM covers progress on NetBSD 11.0 (now at RC5), the CVS-to-Git/Mercurial migration, and infrastructure challenges like LLM scraping and hardware aging. Highlights include five Google Summer of Code projects, CNA onboarding for security advisories, and plans to streamline release cycles. The full IRC log details team updates from core, admins, releng, and security.

• https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/annual_general_meeting_2026

Tribblix and OmniTribblix m41 released

http://tribblix.org/download.html

This doesn't have any significant breaking changes on the application side, just a lot of normal version updates, but does pick up the handful of illumos CVEs we've had recently.

No idea what happened to that tomato, but it grew into the FreeBSD logo.

⇒ Automatic expiry at timeout for pf(4) overload tables

Network-oriented readers will be familiar with the concept of overload tables, commonly used with state tracking options to create adaptive rulesets for such things as punishing password-guessing botnets.

A downside to tables that would tend to fill up indefinitely is that at some point they will be quite full, and the administrator would need to either manually run pfctl expire or set up a crontab entry to weed out old entries at intervals.

• https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260513064948
• https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=177846164902091&w=2

ping: https://framapiaf.org/@openbsdjournal@mastodon.social/116565993077076112

=> 662: I need a hero

Cybersecurity Looks Like Proof of Work Now, Compensating for RAM Constraints with L2ARC on ZFS, GhostBSD 26.1, and more...

• https://www.bsdnow.tv/662

Setup a simple web server with bozohttpd on NetBSD.

• https://bozo.httpd.rocks/

If not any idea how much work that would represent?

Gentlefolk,

I am trying to set up a wireguard client inside a Bastille jail - both the host and the jail are on FreeBSD 15.1.

I have encountered an error (SIOCIFCREATE2 (wg0): Invalid argument) when I try to bring up the interface.

Apparently this is because, while the host system has access to the kernel module that enables wireguard, the jail does not.

After a bit of research, it seems that the way to handle this is to put the declaration
if_wg_load="YES"
into /boot/loader.conf, or perhaps into a file inside /boot/loader.conf.d.

However, Bastille sets up /boot as a read-only filesystem.

Hence the only way I can see to fix this is to edit the fstab for this jail and change the flags for /boot to rw from ro, restart the jail, edit the necessary files, and then go back out to the host and reset the flags in fstab.

Now, call me an optimist, but I suspect the good folks behind Bastille will already have seen this problem and worked out a less awkward solution - I just can't find it anywhere. Am I missing something?

Many thanks as ever,

---WBTD.

06/14

⇒ Building an Open-Source Robot Vacuum — Meet OOMWOO

a new build-in-public project: oomwoo, an open-source robot vacuum you build yourself. Raspberry Pi, ROS 2, 2D LiDAR, Home Assistant, 3D printed, local-first — and open from the first commit.

• https://makerspet.com/blog/building-an-open-source-robot-vacuum-meet-oomwoo/

26/06/19

⇒ MidnightBSD 4.0.6 RELEASE

• https://bsdsec.net/articles/midnightbsd-security-midnightbsd-4-0-6-release

https://nextbsd.org/

https://www.reddit.com/r/BSD/comments/1u5qk0n/nextbsd_the_bsd_of_the_21st_century/

https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1u5qkds/nextbsd_the_bsd_of_the_21st_century/

… My main focus has been getting all the issues fixed with Gershwin Desktop so I can make an image include that + more kexts ASAP. Wifi kexts load but I need to port some 80211 stuff to integrate wifi into configd, etc. More to come. …

…

Mach IPC, launchd (replaces /sbin/init), configd/IPconfiguration (replaces netif), IOkit (replaces devmatch, devd). Resulting in automatic graphics detection, automatic networking with state change handling, service supervision, parallel startup to name a few things. I have other ideas beyond Darwin components like porting smb3 from illumos that I have been brewing about for a long time. New frameworks for jails, bhyve. The equivalent of dockerhub for jails. Management tools comparable to this https://www.hexbsd.org (an earlier creation of mine). A revived NAS appliance. A Gershwin on NextBSD image (desktop appliance).

For people who are new to all of this:

• gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop: Desktop Environment based on GNUstep welcoming to switchers

@tomaoki@mastodon.bsd.cafe please, how would you describe the current situation?

Background

No mention of Optimus in the FreeBSD Handbook or FAQ.

In Bugzilla:

• nothing open with Optimus in the summary line
• quicksearch finds nothing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1vdgi2x/comment/p194kjz/

I'm in my 50s, been using computers since the beginning or the 80s, been on the internet since the beginning of the 90s. I'm a computer professional, I've been

• consultant
• QA lead
• SRE / Sysadmin
• lately more support engineer.

I have a thing for old Unix systems and workstations. I've been involved a lot into the Mozilla project and have been employee. I have a sweet spot for Apple ][s and old Unix workstation. I love SMP when it means more than one processor in the box.

When I'm not toying with computer or spending time with the family, I like to read and I maintain a BookWyrm profile.
I take pictures with a trusted Canon DSLR who's starting to show it's age. I post both on pixelfed and Flickr.
I play historical miniatures war games, which means I build and paint minis.

I'm present on two mastodon instances. And I 'maintain' 3 blogs. I've a love affair with various BSD since I got myself involved in OpenDarwin a few years back. My gaming blog runs on FreeBSD. I wish I'd run a BSD system on a daily basis but running a Fedora machine for work is complcated enough.

Ludo

There's usually booths and a room dedicated to BSD at Fosdem, seem interesting to me to add it, no?

Ludo

FreeBSD 15.2 Will Aim For The Nice KDE Desktop Installation Experience

FreeBSD 15.0 had aimed to provide a KDE desktop install option from its text-based OS installer to make for a more compelling FreeBSD out-of-the-box desktop experience. That was then delayed to FreeBSD 15.1 but that didn't end up materializing. Now the KDE desktop install option is diverted to FreeBSD 15.2...

• https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-15.2-KDE-Desktop