2012: BSD Year in Review

This article looks back on 2012 and provides an overview of what occurred in the BSD world.
FreeBSD
The FreeBSD Project had three releases in 2012:
9.0: was released on January 6. Some of the highlights of this release include: a new installer, SUJ (soft-updates journaling), ZFSv28 which adds RAIDZ3 and deduplication, the HAST (highly available storage) framework, the Capsicum framework for sandboxing applications with minimal code changes, user-level DTrace, pluggable TCP congestion control framework with five new algorithms, NFSv4, high-performance SSH, LLVM and clang, and support for the Sony Playstation 3.
8.3: was released on April 11. This is the fourth release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.2. It introduced some 9.0 features to this branch (ZFSv28 and the pluggable TCP congestion control framework), provided updated drivers, and addressed several security advisories.
9.1: was released on December 30. Some of its new features include: Intel GPU driver with GEM/KMS support, netmap(4) fast userspace packet I/O framework, POSIX2008 extended locale support, kernel support for the AVX FPU extension, and numerous improvements in IPv6 hardware offload support. Due to the November intrusion on the FreeBSD package building cluster, the FreeBSD Project’s package building infrastructure is undergoing a complete review and redesign. This means that the only packages available for 9.1 are those contained on the installation DVD. The Project will make an announcement once the rest of the packages become available.
The FreeBSD ports collection now contain 24,047 ports.
The FreeBSD Project held DevSummits at the following 2012 events: AsiaBSDCon in Tokyo, BSDCan in Ottawa, The University of Cambridge in August, EuroBSDCon in Warsaw, and MeetBSD California in Sunnyvale. The documentation team organized several IRC doc sprints as well as Documentation Working Groups during BSDCan, the Cambridge DevSummit, OpenHelp in Cincinnati, and EuroBSDCon.
NetBSD
The NetBSD Project also had three releases in 2012:
5.1.2: was released on February 2. This release was the second critical security update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch and represented a subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons.
6.0.1: as released on October 17 and is considered to be the current release. It is the first security bugfix update of the NetBSD 6.0 release branch and represents the subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons.
5.2: was released on December 3. This release provides bug and security fixes as well as updated drivers.
pkgsrc currently contains over 13,000 packages. The pkgsrc team released pkgsrc-2012Q1 in April, pkgsrc-2012Q2 in July, and pkgsrc-2012Q3 in October.
OpenBSD
Right on schedule, the OpenBSD Project had two releases in 2012. Each release includes its own artwork and theme song.
5.1: was released on May 1. This release included: improved hardware support, network stack improvements, routing and PF improvements, improved locale support, OpenSSH 6.0, major performance and stability improvements in the package build process, and improved man pages and documentation.
5.2: was released on November 1. The most significant change in this release is the replacement of the user-level uthreads by kernel-level rthreads, allowing multithreaded programs to utilize multiple CPUs/cores. Other features include the addition of nginx(8), and OpenSSH 6.1 which turns on pre-auth sandboxing sshd by default for new installs.
The OpenBSD ports collection now contains over 7,600 ports.
The OpenBSD developers organized several hackathons in 2012: an rthreads hackathon in Paris, a general hackathon in Budapest, a network hackathon in Starnberg, Germany, a ports hackathon in Budapest, and a hackathon in Coimbra, Portugal.
DragonFly BSD
The DragonFly BSD Project had several point releases and two release branches in 2012:
3.0.1: was released on February 22. The giant kernel lock was removed from much of the system, increasing performance significantly on multi-core systems. Other features include: significant improvement in HAMMER throughput under heavy storage loads due to a new time domain multiplexing method, and a BSD-licensed tcplay(8) tool for creating and managing encrypted disk volumes which are 100% TrueCrypt compatible.
3.0.2: was released on March 26.
3.0.3: was released on August 29.
3.2.1: was released on November 2.
3.2.2: was released on December 16. This release added performance improvements under database load, using postgres benchmarking as a measure. FreeBSD’s USB stack is available, but is not built by default.
Work on HAMMER2 continues, though it is not yet ready for production use. An update on its features and what still needs to be done can be found at http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2012-December/017716.html.
OpenBSD PC-BSD
The PC-BSD project had two releases in 2012:
9.0: was released on January 10. This release added support for multiple window managers, a new Control Panel so that common administrative graphical tools are available from any desktop, support for freebsd-update using a graphical Update Manager, an improved graphical networking utility, an enhanced Life Preserver utility for scheduling backups, support for BootCamp partitions, and pre-installed virtualbox and vmware images.
9.1: was released on December 18. This release added the following features: a newly designed installer to separate pre- and post-installation configuration tasks, many ZFS improvements in the installer, a newly designed Warden for managing FreeBSD, ports, and Linux jails, multiple boot environment support for ZFS, the ability to install a vanilla FreeBSD or TrueOS server, a new About utility, a new GDM configuration utility, a new sound configuration GUI, a new hardware compatibility GUI, a new Bluetooth pairing management utility, a new mount tray utility, an improved EasyPBI utility for converting FreeBSD ports to PBIs, a newly designed thinclient script for creating PXE boot servers or PXE installation servers, and USB live mode is now read-writable.
AppCafe now contains over 1,050 PBIs. pbidir.com has been deprecated and a new FreshPBIs.org website is being created to make it easy for users to track PBI information.
FreeBSD Foundation
The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3), US based, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and building the FreeBSD Project and community worldwide. The Foundation accepts donations, using them to fund and manage projects, sponsor FreeBSD events, and provide travel grants to FreeBSD developers and contributors.
The Foundation sponsored the following conferences in 2012: AsiaBSDCon, BSDCan, including its Developer Summit and Vendor Summit, BSDDay in Vienna, EuroBSDCon, the Cambridge Developer Summit, and the Bay Area Vendor Summit.
The Foundation sponsored the travel of twelve people to BSDCan, four to EuroBSDCon, one to OpenHelp, and one to MeetBSD California. Trip reports describing the benefits of sponsorship can be found at freebsdfoundation.blogspot.com.
The Foundation provided financial grants to the following development projects in 2012:

• iSCSI Target project: the goal of this project is to create a native, high performance, iSCSI target facility for FreeBSD. While configuration and connection setup and teardown will still be handled by a userland daemon, all data movement will be performed in the kernel. The iSCSI target will be fully integrated with the CAM target layer meaning that volumes can be backed by files or any block device. The hardware offload capabilities of modern network adapters will also be supported.
• Capsicum Component Framework: this project will develop a comprehensive userspace framework for writing Capsicum-based applications. It will include a Capsicum runtime linker and component library providing sandboxed versions of key higher-level system libraries. Growing Filesystems Online: this project adds GEOM and filesystem changes that are necessary to increase the size of both UFS and ZFS filesystems while the filesystem is mounted read-write. This project will provide the additional benefit of online provisioning of virtual instances.
• IPv6 Performance Analysis: this project will carry out a detailed performance analysis, benchmarking IPv6 to IPv4. It will identify the origins of differences in performance, and where possible, directly address them or identify areas of future work. Having initial benchmark numbers will allow changes to be evaluated by re-running the measurements and quantifying the improvements.
• Implementing auditdistd: the goal of this project is to securely and reliably distribute audit records over the TCP/IP network from a local auditdistd daemon to a remote auditdistd daemon. In case of source system compromise, the attacker’s activity can be analysed using data collected by the remote system, as only the remote system’s audit logs can still be trusted. NAND Flash Support: this project will enable FreeBSD to natively manage NAND flash devices, satisfying a crucial requirement for many applications needing access to fast, reliable, non-volatile storage.
• Porting FreeBSD to Efika ARM platform: this project will make it possible to run X11 applications on FreeBSD on the Efika MX SmartBook laptop and SmartTop nettop devices, with full support for sound and networking. It will also make it much easier to support other devices, such as some Android tablets, that ship with the i.MX515 SoC.

The Foundation’s fund-raising goal for 2012 was $500,000. Thanks in part to a slashdot post, donations from companies and users of FreeBSD blew away that goal. As of this writing, the donations are still being logged, but it is expected that the final total will be over $700,000.
NetBSD Foundation
The NetBSD Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which serves as the legal entity which owns several of the NetBSD Project servers, handles donations of money, services, hardware or time to the project, and administers NetBSD copyrights.
Donations to the Foundation allow the NetBSD Project to make major improvements to the code base. The NetBSD 6.0 Fund Drive is targeting $60,000 and will be used to fund development in various areas of the system, including:

• Improving network stack concurrency and performance
• Development of modern file systems and improvement of existing ones
• Features which are useful in embedded environments, for example, high resolution timers and execute in place (XIP) support
• Automatic testing and quality assurance

As of this writing, the Foundation still needs help in meeting this goal. See www.netbsd.org/donations/ if you would like to assist the NetBSD Project financially.bsdevents.org
bsdevents.org launched this year. This website provides the following features:

• Blog: announces CFPs, upcoming conferences, presentations, and user group meetings about a week in advance. Blog posts are also tweeted to bsdevents@
• Calendar: lists upcoming conferences with BSD related presentations and/or booths
• Presentations: known BSD presentations are organized by year and event. Uses icons to indicate at a glance the type of presentation media
• User groups: list of known BUGs (or UUGs) categorized by country, state/province, and city

The website contains a submission form if you have information about a missing user group or presentation or if you would like to submit the details for an upcoming presentation or BSD booth. A subscribe button is provided for receiving updates in various formats.
BSD Certification
The BSD Certification Group organized 27 paper-based exam events in 14 countries in 2012. Computer-based exams are also available in 20 countries throughout the world. There are currently 187 certified BSDAs in 25 countries.
The Group released the details for the BSDA re-certification policy: http://www.bsdcertification.org/certification/certification/recertification-policy. Certificants who expire in 2013 will also receive an email in January reminding them of the re-certification policy.
The latest release of the BSDA Study DVD was released on December 10. Even if you are not planning on taking the BSDA exam, the DVD provides a handy installation media and documentation reference for FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. DVD sales are used to fund the ongoing psychometric work required by the BSDA certification.
Books
The following books were published in 2012:

• FreeBSD Device Drivers by Joseph Kong: nostarch.com/bsddrivers.htm
• SSH Mastery: OpenSSH, PuTTY, Tunnels and Keys by Michael W. Lucas: www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY-Tunnels/dp/1470069717
• The Kindle version of the FreeNAS 8.3.0 Users Guide is available for purchase. This Guide is also freely available in several formats at doc.freenas.org
• The PC-BSD 9.0 Users Handbook is available in book format from FreeBSD Mall as well as in Kindle format. The Handbook is also freely available in several formats at wiki.pcbsd.org

The following books are in the pipeline for 2013:

• Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition by Michael W. Lucas. This book will become available in April and pre-orders are available now from nostarch.com/obenbsd2e
• The FreeBSD documentation team is working hard to update the FreeBSD Handbook so that an up-to-date version can be published in book format. The current goal is to have a publishable edition by BSDCan 2013 with the book format available from the FreeBSD Mall. An epub format will also be available, with sales going directly to the FreeBSD Foundation.
• The Best of FreeBSD Basics by Dru Lavigne is currently being re-written for FreeBSD 9.x. The new edition should be available by end of 2013.

Bio
Dru Lavigne is author of BSD Hacks, The Best of FreeBSD Basics, and The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD. As Director of Community Development for the PC-BSD Project, she leads the documentation team, assists new users, helps to find and fix bugs, and reaches out to the community to discover their needs. She is the former Managing Editor of the Open Source Business Resource, a free monthly publication covering open source and the commercialization of open source assets. She is founder and current Chair of the BSD Certification Group Inc., a non-profit organization with a mission to create the standard for certifying BSD system administrators, and serves on the Board of the FreeBSD Foundation.