The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE. This is the first release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on stable/8 and adds many new features. Some of the highlights: a new installer, bsdinstall(8) has been added and is the installer used by the ISO images provided as part of this release; the Fast file system now supports softupdates journaling; ZFS updated to version 28; updated ATA/SATA drivers support AHCI, moved into updated CAM framework; Highly Available Storage (HAST) framework; kernel support for Capsicum Capability Mode, an experimental set of features for sandboxing support; user-level DTrace....

Recent Related News and Releases

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.2-BETA3 Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third beta build of FreeBSD 12.2, the upcoming new stable version scheduled for final release exactly one month from today, on 27 October. This should be the last beta before the start of a release candidate (RC) cycle. As usual, the new snapshot fixes a number of issues: " The third BETA build of the 12.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. A summary of changes since 12.2-BETA2 includes: an installation issue with certctl(8) had been fixed; read/write kstats for ZFS datasets had been added from OpenZFS; the default vm.max_user_wired value had been increased; the kern.geom.part.check_integrity sysctl(8) had been extended to work on GPT partitions; the cxgbe(4) firmware had been updated to version 1.25.0.0; fixes for em(4) and igb(4) have been addressed; a fix for a potential NFS server crash had been addressed; a lock order reversal between NFS server and server-side krpc had been addressed. " See the release announcement and the (incomplete) release notes for further information. Download: FreeBSD-12.2-BETA3-amd64-disc1.iso (918MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (762MB, SHA512).

BSD Release: FreeBSD 11.4 Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 11.4, the latest (and final) stable update in the product's legacy branch. It will continue receiving security support until September 2021. " The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 11.4-RELEASE. This is the fifth and final release of the stable/11 branch. Some of the highlights: the Clang, LLVM, lld, lldb and compiler-rt utilities as well as libc++ have been updated to upstream version 10.0.0; OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.0.2u; Unbound has been updated to version 1.9.6; the pkg(8) utility has been updated to version 1.13.2; the KDE desktop environment has been updated to version 5.18.4; the GNOME desktop environment has been updated to version 3.28; support for renaming ZFS bookmarks has been added; the certctl(8) utility has been added; several feature additions and updates to userland applications; warnings for features deprecated in future releases will now be printed on all FreeBSD versions.... See the release announcement and the release notes for further details. Download: FreeBSD-11.4-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (715MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.4-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso (618MB, SHA512).

BSD Release: FreeBSD 12.1 Glen Barber has announced the release of FreeBSD 12.1. The new version includes BearSSL, the Clang compiler has been updated to version 8.0.1, and OpenSSL has also been updated. The 12.x series of FreeBSD is expected to receive support through to June 2024. The release announcement states: " The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/12 branch. Some of the highlights: BearSSL has been imported to the base system; yhe clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 8.0.1; OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1d. The FreeBSD Project dedicates the FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE to the memory of Kurt Lidl. FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe, sparc64, armv6, armv7 and aarch64 architectures. " Additional information on FreeBSD 12.1 and the changes since 12.0 can be found in the project's release notes. Install and upgrade instructions are also available. Download (pkglist): FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso (867MB, SHA512), (728MB, SHA512).

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.1-RC2 Glen Barber has announced the release of the second of third release candidates for FreeBSD 12.1. The new development snapshot features relatively few changes as the 12.1 branch is nearing its stable launch. The release announcement lists the following adjustments since the first release candidate: " A summary of changes since 12.1-RC1 includes: The loader.efi had been updated to use ioalign for compliance with UEFI specification 2.7A. A null pointer dereference bug had been fixed. A fix to SCTP to reset local variables to their initial values had been added. The ixgbe(4) driver had been updated to prevent a system crash when configuring EEE on X500EM_X devices. The sdhci(4) driver had been updated to fix a boot issue on Beaglebone SoCs. " Additional information on the 12.1 branch can be found in the operating system's release notes. Download: FreeBSD-12.1-RC2-amd64-disc1.iso (865MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.1-RC2-i386-disc1.iso (727MB, SHA512).

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.1-RC1 Glen Barber has announced the release of the first of two scheduled release candidates for FreeBSD 12.1. The release candidate contains just a handful of fixes and improvements since last week's BETA3 snapshot. The release announcement reports: " A summary of changes since 12.1-BETA3 includes: A NULL pointer dereference that could lead to a system crash had been fixed. A fix to correctly implement pmap_page_is_mapped() on ARM64 and RISCV. A fix to tun(4) and tap(4) when destroying interfaces had been added. A fix to krping to notify sleeping threads of device removal had been added. Several updates to mlx5core, mlx5en(4), and mlx5ib(4). Several fixes in libusb(3) and xhci(4) have been added. Several SCTP and TCP fixes have been added. " The release candidate is available for i386, AMD64, ARMv7, PowerPC, SPARC64, and AARCH64 processors. More information can be found in the release notes. Download: FreeBSD-12.1-RC1-amd64-disc1.iso (865MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.1-RC1-i386-disc1.iso (726MB, SHA512).

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.1-BETA3 Glen Barber has announced the release of a new development build of FreeBSD 12.1. The new beta release, FreeBSD 12.1-BETA3, fixes some build errors in the core operating system, addresses a send bug in ZFS, and there are two new subcommands for the freebsd-update update manager. The release announcement lists the recent changes: " An issue with imx6-based arm boards had been fixed; an issue with 64-bit long double types leading to link failures had been fixed; an overflow logic error had been fixed in fsck_msdosfs(8); an issue in destruction of robust mutexes had been fixed; support for the '-vnP' flags to the zfs send subcommand had been added for bookmarks; the ixgbe(4) driver had been updated to prevent a potential system crash with certain 10Gb Intel NICs; a regression with the zfs send subcommand when using the '-n', '-P', and '-i' flags had been fixed; the freebsd-update(8) utility had been updated to include two new subcommands - updatesready and showconfig; support for 'ps -H' had been added to kvm(3); an issue when compiling certain ports targeting Intel Atom CPUs had been fixed. " Additional details can be found in the release notes. Download: FreeBSD-12.1-BETA3-amd64-disc1.iso (867MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.1-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso (726MB, SHA512).

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.1-BETA2 The FreeBSD team has published a new development snapshot of the project's upcoming 12.1 release. The latest beta fixes a number of problems found in drivers, the ping6 command, and FUSE filesystem support. " A summary of changes since 12.1-BETA1 includes: an off-by-one error in fusefs(5) had been fixed; a problem with in-place strip(1) on msdosfs(5) had been fixed; stability fixes for mpr(4) and mps(4) have been merged from head; note - support for these drivers have been removed for 32-bit powerpc; a regression had been fixed in the ping6(8) utility when the system is built without capsicum(4); a regression in the jme(4) driver had been fixed; a change to the bhyve(4) uart(4) driver had been fixed to support running under syzkaller; the WITH_PIE and WITH_BIND_NOW build knobs have been added; the 'updatesready' and 'showconfig' subcommands have been added to freebsd-update(8); the camcontrol(8) 'devtype' subcommand had been fixed to correctly report SATL devices. " Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes. Download: FreeBSD-12.1-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso (866MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.1-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso (727MB, SHA512).

Development Release: FreeBSD 12.1-BETA1 Glen Barber has announced the first beta snapshot of FreeBSD 12.1. The new beta offers mostly minor updates and fixes over the previous 12.0 release: " The lockf(1) utility has been updated to return EX_UNAVAILABLE if the -n flag is used and the lock file does not exist. The ktrdump(8) utility has been updated to include the -l flag which enables "live" mode when specified. The gzip(1) utility has been updated to add -l support for xz(1) files. The trim(8) utility has been added, which deletes content for blocks on flash-based storage devices that use wear-leveling algorithms. The sh(1) utility has been updated to include a new pipefail option, which when set, changes the exit status of a pipeline to the last non-zero exit status of any command in the pipeline. The mlx5tool(8) utility has been updated to implement firmware update capability for ConnectX-4, ConnectX-5 and ConnectX-6. The posixshmcontrol(1) utility has been added. The swapon(8) utility has been updated to invoke BIO_DELETE to trim swap devices if either the -E flag is used on the command line, or if the trimonce option is included in fstab(5). " Additional information can be found in the release announcement and in the release notes. Download: FreeBSD-12.1-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso (866MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-12.1-BETA1-i386-disc1.iso (726MB, SHA512).