FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE Release Notes
The FreeBSD Project
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 The FreeBSD Documentation Project
$FreeBSD:
release/7.1.0/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/relnotes/article.sgml
186643 2008-12-31 08:07:10Z hrs $
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.
IBM, AIX, EtherJet, Netfinity, OS/2, PowerPC, PS/2, S/390, and ThinkPad are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
IEEE, POSIX, and 802 are registered trademarks of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. in the United States.
Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
Sparc, Sparc64, SPARCEngine, and UltraSPARC are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed by the “™” or the “®” symbol.
The release notes for FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 7.1-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.
- Table of Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What's New
-
- 2.1 Security Advisories
- 2.2 Kernel Changes
-
- 2.2.1 Boot Loader Changes
- 2.2.2 Hardware Support
- 2.2.3 Network Protocols
- 2.2.4 Disks and Storage
- 2.2.5 File Systems
- 2.3 Userland Changes
-
- 2.3.1 /etc/rc.d Scripts
- 2.4 Contributed Software
- 2.5 Release Engineering and Integration
- 3 Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD
1 Introduction
This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.
This distribution of FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE is a release distribution. It can be found at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/ 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 7.1-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
2 What's New
This section describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 7.0-RELEASE.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 7.0-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.
2.1 Security Advisories
Problems described in the following security advisories have been fixed. For more information, consult the individual advisories available from http://security.FreeBSD.org/.
| Advisory | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| SA-08:05.openssh | 17 April 2008 |
OpenSSH X11-forwarding privilege escalation |
| SA-08:06.bind | 13 July 2008 |
DNS cache poisoning |
| SA-08:07.amd64 | 3 September 2008 |
amd64 swapgs local privilege escalation |
| SA-08:08.nmount | 3 September 2008 |
nmount(2) local arbitrary code execution |
| SA-08:09.icmp6 | 3 September 2008 |
Remote kernel panics on IPv6 connections |
| SA-08:10.nd6 | 1 October 2008 |
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol routing vulnerability |
| SA-08:11.arc4random | 24 November 2008 |
arc4random(9) predictable sequence vulnerability |
| SA-08:12.ftpd | 23 December 2008 |
Cross-site request forgery in ftpd(8) |
| SA-08:13.protosw | 23 December 2008 |
netgraph / bluetooth privilege escalation |
2.2 Kernel Changes
The clock_gettime(2) and the related system calls now support a clock ID CLOCK_THREAD_CPUTIME_ID, defined in POSIX.
The cpuset(2) system call has been added. This is an API for thread to CPU binding and CPU resource grouping and assignment.
The DTrace, a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework and dtrace(1) userland utility have been imported from OpenSolaris. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs.
The ddb(4) kernel debugger now has an output capture facility. Input and output from ddb(4) can now be captured to a memory buffer for later inspection using sysctl(8) or a textdump. The new capture command controls this feature.
The ddb(4) debugger now supports a simple scripting facility, which supports a set of named scripts consisting of a set of ddb(4) commands. These commands can be managed from within ddb(4) or with the use of the new ddb(8) utility. More details can be found in the ddb(4) manual page.
The
ddb(4) ex command now supports an /S mode which interprets and prints the value at
the requested address as a symbol. For example, ex /S aio_swake prints the name of the
function currently registered in via aio_swake hook.
The
ddb(4) show
conifhk command has been added. This lists hooks currently
waiting for completion in run_interrupt_driven_config_hooks().
The fcntl(2) system call now supports F_DUP2FD command. This is equivalent to dup(2), and compatible with Sun Solaris and IBM AIX.
The FreeBSD's
linux(4) ABI support now
implements sched_setaffinity() and
get_setaffinity() using real CPU
affinity setting primitives.
The client side functionality of rpc.lockd(8) has been implemented in FreeBSD kernel. This implementation provides the correct semantics for flock(2) style locks which are used by the lockf(1) command line tool and the pidfile(3) library. It also implements recovery from server restarts and ensures that dirty cache blocks are written to the server before obtaining locks (allowing multiple clients to use file locking to safely share data). Also, a new kernel option options NFSLOCKD has been added and enabled by default. If the kernel support is enabled, rpc.lockd(8) automatically detects and uses the functionality.
The FreeBSD kernel now supports a new textdump format of kernel dumps. A textdump provides higher-level information via mechanically generated/extracted debugging output, rather than a simple memory dump. This facility can be used to generate brief kernel bug reports that are rich in debugging information, but are not dependent on kernel symbol tables or precisely synchronized source code. More information can be found in the textdump(4) manual page.
The
wait4(2) system call now supports
WNOWAIT flag to keep the process whose
status is returned in a waitable state and WSTOPPED which is equivalent to WUNTRACED.
[amd64, i386, sparc64] The FreeBSD kernel now supports initial support of binding interrupts to CPUs.
[amd64, i386] The sched_ule(4) scheduler is now the default process scheduler in GENERIC kernels.
The sysctl variables kern.features.compat_freebsd[456] have been added.
These are corresponding to the kernel options COMPAT_FREEBSD[456].
2.2.1 Boot Loader Changes
[amd64, i386] The BTX kernel used by the boot loader has been changed to invoke BIOS routines from real mode. This change makes it possible to boot FreeBSD from USB devices.
[amd64, i386] A new gptboot boot loader has been added to support booting from a GPT labeled disk. A new boot command has been added to gpt(8), which makes a GPT disk bootable by writing the required bits of the boot loader, creating a new boot partition if required.
2.2.2 Hardware Support
The cmx(4) driver, a driver for Omnikey CardMan 4040 PCMCIA smartcard readers, has been added.
[sparc64] The kbdmux(4) driver has been added. The sunkbd(4) now supports atkbd(4) emulation like ukbd(4).
The nvram(4) driver is now MPSAFE.
An option of the puc(4) driver PUC_FASTINTR has been no longer supported.
The psm(4) driver now attempts detection of Synaptics touchpad before IntelliMouse. Some touchpads will pretend to be IntelliMouse causing the IntelliMouse probe to work and the Synaptics detection never to be done.
The uslcom(4) driver, a driver for Silicon Laboratories CP2101/CP2102-based USB serial adapters, has been imported from OpenBSD.
2.2.2.1 Multimedia Support
The agp(4) driver now supports Intel G33 and G45.
[i386] The dpms(4) driver has been added to use the VESA BIOS for DPMS during suspend and resume.
The DRM kernel driver now supports i915 GME devices.
2.2.2.2 Network Interface Support
The ale(4) driver has been added to provide support for Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit/Fast Ethernet controllers. This driver is not enabled in GENERIC kernels for this release.
The em(4) driver has been split into two drivers with some common parts. The em(4) driver will continue to support adapters up to the 82575, as well as new client/desktop adapters. A new igb(4) driver will support new server adapters.
The hme(4) driver has been improved.
The ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to version 1.6.2 from Intel.
A bug in some of the miibus(4) supported drivers that IEEE 802.3 auto-negotiation was performed in a wrong order, has been fixed. Now it chooses the correct technologies supported by IEEE 802.3 in the order described in Annex 28B.3.
A workaround has been added for a bug in TCP/UDP hardware checksum offload of the msk(4) driver for short frames. Note that for frames that requires hardware VLAN tag insertion, the checksum offload workaround does not work due to changes of checksum offset in mbuf after the VLAN tag. So disabling hardware checksum offload for the VLAN interface is needed in such cases.
The ndis(4) NDIS miniport driver wrapper has been improved.
The sf(4) driver has been improved and now supports checksum offloading.
The stge(4) driver now supports WOL (Wake on LAN).
The vr(4) driver has been improved.
[amd64, i386] The wpi(4) driver has been updated to include a number of stability fixes.
2.2.3 Network Protocols
The arp(8) utility now supports reject and blackhole keywords. In the entry marked as reject, traffic to the host will be discarded and the sender will be notified the host is unreachable. In the entry marked as blackhole, traffic is discarded but the sender is not notified.
The bpf(4) now supports an ioctl BIOCSETFNR. This is just like BIOCSETF but it does not drop all the packets buffered on the descriptor and reset the statistics.
The if_bridge(4) now allow to limit the number of source MACs that can be behind a bridge interface via ifmaxaddr parameter of ifconfig(8).
A bug in the carp(4) interface configuration which leads to a system panic has been fixed.
The
dummynet(4) subsystem now
supports fast mode operation which allows
certain packets to bypass the dummynet scheduler. This can achieve
lower latency and lower overhead when the packet flow is under the
pipe bandwidth, and eliminate recursion in the subsystem. The new
sysctl variable net.inet.ip.dummynet.io_fast has been added to
enable this feature.
The enc(4) now supports sysctl variables to control whether the firewalls or bpf(4) will see inner and outer headers or just inner or outer headers for incoming and outgoing IPsec packets.
The gre(4) now supports ioctls GRESKEY and GREGKEY which allows set or get GRE key used for outgoing packets.
A bug in the ipsec(4) subsystem that PMTU was broken in those cases when there was a route with a lower MTU than the MTU of the outgoing interface, has been fixed.
The netatm subsystem has been removed due to lacking of multiprocessor support.
The ng_nat(4) now supports redirect functionality in libalias. For more details, see the manual page.
The ng_pptpgre(4) now supports multiple hooks like ng_l2tp(4), to use one pair of pptpgre and ksocket nodes for all calls between two peers.
The resolver(3) now allows underscore in domain names. Although this is a violation of RFC 1034 [STD 13], it is accepted by certain name servers as well as other popular operating systems' resolver library.
A socket option TCP_CONGESTION for TCP socket has been added. This is for setting and retrieving the congestion control algorithm. The name used is to allow compatibility with Linux.
The
rwlock(9) has been used
throughout the inpcbinfo and
inpcb infrastructure, and protocols
that depend on that infrastructure, including UDP, TCP, and IP raw
sockets to reduce the lock contentions.
2.2.4 Disks and Storage
The aac(4) driver now supports 64-bit array support for RAIDs larger than 2TB and simultaneous opens of the device for issuing commands to the controller.
The
ata(4) driver now supports a
loader variable hw.ata.ata_dma_check_80pin. This can be used to
disable the 80pin cable check on broken systems such as certain
laptops and Soekris boards. The default value is 1.
A data corruption problem of the ata(4) driver on ServerWorks HT1000 chipsets has been fixed.
The
ciss(4) driver now supports a
loader tunable hw.ciss.nop_message_heartbeat for NOP-message
polling in ciss_periodic(). This can
be used as a workaround for ADAPTER HEARTBEAT
FAILED issue. The default value is 0
(disabled).
The geom_part GEOM class can be built as a kernel module.
The geom_linux_lvm GEOM class can be built as a kernel module.
The hptrr(4) driver has been updated to version 1.2 from Highpoint.
A buffer overflow in the iir(4) driver has been fixed. This likely fixes a great number of weird problems that have been reported with this driver.
The mpt(4) driver now supports mpt_user personality.
The rr232x(4) driver has been superseded by hptrr(4) driver.
The twa(4) driver has been improved with regard to stability on machines with a plenty of memory and high CPU load.
2.2.5 File Systems
The fdescfs(5) is now MPSAFE.
The gpart(8) now supports BSD disklabels (option GEOM_PART_BSD) and VTOC8 disklabels (option GEOM_PART_VTOC8).
The gvinum(8) now accepts volume parameter when creating a plex.
A pathname lookup bug of a UNIX domain socket in the unionfs(7) has been fixed.
2.3 Userland Changes
The
adduser(8) utility now supports a
-M option to set the mode of a new
user's home directory.
The atacontrol(8) utility now supports a spindown command to set or report timeout after which the device will be spun down.
The
chflags(1) now supports a
-v flag for verbose output, a
-f flag to ignore errors, and
-h to allow setting flags on symbolic
links with the same semantics as (for example)
chmod(1).
The
cp(1) now supports a -a flag, which is equivalent to -RpP flags.
A bug in the cp(1) utility which prevents POSIX.1e ACL (see also acl(3)) from copying properly has been fixed.
The
cron(8) utility now supports
-m flag which overrides the default
mail recipient for cron mails unless explicitly provided by
MAILTO= line in crontab file.
The dhclient(8) now supports more options described in dhcp-options(5).
The
dhclient(8) now supports
is_default_interface() function which
determines if this interface is one with the default route.
A bug in the dhclient(8) that prevents removal of the default route from working has been fixed.
The environ(7), environment array of strings now supports unsetting a variable by setting the first character to NULL. This is required by third-party software such as Dovecot and Postfix.
The
fdisk(8) now supports a
-q flag to not display any
warnings.
The
fetch(1) program and libfetch library now supports a NO_PROXY environment variable. This specifies
comma- or whitespace-separated list of host names for which proxies
should not be used. If a single asterisk is specified, the use of
proxies is disabled.
The ffsll(3) and flsll(3) functions have been added. These functions are the same as ffs(3) and fls(3) except that they accept long long as the arguments.
The
fortune(6) program now supports
FORTUNE_PATH environment variable to
specify search path of the fortune files.
A bug in the
fortune(6) program that prevents
-e option with multiple files from
working has been fixed.
The freebsd-update.conf(5) now supports IDSIgnorePaths statement.
The
fwcontrol(8) utility now supports
-f node option which specifies
node as the root node on the
next bus reset.
[sparc64] The
gcc(1) now accepts -mcpu option properly; it was hardcoded as
-mcpu=ultrasparc.
The gpt(8) now supports ZFS.
The ifconfig(8) now supports display of WPS IE (Wireless Provisioning Services Information Element).
The kgdb(1) now supports an add-kld kld command to locate a kld(4) and load its symbols.
The kgdb(1) now has a shared library backend for kernel files that treats kld(4) as shared libraries and auto-loading symbols for kld(4) on startup.
The kgdb(1) now supports a tid command and other kernel module related commands even for a remote target.
The kvm_getcptime(3) function to obtain the global CPU time statistics from the kernel has been added.
The libalias library now supports PORT and EPRT FTP commands in lowercase.
The man(1) now includes a limited support of bzip2(1)-compressed manual pages.
The
mdconfig(8) now supports a
-v (verbose) flag to -l command. It shows size and backing store of all
md(4) devices at one time.
The memrchr(3) function has been added. This behaves like memchr(3) except that it locates the last occurrence of the specified character in the string.
The incorrect output grammar of morse(6) program has been fixed.
The
mountd(8) utility now supports
-h bindip option which specifies IP
addresses to bind to for TCP and UDP requests. This option may be
specified multiple times. If no -h
option is specified, INADDR_ANY will be
used. Note that when specifying IP addresses with this option, it
will automatically add 127.0.0.1 and if
IPv6 is enabled, ::1 to the list.
The
moused(8) utility now supports
-L flag which changes the speed of
scrolling and changes -U option
behavior to only affect the scroll threshold.
The mv(1) now support POSIX specification when moving a directory to an existing directory across devices.
The
periodic(8) now supports
daily_status_mail_rejects_shorten
configuration variable in
periodic.conf(5). This allows the
rejected mail reports to tally the rejects per blacklist without
providing details about individual sender hosts. The default
configuration keeps the reports in their original form.
The ping6(8) now uses exit status of 0 and 2 in the same manner as ping(8).
The
ping6(8) now supports an
-o flag, which makes
ping6(8) exit successfully after
receiving one reply packet.
The
ping6(8) now supports
-r and -R
flags, which are equivalent to
ping(8)'s -a and -A flags,
respectively.
The minimum allowed interval of ping6(8) has been decreased to 0.000001 from 0.01.
The
realpath(1) utility now supports
a -q flag to suppress warnings; it now
also accepts multiple paths on its command line.
The
rfcomm_pppd(8) now supports a
-D flag to register DUN (Dial-Up
Networking) service in addition to the LAN (LAN Access Using PPP)
service.
The sdpd(8) now supports a NAP, GN, and PANU profiles.
The setkey(8) utility now accepts esp as a protocol name for the spdadd command.
A bug in
telnetd(8) that it attempts
authentication even when -a off option
is specified has been fixed.
The
top(1) and
vmstat(8) now support
-P flag which displays per-CPU
statistics.
The
traceroute(8) now supports an
-a flag to display AS number
corresponding to the lookup IP address on each hop. It will query
the number to WHOIS server specified in -A option. If no -A is
specified, whois.radb.net will be used as
the default value.
The uuid_enc_le(3), uuid_dec_le(3), uuid_enc_be(3), and uuid_dec_be(3) functions have been added. These functions encode/decode a binary representation of a UUID.
The watch(8) utility now supports more than 10 snp(4) devices at a time.
The
ypserv(8) now supports a
-P option to specify the port number on
which it should listen.
2.3.1 /etc/rc.d Scripts
The
rc.conf(5) now supports
dummynet_enable variable which allow
dummynet(4) kernel module to be
loaded when firewall_enable is
YES.
The ntpd rc(8) script can work with no configuration file /etc/ntp.conf now.
The ppp
rc(8) script now supports
multiple instances. For more details, see description of
ppp_profile variable in
rc.conf(5).
The sysctl rc(8) script now supports loading /etc/sysctl.conf.local in addition to /etc/sysctl.conf.
The
rc.conf(5) now supports
configuration of interfaces and attached networks for firewall rule
set by rc.firewall when firewall_type is simple
or client. See firewall_client_net, firewall_simple_iif, firewall_simple_inet, firewall_simple_oif, and firewall_simple_onet.
2.4 Contributed Software
am-utils has been updated from version 6.0.10p1 to version 6.1.5.
ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.4.2-P2.
awk has been updated from 1 May 2007 release to the 23 October 2007 release.
bzip2 has been updated from version 1.0.4 to version 1.0.5.
CVS has been updated to version 1.11.22.1.
hostapd has been updated to version 0.5.10 + radius ACL support.
libarchive has been updated to version 2.5.5.
ncurses library has been updated to version 5.6-20080503.
NTP has been updated to version 4.2.4p5.
OpenPAM has been updated from the Figwort release to the Hydrangea release.
OpenSSH has been updated from version 4.5p1 to version 5.1p1.
The resolver(3) library has been updated to one of ISC BIND 9.4.3.
sendmail has been updated from version 8.14.2 to version 8.14.3.
The timezone database has been updated from the tzdata2007h release to the tzdata2008h release.
wpa_supplicant has been updated to version 0.5.10 + syslog support.
2.5 Release Engineering and Integration
The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated from 2.20.1 to 2.22.
The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde3) has been updated from 3.5.8 to 3.5.10.
3 Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD
[amd64, i386] Beginning with FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE, 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 or SMP kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity.
An older form of binary upgrade is supported through the Upgrade option from the main sysinstall(8) menu on CDROM distribution media. This type of binary upgrade may be useful on non-i386, non-amd64 machines or on systems with no 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.
Important: Upgrading FreeBSD should, of course, only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files.
This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.