Episode 369

Where rc.d belongs

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September 24th, 2020

44 mins 9 secs

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midnightbsd opnsense release end of life etc libexec rc.d emacs development ifstated pfsync carp high availability ha interview dataset zpool zfs distribution software berkeley os operating system bsd guide howto tutorial hardenedbsd trident trueos dragonflybsd netbsd openbsd freebsd

About this Episode

High Availability Router/Firewall Using OpenBSD, CARP, pfsync, and ifstated, Building the Development Version of Emacs on NetBSD, rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc, FreeBSD 11.3 EOL, OPNsense 20.7.1 Released, MidnightBSD 1.2.7 out, and more.

NOTES
This episode of BSDNow is brought to you by Tarsnap

Headlines

High Availability Router/Firewall Using OpenBSD, CARP, pfsync, and ifstated

I have been running OpenBSD on a Soekris net5501 for my router/firewall since early 2012. Because I run a multitude of services on this system (more on that later), the meager 500Mhz AMD Geode + 512MB SDRAM was starting to get a little sluggish while trying to do anything via the terminal. Despite the perceived performance hit during interactive SSH sessions, it still supported a full 100Mbit connection with NAT, so I wasn’t overly eager to change anything. Luckily though, my ISP increased the bandwidth available on my plan tier to 150Mbit+. Unfortunately, the Soekris only contained 4xVIA Rhine Fast Ethernet. So now, I was using a slow system and wasting money by not being able to fully utilize my connection.

Building the Development Version of Emacs on NetBSD

I hadn’t really planned on installing a NetBSD VM (after doing all the other two BSDs), but then a NetBSD-related Emacs bug report arrived.

News Roundup

rc.d belongs in libexec, not etc

Let’s open with the controversy: the scripts that live under /etc/rc.d/ in FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are in the wrong place. They all should live in /libexec/rc.d/ because they are code, not configuration.
This misplacement is something that has bugged me for ages but I never had the energy to open this can of worms back when I was very involved in NetBSD. I suspect it would have been a draining discussion and a very difficult thing to change.

FreeBSD 11.3 EOL

As of September 30, 2020, FreeBSD 11.3 will reach end-of-life and will no longer
be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of FreeBSD 11.3 are strongly
encouraged to upgrade to a newer release as soon as possible.

OPNsense 20.7.1 Released

Overall, the jump to HardenedBSD 12.1 is looking promising from our end. From the reported issues we still have more logging quirks to investigate and especially Netmap support (used in IPS and Sensei) is lacking in some areas that were previously working. Patches are being worked on already so we shall get there soon enough. Stay tuned.

MidnightBSD 1.2.7 out

MidnightBSD 1.2.7 is available via the FTP/HTTP and mirrors as well as github.

It includes several bug fixes and security updates over the last ISO release and is recommended for new installations.

Users who don't want to updatee the whole OS, should consider at least updating libmport as there are many package management fixes

Beastie Bits

Tarsnap

  • This weeks episode of BSDNow was sponsored by our friends at Tarsnap, the only secure online backup you can trust your data to. Even paranoids need backups.

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