announce::DruidBSD 9.0b56 released
DruidBSD is a universal boot solution for FreeBSD based on SYSLINUX(TM). This micro distribution resides on a gzipped 1.9MB floppy and can allowing you to boot and install FreeBSD 9.0 (32 or 64 bit) onto most types of media, CD/DVD drives, USB flash drives and of course hard disks.
announce::iXsystems – PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope Edition Released
More desktop choices, updated PBI system round out new feature list
From the outer reaches of deep space to the miniscule nucleus of an atom, the developers of PC-BSD make it clear that the scope and possibilities of PC-BSD are endless. Following the release of the Hubble Edition, iXsystems eagerly announces the release of PC-BSD® 9.0: Isotope Edition.
PC-BSD is a stable, secure, and user-oriented desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. Kris Moore, founder and lead developer of the PC-BSD Project, states that “PC-BSD 9.0 marks an important step in the series. Users are now given the flexibility and power of running the desktop of their choice, fully integrated with the PC-BSD tool library and PBI package management system.”
At first glance, PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope Edition offers more available desktop choices. In this latest version, many open source Window managers (GNOME, LXDE, XFCE, and KDE) are fully supported. More users can run their preferred desktop while still being able to enjoy all the features and advantages that PC-BSD offers.
New enhancements have also been added, including an updated PBI (Push-Button Installer) system. PBIs are self-contained applications that allow users to easily install programs without deleting or overwriting important data. Isotope’s 8.x predecessor allowed users to easily download, install, and update applications. The new PBI system makes significant improvements by efficiently organizing PBI dependencies without unnecessary duplication.
As always, updating new versions of software will not interfere with previously working ones, and now disk space is also conserved. The new AppCafe, replacing the Software Manager, provides an easy way to obtain and manage applications from a graphical user interface, and works across all supported desktops.
“PC-BSD 9.0 has truly innovated the BSD world and proved to me that their system is easy for anybody to use, while still containing the core aspects of one of the most stable operating systems,” says Mark Shaw, Systems Administrator and Web Developer at Card’s Computers, Inc. “It really is a beautiful system and I love the AppCafe. This is probably one of the biggest achievements the PC-BSD team has made in making it easy for people to install software.”
PC-BSD 9.0 also includes full integration of ZFS v28 thanks to the FreeBSD® Project. ZFS (Zettabyte File System) is an open source 128-bit file system that provides triple-redundancy storage without a RAID controller, automatically restores corrupted files from redundancies, and allows users to incrementally back up a snapshot of the filesystem to a remote ZFS volume.
More new features offered include:
- Enhanced Life Preserver, which allows users to back up their system with greater ease.
- New Update Manager that automatically checks for updates.
- Ability to update to the next major point release without reinstalling.
- Control Panel configurations can now be saved across desktops.
- Touchscreen drivers are now available. Users can download, run, and operate PC-BSD without ever touching a keyboard.
- Wireless configuration profiles are added to the system; users can quickly view and connect to available connections.
“It has been a long time since I have been truly impressed with an operating system and PC-BSD just absolutely nailed it with PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope Edition. All of the rough corners from 8.0 Hubble Edition have been polished off, and the GUI is second to none. Installation is simple and flawless, and ZFS works beautifully. I can (and will) install 9.0 to a 3TB drive, and I am looking forward to finally having a dedicated PC-BSD system,” remarks Al Fairclough, a retired Photo Imaging Consultant.
For more information on PC-BSD, or to download the new PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope Edition, please visit http://pcbsd.org. It is also available for retail sale at http://www.freebsdmall.com on DVD.
About PC-BSD
PC-BSD is a fully functional, user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. It runs on the latest FreeBSD version 9.0 with a desktop interface of the user’s choice and graphical system installer. Its PBI system, developed for PC-BSD and also available on FreeBSD, allows users to download and install their applications in a self-extracting and self-installing format.
About iXsystems, Inc.
iXsystems® is the all-around FreeBSD company that builds FreeBSD-certified servers and storage solutions, oversees FreeNAS development, and is the corporate sponsor of the PC-BSD Project. iXsystems is an employee-owned and operated, open source-centric, customer focused organization, dedicated to providing the highest quality built-to-order enterprise rackmount server solutions, pre-configured server appliances, and scalable storage solutions to our customers around the globe. More information about iXsystems is available on the web at http://www.iXsystems.com.
announce::FreeBSD 9.0 officially released
Earlier this afternoon the official announcement of the latest release of FreeBSD hit the mailing list.
A copy is available below as well as on http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/announce.html
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE Announcement
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 Filesystem 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
- The TCP/IP stack now supports pluggable congestion control framework and five congestion control algorithm implementations available
- NFS subsystem updated, new implementation supports NFSv4 in addition to NFSv3 and NFSv2
- High Performance SSH (HPN-SSH)
- Flattened device tree (FDT), simplifying FreeBSD configuration for embedded platforms
- The powerpc architecture now supports Sony Playstation 3
- The LLVM compiler infrastructure and clang have been imported
- Gnome version 2.32.1, KDE version 4.7.3
For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list available at:
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities please see:
Dedication
The FreeBSD Project dedicates the FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE to the memory of Dennis M. Ritchie, one of the founding fathers of the UNIX[tm] operating system. It is on the foundation laid by the work of visionaries like Dennis that software like the FreeBSD operating system came to be. The fact that his work of so many years ago continues to influence new design decisions to this very day speaks for the brilliant engineer that he was.
May he rest in peace.
Availability
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures.
FreeBSD 9.0 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones such as amd64 and i386.
NOTE: A problem was discovered with the DVD images for amd64 and i386 architectures shortly after they were loaded on the FTP distribution server. Those images have since been replaced and we have allowed enough time that the newer images should have distributed to all the FTP servers that carry the release. If you downloaded the amd64 or i386 DVD images prior to this announcement it would be a good idea to verify the checksums of the image you downloaded with the checksums provided as part of this Release Announcement. The only thing wrong with the images that were replaced is that sysinstall(8) can not be used to install the pre-built packages on the DVD. Other than that there is nothing different on the updated images. The bad DVD images were never available on BitTorrent.
MD5 and SHA256 hashes for the release ISO images are included at the bottom of this message.
The purpose of the images provided as part of the release are as follows:
- dvd1
- This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, a collection of pre-built packages aimed at getting a graphical workstation up and running. It also supports booting into a “livefs” based rescue mode. This should be all you need if you can burn and use DVD-sized media.
- disc1
- This contains the base FreeBSD operating system. It also supports booting into a “livefs” based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
- bootonly
- This supports booting a machine using the CDROM drive but does not contain the support for installing FreeBSD from the CD itself. You would need to perform a network based install (e.g. from an FTP server) after booting from the CD.
- memstick
- This can be written to an USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a “livefs” based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages.
As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work:
# dd if=FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync
Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct.
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE can also be purchased on CD-ROM or DVD from several vendors. One of the vendors that will be offering FreeBSD 9.0-based products is:
- FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/
BitTorrent
9.0-RELEASE ISOs are available via BitTorrent. A collection of torrent files to download the images is available at:
FTP
At the time of this announcement the following FTP sites have FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE available.
- ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp7.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp8.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.cn.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.cz.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.dk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.fr.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.ru.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.tw.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.uk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp2.us.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp10.us.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
- ftp://ftp.za.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/
However before trying these sites please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:
- ftp://ftp.<yourdomain>.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD
Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.
More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:
For instructions on installing FreeBSD or updating an existing machine to 9.0-RELEASE please see:
Support
The FreeBSD Security Team currently plans to support FreeBSD 9.0 until January 31st, 2013. For more information on the Security Team and their support of the various FreeBSD branches see:
Other Projects Based on FreeBSD
There are many “third party” Projects based on FreeBSD. The Projects range from re-packaging FreeBSD into a more “novice friendly” distribution to making FreeBSD available on Amazon’s EC2 infrastructure. For more information about these Third Party Projects see:
Acknowledgments
Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 9.0 including The FreeBSD Foundation, Yahoo!, NetApp, Internet Systems Consortium, Sentex Communications, New York Internet, Juniper Networks, and iXsystems.
The release engineering team for 9.0-RELEASE includes:
| Ken Smith <kensmith@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, amd64, i386, sparc64 Release Building, Mirror Site Coordination |
| Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, Security |
| Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering |
| Marc Fonvieille <blackend@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, Documentation |
| Josh Paetzel <jpaetzel@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering |
| Hiroki Sato <hrs@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering, Documentation |
| Bjoern Zeeb <bz@FreeBSD.org> | Release Engineering |
| Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@FreeBSD.org> | ia64, powerpc Release Building |
| Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org> | powerpc64 Release Building |
| Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Erwin Lansing <erwin@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Mark Linimon <linimon@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Pav Lucistnik <pav@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building |
| Martin Wilke <miwi@FreeBSD.org> | Package Building, Ports Security |
| Colin Percival <cperciva@FreeBSD.org> | Security Officer |
Trademark
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
ISO Image Checksums
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso) = 477019a305797186a8b3e4147f44edec MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) = b23ef73412bd50ed62ef8613ca1a4199 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso) = 61221643ebeefeeb74bd552311e07070 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img) = b37217292ad626d6ab2d3a9c1d215d2d
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso) = 70b4b0dd42c309da79ce63ba2789cfe3 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso) = 5bf615f286ee6eeb3ecce45bd8d1622c MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso) = fee32ba2041285b971daf7ea429e36e4 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img) = 79ddd8f3422e209ae9bd11fee4e399eb
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-bootonly.iso) = 5c83f9a5bf359b2971059d1664ef5f7e MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-memstick) = ee1d5196eb281966b9ef95b953a36d8d MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-release.iso) = 73ca213db21379eb2527dcea37eeb824
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-bootonly.iso) = bfe036760daac0cddfe8ce2915eaec54 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-memstick) = e7a09f343ee248ee538954b39549c241 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-release.iso) = 2431f52b2f9cc1951b0e568b3cd0f126
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-bootonly.iso) = 377714742e5f2e16e34b7818347d4e3f MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-memstick) = 9e4ee64a7460c3c930d0e3e2e3cd03b9 MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-release.iso) = 347e51ceb3e65c1eff3cc3acdb519ffb
MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-sparc64-bootonly.iso) = 81778b8ee1a8881b8597ee4275cc3b4e MD5 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-sparc64-disc1.iso) = a63a07e3c45275568db2cead1b3e7167
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso) = d16fd5f32c9483177a01241f37ed84f347484c65e52aba4dbf8a2f3108fb457d SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) = bcc69320cd2f227411d55967113abc8ffa5ede0a6526090ca3fb5ab776fead9d SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso) = f338e24645f0bcc792b8417411ed737d8057cd2f470f9d2b601c143352d6d459 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img) = b8c964f362200d758e06dc6ea8dd556a4d6fedc2f3cd44c300318d9c2f4fb7a5
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso) = e655de649040269ffdaa40179c3b91c59c8febef7486e340c3a5a5493097366d SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso) = b03df5fbd345781cab7dcab1fd0ea4d84c7c48712a6035476a709e6c0d5763f0 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso) = ebc75ecdbd0580fbe9e59373962e0fc452c4480082af563e5cd765aca1ecd705 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img) = 99193a7895109d415936ba89e4f2c24227af48f064073dee7c4b49722c3656f8
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-bootonly.iso) = 1d25fc52d868877eb3cbdc012be895827f9c2bd808f886755d7ca2e9257af108 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-memstick) = af147d20765bdbe6f71a8fb113fdba64de4d152b554c1fc8d78dc6f941e4737c SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-ia64-release.iso) = 289f31e0dadfa46f51e9a44e26cd9cf6652ff4b5a631a21dca065dcd0d66890d
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-bootonly.iso) = 7ca03f71d2dd0cad929d0005601b4c994a54b02ab140d4218fa326b0fce7dad8 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-memstick) = 042bb4d473b615cf0d3c46d48d4db1fb457a54695e6ef3e47ee1b2dc6a4f3d9b SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc-release.iso) = 0a7af5c74ebc0e13e79dfde03d54d3d752f3c71aff39659406ad6e5bcc0cefc3
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-bootonly.iso) = 2eb5f141fb702a9c757f91a54ff8ea5ded13d51b29dfa86e5ba6bfbe9bb8e48e SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-memstick) = 91648a0377cd4cf8dc5453e48416dd16ac99a30e5439534053a1ca16f9944a0d SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-powerpc64-release.iso) = 17ab67fe62e1da232038b1ff598be1aef5fe8ccea620e0fbd67d8e262992fd66
SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-sparc64-bootonly.iso) = 1f633899cf42be1fecc61f82aa9fd9197da0cf88dda25aabbbf67250653459f5 SHA256 (FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-sparc64-disc1.iso) = 8414abb3a501a9f712fe137a2f3667249ab3d2666815a877a93c934ced5d1110
release::FreeBSD 9.0
If you haven’t been paying attention FreeBSD development team has been working extremely diligently to release the ninth major revision of the venerable operating system. Earlier this evening the ftp servers were updated in preparation of tomorrow’s anticipated forthcoming announcement of the 9.0 release availability. For those who are not aware this means that we should also see a release of PC-BSD 9.0 in relatively short succession.
I for one am looking forward to this new version of BSD as I have played around with several of the release candidates. We will offer a review as soon as possible after the official release. Once we can carve out some spare time to draft one.
release::OpenBSD 5.0
OpenBSD 5.0 release today. Although you can download the release form various FTP/HTTP mirrors for free, remember that purchasing CD media from official sources via the ISBN 978-0-9784475-8-8 helps to support the project.
FreeBSD 9.0 RC1
The first release candidate of FreeBSD 9.0 is available. Although a several weeks behind the original schedule in our experience t BSD News it is always well worth the wait.
Previously projected schedule:
| Action | Expected | Actual | Description |
| Initial release schedule announcement | - | 19 April 2011 | Release Engineers send announcement email to developers with a rough schedule. |
| Release schedule reminder | - | 6 May 2011, 15 June 2011 |
Release Engineers send reminder announcement e-mail to developers with updated schedule. |
| Code freeze begins | 17 July 2011 | 18 July 2011 | Release Engineers announce that all further commits to the head branch will require explicit approval. Certain blanket approvals will be granted for narrow areas of development, documentation improvements, etc. |
| BETA1 | 20 July 2011 | 1 August 2011 | First beta test snapshot. |
| BETA2 | 3 August 2011 | - | Second beta test snapshot. |
| releng/9.0 branch | 3 August 2011 | - | Subversion branch created, propagated to CVS; future release engineering proceeds on this branch. |
| BETA3 | 17 August 2011 | - | Third beta test snapshot. |
| RC1 | 24 August 2011 | - | First release candidate. |
| RC2 | 31 August 2011 | - | Second release candidate. |
| RELEASE build | 7 September 2011 | - | 9.0-RELEASE built. |
| RELEASE announcement | - | - | 9.0-RELEASE press release. |
| Turn over to the secteam | - | - | RELENG_9_0 branch is handed over to the FreeBSD Security Officer Team in one or two weeks after the announcement. |
A Part of UNIX Died This Week
We at BSD News are especially remorseful at learning about the death of one of the fathers of UNIX. Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8th. It is sufficient to say that without the contributions of Mr. Ritchie the world would be extremely different. Just about every major computer technology we take for granted today is a direct result of his work. You can read about his various works in the many obituaries as well as the Wikipedia page.
While many in the Linux world lament this loss it is some what different in the BSD camp. In plainer terms the loss of Ritchie is to those of us in the BSD world what the loss of Torvalds would be to Linux. However what you must bear in mind is that while BSD is a direct descendant of his work Linux if a tangent and merely a copy. Respectfully even Mac OS X is more inline with the work pioneered by Dennis Ritchie and is coworkers.
That being said think of all of the things that we would not have any of the modern technological conveniences that we enjoy today. There would be no iPods, cel phones, personal computers or even Microsoft Windows for that matter. All of these technologies depend upon the C programming language and many of them run a derivative of you guessed it UNIX.
The is a proposal on the the FreeBSD mailing list to dedicate the forthcoming 9.x release of the operating system in honor of Dennis Ritchie. I can honestly think of no better tribute that this considering all that his work has given us.
Perhaps if we receive enough positive commentary we can persuade the developers to follow through on this noble honor.
Please eave your support in the comment stream.
Thank you,
Mikel King
printf(“goodbye, world\n”);
announce::Porting of libc++ to FreeBSD
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that David Chisnall has been awarded a grant to implement xlocale APIs to enable porting libc++.
The C standard library (libc) is one of the most important parts of a UNIX system as most programs interact with the kernel through interfaces written in C. Porting code between platforms with similar libc implementations is trivial and if something is supported by libc, higher-level languages can use it without being reimplemented.
Over time, the C language has slowly evolved to modern multicore systems, but there are still some places that are problematic. One of these is localization as C began originally had no localization support. FreeBSD libc and Darwin libc (used by Mac OS X) are similar, making it much easier to port code from OS X to FreeBSD than from OS X to Linux. The libc used by OS X supports a set of extended locale functions (xlocale) that allow locale to be set on a per-thread basis.
Additionally, libc++, from the LLVM project, was originally developed on Darwin, so it uses xlocale for most of the C++ locale support. The lack of this support is the primary obstacle to porting it to FreeBSD.
Once xlocale is supported in FreeBSD libc, we can port libc++ to FreeBSD, giving us an MIT-licensed C++11 standard library implementation. This, in conjunction with Clang and libcxxrt, means that the entire C++ stack in FreeBSD will be free of any GNU code. This leaves the linker as the only significant obstacle to a GPL-free FreeBSD 10.
The project will conclude the end of September 2011.
The FreeBSD Foundation
annoounce::DIFFUSE project comes to FreeBSD
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Swinburne University
of Technology’s Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures (CAIA) has
been awarded a grant to implement DIFFUSE for FreeBSD.
DIFFUSE (Distributed Firewall and Flow-shaper Using Statistical
Evidence) is an extension to the FreeBSD IPFW firewall subsystem
developed by CAIA <http://www.caia.swin.edu.au>. It allows IPFW to classify traffic based on
statistical properties of flows being observed in realtime, and
instantiate network actions across a distributed set of “action nodes”
for particular flows if required.
This project will tidy up and integrate the existing DIFFUSE prototype <http://www.caia.swin.edu.au/urp/diffuse>
into FreeBSD, and incorporate a number of important new
features. Integration of DIFFUSE into FreeBSD will increase FreeBSD’s
utility to designers and implementers of FreeBSD-based networking
infrastructure.
Network architects frequently require the ability to classify different
traffic types flowing across a network, typically using packet
inspection capabilities of base system tools such as ipfw and pf.
Traffic classification then enables the provision of customized service
levels to different traffic types (such as priority packet queuing and
forwarding, or allocation of specific bandwidth guarantees).
DIFFUSE uses machine learning techniques to enable robust and efficient
classification of IP traffic flows based on their unique statistical
properties in addition to traditional inspection of packet header or
payload contents. DIFFUSE also allows traffic classification to occur in
one place (e.g. in the core of a network) and trigger traffic shaping
and differentiation elsewhere (e.g. at the edges of a network). DIFFUSE
has applications in ISP, residential broadband and large corporate
network scenarios to name a few.
The project will conclude the end of October 2011.
announce::PC-BSD 9.0b2
PC-BSD 9.0 beta 2 is available for open testing. There have been numerous fixes to issues discovered in beat 1.


