FreeBSD is a free, open-source and UNIX-like operating system. Though relatively unknown, it’s a performing and powerful work-horse, capable of coping with massive work-loads whilest remaining fast, ultra-stable and rock-solid. Blogging about FreeBSD and operating systems based on this versatile, safe and secure OS, I want to generate more interest in FreeBSD and its dependants. If you need a reliable, rock-solid and performing system for either your desktop or servers, consider FreeBSD!
Dru Lavigne has uploaded the audio file of her presentation at SCALE 2010 talk on BSD for Linux Users is now available in mp3 format. Slides are available as PDF
She also mentioned an mp3 of a NYCBUG session on PFSense II, Rocking The Datacenter.
pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution.
Chris Buechler has announced the availability of the first beta release of pfSense 2.0, a FreeBSD-based firewall system.
Our Christmas gift to the community is the 2.0 release reaching the beta milestone. The release is feature complete, with no new features being added, and should stay relatively stable throughout the remainder of the development process.
That’s not to say it’s production-ready though, most of our developers are using it in production and have been for months, but unless you have a solid understanding of the underlying system and can manually verify the configuration, 2.0 is not yet for you. If you have a non-critical environment where you can try it out, you can find the latest build on the snapshot server.
Kris Moore announced on New Year’s day the availability of PC-BSD 8.0-BETA (Hubble Edition).
Version 8.0 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:
FreeBSD 8.0-Release
KDE 4.3.4
Brand new System Installer, allows the install of PC-BSD or FreeBSD
Run in Live mode directly from DVD
Updated Software Manager, allows browsing and installing applications directly
Support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64
Version 8.0-BETA of PC-BSD is available for download from our mirrors, and will be available shortly as bittorrent from www.gotbsd.net.
In order to prepare for 8.0-Release, please report any bugs to the Trac Database! Discussion regarding testing etc are taking place on the testing mailinglist.
1.2.3 release is now available! This is a maintenance release in the 1.2.x series, bringing an updated FreeBSD base, some minor enhancements, some bug fixes, and a couple security updates. We’ve been waiting a few weeks in anticipation of a FreeBSD security advisory for the SSL/TLS renegotiation vulnerability, which came last week and allowed us to finalize the release.
The primary changes from 1.2.2 are:
Upgrade to FreeBSD 7.2
Embedded switched to nanobsd
Dynamic interface bridging bug fix
IPsec connection reloading improvements
Dynamic site to site IPsec
Sticky connections enable/disable
Ability to delete DHCP leases
Polling fixed
ipfw state table size
Server load balancing
UDP state timeout increases
Disable auto-added VPN rules option
Multiple servers per-domain in DNS forwarder overrides
No XMLRPC Sync rules fixed
Captive portal locking replaced
Outbound load balancer replaced
For futher details, the changelog and download info, visit the pfSense 1.2.3 page
Vincent Danen lists the benefits of using the do-it-yourself pfSense firewall system over some of the readily available firewall appliances from Linksys and D-Link.
For features, security, reliability, and availability, pfSense beats the competition.
Authored by pfSense co-founder Chris Buechler and pfSense developer Jim Pingle, The Definitive Guide to pfSense covers installation and basic configuration through advanced networking and firewalling of the popular open source firewall and router distribution.
Dru Lavigne is currently working on a book on PC-BSD: Definitive Guide to PC-BSD
I’m about 2/3 of the way through book #3 on BSD, tentatively titled “The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD”. This book will be through Apress, and I’m excited that it will include a live DVD of PC-BSD 8.0 so you can follow along as you read it. The book is designed for users new to BSD up to existing PC-BSD/FreeBSD power users. Think of it as the type of book new users can grow into while existing users can still find nuggets of “I didn’t know that”. I’ve also concentrated on the importance of community–a concept new users aren’t used to and most tech books never mention.
Rolfsa is another user who’s replacing Cisco PIX boxes with pfSense.
Part of my security redesign this year is to replace our aging Cisco PIX boxes with pfsense. Yesterday I spent the day setting up a simulated environment for 3 of our offices over an Internet connection. I was able to get the IPSEC tunnel up and running between two pfsense boxes pretty quick. Here’s a quick and dirty process for getting it all to work:
Olivier Cochard-Labbé, an IP routing expert and founder of FreeNAS (a FreeBSD based Network-Attached-Storage system), has released the first alpha (0.1) image of his new project: BSD Router Project - http://bsdrp.net
bsdrp is an open source customised distribution of FreeBSD dedicated to offering IP routing services for small ISP’s.
The release 0.1 of BSDRP is a fully working prototype, to be used on real or virtual machines that boot from ATA device only (not usb).
This first release includes:
Base FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT system (NanoBSD) for i386
Quagga ready to use (OSPFv2, OSPFv3, RIP, RIPng and BGP)
You may ask, what is the difference between BSDRP and m0n0wall of pfSense.
The main goal of BSDRP is not firewalling but routing. If you need a firewall don’t use BSDRP: Use m0n0wall or pfSense.
BSDRP is not for a home use, but for compagny use (small ISP’s for example).
BSDRP doesn’t have a Web GUI: It’s to be configured from a CLI only (like Cisco or Juniper)
pfSense can be used for routing, but Olivier wanted to set up a Cisco or Juniper like project just for routing.
Thanks, Olivier, for contacting me to announce this project. If you have any (new) FreeBSD related products or services that you want to announce, submit it here.
After been using the CheckPoint safe@office in a live environment for almost two month I have now decided to go back to using my homebuilt pfSense firewall.
Both firewalls have pros and cons. For me the pros of the pfSense made it for me. The biggest pros of the pfSense is definitely the speed. Even if both firewalls are able to deliver around 100 mbit/s throughput, the CheckPoint has some nasty lags sometimes, and drops the connections sometimes to IRC, MSN, ICQ and also webdownloads. Even thou I made a rule to allow all those protocols. Anyway, the biggest pros of the CheckPoint is without a doubt it’s power consumption, heat and sound level. It has a power consumption of about 15-20W compared to my pfSense which is about 60W. No heat or whatsoever from the CheckPoint either. And it makes NO sound at all, it’s fanless.
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pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution.
Chris Buechler has 
Kris Moore announced on New Year’s day the availability of 
Chris Buechler has 
This book is designed to be a friendly step-by-step guide to common networking and security tasks, plus a thorough reference of pfSense’s capabilities. 
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