FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE Release Notes

Userland Configuration Changes

Group permissions on /dev/acpi have been changed to allow users in the operator GID to invoke acpiconf(8) to suspend the system. [r335864] (Sponsored by DARPA, AFRL)

The default PAGER now defaults to less(1) for most commands. [r337497]

The newsyslog(8) utility has been updated to reject configuration entries that specify setuid(2) or executable log files. [r338165] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)

The WITH_REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD src.conf(5) knob has been enabled by default. [r338642] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

LDNS now enables DANE-TA, and GOST has been removed. [r339303]

A new src.conf(5) knob, WITH_RETPOLINE, has been added to enable the retpoline mitigation for userland builds. [r340773] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

Userland Application Changes

xlint and the ability to build lint libraries or lint source code has been removed.

The dtrace(1) utility has been updated to support if and else statements. [r304200]

The legacy gdb(1) utility included in the base system is now installed to /usr/libexec for use with crashinfo(8) . The gdbserver and gdbtui utilities are no longer installed. For interactive debugging, lldb(1) or a modern version of gdb(1) from devel/gdb should be used. A new src.conf(5) knob, WITHOUT_GDB_LIBEXEC has been added to disable building gdb(1) . The gdb(1) utility is still installed in /usr/bin on sparc64. [r317416]

The setfacl(1) utility has been updated to include a new flag, -R, used to operate recursively on directories. [r332396] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The cat(1) utility has been updated to print output aligned the same regardless of if invoked with -ne or -be. [r323865]

The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for amd64. [r334391] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The dhclient(8) utility has been updated to add a configuration knob to allow superseding the interface-mtu option provided by an incorrectly-configured DHCP server. [r334443]

The asf(8) utility has been removed, as kgdb(1) now handles kernel module state internally. [r335222] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The sha224(1) utility has been added. [r336126]

The geli(8) utility has been updated to provide support for initializing multiple providers at once when they use the same passphrase and/or key. [r336659]

The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for i386. [r336901] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The default bootstrap linker has been changed to ld_lld(1) for armv7. [r337057] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The dd(1) utility has been updated to add the status=progress option, which prints the status of its operation on a single line once per second, similar to GNU dd(1) . [r337505]

The date(1) utility has been updated to include a new flag, -I, which prints its output in ISO 8601 formatting. [r337332]

The bectl(8) utility has been added, providing an administrative interface for managing ZFS boot environments, similar to sysutils/beadm. [r337663]

The ls(1) utility has been updated to include a new --color=when flag, where when can be one of always, auto (default), or never. [r337956]

The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add a new subcommand to the -l and -s flags, help, which when used, prints a list of supported LPC and PCI devices, respectively. [r338210] (Sponsored by iXsystems)

The tftp(1) utility has been updated to change the default transfer mode from ASCII to binary. [r338258]

The chown(8) utility has been updated to prevent overflow of UID or GID arguments where the argument exceeded UID_MAX or GID_MAX, respectively. [r338950] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)

The ctm(1) and related utilities have been marked as deprecated for removal in FreeBSD 13.0. [r340444]

Contributed Software

The ELF Tool Chain has been updated to version r3614. [r333063] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The zstd(1) utility has been updated to version 1.3.4. [r331602] (Sponsored by Dell EMC Isilon)

The vt(4) Terminus BSD Console font has been updated to version 4.46. [r332452] (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)

The xz(1) utility has been updated to version 5.2.4. [r333783]

The clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 6.0.1. [r335799]

The bsnmp utility has been updated to version 1.13. [r335885]

The WPA utilities have been updated to version 2.6. [r336203]

The ntpd(8) utility has been updated to allow being run as a non-root user. [r336525]

Note:
Source-based upgrades from FreeBSD 11.x and earlier require the ntpd UID (123) and GID (123) to exist before the installworld target is run. See the "rebuild everything and install" section of UPDATING for the documented procedure for source-based upgrades for more details.

The lua utility has been updated to version 5.3.5. [r337810]

Support for send, receive, and state-change providers have been added to dtrace_sctp(4) . [r338213]

The ntpd(8) utility has been updated to version 4.2.8p12. [r338126]

OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.8p1. [r338561]

Serf has been updated to version 1.3.9. [r339256]

ACPICA has been updated to version 20181003. [r339262]

Unbound has been updated to version 1.8.1. [r339278]

The timezone database files have been updated to version 2018g. [r339937]

OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1a. [r340711]

Installation and Configuration Tools

The bsdinstall(8) installer and zfsboot(8) boot code have been updated to allow an UEFI+GELI installation option. [r338282] (Sponsored by Klara Systems)

Runtime Libraries and API

ABI Compatibility

The pthread(3) library has been updated to incorporate POSIX/SUSv4-2018 compliance improvements. [r337992]

The arc4random(3) library has been updated to remove arc4random_stir() and arc4random_addrandom(). [r338331]