1Release notes for FreeBSD 15.0. 2 3This file describes new user-visible features, changes and updates relevant to 4users of binary FreeBSD releases. Each entry should describe the change in no 5more than several sentences and should reference manual pages where an 6interested user can find more information. Entries should wrap after 80 7columns. Each entry should begin with one or more commit IDs on one line, 8specified as a comma separated list and/or range, followed by a colon and a 9newline. Entries should be separated by a newline. 10 11Changes to this file should not be MFCed. 12 135000d023a446, 03da141d59ae: 14 Add a "-f" option to "kadmin -l dump" which can be used to 15 dump the Heimdal KDC database in a format that can be loaded 16 into the MIT KDC. 17 See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Kerberos/Heimdal2MIT_KDC_Migration 18 for how to use "-f" to transfer/convert the KDC database. 19 209cab9fde5eda: 21 virtual_oss is imported to base. The audio/virtual_oss port will stop 22 being built from FreeBSD 15.0 onwards. 23 24 Regarding user-facing changes, the only practical difference is the 25 installation process. Everything is provided by the base system, except 26 for the following optional components, which can be installed from 27 ports: 28 29 * sndio backend support: audio/virtual_oss_sndio 30 * bluetooth backend support: audio/virtual_oss_bluetooth 31 * virtual_equalizer(8): audio/virtual_oss_equalizer 32 33 Apart from that, virtual_oss should work as expected. Users of 34 virtual_oss can uninstall audio/virtual_oss and instead use the base 35 system version from now on. 36 37929f5966a9fd, b9b0e105c357, 5105e1ebecc7, cb3eac927b5d, ce9c325a2e92, 18a870751b03, 89c82750da1a, 0c13e9c3c464, 10eecc467f32, 619feb9dd00e, 7d2cfb27d62f, e26259f48afe, a245dc5d68c7, 9a726ef24134, 383e7290c0b5, c791ea80b5f7, 543b875a8ee4, 40a5abfc3f66, 73ed0c7992fd, 04764f21855a, 624b7beed5ac, 7b68893ffa9b, 6c4771c73470, dd0ec030f8fd, fb1ccc04adfe, b98d0566b2bd, ca9ccf0ce9ad, 6b28571cb6ba, 98d46e05ab08, 2a454b05f2c1, 110111a6cca1, 5f8493bbf479, e447c252d0ec, 4680e7fcc70a, 188138106b9f, 4cb1baa7d85c, 805498e49ae4, f58febc4cefa, ae07a5805b19, 0559f30a882d, cbb6e747af98, 0d1496f0f1e7, 60f970b85e44, 0b9a631e0724, ee3960cba106: 38 Replaced Heimdal 1.5.2 with MIT KRB5 (1.21.3, 1.22.0, 1.22.1). 39 Heimdal 1.5.2 can still be built using the WITHOUT_MITKRB5 flag. 40 Heimdal build plumbing will be removed in 16. 41 422b74ff5fceb6: 43 Introduced support for watchdog timer in Intel 6300ESB I/O controller 44 hub via the i6300esbwd driver, now included in ichwd.ko. 45 This driver is intended primarily for QEMU users, where it serves as 46 the default and only watchdog timer for x86 virtual machines. 47 483068d706eabe: 49 Lua updated to 5.4.8, which is minor bug fixes from 5.4.7. 50 51b45a181a74c8: 52 Awk updates to August 04, 2025 version, with minor bug fixes. 53 54dc5ba6b8b4f0: 55 The WITHOUT_GSSAPI src.conf(5) option has been removed. The GSSAPI 56 libraries are now always built unless WITHOUT_KERBEROS is set. 57 58c43cad871720: 59 jemalloc 5.3.0 has landed. See contrib/jemalloc/ChangeLog 60 for the long list of changes. 61 62cce64f2e6851: 63 Add support for the NFSv4.2 Clone operation, which uses 64 block cloning to "copy on write" files on an NFS server. 65 This only works for exported ZFS file systems that have 66 block cloning enabled, at this time. 67 6837b2cb5ecb0f: 69 Add support to VOP_COPY_FILE_RANGE() for block cloning. 70 At this time, ZFS is the only local file system that supports 71 this and only if block cloning is enabled. NFSv4.2 also supports it. 72 See pathconf(2) and copy_file_range(2) for more information. 73 742ec2ba7e232d, df58e8b1506f (openzfs 2957eabbe), f61844833ee8, b1b607bd200f, 75 ee95e4d02dbd: 76 Add Solaris style extended attributes (called named attributes 77 in NFSv4). At this time, only ZFS when the ZFS property called 78 xattr=dir and NFSv4 support them. The attributes are presented 79 in a directory as regular files. See named_attribute(7) for 80 more information. 81 82ef2a572bf6: 83 Inline IPSEC offload infrastructure and driver support for mlx5(4) 84 Nvidia ConnectX-6+ network cards were added. 85 8668ba38dad3: 87 amd64: handling of the %fsbase/%gsbase registers and tls base 88 were reworked, making it more useful for apps that directly 89 manipulate CPU context. 90 9178aaab9f1cf: 92 rtld: added support for -z initfirst 93 94e36f069ecb4, c069ca085b: 95 Reliability of UFS on volumes with more than 2G of inodes is 96 significantly improved. The underlying issue was the invalid 97 interpretation of the 32bit inode number as signed, which got 98 sign-extended into ino_t. 99 100d390633cf8c: 101 On modern amd64 machines (which have the LA57 CPU feature), 102 FreeBSD is able to utilize more than 4TB of RAM. 103 1042bd157bc732a: 105 The readdir_r(3) function is deprecated and may be removed in future 106 releases. Using it in a program will result in compile-time and 107 link-time warnings. 108 1099ba51cce8bbd: 110 bsnmpd(1) no longer supports legacy UDP transport. Users, that have 111 not updated their /etc/snmpd.config since 12.0-RELEASE or older will 112 need to merge in the new configuration. In particular, the transport 113 definition shall be changed from begemotSnmpdPortStatus OID to 114 begemotSnmpdTransInetStatus. 115 1161349a733cf28: 117 Add a driver supporting a new storage controller interface, 118 Universal Flash Storage Host Controller Interface, supporting 119 version 4.1 and earlier, via ufshci(4). 120 121f1f230439fa4: 122 FreeBSD now implements the inotify(2) family of system calls. 123 12450e733f19b37, 171f66b0c2ca: 125 These commits helped improve utilization of NFSv4.1/4.2 126 delegations. The changes are only used when the NFSv4 127 mount uses the "nocto" mount option and requires an 128 up-to-date NFSv4.1/4.2 server with delegations enabled. 129 For example: For a FreeBSD kernel build with both src 130 and obj NFSv4 mounted, the total RPC count dropped from 131 5461286 to 945643, with a 20% drop in elapsed time. 132 133c3fc0db3bc50 134 The default value of the sysctl variable 135 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait has changed from 1 to 0. This means 136 that FreeBSD does not skip the TIME_WAIT state anymore for 137 endpoints for which the remote address is local. The new sysctl 138 variable net.inet.tcp.msl_local can be used to control the time 139 these endpoints stay in the TIME_WAIT state. The sysctl variable 140 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait is deprecated and intended to be 141 removed in FreeBSD 16. 142 143cd240957d7ba 144 Making a connection to INADDR_ANY (i.e., using INADDR_ANY as an alias 145 for localhost) is now disabled by default. This functionality can be 146 re-enabled by setting the net.inet.ip.connect_inaddr_wild sysctl to 1. 147 148b61850c4e6f6 149 The bridge(4) sysctl net.link.bridge.member_ifaddrs now defaults to 0, 150 meaning that interfaces added to a bridge may not have IP addresses 151 assigned. Refer to bridge(4) for more information. 152 15344e5a0150835, 9a37f1024ceb: 154 A new utility sndctl(8) has been added to concentrate the various 155 interfaces for viewing and manipulating audio device settings (sysctls, 156 /dev/sndstat), into a single utility with a similar control-driven 157 interface to that of mixer(8). 158 15993a94ce731a8: 160 ps(1)'s options '-a' and '-A', when combined with any other one 161 affecting the selection of processes except for '-X' and '-x', would 162 have no effect, in contradiction with the rule that one process is 163 listed as soon as any of the specified options selects it (inclusive 164 OR), which is both mandated by POSIX and arguably a natural expectation. 165 This bug has been fixed. 166 167 As a practical consequence, specifying '-a'/'-A' now causes all 168 processes to be listed regardless of other selection options (except for 169 '-X' and '-x', which still apply). In particular, to list only 170 processes from specific jails, one must not use '-a' with '-J'. Option 171 '-J', contrary to its apparent initial intent, never worked as a filter 172 in practice (except by accident with '-a' due to the bug), but instead 173 as any other selection options (e.g., '-U', '-p', '-G', etc.) subject to 174 the "inclusive OR" rule. 175 176995b690d1398: 177 ps(1)'s '-U' option has been changed to select processes by their real 178 user IDs instead of their effective one, in accordance with POSIX and 179 the use case of wanting to list processes launched by some user, which 180 is expected to be more frequent than listing processes having the rights 181 of some user. This only affects the selection of processes whose real 182 and effective user IDs differ. After this change, ps(1)'s '-U' flag 183 behaves differently then in other BSDs but identically to that of 184 Linux's procps and illumos. 185 1861aabbb25c9f9: 187 ps(1)'s default list of processes now comes from matching its effective 188 user ID instead of its real user ID with the effective user ID of all 189 processes, in accordance with POSIX. As ps(1) itself is not installed 190 setuid, this only affects processes having different real and effective 191 user IDs that launch ps(1) processes. 192 193f0600c41e754-de701f9bdbe0, bc201841d139: 194 mac_do(4) is now considered production-ready and its functionality has 195 been considerably extended at the price of breaking credentials 196 transition rules' backwards compatibility. All that could be specified 197 with old rules can also be with new rules. Migrating old rules is just 198 a matter of adding "uid=" in front of the target part, substituting 199 commas (",") with semi-colons (";") and colons (":") with greater-than 200 signs (">"). Please consult the mac_do(4) manual page for the new rules 201 grammar. 202 20302d4eeabfd73: 204 hw.snd.maxautovchans has been retired. The commit introduced a 205 hw.snd.vchans_enable sysctl, which along with 206 dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans, from now on work as tunables to only 207 enable/disable vchans, as opposed to setting their number and/or 208 (de-)allocating vchans. Since these sysctls do not trigger any 209 (de-)allocations anymore, their effect is instantaneous, whereas before 210 we could have frozen the machine (when trying to allocate new vchans) 211 when setting dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans to a very large value. 212 2137e7f88001d7d: 214 The definition of pf's struct pfr_tstats and struct pfr_astats has 215 changed, breaking ABI compatibility for 32-bit powerpc (including 216 powerpcspe) and armv7. Users of these platforms should ensure kernel 217 and userspace are updated together. 218 2195dc99e9bb985, 08e638c089a, 4009a98fe80: 220 The net.inet.{tcp,udp,raw}.bind_all_fibs tunables have been added. 221 They modify socket behavior such that packets not originating from the 222 same FIB as the socket are ignored. TCP and UDP sockets belonging to 223 different FIBs may also be bound to the same address. The default 224 behavior is unmodified. 225 226f87bb5967670, e51036fbf3f8: 227 Support for vinum volumes has been removed. 228 2298ae6247aa966, cf0ede720391d, 205659c43d87bd, 1ccbdf561f417, 4db1b113b151: 230 The layout of NFS file handles for the tarfs, tmpfs, cd9660, and ext2fs 231 file systems has changed. An NFS server that exports any of these file 232 systems will need its clients to unmount and remount the exports. 233 2341111a44301da: 235 Defer the January 19, 2038 date limit in UFS1 filesystems to 236 February 7, 2106. This affects only UFS1 format filesystems. 237 See the commit message for details. 238 23907cd69e272da: 240 Add a new -a command line option to mountd(8). 241 If this command line option is specified, when 242 a line in exports(5) has the -alldirs export option, 243 the directory must be a server file system mount point. 244 2450e8a36a2ab12: 246 Add a new NFS mount option called "mountport" that may be used 247 to specify the port# for the NFS server's Mount protocol. 248 This permits a NFSv3 mount to be done without running rpcbind(8). 249 250b2f7c53430c3: 251 Kernel TLS is now enabled by default in kernels including KTLS 252 support. KTLS is included in GENERIC kernels for aarch64, 253 amd64, powerpc64, and powerpc64le. 254 255f57efe95cc25: 256 New mididump(1) utility which dumps MIDI 1.0 events in real time. 257 258ddfc6f84f242: 259 Update unicode to 16.0.0 and CLDR to 45.0.0. 260 261b22be3bbb2de: 262 Basic Cloudinit images no longer generate RSA host keys by default for 263 SSH. 264 265000000000000: 266 RSA host keys for SSH are deprecated and will no longer be generated 267 by default in FreeBSD 16. 268 2690aabcd75dbc2: 270 EC2 AMIs no longer generate RSA host keys by default for SSH. RSA 271 host key generation can be re-enabled by setting sshd_rsa_enable="YES" 272 in /etc/rc.conf if it is necessary to support very old SSH clients. 273 274a1da7dc1cdad: 275 The SO_SPLICE socket option was added. It allows TCP connections to 276 be spliced together, enabling proxy-like functionality without the 277 need to copy data in and out of user memory. 278 279fc12c191c087: 280 grep(1) no longer follows symbolic links by default for 281 recursive searches. This matches the documented behavior in 282 the manual page. 283 284e962b37bf0ff: 285 When running bhyve(8) guests with a boot ROM, i.e., bhyveload(8) is not 286 used, bhyve now assumes that the boot ROM will enable PCI BAR decoding. 287 This is incompatible with some boot ROMs, particularly outdated builds 288 of edk2-bhyve. To restore the old behavior, add 289 "pci.enable_bars='true'" to your bhyve configuration. 290 291 Note in particular that the uefi-edk2-bhyve package has been renamed 292 to edk2-bhyve. 293 29443caa2e805c2: 295 amd64 bhyve(8)'s "lpc.bootrom" and "lpc.bootvars" options are 296 deprecated. Use the top-level "bootrom" and "bootvars" options 297 instead. 298 299822ca3276345: 300 byacc was updated to 20240109. 301 30221817992b331: 303 ncurses was updated to 6.5. 304 3051687d77197c0: 306 Filesystem manual pages have been moved to section four. 307 Please check ports you are maintaining for crossreferences. 308 3098aac90f18aef: 310 new MAC/do policy and mdo(1) utility which enables a user to 311 become another user without the requirement of setuid root. 312 3137398d1ece5cf: 314 hw.snd.version is removed. 315 316a15f7c96a276,66b5296f1b29: 317 NVMe over Fabrics controller. The nvmft(4) kernel module adds 318 a new frontend to the CAM target layer which exports ctl(4) 319 LUNs as NVMe namespaces to remote hosts. The ctld(8) daemon 320 now supports NVMe controllers in addition to iSCSI targets and 321 is responsible for accepting incoming connection requests and 322 handing off connected queue pairs to nvmft(4). 323 324a1eda74167b5,1058c12197ab: 325 NVMe over Fabrics host. New commands added to nvmecontrol(8) 326 to establish connections to remote controllers. Once 327 connections are established they are handed off to the nvmf(4) 328 kernel module which creates nvmeX devices and exports remote 329 namespaces as nda(4) disks. 330 33125723d66369f: 332 As a side-effect of retiring the unit.* code in sound(4), the 333 hw.snd.maxunit loader(8) tunable is also retired. 334 335eeb04a736cb9: 336 date(1) now supports nanoseconds. For example: 337 `date -Ins` prints "2024-04-22T12:20:28,763742224+02:00" and 338 `date +%N` prints "415050400". 339 3406d5ce2bb6344: 341 The default value of the nfs_reserved_port_only rc.conf(5) setting has 342 changed. The FreeBSD NFS server now requires the source port of 343 requests to be in the privileged port range (i.e., <= 1023), which 344 generally requires the client to have elevated privileges on their local 345 system. The previous behavior can be restored by setting 346 nfs_reserved_port_only=NO in rc.conf. 347 348aea973501b19: 349 ktrace(2) will now record detailed information about capability mode 350 violations. The kdump(1) utility has been updated to display such 351 information. 352 353f32a6403d346: 354 One True Awk updated to 2nd Edition. See https://awk.dev for details 355 on the additions. Unicode and CSVs (Comma Separated Values) are now 356 supported. 357 358fe86d923f83f: 359 usbconfig(8) now reads the descriptions of the usb vendor and products 360 from usb.ids when available, similarly to what pciconf(8) does. 361 3624347ef60501f: 363 The powerd(8) utility is now enabled in /etc/rc.conf by default on 364 images for the arm64 Raspberry Pi's (arm64-aarch64-RPI img files). 365 This prevents the CPU clock from running slow all the time. 366 3670b49e504a32d: 368 rc.d/jail now supports the legacy variable jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset 369 to allow unmaintained jail managers like ezjail to make use of this 370 feature (simply rename jail_${jailname}_zfs_datasets in the ezjail 371 config to jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset. 372 373e0dfe185cbca: 374 jail(8) now support zfs.dataset to add a list of ZFS datasets to a 375 jail. 376 37761174ad88e33: 378 newsyslog(8) now supports specifying a global compression method directly 379 at the beginning of the newsyslog.conf file, which will make newsyslog(8) 380 to behave like the corresponding option was passed to the newly added 381 '-c' option. For example: 382 383 <compress> none 384 385906748d208d3: 386 newsyslog(8) now accepts a new option, '-c' which overrides all historical 387 compression flags by treating their meaning as "treat the file as compressible" 388 rather than "compress the file with that specific method." 389 390 The following choices are available: 391 * none: Do not compress, regardless of flag. 392 * legacy: Historical behavior (J=bzip2, X=xz, Y=zstd, Z=gzip). 393 * bzip2, xz, zstd, gzip: apply the specified compression method. 394 395 We plan to change the default to 'none' in FreeBSD 15.0. 396 3971a878807006c: 398 This commit added some statistics collection to the NFS-over-TLS 399 code in the NFS server so that sysadmins can moditor usage. 400 The statistics are available via the kern.rpc.tls.* sysctls. 401 4027c5146da1286: 403 Mountd has been modified to use strunvis(3) to decode directory 404 names in exports(5) file(s). This allows special characters, 405 such as blanks, to be embedded in the directory name(s). 406 "vis -M" may be used to encode such directory name(s). 407 408c5359e2af5ab: 409 bhyve(8) has a new network backend, "slirp", which makes use of the 410 libslirp package to provide a userspace network stack. This backend 411 makes it possible to access the guest network from the host without 412 requiring any extra network configuration on the host. 413 414bb830e346bd5: 415 Set the IUTF8 flag by default in tty(4). 416 417 128f63cedc14 and 9e589b093857 added proper UTF-8 backspacing handling 418 in the tty(4) driver, which is enabled by setting the new IUTF8 flag 419 through stty(1). Since the default locale is UTF-8, enable IUTF8 by 420 default. 421 422ff01d71e48d4: 423 dialog(1) has been replaced by bsddialog(1) 424 42541582f28ddf7: 426 FreeBSD 15.0 will not include support for 32-bit platforms. 427 However, 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit 428 binaries. 429 430 Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via 431 COMPAT_FREEBSD32 will remain supported for at least the 432 stable/15 and stable/16 branches. 433 434 Support for compiling individual 32-bit applications via 435 `cc -m32` will also be supported for at least the stable/15 436 branch which includes suitable headers in /usr/include and 437 libraries in /usr/lib32. 438 439 Support for 32-bit platforms in ports for 15.0 and later 440 releases is also deprecated, and these future releases may not 441 include binary packages for 32-bit platforms or support for 442 building 32-bit applications from ports. 443 444 stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit 445 kernel and world support. Ports will retain existing support 446 for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14 447 and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported 448 by the ports system. However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2 449 or Tier-3 and support for individual ports should be expected 450 to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms. 451 452 With the current support schedule, stable/14 will be EOLed 5 453 years after the release of 14.0. The EOL of stable/14 would 454 mark the end of support for 32-bit platforms including source 455 releases, pre-built packages, and support for building 456 applications from ports. Given an estimated release date of 457 October 2023 for 14.0, support for 32-bit platforms would end 458 in October 2028. 459 460 The project may choose to alter this approach when 15.0 is 461 released by extending some level of 32-bit support for one or 462 more platforms in 15.0 or later. Users should use the 463 stable/14 branch to migrate off of 32-bit platforms. 464