xref: /freebsd/RELNOTES (revision 87025ccb8c802b6074f1651bfaaca5c6b4ffcc17)

Release notes for FreeBSD 15.0.

This file describes new user-visible features, changes and updates relevant to
users of binary FreeBSD releases.  Each entry should describe the change in no
more than several sentences and should reference manual pages where an
interested user can find more information.  Entries should wrap after 80
columns.  Each entry should begin with one or more commit IDs on one line,
specified as a comma separated list and/or range, followed by a colon and a
newline.  Entries should be separated by a newline.

Changes to this file should not be MFCed.

8e0b1a1c03a3:
	The FreeBSD-base repository is now defined in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf,
	disabled by default.  Systems which installed with pkgbase prior to
	15.0-RC1 (if running releng/15.0) or November 15th (if running from
	stable/main snapshots) will need to remove the definition of the
	FreeBSD-base repository from /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/ and replace
	it with a single line "FreeBSD-base: { enabled: yes }".

5000d023a446, 03da141d59ae:
	Add a "-f" option to "kadmin -l dump" which can be used to
	dump the Heimdal KDC database in a format that can be loaded
	into the MIT KDC.
	See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Kerberos/Heimdal2MIT_KDC_Migration
	for how to use "-f" to transfer/convert the KDC database.

9cab9fde5eda:
	virtual_oss is imported to base. The audio/virtual_oss port will stop
	being built from FreeBSD 15.0 onwards.

	Regarding user-facing changes, the only practical difference is the
	installation process. Everything is provided by the base system, except
	for the following optional components, which can be installed from
	ports:

	* sndio backend support: audio/virtual_oss_sndio
	* bluetooth backend support: audio/virtual_oss_bluetooth
	* virtual_equalizer(8): audio/virtual_oss_equalizer

	Apart from that, virtual_oss should work as expected. Users of
	virtual_oss can uninstall audio/virtual_oss and instead use the base
	system version from now on.

929f5966a9fd, 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:
	Replaced Heimdal 1.5.2 with MIT KRB5 (1.21.3, 1.22.0, 1.22.1).
	Heimdal 1.5.2 can still be built using the WITHOUT_MITKRB5 flag.
	Heimdal build plumbing will be removed in 16.

2b74ff5fceb6:
	Introduced support for watchdog timer in Intel 6300ESB I/O controller
	hub via the i6300esbwd driver, now included in ichwd.ko.
	This driver is intended primarily for QEMU users, where it serves as
	the default and only watchdog timer for x86 virtual machines.

3068d706eabe:
	Lua updated to 5.4.8, which is minor bug fixes from 5.4.7.

b45a181a74c8:
	Awk updates to August 04, 2025 version, with minor bug fixes.

dc5ba6b8b4f0:
	The WITHOUT_GSSAPI src.conf(5) option has been removed.  The GSSAPI
	libraries are now always built unless WITHOUT_KERBEROS is set.

c43cad871720:
	jemalloc 5.3.0 has landed. See contrib/jemalloc/ChangeLog
	for the long list of changes.

cce64f2e6851:
	Add support for the NFSv4.2 Clone operation, which uses
	block cloning to "copy on write" files on an NFS server.
	This only works for exported ZFS file systems that have
	block cloning enabled, at this time.

37b2cb5ecb0f:
	Add support to VOP_COPY_FILE_RANGE() for block cloning.
	At this time, ZFS is the only local file system that supports
	this and only if block cloning is enabled.  NFSv4.2 also supports it.
	See pathconf(2) and copy_file_range(2) for more information.

2ec2ba7e232d, df58e8b1506f (openzfs 2957eabbe), f61844833ee8, b1b607bd200f,
	ee95e4d02dbd:
	Add Solaris style extended attributes (called named attributes
	in NFSv4).  At this time, only ZFS when the ZFS property called
	xattr=dir and NFSv4 support them.  The attributes are presented
	in a directory as regular files.  See named_attribute(7) for
	more information.

ef2a572bf6:
	Inline IPSEC offload infrastructure and driver support for mlx5(4)
	Nvidia ConnectX-6+ network cards were added.

68ba38dad3:
	amd64: handling of the %fsbase/%gsbase registers and tls base
	were reworked, making it more useful for apps that directly
	manipulate CPU context.

78aaab9f1cf:
	rtld: added support for -z initfirst

e36f069ecb4, c069ca085b:
	Reliability of UFS on volumes with more than 2G of inodes is
	significantly improved.  The underlying issue was the invalid
	interpretation of the 32bit inode number as signed, which got
	sign-extended into ino_t.

d390633cf8c:
	On modern amd64 machines (which have the LA57 CPU feature),
	FreeBSD is able to utilize more than 4TB of RAM.

2bd157bc732a:
	The readdir_r(3) function is deprecated and may be removed in future
	releases.  Using it in a program will result in compile-time and
	link-time warnings.

9ba51cce8bbd:
	bsnmpd(1) no longer supports legacy UDP transport.  Users, that have
	not updated their /etc/snmpd.config since 12.0-RELEASE or older will
	need to merge in the new configuration.  In particular, the transport
	definition shall be changed from begemotSnmpdPortStatus OID to
	begemotSnmpdTransInetStatus.

1349a733cf28:
	Add a driver supporting a new storage controller interface,
	Universal Flash Storage Host Controller Interface, supporting
	version 4.1 and earlier, via ufshci(4).

f1f230439fa4:
	FreeBSD now implements the inotify(2) family of system calls.

50e733f19b37, 171f66b0c2ca:
	These commits helped improve utilization of NFSv4.1/4.2
	delegations.  The changes are only used when the NFSv4
	mount uses the "nocto" mount option and requires an
	up-to-date NFSv4.1/4.2 server with delegations enabled.
	For example: For a FreeBSD kernel build with both src
	and obj NFSv4 mounted, the total RPC count dropped from
	5461286 to 945643, with a 20% drop in elapsed time.

c3fc0db3bc50
	The default value of the sysctl variable
	net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait has changed from 1 to 0. This means
	that FreeBSD does not skip the TIME_WAIT state anymore for
	endpoints for which the remote address is local. The new sysctl
	variable net.inet.tcp.msl_local can be used to control the time
	these endpoints stay in the TIME_WAIT state. The sysctl variable
	net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait is deprecated and intended to be
	removed in FreeBSD 16.

cd240957d7ba
	Making a connection to INADDR_ANY (i.e., using INADDR_ANY as an alias
	for localhost) is now disabled by default.  This functionality can be
	re-enabled by setting the net.inet.ip.connect_inaddr_wild sysctl to 1.

b61850c4e6f6
	The bridge(4) sysctl net.link.bridge.member_ifaddrs now defaults to 0,
	meaning that interfaces added to a bridge may not have IP addresses
	assigned.  Refer to bridge(4) for more information.

44e5a0150835, 9a37f1024ceb:
	A new utility sndctl(8) has been added to concentrate the various
	interfaces for viewing and manipulating audio device settings (sysctls,
	/dev/sndstat), into a single utility with a similar control-driven
	interface to that of mixer(8).

93a94ce731a8:
	ps(1)'s options '-a' and '-A', when combined with any other one
	affecting the selection of processes except for '-X' and '-x', would
	have no effect, in contradiction with the rule that one process is
	listed as soon as any of the specified options selects it (inclusive
	OR), which is both mandated by POSIX and arguably a natural expectation.
	This bug has been fixed.

	As a practical consequence, specifying '-a'/'-A' now causes all
	processes to be listed regardless of other selection options (except for
	'-X' and '-x', which still apply).  In particular, to list only
	processes from specific jails, one must not use '-a' with '-J'.  Option
	'-J', contrary to its apparent initial intent, never worked as a filter
	in practice (except by accident with '-a' due to the bug), but instead
	as any other selection options (e.g., '-U', '-p', '-G', etc.) subject to
	the "inclusive OR" rule.

995b690d1398:
	ps(1)'s '-U' option has been changed to select processes by their real
	user IDs instead of their effective one, in accordance with POSIX and
	the use case of wanting to list processes launched by some user, which
	is expected to be more frequent than listing processes having the rights
	of some user.  This only affects the selection of processes whose real
	and effective user IDs differ.	After this change, ps(1)'s '-U' flag
	behaves differently then in other BSDs but identically to that of
	Linux's procps and illumos.

1aabbb25c9f9:
	ps(1)'s default list of processes now comes from matching its effective
	user ID instead of its real user ID with the effective user ID of all
	processes, in accordance with POSIX.  As ps(1) itself is not installed
	setuid, this only affects processes having different real and effective
	user IDs that launch ps(1) processes.

f0600c41e754-de701f9bdbe0, bc201841d139:
	mac_do(4) is now considered production-ready and its functionality has
	been considerably extended at the price of breaking credentials
	transition rules' backwards compatibility.  All that could be specified
	with old rules can also be with new rules.  Migrating old rules is just
	a matter of adding "uid=" in front of the target part, substituting
	commas (",") with semi-colons (";") and colons (":") with greater-than
	signs (">").  Please consult the mac_do(4) manual page for the new rules
	grammar.

02d4eeabfd73:
	hw.snd.maxautovchans has been retired. The commit introduced a
	hw.snd.vchans_enable sysctl, which along with
	dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans, from now on work as tunables to only
	enable/disable vchans, as opposed to setting their number and/or
	(de-)allocating vchans. Since these sysctls do not trigger any
	(de-)allocations anymore, their effect is instantaneous, whereas before
	we could have frozen the machine (when trying to allocate new vchans)
	when setting dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans to a very large value.

7e7f88001d7d:
	The definition of pf's struct pfr_tstats and struct pfr_astats has
	changed, breaking ABI compatibility for 32-bit powerpc (including
	powerpcspe) and armv7. Users of these platforms should ensure kernel
	and userspace are updated together.

5dc99e9bb985, 08e638c089a, 4009a98fe80:
	The net.inet.{tcp,udp,raw}.bind_all_fibs tunables have been added.
	They modify socket behavior such that packets not originating from the
	same FIB as the socket are ignored.  TCP and UDP sockets belonging to
	different FIBs may also be bound to the same address.  The default
	behavior is unmodified.

f87bb5967670, e51036fbf3f8:
	Support for vinum volumes has been removed.

8ae6247aa966, cf0ede720391d, 205659c43d87bd, 1ccbdf561f417, 4db1b113b151:
	The layout of NFS file handles for the tarfs, tmpfs, cd9660, and ext2fs
	file systems has changed.  An NFS server that exports any of these file
	systems will need its clients to unmount and remount the exports.

1111a44301da:
	Defer the January 19, 2038 date limit in UFS1 filesystems to
	February 7, 2106. This affects only UFS1 format filesystems.
	See the commit message for details.

07cd69e272da:
	Add a new -a command line option to mountd(8).
	If this command line option is specified, when
	a line in exports(5) has the -alldirs export option,
	the directory must be a server file system mount point.

0e8a36a2ab12:
	Add a new NFS mount option called "mountport" that may be used
	to specify the port# for the NFS server's Mount protocol.
	This permits a NFSv3 mount to be done without running rpcbind(8).

b2f7c53430c3:
	Kernel TLS is now enabled by default in kernels including KTLS
	support.  KTLS is included in GENERIC kernels for aarch64,
	amd64, powerpc64, and powerpc64le.

f57efe95cc25:
	New mididump(1) utility which dumps MIDI 1.0 events in real time.

ddfc6f84f242:
	Update unicode to 16.0.0 and CLDR to 45.0.0.

b22be3bbb2de:
	Basic Cloudinit images no longer generate RSA host keys by default for
	SSH.

000000000000:
	RSA host keys for SSH are deprecated and will no longer be generated
	by default in FreeBSD 16.

0aabcd75dbc2:
	EC2 AMIs no longer generate RSA host keys by default for SSH.  RSA
	host key generation can be re-enabled by setting sshd_rsa_enable="YES"
	in /etc/rc.conf if it is necessary to support very old SSH clients.

a1da7dc1cdad:
	The SO_SPLICE socket option was added.  It allows TCP connections to
	be spliced together, enabling proxy-like functionality without the
	need to copy data in and out of user memory.

fc12c191c087:
	grep(1) no longer follows symbolic links by default for
	recursive searches.  This matches the documented behavior in
	the manual page.

e962b37bf0ff:
	When running bhyve(8) guests with a boot ROM, i.e., bhyveload(8) is not
	used, bhyve now assumes that the boot ROM will enable PCI BAR decoding.
	This is incompatible with some boot ROMs, particularly outdated builds
	of edk2-bhyve.  To restore the old behavior, add
	"pci.enable_bars='true'" to your bhyve configuration.

	Note in particular that the uefi-edk2-bhyve package has been renamed
	to edk2-bhyve.

43caa2e805c2:
	amd64 bhyve(8)'s "lpc.bootrom" and "lpc.bootvars" options are
	deprecated.  Use the top-level "bootrom" and "bootvars" options
	instead.

822ca3276345:
	byacc was updated to 20240109.

21817992b331:
	ncurses was updated to 6.5.

1687d77197c0:
	Filesystem manual pages have been moved to section four.
	Please check ports you are maintaining for crossreferences.

8aac90f18aef:
	new MAC/do policy and mdo(1) utility which enables a user to
	become another user without the requirement of setuid root.

7398d1ece5cf:
	hw.snd.version is removed.

a15f7c96a276,66b5296f1b29:
	NVMe over Fabrics controller.  The nvmft(4) kernel module adds
	a new frontend to the CAM target layer which exports ctl(4)
	LUNs as NVMe namespaces to remote hosts.  The ctld(8) daemon
	now supports NVMe controllers in addition to iSCSI targets and
	is responsible for accepting incoming connection requests and
	handing off connected queue pairs to nvmft(4).

a1eda74167b5,1058c12197ab:
	NVMe over Fabrics host.  New commands added to nvmecontrol(8)
	to establish connections to remote controllers.  Once
	connections are established they are handed off to the nvmf(4)
	kernel module which creates nvmeX devices and exports remote
	namespaces as nda(4) disks.

25723d66369f:
	As a side-effect of retiring the unit.* code in sound(4), the
	hw.snd.maxunit loader(8) tunable is also retired.

eeb04a736cb9:
	date(1) now supports nanoseconds. For example:
	`date -Ins` prints "2024-04-22T12:20:28,763742224+02:00" and
	`date +%N` prints "415050400".

6d5ce2bb6344:
	The default value of the nfs_reserved_port_only rc.conf(5) setting has
	changed.  The FreeBSD NFS server now requires the source port of
	requests to be in the privileged port range (i.e., <= 1023), which
	generally requires the client to have elevated privileges on their local
	system.  The previous behavior can be restored by setting
	nfs_reserved_port_only=NO in rc.conf.

aea973501b19:
	ktrace(2) will now record detailed information about capability mode
	violations. The kdump(1) utility has been updated to display such
	information.

f32a6403d346:
	One True Awk updated to 2nd Edition. See https://awk.dev for details
	on the additions. Unicode and CSVs (Comma Separated Values) are now
	supported.

fe86d923f83f:
	usbconfig(8) now reads the descriptions of the usb vendor and products
	from usb.ids when available, similarly to what pciconf(8) does.

4347ef60501f:
	The powerd(8) utility is now enabled in /etc/rc.conf by default on
	images for the arm64 Raspberry Pi's (arm64-aarch64-RPI img files).
	This prevents the CPU clock from running slow all the time.

0b49e504a32d:
	rc.d/jail now supports the legacy variable jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset
	to allow unmaintained jail managers like ezjail to make use of this
	feature (simply rename jail_${jailname}_zfs_datasets in the ezjail
	config to jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset.

e0dfe185cbca:
	jail(8) now support zfs.dataset to add a list of ZFS datasets to a
        jail.

61174ad88e33:
	newsyslog(8) now supports specifying a global compression method directly
	at the beginning of the newsyslog.conf file, which will make newsyslog(8)
	to behave like the corresponding option was passed to the newly added
	'-c' option. For example:

	<compress> none

906748d208d3:
	newsyslog(8) now accepts a new option, '-c' which overrides all historical
	compression flags by treating their meaning as "treat the file as compressible"
	rather than "compress the file with that specific method."

	The following choices are available:
	 * none: Do not compress, regardless of flag.
	 * legacy: Historical behavior (J=bzip2, X=xz, Y=zstd, Z=gzip).
	 * bzip2, xz, zstd, gzip: apply the specified compression method.

	We plan to change the default to 'none' in FreeBSD 15.0.

1a878807006c:
	This commit added some statistics collection to the NFS-over-TLS
	code in the NFS server so that sysadmins can moditor usage.
	The statistics are available via the kern.rpc.tls.* sysctls.

7c5146da1286:
	Mountd has been modified to use strunvis(3) to decode directory
	names in exports(5) file(s).  This allows special characters,
	such as blanks, to be embedded in the directory name(s).
	"vis -M" may be used to encode such directory name(s).

c5359e2af5ab:
	bhyve(8) has a new network backend, "slirp", which makes use of the
	libslirp package to provide a userspace network stack.  This backend
	makes it possible to access the guest network from the host without
	requiring any extra network configuration on the host.

bb830e346bd5:
	Set the IUTF8 flag by default in tty(4).

	128f63cedc14 and 9e589b093857 added proper UTF-8 backspacing handling
	in the tty(4) driver, which is enabled by setting the new IUTF8 flag
	through stty(1). Since the default locale is UTF-8, enable IUTF8 by
	default.

ff01d71e48d4:
	dialog(1) has been replaced by bsddialog(1)

41582f28ddf7:
	FreeBSD 15.0 will not include support for 32-bit platforms.
	However, 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit
	binaries.

	Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via
	COMPAT_FREEBSD32 will remain supported for at least the
	stable/15 and stable/16 branches.

	Support for compiling individual 32-bit applications via
	`cc -m32` will also be supported for at least the stable/15
	branch which includes suitable headers in /usr/include and
	libraries in /usr/lib32.

	Support for 32-bit platforms in ports for 15.0 and later
	releases is also deprecated, and these future releases may not
	include binary packages for 32-bit platforms or support for
	building 32-bit applications from ports.

	stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit
	kernel and world support.  Ports will retain existing support
	for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14
	and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported
	by the ports system.  However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2
	or Tier-3 and support for individual ports should be expected
	to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms.

	With the current support schedule, stable/14 will be EOLed 5
	years after the release of 14.0.  The EOL of stable/14 would
	mark the end of support for 32-bit platforms including source
	releases, pre-built packages, and support for building
	applications from ports.  Given an estimated release date of
	October 2023 for 14.0, support for 32-bit platforms would end
	in October 2028.

	The project may choose to alter this approach when 15.0 is
	released by extending some level of 32-bit support for one or
	more platforms in 15.0 or later.  Users should use the
	stable/14 branch to migrate off of 32-bit platforms.