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 139cab9fde5eda: 14 virtual_oss is imported to base. The audio/virtual_oss port will stop 15 being built from FreeBSD 15.0 onwards. 16 17 Regarding user-facing changes, the only practical difference is the 18 installation process. Everything is provided by the base system, except 19 for the following optional components, which can be installed from 20 ports: 21 22 * sndio backend support: audio/virtual_oss_sndio 23 * bluetooth backend support: audio/virtual_oss_bluetooth 24 * virtual_equalizer(8): audio/virtual_oss_equalizer 25 26 Apart from that, virtual_oss should work as expected. Users of 27 virtual_oss can uninstall audio/virtual_oss and instead use the base 28 system version from now on. 29 30929f5966a9fd, 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: 31 Replaced Heimdal 1.5.2 with MIT KRB5 (1.21.3, 1.22.0, 1.22.1). 32 Heimdal 1.5.2 can still be built using the WITHOUT_MITKRB5 flag. 33 Heimdal build plumbing will be removed in 16. 34 352b74ff5fceb6: 36 Introduced support for watchdog timer in Intel 6300ESB I/O controller 37 hub via the i6300esbwd driver, now included in ichwd.ko. 38 This driver is intended primarily for QEMU users, where it serves as 39 the default and only watchdog timer for x86 virtual machines. 40 413068d706eabe: 42 Lua updated to 5.4.8, which is minor bug fixes from 5.4.7. 43 44b45a181a74c8: 45 Awk updates to August 04, 2025 version, with minor bug fixes. 46 47dc5ba6b8b4f0: 48 The WITHOUT_GSSAPI src.conf(5) option has been removed. The GSSAPI 49 libraries are now always built unless WITHOUT_KERBEROS is set. 50 51c43cad871720: 52 jemalloc 5.3.0 has landed. See contrib/jemalloc/ChangeLog 53 for the long list of changes. 54 55cce64f2e6851: 56 Add support for the NFSv4.2 Clone operation, which uses 57 block cloning to "copy on write" files on an NFS server. 58 This only works for exported ZFS file systems that have 59 block cloning enabled, at this time. 60 6137b2cb5ecb0f: 62 Add support to VOP_COPY_FILE_RANGE() for block cloning. 63 At this time, ZFS is the only local file system that supports 64 this and only if block cloning is enabled. NFSv4.2 also supports it. 65 See pathconf(2) and copy_file_range(2) for more information. 66 672ec2ba7e232d, df58e8b1506f (openzfs 2957eabbe), f61844833ee8, b1b607bd200f, 68 ee95e4d02dbd: 69 Add Solaris style extended attributes (called named attributes 70 in NFSv4). At this time, only ZFS when the ZFS property called 71 xattr=dir and NFSv4 support them. The attributes are presented 72 in a directory as regular files. See named_attribute(7) for 73 more information. 74 75ef2a572bf6: 76 Inline IPSEC offload infrastructure and driver support for mlx5(4) 77 Nvidia ConnectX-6+ network cards were added. 78 7968ba38dad3: 80 amd64: handling of the %fsbase/%gsbase registers and tls base 81 were reworked, making it more useful for apps that directly 82 manipulate CPU context. 83 8478aaab9f1cf: 85 rtld: added support for -z initfirst 86 87e36f069ecb4, c069ca085b: 88 Reliability of UFS on volumes with more than 2G of inodes is 89 significantly improved. The underlying issue was the invalid 90 interpretation of the 32bit inode number as signed, which got 91 sign-extended into ino_t. 92 93d390633cf8c: 94 On modern amd64 machines (which have the LA57 CPU feature), 95 FreeBSD is able to utilize more than 4TB of RAM. 96 972bd157bc732a: 98 The readdir_r(3) function is deprecated and may be removed in future 99 releases. Using it in a program will result in compile-time and 100 link-time warnings. 101 1029ba51cce8bbd: 103 bsnmpd(1) no longer supports legacy UDP transport. Users, that have 104 not updated their /etc/snmpd.config since 12.0-RELEASE or older will 105 need to merge in the new configuration. In particular, the transport 106 definition shall be changed from begemotSnmpdPortStatus OID to 107 begemotSnmpdTransInetStatus. 108 1091349a733cf28: 110 Add a driver supporting a new storage controller interface, 111 Universal Flash Storage Host Controller Interface, supporting 112 version 4.1 and earlier, via ufshci(4). 113 114f1f230439fa4: 115 FreeBSD now implements the inotify(2) family of system calls. 116 11750e733f19b37, 171f66b0c2ca: 118 These commits helped improve utilization of NFSv4.1/4.2 119 delegations. The changes are only used when the NFSv4 120 mount uses the "nocto" mount option and requires an 121 up-to-date NFSv4.1/4.2 server with delegations enabled. 122 For example: For a FreeBSD kernel build with both src 123 and obj NFSv4 mounted, the total RPC count dropped from 124 5461286 to 945643, with a 20% drop in elapsed time. 125 126c3fc0db3bc50 127 The default value of the sysctl variable 128 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait has changed from 1 to 0. This means 129 that FreeBSD does not skip the TIME_WAIT state anymore for 130 endpoints for which the remote address is local. The new sysctl 131 variable net.inet.tcp.msl_local can be used to control the time 132 these endpoints stay in the TIME_WAIT state. The sysctl variable 133 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait is deprecated and intended to be 134 removed in FreeBSD 16. 135 136cd240957d7ba 137 Making a connection to INADDR_ANY (i.e., using INADDR_ANY as an alias 138 for localhost) is now disabled by default. This functionality can be 139 re-enabled by setting the net.inet.ip.connect_inaddr_wild sysctl to 1. 140 141b61850c4e6f6 142 The bridge(4) sysctl net.link.bridge.member_ifaddrs now defaults to 0, 143 meaning that interfaces added to a bridge may not have IP addresses 144 assigned. Refer to bridge(4) for more information. 145 14644e5a0150835, 9a37f1024ceb: 147 A new utility sndctl(8) has been added to concentrate the various 148 interfaces for viewing and manipulating audio device settings (sysctls, 149 /dev/sndstat), into a single utility with a similar control-driven 150 interface to that of mixer(8). 151 15293a94ce731a8: 153 ps(1)'s options '-a' and '-A', when combined with any other one 154 affecting the selection of processes except for '-X' and '-x', would 155 have no effect, in contradiction with the rule that one process is 156 listed as soon as any of the specified options selects it (inclusive 157 OR), which is both mandated by POSIX and arguably a natural expectation. 158 This bug has been fixed. 159 160 As a practical consequence, specifying '-a'/'-A' now causes all 161 processes to be listed regardless of other selection options (except for 162 '-X' and '-x', which still apply). In particular, to list only 163 processes from specific jails, one must not use '-a' with '-J'. Option 164 '-J', contrary to its apparent initial intent, never worked as a filter 165 in practice (except by accident with '-a' due to the bug), but instead 166 as any other selection options (e.g., '-U', '-p', '-G', etc.) subject to 167 the "inclusive OR" rule. 168 169995b690d1398: 170 ps(1)'s '-U' option has been changed to select processes by their real 171 user IDs instead of their effective one, in accordance with POSIX and 172 the use case of wanting to list processes launched by some user, which 173 is expected to be more frequent than listing processes having the rights 174 of some user. This only affects the selection of processes whose real 175 and effective user IDs differ. After this change, ps(1)'s '-U' flag 176 behaves differently then in other BSDs but identically to that of 177 Linux's procps and illumos. 178 1791aabbb25c9f9: 180 ps(1)'s default list of processes now comes from matching its effective 181 user ID instead of its real user ID with the effective user ID of all 182 processes, in accordance with POSIX. As ps(1) itself is not installed 183 setuid, this only affects processes having different real and effective 184 user IDs that launch ps(1) processes. 185 186f0600c41e754-de701f9bdbe0, bc201841d139: 187 mac_do(4) is now considered production-ready and its functionality has 188 been considerably extended at the price of breaking credentials 189 transition rules' backwards compatibility. All that could be specified 190 with old rules can also be with new rules. Migrating old rules is just 191 a matter of adding "uid=" in front of the target part, substituting 192 commas (",") with semi-colons (";") and colons (":") with greater-than 193 signs (">"). Please consult the mac_do(4) manual page for the new rules 194 grammar. 195 19602d4eeabfd73: 197 hw.snd.maxautovchans has been retired. The commit introduced a 198 hw.snd.vchans_enable sysctl, which along with 199 dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans, from now on work as tunables to only 200 enable/disable vchans, as opposed to setting their number and/or 201 (de-)allocating vchans. Since these sysctls do not trigger any 202 (de-)allocations anymore, their effect is instantaneous, whereas before 203 we could have frozen the machine (when trying to allocate new vchans) 204 when setting dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans to a very large value. 205 2067e7f88001d7d: 207 The definition of pf's struct pfr_tstats and struct pfr_astats has 208 changed, breaking ABI compatibility for 32-bit powerpc (including 209 powerpcspe) and armv7. Users of these platforms should ensure kernel 210 and userspace are updated together. 211 2125dc99e9bb985, 08e638c089a, 4009a98fe80: 213 The net.inet.{tcp,udp,raw}.bind_all_fibs tunables have been added. 214 They modify socket behavior such that packets not originating from the 215 same FIB as the socket are ignored. TCP and UDP sockets belonging to 216 different FIBs may also be bound to the same address. The default 217 behavior is unmodified. 218 219f87bb5967670, e51036fbf3f8: 220 Support for vinum volumes has been removed. 221 2228ae6247aa966, cf0ede720391d, 205659c43d87bd, 1ccbdf561f417, 4db1b113b151: 223 The layout of NFS file handles for the tarfs, tmpfs, cd9660, and ext2fs 224 file systems has changed. An NFS server that exports any of these file 225 systems will need its clients to unmount and remount the exports. 226 2271111a44301da: 228 Defer the January 19, 2038 date limit in UFS1 filesystems to 229 February 7, 2106. This affects only UFS1 format filesystems. 230 See the commit message for details. 231 23207cd69e272da: 233 Add a new -a command line option to mountd(8). 234 If this command line option is specified, when 235 a line in exports(5) has the -alldirs export option, 236 the directory must be a server file system mount point. 237 2380e8a36a2ab12: 239 Add a new NFS mount option called "mountport" that may be used 240 to specify the port# for the NFS server's Mount protocol. 241 This permits a NFSv3 mount to be done without running rpcbind(8). 242 243b2f7c53430c3: 244 Kernel TLS is now enabled by default in kernels including KTLS 245 support. KTLS is included in GENERIC kernels for aarch64, 246 amd64, powerpc64, and powerpc64le. 247 248f57efe95cc25: 249 New mididump(1) utility which dumps MIDI 1.0 events in real time. 250 251ddfc6f84f242: 252 Update unicode to 16.0.0 and CLDR to 45.0.0. 253 254b22be3bbb2de: 255 Basic Cloudinit images no longer generate RSA host keys by default for 256 SSH. 257 258000000000000: 259 RSA host keys for SSH are deprecated and will no longer be generated 260 by default in FreeBSD 16. 261 2620aabcd75dbc2: 263 EC2 AMIs no longer generate RSA host keys by default for SSH. RSA 264 host key generation can be re-enabled by setting sshd_rsa_enable="YES" 265 in /etc/rc.conf if it is necessary to support very old SSH clients. 266 267a1da7dc1cdad: 268 The SO_SPLICE socket option was added. It allows TCP connections to 269 be spliced together, enabling proxy-like functionality without the 270 need to copy data in and out of user memory. 271 272fc12c191c087: 273 grep(1) no longer follows symbolic links by default for 274 recursive searches. This matches the documented behavior in 275 the manual page. 276 277e962b37bf0ff: 278 When running bhyve(8) guests with a boot ROM, i.e., bhyveload(8) is not 279 used, bhyve now assumes that the boot ROM will enable PCI BAR decoding. 280 This is incompatible with some boot ROMs, particularly outdated builds 281 of edk2-bhyve. To restore the old behavior, add 282 "pci.enable_bars='true'" to your bhyve configuration. 283 284 Note in particular that the uefi-edk2-bhyve package has been renamed 285 to edk2-bhyve. 286 28743caa2e805c2: 288 amd64 bhyve(8)'s "lpc.bootrom" and "lpc.bootvars" options are 289 deprecated. Use the top-level "bootrom" and "bootvars" options 290 instead. 291 292822ca3276345: 293 byacc was updated to 20240109. 294 29521817992b331: 296 ncurses was updated to 6.5. 297 2981687d77197c0: 299 Filesystem manual pages have been moved to section four. 300 Please check ports you are maintaining for crossreferences. 301 3028aac90f18aef: 303 new MAC/do policy and mdo(1) utility which enables a user to 304 become another user without the requirement of setuid root. 305 3067398d1ece5cf: 307 hw.snd.version is removed. 308 309a15f7c96a276,66b5296f1b29: 310 NVMe over Fabrics controller. The nvmft(4) kernel module adds 311 a new frontend to the CAM target layer which exports ctl(4) 312 LUNs as NVMe namespaces to remote hosts. The ctld(8) daemon 313 now supports NVMe controllers in addition to iSCSI targets and 314 is responsible for accepting incoming connection requests and 315 handing off connected queue pairs to nvmft(4). 316 317a1eda74167b5,1058c12197ab: 318 NVMe over Fabrics host. New commands added to nvmecontrol(8) 319 to establish connections to remote controllers. Once 320 connections are established they are handed off to the nvmf(4) 321 kernel module which creates nvmeX devices and exports remote 322 namespaces as nda(4) disks. 323 32425723d66369f: 325 As a side-effect of retiring the unit.* code in sound(4), the 326 hw.snd.maxunit loader(8) tunable is also retired. 327 328eeb04a736cb9: 329 date(1) now supports nanoseconds. For example: 330 `date -Ins` prints "2024-04-22T12:20:28,763742224+02:00" and 331 `date +%N` prints "415050400". 332 3336d5ce2bb6344: 334 The default value of the nfs_reserved_port_only rc.conf(5) setting has 335 changed. The FreeBSD NFS server now requires the source port of 336 requests to be in the privileged port range (i.e., <= 1023), which 337 generally requires the client to have elevated privileges on their local 338 system. The previous behavior can be restored by setting 339 nfs_reserved_port_only=NO in rc.conf. 340 341aea973501b19: 342 ktrace(2) will now record detailed information about capability mode 343 violations. The kdump(1) utility has been updated to display such 344 information. 345 346f32a6403d346: 347 One True Awk updated to 2nd Edition. See https://awk.dev for details 348 on the additions. Unicode and CSVs (Comma Separated Values) are now 349 supported. 350 351fe86d923f83f: 352 usbconfig(8) now reads the descriptions of the usb vendor and products 353 from usb.ids when available, similarly to what pciconf(8) does. 354 3554347ef60501f: 356 The powerd(8) utility is now enabled in /etc/rc.conf by default on 357 images for the arm64 Raspberry Pi's (arm64-aarch64-RPI img files). 358 This prevents the CPU clock from running slow all the time. 359 3600b49e504a32d: 361 rc.d/jail now supports the legacy variable jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset 362 to allow unmaintained jail managers like ezjail to make use of this 363 feature (simply rename jail_${jailname}_zfs_datasets in the ezjail 364 config to jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset. 365 366e0dfe185cbca: 367 jail(8) now support zfs.dataset to add a list of ZFS datasets to a 368 jail. 369 37061174ad88e33: 371 newsyslog(8) now supports specifying a global compression method directly 372 at the beginning of the newsyslog.conf file, which will make newsyslog(8) 373 to behave like the corresponding option was passed to the newly added 374 '-c' option. For example: 375 376 <compress> none 377 378906748d208d3: 379 newsyslog(8) now accepts a new option, '-c' which overrides all historical 380 compression flags by treating their meaning as "treat the file as compressible" 381 rather than "compress the file with that specific method." 382 383 The following choices are available: 384 * none: Do not compress, regardless of flag. 385 * legacy: Historical behavior (J=bzip2, X=xz, Y=zstd, Z=gzip). 386 * bzip2, xz, zstd, gzip: apply the specified compression method. 387 388 We plan to change the default to 'none' in FreeBSD 15.0. 389 3901a878807006c: 391 This commit added some statistics collection to the NFS-over-TLS 392 code in the NFS server so that sysadmins can moditor usage. 393 The statistics are available via the kern.rpc.tls.* sysctls. 394 3957c5146da1286: 396 Mountd has been modified to use strunvis(3) to decode directory 397 names in exports(5) file(s). This allows special characters, 398 such as blanks, to be embedded in the directory name(s). 399 "vis -M" may be used to encode such directory name(s). 400 401c5359e2af5ab: 402 bhyve(8) has a new network backend, "slirp", which makes use of the 403 libslirp package to provide a userspace network stack. This backend 404 makes it possible to access the guest network from the host without 405 requiring any extra network configuration on the host. 406 407bb830e346bd5: 408 Set the IUTF8 flag by default in tty(4). 409 410 128f63cedc14 and 9e589b093857 added proper UTF-8 backspacing handling 411 in the tty(4) driver, which is enabled by setting the new IUTF8 flag 412 through stty(1). Since the default locale is UTF-8, enable IUTF8 by 413 default. 414 415ff01d71e48d4: 416 dialog(1) has been replaced by bsddialog(1) 417 41841582f28ddf7: 419 FreeBSD 15.0 will not include support for 32-bit platforms. 420 However, 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit 421 binaries. 422 423 Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via 424 COMPAT_FREEBSD32 will remain supported for at least the 425 stable/15 and stable/16 branches. 426 427 Support for compiling individual 32-bit applications via 428 `cc -m32` will also be supported for at least the stable/15 429 branch which includes suitable headers in /usr/include and 430 libraries in /usr/lib32. 431 432 Support for 32-bit platforms in ports for 15.0 and later 433 releases is also deprecated, and these future releases may not 434 include binary packages for 32-bit platforms or support for 435 building 32-bit applications from ports. 436 437 stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit 438 kernel and world support. Ports will retain existing support 439 for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14 440 and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported 441 by the ports system. However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2 442 or Tier-3 and support for individual ports should be expected 443 to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms. 444 445 With the current support schedule, stable/14 will be EOLed 5 446 years after the release of 14.0. The EOL of stable/14 would 447 mark the end of support for 32-bit platforms including source 448 releases, pre-built packages, and support for building 449 applications from ports. Given an estimated release date of 450 October 2023 for 14.0, support for 32-bit platforms would end 451 in October 2028. 452 453 The project may choose to alter this approach when 15.0 is 454 released by extending some level of 32-bit support for one or 455 more platforms in 15.0 or later. Users should use the 456 stable/14 branch to migrate off of 32-bit platforms. 457