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 138e0b1a1c03a3: 14 The FreeBSD-base repository is now defined in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf, 15 disabled by default. Systems which installed with pkgbase prior to 16 15.0-RC1 (if running releng/15.0) or November 15th (if running from 17 stable/main snapshots) will need to remove the definition of the 18 FreeBSD-base repository from /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/ and replace 19 it with a single line "FreeBSD-base: { enabled: yes }". 20 215000d023a446, 03da141d59ae: 22 Add a "-f" option to "kadmin -l dump" which can be used to 23 dump the Heimdal KDC database in a format that can be loaded 24 into the MIT KDC. 25 See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Kerberos/Heimdal2MIT_KDC_Migration 26 for how to use "-f" to transfer/convert the KDC database. 27 289cab9fde5eda: 29 virtual_oss is imported to base. The audio/virtual_oss port will stop 30 being built from FreeBSD 15.0 onwards. 31 32 Regarding user-facing changes, the only practical difference is the 33 installation process. Everything is provided by the base system, except 34 for the following optional components, which can be installed from 35 ports: 36 37 * sndio backend support: audio/virtual_oss_sndio 38 * bluetooth backend support: audio/virtual_oss_bluetooth 39 * virtual_equalizer(8): audio/virtual_oss_equalizer 40 41 Apart from that, virtual_oss should work as expected. Users of 42 virtual_oss can uninstall audio/virtual_oss and instead use the base 43 system version from now on. 44 45929f5966a9fd, 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: 46 Replaced Heimdal 1.5.2 with MIT KRB5 (1.21.3, 1.22.0, 1.22.1). 47 Heimdal 1.5.2 can still be built using the WITHOUT_MITKRB5 flag. 48 Heimdal build plumbing will be removed in 16. 49 502b74ff5fceb6: 51 Introduced support for watchdog timer in Intel 6300ESB I/O controller 52 hub via the i6300esbwd driver, now included in ichwd.ko. 53 This driver is intended primarily for QEMU users, where it serves as 54 the default and only watchdog timer for x86 virtual machines. 55 563068d706eabe: 57 Lua updated to 5.4.8, which is minor bug fixes from 5.4.7. 58 59b45a181a74c8: 60 Awk updates to August 04, 2025 version, with minor bug fixes. 61 62dc5ba6b8b4f0: 63 The WITHOUT_GSSAPI src.conf(5) option has been removed. The GSSAPI 64 libraries are now always built unless WITHOUT_KERBEROS is set. 65 66c43cad871720: 67 jemalloc 5.3.0 has landed. See contrib/jemalloc/ChangeLog 68 for the long list of changes. 69 70cce64f2e6851: 71 Add support for the NFSv4.2 Clone operation, which uses 72 block cloning to "copy on write" files on an NFS server. 73 This only works for exported ZFS file systems that have 74 block cloning enabled, at this time. 75 7637b2cb5ecb0f: 77 Add support to VOP_COPY_FILE_RANGE() for block cloning. 78 At this time, ZFS is the only local file system that supports 79 this and only if block cloning is enabled. NFSv4.2 also supports it. 80 See pathconf(2) and copy_file_range(2) for more information. 81 822ec2ba7e232d, df58e8b1506f (openzfs 2957eabbe), f61844833ee8, b1b607bd200f, 83 ee95e4d02dbd: 84 Add Solaris style extended attributes (called named attributes 85 in NFSv4). At this time, only ZFS when the ZFS property called 86 xattr=dir and NFSv4 support them. The attributes are presented 87 in a directory as regular files. See named_attribute(7) for 88 more information. 89 90ef2a572bf6: 91 Inline IPSEC offload infrastructure and driver support for mlx5(4) 92 Nvidia ConnectX-6+ network cards were added. 93 9468ba38dad3: 95 amd64: handling of the %fsbase/%gsbase registers and tls base 96 were reworked, making it more useful for apps that directly 97 manipulate CPU context. 98 9978aaab9f1cf: 100 rtld: added support for -z initfirst 101 102e36f069ecb4, c069ca085b: 103 Reliability of UFS on volumes with more than 2G of inodes is 104 significantly improved. The underlying issue was the invalid 105 interpretation of the 32bit inode number as signed, which got 106 sign-extended into ino_t. 107 108d390633cf8c: 109 On modern amd64 machines (which have the LA57 CPU feature), 110 FreeBSD is able to utilize more than 4TB of RAM. 111 1122bd157bc732a: 113 The readdir_r(3) function is deprecated and may be removed in future 114 releases. Using it in a program will result in compile-time and 115 link-time warnings. 116 1179ba51cce8bbd: 118 bsnmpd(1) no longer supports legacy UDP transport. Users, that have 119 not updated their /etc/snmpd.config since 12.0-RELEASE or older will 120 need to merge in the new configuration. In particular, the transport 121 definition shall be changed from begemotSnmpdPortStatus OID to 122 begemotSnmpdTransInetStatus. 123 1241349a733cf28: 125 Add a driver supporting a new storage controller interface, 126 Universal Flash Storage Host Controller Interface, supporting 127 version 4.1 and earlier, via ufshci(4). 128 129f1f230439fa4: 130 FreeBSD now implements the inotify(2) family of system calls. 131 13250e733f19b37, 171f66b0c2ca: 133 These commits helped improve utilization of NFSv4.1/4.2 134 delegations. The changes are only used when the NFSv4 135 mount uses the "nocto" mount option and requires an 136 up-to-date NFSv4.1/4.2 server with delegations enabled. 137 For example: For a FreeBSD kernel build with both src 138 and obj NFSv4 mounted, the total RPC count dropped from 139 5461286 to 945643, with a 20% drop in elapsed time. 140 141c3fc0db3bc50 142 The default value of the sysctl variable 143 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait has changed from 1 to 0. This means 144 that FreeBSD does not skip the TIME_WAIT state anymore for 145 endpoints for which the remote address is local. The new sysctl 146 variable net.inet.tcp.msl_local can be used to control the time 147 these endpoints stay in the TIME_WAIT state. The sysctl variable 148 net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait is deprecated and intended to be 149 removed in FreeBSD 16. 150 151cd240957d7ba 152 Making a connection to INADDR_ANY (i.e., using INADDR_ANY as an alias 153 for localhost) is now disabled by default. This functionality can be 154 re-enabled by setting the net.inet.ip.connect_inaddr_wild sysctl to 1. 155 156b61850c4e6f6 157 The bridge(4) sysctl net.link.bridge.member_ifaddrs now defaults to 0, 158 meaning that interfaces added to a bridge may not have IP addresses 159 assigned. Refer to bridge(4) for more information. 160 16144e5a0150835, 9a37f1024ceb: 162 A new utility sndctl(8) has been added to concentrate the various 163 interfaces for viewing and manipulating audio device settings (sysctls, 164 /dev/sndstat), into a single utility with a similar control-driven 165 interface to that of mixer(8). 166 16793a94ce731a8: 168 ps(1)'s options '-a' and '-A', when combined with any other one 169 affecting the selection of processes except for '-X' and '-x', would 170 have no effect, in contradiction with the rule that one process is 171 listed as soon as any of the specified options selects it (inclusive 172 OR), which is both mandated by POSIX and arguably a natural expectation. 173 This bug has been fixed. 174 175 As a practical consequence, specifying '-a'/'-A' now causes all 176 processes to be listed regardless of other selection options (except for 177 '-X' and '-x', which still apply). In particular, to list only 178 processes from specific jails, one must not use '-a' with '-J'. Option 179 '-J', contrary to its apparent initial intent, never worked as a filter 180 in practice (except by accident with '-a' due to the bug), but instead 181 as any other selection options (e.g., '-U', '-p', '-G', etc.) subject to 182 the "inclusive OR" rule. 183 184995b690d1398: 185 ps(1)'s '-U' option has been changed to select processes by their real 186 user IDs instead of their effective one, in accordance with POSIX and 187 the use case of wanting to list processes launched by some user, which 188 is expected to be more frequent than listing processes having the rights 189 of some user. This only affects the selection of processes whose real 190 and effective user IDs differ. After this change, ps(1)'s '-U' flag 191 behaves differently then in other BSDs but identically to that of 192 Linux's procps and illumos. 193 1941aabbb25c9f9: 195 ps(1)'s default list of processes now comes from matching its effective 196 user ID instead of its real user ID with the effective user ID of all 197 processes, in accordance with POSIX. As ps(1) itself is not installed 198 setuid, this only affects processes having different real and effective 199 user IDs that launch ps(1) processes. 200 201f0600c41e754-de701f9bdbe0, bc201841d139: 202 mac_do(4) is now considered production-ready and its functionality has 203 been considerably extended at the price of breaking credentials 204 transition rules' backwards compatibility. All that could be specified 205 with old rules can also be with new rules. Migrating old rules is just 206 a matter of adding "uid=" in front of the target part, substituting 207 commas (",") with semi-colons (";") and colons (":") with greater-than 208 signs (">"). Please consult the mac_do(4) manual page for the new rules 209 grammar. 210 21102d4eeabfd73: 212 hw.snd.maxautovchans has been retired. The commit introduced a 213 hw.snd.vchans_enable sysctl, which along with 214 dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans, from now on work as tunables to only 215 enable/disable vchans, as opposed to setting their number and/or 216 (de-)allocating vchans. Since these sysctls do not trigger any 217 (de-)allocations anymore, their effect is instantaneous, whereas before 218 we could have frozen the machine (when trying to allocate new vchans) 219 when setting dev.pcm.X.{play|rec}.vchans to a very large value. 220 2217e7f88001d7d: 222 The definition of pf's struct pfr_tstats and struct pfr_astats has 223 changed, breaking ABI compatibility for 32-bit powerpc (including 224 powerpcspe) and armv7. Users of these platforms should ensure kernel 225 and userspace are updated together. 226 2275dc99e9bb985, 08e638c089a, 4009a98fe80: 228 The net.inet.{tcp,udp,raw}.bind_all_fibs tunables have been added. 229 They modify socket behavior such that packets not originating from the 230 same FIB as the socket are ignored. TCP and UDP sockets belonging to 231 different FIBs may also be bound to the same address. The default 232 behavior is unmodified. 233 234f87bb5967670, e51036fbf3f8: 235 Support for vinum volumes has been removed. 236 2378ae6247aa966, cf0ede720391d, 205659c43d87bd, 1ccbdf561f417, 4db1b113b151: 238 The layout of NFS file handles for the tarfs, tmpfs, cd9660, and ext2fs 239 file systems has changed. An NFS server that exports any of these file 240 systems will need its clients to unmount and remount the exports. 241 2421111a44301da: 243 Defer the January 19, 2038 date limit in UFS1 filesystems to 244 February 7, 2106. This affects only UFS1 format filesystems. 245 See the commit message for details. 246 24707cd69e272da: 248 Add a new -a command line option to mountd(8). 249 If this command line option is specified, when 250 a line in exports(5) has the -alldirs export option, 251 the directory must be a server file system mount point. 252 2530e8a36a2ab12: 254 Add a new NFS mount option called "mountport" that may be used 255 to specify the port# for the NFS server's Mount protocol. 256 This permits a NFSv3 mount to be done without running rpcbind(8). 257 258b2f7c53430c3: 259 Kernel TLS is now enabled by default in kernels including KTLS 260 support. KTLS is included in GENERIC kernels for aarch64, 261 amd64, powerpc64, and powerpc64le. 262 263f57efe95cc25: 264 New mididump(1) utility which dumps MIDI 1.0 events in real time. 265 266ddfc6f84f242: 267 Update unicode to 16.0.0 and CLDR to 45.0.0. 268 269b22be3bbb2de: 270 Basic Cloudinit images no longer generate RSA host keys by default for 271 SSH. 272 273000000000000: 274 RSA host keys for SSH are deprecated and will no longer be generated 275 by default in FreeBSD 16. 276 2770aabcd75dbc2: 278 EC2 AMIs no longer generate RSA host keys by default for SSH. RSA 279 host key generation can be re-enabled by setting sshd_rsa_enable="YES" 280 in /etc/rc.conf if it is necessary to support very old SSH clients. 281 282a1da7dc1cdad: 283 The SO_SPLICE socket option was added. It allows TCP connections to 284 be spliced together, enabling proxy-like functionality without the 285 need to copy data in and out of user memory. 286 287fc12c191c087: 288 grep(1) no longer follows symbolic links by default for 289 recursive searches. This matches the documented behavior in 290 the manual page. 291 292e962b37bf0ff: 293 When running bhyve(8) guests with a boot ROM, i.e., bhyveload(8) is not 294 used, bhyve now assumes that the boot ROM will enable PCI BAR decoding. 295 This is incompatible with some boot ROMs, particularly outdated builds 296 of edk2-bhyve. To restore the old behavior, add 297 "pci.enable_bars='true'" to your bhyve configuration. 298 299 Note in particular that the uefi-edk2-bhyve package has been renamed 300 to edk2-bhyve. 301 30243caa2e805c2: 303 amd64 bhyve(8)'s "lpc.bootrom" and "lpc.bootvars" options are 304 deprecated. Use the top-level "bootrom" and "bootvars" options 305 instead. 306 307822ca3276345: 308 byacc was updated to 20240109. 309 31021817992b331: 311 ncurses was updated to 6.5. 312 3131687d77197c0: 314 Filesystem manual pages have been moved to section four. 315 Please check ports you are maintaining for crossreferences. 316 3178aac90f18aef: 318 new MAC/do policy and mdo(1) utility which enables a user to 319 become another user without the requirement of setuid root. 320 3217398d1ece5cf: 322 hw.snd.version is removed. 323 324a15f7c96a276,66b5296f1b29: 325 NVMe over Fabrics controller. The nvmft(4) kernel module adds 326 a new frontend to the CAM target layer which exports ctl(4) 327 LUNs as NVMe namespaces to remote hosts. The ctld(8) daemon 328 now supports NVMe controllers in addition to iSCSI targets and 329 is responsible for accepting incoming connection requests and 330 handing off connected queue pairs to nvmft(4). 331 332a1eda74167b5,1058c12197ab: 333 NVMe over Fabrics host. New commands added to nvmecontrol(8) 334 to establish connections to remote controllers. Once 335 connections are established they are handed off to the nvmf(4) 336 kernel module which creates nvmeX devices and exports remote 337 namespaces as nda(4) disks. 338 33925723d66369f: 340 As a side-effect of retiring the unit.* code in sound(4), the 341 hw.snd.maxunit loader(8) tunable is also retired. 342 343eeb04a736cb9: 344 date(1) now supports nanoseconds. For example: 345 `date -Ins` prints "2024-04-22T12:20:28,763742224+02:00" and 346 `date +%N` prints "415050400". 347 3486d5ce2bb6344: 349 The default value of the nfs_reserved_port_only rc.conf(5) setting has 350 changed. The FreeBSD NFS server now requires the source port of 351 requests to be in the privileged port range (i.e., <= 1023), which 352 generally requires the client to have elevated privileges on their local 353 system. The previous behavior can be restored by setting 354 nfs_reserved_port_only=NO in rc.conf. 355 356aea973501b19: 357 ktrace(2) will now record detailed information about capability mode 358 violations. The kdump(1) utility has been updated to display such 359 information. 360 361f32a6403d346: 362 One True Awk updated to 2nd Edition. See https://awk.dev for details 363 on the additions. Unicode and CSVs (Comma Separated Values) are now 364 supported. 365 366fe86d923f83f: 367 usbconfig(8) now reads the descriptions of the usb vendor and products 368 from usb.ids when available, similarly to what pciconf(8) does. 369 3704347ef60501f: 371 The powerd(8) utility is now enabled in /etc/rc.conf by default on 372 images for the arm64 Raspberry Pi's (arm64-aarch64-RPI img files). 373 This prevents the CPU clock from running slow all the time. 374 3750b49e504a32d: 376 rc.d/jail now supports the legacy variable jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset 377 to allow unmaintained jail managers like ezjail to make use of this 378 feature (simply rename jail_${jailname}_zfs_datasets in the ezjail 379 config to jail_${jailname}_zfs_dataset. 380 381e0dfe185cbca: 382 jail(8) now support zfs.dataset to add a list of ZFS datasets to a 383 jail. 384 38561174ad88e33: 386 newsyslog(8) now supports specifying a global compression method directly 387 at the beginning of the newsyslog.conf file, which will make newsyslog(8) 388 to behave like the corresponding option was passed to the newly added 389 '-c' option. For example: 390 391 <compress> none 392 393906748d208d3: 394 newsyslog(8) now accepts a new option, '-c' which overrides all historical 395 compression flags by treating their meaning as "treat the file as compressible" 396 rather than "compress the file with that specific method." 397 398 The following choices are available: 399 * none: Do not compress, regardless of flag. 400 * legacy: Historical behavior (J=bzip2, X=xz, Y=zstd, Z=gzip). 401 * bzip2, xz, zstd, gzip: apply the specified compression method. 402 403 We plan to change the default to 'none' in FreeBSD 15.0. 404 4051a878807006c: 406 This commit added some statistics collection to the NFS-over-TLS 407 code in the NFS server so that sysadmins can moditor usage. 408 The statistics are available via the kern.rpc.tls.* sysctls. 409 4107c5146da1286: 411 Mountd has been modified to use strunvis(3) to decode directory 412 names in exports(5) file(s). This allows special characters, 413 such as blanks, to be embedded in the directory name(s). 414 "vis -M" may be used to encode such directory name(s). 415 416c5359e2af5ab: 417 bhyve(8) has a new network backend, "slirp", which makes use of the 418 libslirp package to provide a userspace network stack. This backend 419 makes it possible to access the guest network from the host without 420 requiring any extra network configuration on the host. 421 422bb830e346bd5: 423 Set the IUTF8 flag by default in tty(4). 424 425 128f63cedc14 and 9e589b093857 added proper UTF-8 backspacing handling 426 in the tty(4) driver, which is enabled by setting the new IUTF8 flag 427 through stty(1). Since the default locale is UTF-8, enable IUTF8 by 428 default. 429 430ff01d71e48d4: 431 dialog(1) has been replaced by bsddialog(1) 432 43341582f28ddf7: 434 FreeBSD 15.0 will not include support for 32-bit platforms. 435 However, 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit 436 binaries. 437 438 Support for executing 32-bit binaries on 64-bit platforms via 439 COMPAT_FREEBSD32 will remain supported for at least the 440 stable/15 and stable/16 branches. 441 442 Support for compiling individual 32-bit applications via 443 `cc -m32` will also be supported for at least the stable/15 444 branch which includes suitable headers in /usr/include and 445 libraries in /usr/lib32. 446 447 Support for 32-bit platforms in ports for 15.0 and later 448 releases is also deprecated, and these future releases may not 449 include binary packages for 32-bit platforms or support for 450 building 32-bit applications from ports. 451 452 stable/14 and earlier branches will retain existing 32-bit 453 kernel and world support. Ports will retain existing support 454 for building ports and packages for 32-bit systems on stable/14 455 and earlier branches as long as those branches are supported 456 by the ports system. However, all 32-bit platforms are Tier-2 457 or Tier-3 and support for individual ports should be expected 458 to degrade as upstreams deprecate 32-bit platforms. 459 460 With the current support schedule, stable/14 will be EOLed 5 461 years after the release of 14.0. The EOL of stable/14 would 462 mark the end of support for 32-bit platforms including source 463 releases, pre-built packages, and support for building 464 applications from ports. Given an estimated release date of 465 October 2023 for 14.0, support for 32-bit platforms would end 466 in October 2028. 467 468 The project may choose to alter this approach when 15.0 is 469 released by extending some level of 32-bit support for one or 470 more platforms in 15.0 or later. Users should use the 471 stable/14 branch to migrate off of 32-bit platforms. 472