&title;

+
Important: If you are upgrading from a previous + release of FreeBSD, please read upgrading section in the Release Notes for + notable incompatibilities carefully.
+

Release Highlights

The highlights in the 9.1-RELEASE are the following. For more + details, please see the + Detailed Release Notes.

FreeBSD Jail subsystem now supports mounting + devfs(5), + nullfs(5), and ZFS + filesystem inside a jail. New + jail(8) parameters + allow.mount.devfs, + allow.mount.nullfs, and + allow.mount.zfs to + control the per-jail capabilities have been + added. All of them are disabled by default.[r232728]

+ +

The FreeBSD + sched_ule(4) + scheduler has been improved on CPU load balancing of + SMT (Simultaneous MultiThreading) CPUs. It gives + 10-15% performance improvement when the number of + threads is lesser than the number of logical CPUs.[r233599]

+ +

The + boot0cfg(8) + utility now supports configuration of PXE boot via + boot0 boot block + temporarily on the next boot. The slice number 6 or a keyword PXE can be specified to enable + PXE boot in the -s option.[r230065]

+ +

[amd64, i386] The + hwpmc(4) + driver now supports Intel Sandy Bridge + microarchitecture.[r234046]

+ +

[arm] FreeBSD/arm now supports Atmel SAM9XE family + of microcontrollers.[r236081]

+ +

A bug in the + xhci(4) (USB 3.0) + driver has been fixed. It did not work with USB 3.0 + hubs.[r230302]

+ +

The drm2(4) Intel GPU driver, which supports GEM, + KMS, and works with new generations of GPUs such as + IronLake, SandyBridge, and IvyBridge, has been + added. The + agp(4) dirver now + supports SandyBridge and IvyBridge CPU + northbridges.[r236926, r236927, r239965]

+ +

The + snd_hda(4) driver + has been updated. It now supports HDMI, new volume + control, automatic recording source selection, runtime + reconfigureation, more then 4 PCM devices on a + controller, multichannel recording, additional + playback/record streams, higher bandwidth, and more + informative device names.[r232798]

+ +

The + snd_hdspe(4) + driver has been added. This supports RME HDSPe AIO + and RayDAT sound cards.[r233165]

+ +

A bug in ae(4) driver which + could prevent from working under certain conditions + has been fixed.[r229520]

+ +

The + bge(4) and + brgphy(4) driver have been improved:

+ +

+
A bug which could prevent the DMA + functionality from working correctly, has been + fixed.[r229350]
+
+
It now works with PCI-X BCM 5704 controller + that connected to AMD-8131 PCI-X bridge.[r233495]
+
+
It now supports BCM 5720 and BCM 5720C PHY, + and BCM 57780 1000BASE-T media interface.[r229357, r229867, r232134]
+
+
It now supports a + loader(8) + tunable dev.bge.N.msi + to control the use of MSI. The default value + is 1 (enabled).[r231734]
+

+ +

The + cxgbe(4) and + + cxgb(4) driver has + been updated to firmware version 1.5.2.0. This now + supports device configuration via a plain text + configration file, IPv6 hardware checksumming, IPv6 + TSO and LRO, loadfw command in the + cxgbetool(8) utility which allows to install a + firmware to the card, + sysctl(8) variables + under dev.t4nex.N.misc for + various information.[r231093, r237925]

+ +

The + igb(4) driver has + been updated to version 2.3.4. It now supports newer + i210/i211 devices.[r238262]

+ +

The + mxge(4) driver has + been updated to firmware version 1.4.55 from + Myricom.[r236413]

+ +

The + oce(4) driver, + which supports Emulex OneConnect 10Gbit Ethernet + card, has been added.[r231663]

+ +

The + ral(4) driver now + supports Ralink RT2800 and RT3000 chipsets.[r236004]

+ +

The re(4) driver now + supports RTL8411 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controller. A + bug which could prevent WoL (Wake-on-LAN) from + working on RTL8168E has been fixed.[r229529, r231731]

+ +

The + sfxge(4) driver, + which supports 10Gb Ethernet adapters based on + Solarflare SFC9000 family controllers, has been + added.[r228100]

+ +

The + xnb(4) Xen + Paravirtualized Backend Ethernet Driver (netback) + has been updated. This is attached via newbus + framework and works properly in both HVM and PVM + mode.[r231697]

+ +

The table argument in the + + ipfw(4) packet + filter rule syntax now supports IP address, + interface name, port number, and jail ID. [r234597]

+ +

FreeBSD + ip6(4) protocol + stack now has been improved in terms of its + performance. Benchmarking can be found at http://people.freebsd.org/~bz/bench/.

+ +

FreeBSD + ip6(4) protocol + stack now supports multiple FIB.[r232292]

+ +

The + netmap(4) fast + packet I/O framework has been added. The em(4), lem(4), + + + ifpnp(4). and re(4) drivers now + support this framework. The technical details can be + found at http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/.[r231650, r235527]

+ +

The + arcmsr(4) driver + has been updated to version 1.20.00.25.[r240758]

+ +

The + cam(4) driver now + supports SEMB (SATA Enclosure Management Bridge) + devices, which are equivalent to the SCSI SES/SAF-TE + devices.[r236778]

+ +

The ctl(4) driver, which supports + cam(4) Target + Layer and + ctladm(8), a + userland control utility, have been added. ctl(4) is + a disk and processor device emulation subsystem + supporting tagged queueing, SCSI task attribute, + SCSI implicit command ordering, full task + management, multiple ports, multiple simultaneous + initiators, multiple simultaneous backing stores, + mode sense/select, and error injection support.[r231772]

+ +

The MIRROR + geom(4) class now + supports BIO_DELETE. This + means TRIM command will be + issued on the supported devices when deleting + data.[r238500]

+ +

The MULTIPATH + geom(4) class has + been updated. It now supports Active/Active mode, + Active/Read mode as hybrid of Active/Active and + Active/Passive, keeping a failed path without + removing the geom provider, manual configuration + without on-disk metadata, and add, remove, fail, restore, configure subcommands in + gmultipath(8) + utility to manage the configured paths.[r229303, r234916]

+ +

The UNCOMPRESS + geom(4) class and + the + mkulzma(8) utility + have been added. This class supports lzma compressed + images like UZIP + geom(4) class and + the + mkuzip(8) + utility.[r235483]

+ +

[amd64, i386] The + hpt27xx(4) + dirver has been added. This supports HighPoint RocketRAID + 27xx-based SAS 6Gb/s HBA.[r229975]

+ +

[amd64, i386] The + isci(4) + driver, which supports the integrated SAS controller in + the Intel C600 (Patsburg) chipset, has been + added.[r231689]

+ +

The + ixgbe(4) driver + now supports Intel X540 adapter.[r230775]

+ +

The + mfi(4) driver + now supports single-message MSI, and Drake Skinny and ThunderBolt cards. The + + loader(8) tunable + hw.mfi.msi has been + added and it is enabled by default.[r229611, r234429]

+ +

The + mps(4) driver + has been updated to version 14.00.00.01-fbsd. This + now supports Integrated RAID, WarpDrive controllers, + WRITE12 and READ12 for direct I/O, SCSI protection + information (EEDP), Transport Level Retries (TLR) + for tape drives, and LSI's userland utility.[r230920, r231679, r237876]

+ +

The + usb(4) storage + device driver now enables power save mode by + default.[r229107]

+ +

The FreeBSD NFS filesystem has been improved:

+
It now supports a timeout on positive name cache + entries on the client side. A new mount option + nametimeo has been added + and set to 60 (in second) + by default.[r233326]
+
+
A memory leak when a ZFS volume is exported via + the FreeBSD NFS server has been fixed.[r234740]
+
+
A bug has been fixed. When a process writes to an + mmap-backed file on an NFS filesystem, flushing + changes to the data could fail under some + circumstances such as errors due to permission + mismatch and this failure could not detected as an + error. A new + sysctl(8) + variable vfs.nfs.nfs_keep_dirty_on_error + has been added to control the behavior on the + client side related to this issue. When this is + set to 1, the pages where + a write operation failed are kept dirty. The + default value is set to 0.[r233730]
+
+
The + nfsv4(4) + filesystem now supports a new + sysctl(8) + variable vfs.nfsd.disable_checkutf8. This + disables the check for a UTF-8 compliance in the + filenames. This is disabled by default. Note + that enabling this may help some + interoperability issue but results in an NFSv4 + server that is non-RFC 3530 compliant.[r229799]
+

+ +

The + tmpfs(5) + filesystem is not an experimental implementation + anymore.[r234511]

+ +

The + tmpfs(5) + filesystem now supports a new + sysctl(8) variable + vfs.tmpfs.memory_reserved to set + amount of required free pages when + tmpfs(5) attempts + to allocate a new node.[r234849]

+ +

FreeBSD ZFS filesystem has been updated by merging + improvements in illumos project. The following changes + are made:[r229578, r232328]

+ +

+
New properties, clones and written, have been added.
+
+
+ zfs(8) send command now reports + estimated size of the stream.
+
+
+ zfs(8) destroy command now reports + estimatated space which would be reclaimed when + -n flag is specified.
+
+
+ zfs(8) get command now supports + -t type flag + to specify the data type.
+

+ +

The + dhclient(8) + utility now supports domain-search (option number 119, + described in RFC 3397). This allows a DHCP server to + publish a list of implicit domain suffixes used + during name lookup. If this option is specified, a + search keyword will be added + to /etc/resolv.conf.[r230597]

+ +

A bug in the + gcc(1) compiler + has been fixed. It could lead to incorrect + calculations when -ffast-math flag is specified.[r234023]

+ +

The + ifconfig(8) + utility now supports vlanhwcsum parameter to set or + reset checksum offloading capability on VLANs.[r231221]

+ +

The + ifconfig(8) + utility now supports carp + state + parameter to set the state to backup or master forcibly.[r232486]

+ +

The + jail(8) utility + now supports configuration file ( + jail.conf(5)) for + complex configurations.[r235839]

+ +

Lock handling performance in the libthr pthread library has been + improved. It now works 10 times faster especially under + the condition that a mutex is heavily contested.[r234372]

+ +

libcxxrt and libc++ C++ runtime libraries from + PathScale have been imported. This implementation is a + full replacement for the GNU libsupc++ library for platforms + that use the Itanium C++ ABI, including i386 and amd64, + and will replace portions of the C++ stack previously + only available under the GPL. It provides + implementations of the dynamic features of C++, + including dynamic casting, exception handling, and + thread-safe static initializers.[r235798]

+ +

The + rtld(1) run-time + linker now supports GCC's RELRO (RElocation + Read-Only). This prevents GOT (Global Offset Table) + from being overwritten.[r231579]

+ +

The + rtld(1) run-time + linker now supports GNU hash section (DT_GNU_HASH), which is a + replacement of optional ELF hash section.[r235396]

+ +

The + setbuf(1) utility + and libstdbuf library have + been added. This controls the default buffering + behavior of standard stdio streams.[r235139]

+ +

The + xlocale(3) API has + been implemented. This consists of _l-suffixed versions of various + standard library functions that use the global + locale, making them take an explicit locale parameter + and allowing thread-safe extended locale + support. This is from Apple Darwin, and mainly for + use by libc++.[r235785]

+ +

ISC BIND has been updated to version 9.8.3-P4.[r241417]

+ +

The compiler-rt library, + which provides low-level target-specific interfaces + such as functions in libgcc, + has been updated to revision 147467.[r236018]

+ +

file ( + file(1)) has been + updated to version 5.11.[r237983]

+ +

GNU + gperf(1) has been + updated to version 3.0.3 (the latest GPLv2-licensed + version).[r230237]

+ +

libarchive, + bsdtar(1), and + + cpio(1) have been + updated to version 2.8.5.[r229588]

+ +

libpcap library have been + updated to 1.2.1.[r236167]

+ +

libstdc++ have been + updated to rev 135556 of gcc-4_2-branch (LGPLv2-licensed + version).[r229551]

+ +

The LLVM compiler + infrastructure and clang, a + C language family front-end, version 3.1 have been + imported. Note that it is not used for building the + FreeBSD base system by default.[r236144]

+ +

The netcat utility has been + updated to version 5.1.[r235971]

+ +

OpenSSL has been updated + to 0.9.8x.[r237998]

+ +

tcpdump ( + tcpdump(1)) + utility has been updated to 4.2.1.[r236192]

+ +

The TENEX C shell ( + tcsh(1)) has + been updated to version 6.18.01.[r232633]

+ +

The timezone database has + been updated to the tzdata2012a + release.[r233447]

+ +

zlib library have been + updated to 1.2.7.[r237691]

+ +

The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to + 4.8.4.