2.1 Kernel Changes

The O_DIRECT flag has been added to open(2) and fcntl(2). Specifying this flag for open files will attempt to minimize the cache effects of reading and writing.

An orm(4) device has been added to claim the option ROMs in the ISA memory I/O space, to prevent other drivers from mistakenly assigning addresses that conflict with these ROMs.

The out-of-swap process termination code now begins killing processes earlier to avoid deadlocks; it now also takes into account the swap space used by processes when computing the process sizes.

Network device cloning has been implemented, and the gif(4) device has been modified to take advantage of it. Thus, instead of specifying how many gif(4) interfaces are available in kernel configuration files, ifconfig(8)'s create option should be used when another device instance is desired.

Two new ddb(4) commands, hwatch and dhwatch, have been introduced. Analogous to watch and dwatch, they install hardware watchpoints (as opposed to software watchpoints) if supported by the architecture.

A nmdm(4) null-modem terminal driver has been added.

The stl(4) driver now supports the PCI and ISA EasyIO multi-port serial cards from Stallion Technologies based on the Signetics SC26C194/8 Intelligent Quad/Octal UART.

The maxusers kernel configuration parameter is now a boot-time tunable variable. The kernel parameters derived from maxusers are now also tunables and can be overridden at boot-time. The hz parameter is also now a tunable.

The FreeBSD boot loader now contains a workaround to support CDROM booting on certain IBM BIOSs that expect the first sector of the emulated floppy to contain a valid MS-DOS BPB that they can modify.

    hw.pcic.intr_path="1"
    hw.pcic.irq="0"

    ok set hw.pcic.intr_path="1"
    ok set hw.pcic.irq="0"

    # pccardc power 0 slot

2.2 Security-Related Changes

The security fix mentioned in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:39, which governs initial sequence number generation for TCP connections, has raised some possible compatibility issues. To mitigate this effect, the fix can now be enabled or disabled using the net.inet.tcp.tcp_seq_genscheme sysctl variable.

A vulnerability in the fts(3) routines (used by applications for recursively traversing a filesystem) could allow a program to operate on files outside the intended directory hierarchy. This bug has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:40).

portmap(8) is now turned off by default, although it will be started automatically on machines that enable NFS serving, NIS services, or amd(8) through rc.conf(5).

A flaw allowed some signal handlers to remain in effect in a child process after being exec-ed from its parent. This allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of a setuid binary. This flaw has been corrected (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:42).

A remote buffer overflow in tcpdump(1) has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:48).

A remote buffer overflow in telnetd(8) has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:49).

The new net.inet.ip.maxfragpackets and net.inet.ip6.maxfragpackets sysctl variables limit the amount of memory that can be consumed by IPv4 and IPv6 packet fragments, which defends against some denial of service attacks (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:52).

The number of ``security profiles'' available in sysinstall(8) for new installations has been reduced to two.

All services in inetd.conf are now disabled by default for new installations. sysinstall(8) gives the option of enabling or disabling inetd(8) on new installations, as well as editing inetd.conf.

A flaw in the implementation of the ipfw(8) me rules on point-to-point links has been corrected. Formerly, me filter rules would match the remote IP address of a point-to-point interface in addition to the intended local IP address (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:53).

A vulnerability in procfs(5), which could allow a process to read sensitive information from another process's memory space, has been closed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:55).

The PARANOID hostname checking in tcp_wrappers now works as advertised (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:56).

A local root exploit in sendmail(8) has been closed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:57).

A remote root vulnerability in lpd(8) has been closed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:58).

A race condition in rmuser(8) that briefly exposed a world-readable /etc/master.passwd has been fixed (see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-01:59).

All non-root-owned binaries in standard system paths now have the schg flag set to prevent exploit vectors when run by cron(8), by root, or by a user other then the one owning the binary. In addition, uustat(1) is now run via /etc/periodic/daily/410.status-uucp as uucp, not root.

A security hole in the form of a buffer overflow in the semop(2) system call has been closed.

2.3 Userland Changes

ip6fw(8) now has the ability to use a preprocessor and use the -q (quiet) flag when reading from a file.

ping(8) now supports a -m option to set the TTL of outgoing packets.

ln(1) now takes a -h flag to avoid following a target that is a link, with a -n flag for compatibility with other implementations.

find(1) now has the -anewer, -cnewer, -mnewer, -okdir, and -newer[acm][acmt] primaries for comparisons of file timestamps.

The performance of the ELF dynamic linker has been improved.

ifconfig(8) can now accept addresses in slash/CIDR notation.

c89(1) has been converted from a shell script to a binary executable, fixing some minor bugs.

vidcontrol(1) now supports a -p option to take a snapshot of a syscons(4) video buffer. These snapshots can be manipulated by the graphics/scr2png utility in the Ports Collection.

vidcontrol(1) now allows the user to omit the font size specification when loading a font, and has some better error-handling.

telnet(1) now supports a -u flag to allow connections to UNIX-domain (AF_UNIX) sockets.

newfs(8) now takes a -U option to enable softupdates on a new filesystem.

libcrypt now has support for Blowfish password hashing.

Ukrainian language support has been added to the FreeBSD console.

savecore(8) now works correctly on machines with 2 GB or more of RAM.

The syntax of inetd(8)'s support for faithd(8) is now compatible with that of other BSDs.

The ident protocol support in inetd(8) has been cleaned up and updated.

inetd(8) now has the ability to manage UNIX-domain sockets.

The resolver(3) in FreeBSD now implements EDNS0 support, which will be necessary when working with IPv6 transport-ready resolvers/DNS servers.

df(1) now takes a -l option to only display information about locally-mounted filesystems.

whois(1) now directs queries for IP addresses to ARIN. If a query to ARIN references APNIC or RIPE, the appropriate server will also be queried, provided that the -Q option is not specified.

The -T option to dump(8) no longer swallows an extra argument.

dump(8) has a new -D option, allowing the path to the /etc/dumpdates file to be changed.

libfetch now has support for a HTTP_USER_AGENT environment variable.

The getprogname(3) and setprogname(3) library functions have been added to manipulate the name of the current program. They are used by error-reporting routines to produce consistent output.

xargs(1) now supports a -J replstr option that allows the user to tell xargs(1) to insert the data read from standard input at a specific point in the command line arguments, rather than at the end.

ifconfig(8) now has support for setting parameters for IEEE 802.11 wireless network devices. wi(4) and an(4) devices are supported.

ifconfig(8) no longer displays the list of supported media by default. Instead it displays it when the -m option is given.

lpd(8) now takes two new options: -c will log all connection errors to syslogd(8), while -W will allow connections from non-reserved ports.

lpc(8) has been improved; lpc clean is now somewhat safer, and a new lpc tclean command has been added to check to see what files would be removed by lpc clean.

du(1) now takes a -I command-line flag to ignore/skip files and subdirectories matching a specified shell-glob mask.

growfs(8), a utility for growing FFS filesystems, has been added. ffsinfo(8), a utility for dump all the meta-information of an existing filesystem, has also been added.

mail(1) now takes a -E flag to avoid sending messages with empty bodies.

vidcontrol(1) now supports a -C option to clear the history buffer for a given tty, as well as a -h option to set the size of the history buffer.

last(1) now implements a -d option that provides a ``snapshot'' of who was logged in at a particular date and time.

libcrypt and libdescrypt have been unified to provide a configurable password authentication hash library. Both the md5 and des hash methods are provided unless the des hash is specifically compiled out.

install(1) has a number of new features, including the -b and -B options for backing up existing target files and the -S option for ``safe'' (atomic copy) operation. The -c (copy) flag is now the default, and the -D (debugging) flag has been withdrawn. install(1) now issues a warning if -d (create directories) and -C (copy changed files only) are used together.

The FreeBSD Makefile infrastructure now supports the WARNS directive from NetBSD. This directive controls the addition of compiler warning flags to CFLAGS in a relatively compiler-neutral manner.

A new fsck_msdosfs(8) utility has been added to check the consistency of MS-DOS filesystems.

The kldconfig(8) utility has been added to make it easier to manipulate the kernel module search path.

moused(8) now takes a -a option to control mouse acceleration.

The tcpmssfixup ppp(8) option now adjusts the maximum receive segment size of incoming TCP SYN segments as well as outgoing TCP SYN segments.

sysctl(8) now supports a -N option to print out variable names only.

sysctl(8) has replaced the -A and -X options with -ao and -ax respectively; the former options are now deprecated. The -w flag is deprecated as well; it is not needed to determine the user's intentions.

cdcontrol(1) now supports next and prev commands to skip forwards or backwards a specified number of tracks while playing an audio CD.

col(1) now takes a -p flag to force unknown control sequences to be passed through unchanged.

tmpnam(3) will now use the TMPDIR environment variable, if set, to specify the location of temporary files.

rc(8) now deletes all non-directory files in /var/run and /var/spool/lock at boot time.

fmtcheck(3), a function for checking consistency of format string arguments, has been added.

apmd(8) now has the ability to monitor battery levels and execute commands based on percentage or minutes of battery life remaining via the apm_battery configuration directive. See the commented-out examples in /etc/apmd.conf for the syntax.

pppd(8) (the control program for kernel-level PPP) is now installed mode 4550 and root:dialer, rather than mode 4555 (in other words, it is no longer world-executable). Users of pppd(8) may need to change their group settings.