OpenBSD 4.1: Puffy Strikes Again  OpenBSD 4.1 has recently been released. It includes improvements to spam fighting, SMP, porting to new platforms, and much more. As usual, Federico Biancuzzi has sought out some of the most influential OpenBSD developers for a discussion of what you'll find in 4.1  [BSD]

Making NetBSD Multiboot-Compatible  The i386 boot process is as crufty as you'd expect from decades of stagnation. Booting your OS could be much easier--that's why the GRUB hackers developed The Multiboot Specification. Julio M. Merino Vidal explains why Multiboot exists, what it can do for you, and how he modified the NetBSD kernel to work with it.   [BSD]

Hardware Versus Software Firewalls  Software can do almost anything hardware can do. Is there a reason to use dedicated hardware? Chris Swartz and Randy Rosel put this to the test, comparing the Cisco PIX to Smoothwall and OpenBSD with pf. Here's how they compared various firewalls, and how you can reproduce their results in your environment.   [Sysadmin]

Inside PC-BSD 1.3  iXsystems' recent acquisition of PC-BSD hasn't slowed the development of the desktop-capable FreeBSD distribution. Version 1.3 is out and available. Dru Lavigne talks with PC-BSD developers about the new release and their plans to continue to make an effective, efficient, and usable free desktop operating systems.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Fun with X.org  X.org includes several useful utilities and features that almost no one knows about. You can accelerate your display, nest one X server in another, distribute your session across multiple monitors on different machines, and watch a session on another machine. Dru Lavigne explains.   [BSD]

OpenBSD 4.0: Pufferix's Adventures  On October 18th, OpenBSD celebrated its 11th birthday. Now it's time for the release of OpenBSD 4.0. To celebrate both milestones, Federico Biancuzzi interviewed over 20 developers to discuss the new features of this release and the continual work to get hardware specifications from vendors.   [Sysadmin]

Why iXsystems Bought PC-BSD  PC-BSD is a distribution of FreeBSD intended to make installing and maintaining a poweful and free Unix system easy. iXsystems is a vendor of powerful computer systems built on free Unix systems. The latter recently acquired the former. In an interview with BSD guru Dru Lavigne, the principals of both groups explain why the new collaboration makes a lot of sense.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Sharing Internet Connections  Protecting your computer when you're online is good. If you have multiple computers in your home or small business, protecting all of them is also good--especially if you can share your internet connection. Dru Lavigne demonstrates how to allow other computers to use the network safely with a FreeBSD or similar Unix system and fwbuilder.   [BSD]

Confessions of a Recovering NetBSD Zealot  Charles M. Hannum is one of the founders of the NetBSD project. He recently posted to the NetBSD list that the project has "stagnated to the point of irrelevance" and gave suggestions for improvement. As you might expect, this provoked strong reactions. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed Hannum about the past, present, and potential future of NetBSD.   [BSD]

Using IPFW Rulesets with BSD Firewalls  The IPFW firewall comes with FreeBSD, but its documentation isn't entirely clear. Dennis Olvany demonstrates how to create and maintain IPFW rulesets to keep you secure but also to prevent network outages during updates.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Using DesktopBSD  A few user-friendly distributions of FreeBSD have appeared lately. DesktopBSD is a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD 5.5 that is suitable even for Unix novices. Dru Lavigne walks through the installation and use of DesktopBSD to provide a modern, powerful workstation.   [BSD]

OpenBSD 3.9: Blob-Busters Interviewed  Every six months, the OpenBSD team releases a new version of their OS. OpenBSD 3.9 is here. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed the core developers about new features and improvements, as well as their principled stand against shipping binary-only blobs in place of actual drivers.   [BSD]

Building a FreeBSD Build System  Keeping a single BSD system up to date is relatively easy. Keeping a whole business full of servers fresh with patches and new applications and updates is more work--unless you take advantage of the ports system. Bjorn Nelson walks through the design and implementation of a build system usable to push fresh binaries to as many servers as you have.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Using PC-BSD  A few user-friendly distributions of FreeBSD have appeared lately. PC-BSD is one suitable for the corporate and home desktops, even those of users unfamiliar with Unix. Dru Lavigne walks through the installation and configuration of PC-BSD to provide a modern, powerful workstation.   [BSD]

Virtualization with FreeBSD Jails  Consolidating several small machines into one powerful one has advantages in administration and resource usage. It also has implications for security and encapsulation. FreeBSD's jails feature allows you to host multiple separate services on a single machine while keeping them securely separate. Dan Langille shows how.   [BSD]

Network Filtering by Operating System  Some operating systems are better networking citizens than others. Depending on your network, you may want to prioritize traffic from certain machines over traffic from other operating systems--especially when the latest Windows worm strikes. Avleen Vig shows how to use pf, altq, and Squid on FreeBSD to shape your bandwidth with respect to the systems you run.   [BSD]

Big Scary Daemons
Running Commercial Linux Software on FreeBSD  One intriguing feature of the BSDs is their ability to run binaries for Linux distributions. This can be very useful for running commercial software. Michael W. Lucas demonstrates how to configure and use the Linux compatibility layer on FreeBSD.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Building Binary PC-BSD Packages  Several BSD-based distributions have emerged recently--and a few are relevant to and accessible by end users. One such is PC-BSD, whose innovations include a binary package installation system. Of course, that requires people to build binary packages for it. Fortunately, as Dru Lavigne demonstrates, doing so is both easy and addictively fun.   [BSD]

Inside NetBSD's CGD  Security-minded laptop users live in fear of theft, not only of their computer but also of their precious secret data. NetBSD's CGD project is a cryptographic virtual disk that can protect sensitive data while acting like a normal filesystem. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed its author, Roland Dowdeswell, on the goals and implementation of the system.   [BSD]

Big Scary Daemons
Building Detailed Network Reports with Netflow  You can trace every packet on your network from source to destination, if you really want to. Having all of this information is useless unless you can actually find what you need to know. Netflow not only helps record traffic information but also can help you report on just the types of packets you want. Michael W. Lucas demonstrates.   [BSD]

FreeBSD Basics
Using Software RAID-1 with FreeBSD  Disk space is cheap, and putting multiple disks in a computer is relatively cheap. Taking advantage of redundant disks to protect against hardware failure is invaluable. Though some RAID solutions require special hardware, FreeBSD 5.0 and later support software RAID. Dru Lavigne shows how to configure and enable disk mirroring.   [BSD]