MidnightBSD: The BSD For Everyone

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 15:55

Unbound updated in stable/3.1 branch (will be part of 3.1.5)

I just updated unbound to 1.19.3 in the stable/3.1 branch. This fixes a number of CVEs. Anyone using it on 3.1 should consider updating the base system or use the mports version....

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:11

MidnightBSD 3.1.4 release

MidnightBSD 3.1.4 release Fixes issues with mport and updates timezone data. "https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/releases/tag/3.1.4" (https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/releases/tag/3.1.4)...

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 16:10

Update on xz

I've updated the xz version in 3.2-current to 5.4.x and avoided the known vulnerable releases. This aligns with recommendations from several sources. As far as the calls to switch off xz for everything, that's unlikely in the short term. A lot of software distributed in mports uses tar.xz files. Further, package files generated by mport use it. Early releases of mport used bzip2 but we migrated many years ago to tar.xz. We're investigating the possibility of migrating to zstd and are working on updating libarchive to a newer release in base for this purpose. It will likely not happen for the midnightbsd 3.2 release and will need to happen during a major release cycle. (4.x? 3.3?) The long term risk is that xz isn't taken over or forked by a trustworthy source and CVEs start piling up. The actual linux specific issues with 5.6.x are not a concern for BSD platforms aside from the real risk of something like this happening again. (the supply chain attack piece is a danger) The harsh reality of open source is that there is a lot of code and it's difficult to review it all. Companies have been bitten by issues like Amazon Music getting crypto mining node modules years ago or the recent attack on Notepad++ plugins. It happens. How we deal with it is what's important....

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 16:02

3.1.4 release pending

We've tagged 3.1.4 in git for the stable/3.1 branch and have an amd64 ISO on the FTP. Still need to build i386. This includes updated timezone data and some major fixes to mport package manager. There were a lot of issues in the 3.1.3 release of MidnightBSD with installing and using packages....

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:06

3.2 amd64 ISO snap available

I'm uploading a 3.2 amd64 snapshot to the primary FTP server for MidnightBSD...

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:03

mport 2.6.2

We just released mport 2.6.2; it fixes two bugs with mport list and mport list updates that would cause no output to display. This has been imported into current and stable/3.1 branches...

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 14:11

xz vulnerability

There is an xz vulnerability in 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 that was caused by a malicious payload added via a commit."https://boehs.org/node/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdoor" (https://boehs.org/node/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdoor) At this time, I am unaware of anything in libarchive that is considered dangerous as mentioned on that website. MidnightBSD does not use the affected versions of xz in base. We have 5.2.9 right now....

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 12:55

Unbound CVEs

There's two security vulnerabilities in the base system unbound. We've updated unbound to 1.19.1 in 3.2 CURRENT and 1.19.3 in mports....

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 18:37

current focus

We're working on getting mports back in shape on 3.2-current. At the moment, work is underway on the devel/llvm15 port so we can update mesa...

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 21:42

perl removed from base

We're in the process of migrating to perl in mports from base. Perl went into midnightbsd many years ago (around 0.4 i think) There are a few reasons for the change but here are a few: * Difficulty in updating * Delays between releases * Security fixes are easier * Less software requires Perl now than when we made the decision The biggest downsides are with mports as a lot of it still uses Perl. We're working on that....

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 18:47

mport package manager issue on 3.1.3 release

It seems that mport install doesn't work sometimes and gives no output. Workaround: mport download pkgname /usr/libexec/mport.install /var/db/mport/downloads/pkgfilename.mport where pkgname is something like gmake and pkgfilename.mport is something like gmake-3.8.1.mport...

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 18:51

Project Status 2024

Here are our plans for 2024: * 3.2 release - bug fix release with some base system third-party library updates. This is on track to be released in the next few months. TODO: decide if perl will migrate to ports. (likely) * 4.0 work started - still planning what will be in this release Updating mesa and llvm ports (llvm 12 recently added) * Migrate from svn to git to magus indexer. (done today) Find ways to cut costs month to month. (spending roughly $300 a month on server/cloud plus on prem infra including business internet connection) * Determine what we want to do with portsnap. Love to know if you use it....

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 19:56

mports status

Packages for i386 and amd64 MidnightBSD 3.1 have been released this month. We're currently trying to fix a number of vulnerable mports with updates and also add support for PHP 8.3....

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:36

xfce 4.18 now in mports

We updated xfce desktop to 4.18 in mports....