As of r294999 it’s possible to boot FreeBSD/amd64 stable/10 from ZFS pools on systems running UEFI firmware. Up until now I have booted my UEFI ZFS laptop using the older boot1.efi boot loader with /boot located on a UFS partition. Earlier today I updated my EFI System Partition (ESP), put /boot back where it belongs, […]

Read More → FreeBSD’s UEFI boot loader now supports ZFS pools

The strange combination of FreeBSD/i386, stable/10, OpenSSL from ports, optimized assembly code, Dell PowerEdge 1950, Intel Xeon X5450@3.00GHz, and BIOS 2.5.0, resulted in core dumps for all applications linked with OpenSSL from ports.

Read More → FreeBSD/i386, stable/10, OpenSSL from ports, optimized assembly code, Dell PowerEdge 1950, Xeon X5450@3.00GHz, and BIOS 2.5.0

I bought the ebook edition of FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS this June. While the authors’ intentions are good, the 2015-05-21 edition has some errors and mistakes. The table below is nothing more than an unofficial errata of said book. Beware, what you find below might be due to my lack of understanding FreeBSD, ZFS, or the […]

Read More → Unofficial errata: FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS

FreeBSD gives the user an option of installing the file /usr/local/etc/screenrc with some sensible defaults along with GNU Screen, aka sysutils/screen. Among the defaults are a format string for the hardstatus line. It shows the date using yy/dd/mm notation and the time as a 12 hour clock. That may be fine in the English speaking […]

Read More → Adding 24 hour clock to FreeBSD’s hardstatus string for GNU Screen

When upgrading from one major version of FreeBSD to another, in my case from FreeBSD/amd64 stable/9 to FreeBSD/amd64 stable/10, it’s customary to upgrade the installed ports afterwards, beginning with ports-mgmt/pkg. I forcefully upgraded all installed ports using portupgrade -afpv, but the upgrade of lang/ruby21 failed miserably. I removed all traces of Ruby 2.1, i.e. ports-mgmt/portupgrade […]

Read More → Ascertaining installed ports for a specific architecture