FreeBSD 14.5: an update to the 14.x branch with tweaks to userland utilities

The FreeBSD project has unveiled another update to the stable 14.x branch — version 14.5. The release is primarily a maintenance one: in addition to bug fixes, it brings a number of noteworthy changes to the base system's userland utilities.

The firewall and the upgrade to 15.0

The rc.firewall script has learned to read IP addresses and subnets from files on disk for the list variables firewall_allowservices and firewall_trusted. Lines that look like absolute paths are processed line by line: comments and empty lines are skipped, and the first word on a line is treated as an address or subnet.

The compatibility mechanism in ipfw(8) deserves special attention. Now, when running with a FreeBSD 15.0 or newer kernel, the binary automatically invokes the built-in ipfw15 to load rules — this should spare administrators any surprises while upgrading to the new major version.

Closer to POSIX

Several tweaks bring the system's behavior into line with the latest POSIX.1-2024 standard. The default command history size in the sh(1) shell has grown from 100 to 128 entries — exactly the minimum mandated by the standard. The behavior of pwd(1) has changed as well: the default mode has switched from -P to -L, which is likewise dictated by POSIX semantics.

Small things for administrators

The daemon(8) utility has gained a -m option that lets you set the access mode for the output file. Thanks to this, even processes running without superuser privileges will be able to collect logs. Finally, density codes and cartridge specifications for LTO-10 and LTO-10P have been added to mt(1) and the libmt library — the system can now recognize and correctly report the new tape formats.

The FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE image for amd64 (disc1) is about 1262 MB in size. Details are given in the official release announcement and in the release notes.

Source: DistroWatch