just upgraded to 15.1-RELEASE via packages, first time. Worked pefectly

luser: Yeah, I saw it in 15.0 too.

can i still upgrade to 15.1 with freebsd-update?

yes

ok. thought i saw someone get a weird error when trying it saying it needed to use pkg

maybe i misread that or maybe they accidentally chose the pkg method in install

i upgraded using freebsd-update

cool. thanks. i'm trying to update now

just in case, freebsd.org/releases/15.1R/installation

those sure look like a lot of extra steps

:/

i typically use the handbook instructions

It's just to two forms of upgraded, plus updating the bootcode.

Handbook is also referenced regarding updating from source.

hm

is updating the bootcode during minor updates something that the updater doesn't do for you?

or even major updates.

Macer, Correct. You need to update the bootcode manually. It's usually required at major upgrades only. Minor upgrades should not need it.

Typically it is forced by zfs pool feature upgrades. If you don't zpool upgrade then the features don't change and the old bootcode generally keeps working. But part of the upgrade that is also manual and done later is zpool-upgrade which upgrades the features and if that is done then the bootcode must be upgraded to a newer version which knows how to handle the new zpool features.

i think i am going to cause myself headaches.. but if my network card requires a ports package (that already exists in 15.0) and i upgrade to 15.1.. the network will NOT work until i "update" the module.. because of potential ABI version mismatch, correct?

my /boot/loader.conf has 2 lines if_re_load="YES" and if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"

i know this IS the case for major version upgrades but the minor upgrades.. i am not 100% sure on

well lets see what happens

well that worked :)

rwp: The zpool upgrade you mentioned, before i had to do a reboot, that is something required to take advantage of new openZFS features?

voy4g3r2, I can't say for sure about your network card. It will usually work between .0 and .1 because the pkgs are built against .0. But eventually down the line at .4 or .5 it will almost certainly fail there. That's been my experience with graphics drivers.

rwp: yeah, a miracle happened.. and worked :)

i probably should just buy a dang intel card .. instead of this integrated 2.5g realtek crap

voy4g3r2, As for the bootcode not quite. It's not to take advantage of the new features. It's to allow it to mount the zpool at all! Otherwise it will reject the mount not knowing how to handle the newer features and fail to boot.

+1 for buying a better card.

ah on zpool

Recently there has been a build infrastructure change adding a new pkgs repository that is supposed to be built against the current release kernel. And I think that at least sometimes works. But I had it fail recently on my amdgpu module. So I got burned by it anyway.

i do not think i EVER upgraded the pool

this is the one and it was always more stable than re module in kernel.. at least in 14.x land

I think that if you never upgrade the zpool then you don't need to upgrade the bootcode. At least not for zfs changes. Probably there can be and will eventually be kernel changes. But I also hold off upgrading the zpool too. So rarely need to upgrade the bootcode.

yheah, i just remember trauma moving zroot to a nvme from spinning drives.. that was a nightmare

i now have a nroot and not a zroot..

I haven't experienced such problems moving pools around. Was this a zfs send|recv ? Or some other method?

some other method

i learned the HARD way to not use rsync or dd

it was very very very early in my freebsd usage

Thinking about your realtek kernel module... It works with the one in base but just not well? Then best to disable the ports module and boot it with base and hten come back later and update the ports pkg one.

some how i ended up naming it nroot in process from zroot because of some move/swap and bootloader not liking "something"

it gave me problems back in early 14.x days.. and the solution i had was not using that one :)

why it was not behaving. i stopped investigating after i found a work-around

i do remember the microcenter people asking me, why do i care so much about what chipset is used for nic..

I am pretty sure you can rename your nroot to zroot if you wish. I think the process is to boot recovery media such as the install iso, importing it with the new name, then exporting it, and then it has the new name. Something close to that process.

as i had the list of documents printed out from the website and the chipsets that worked and did not work

That's a bad question from the micro center folks. Because performance is the answer. Different chipsets are not equal. Some are definitely more performant than others.

yeah well.. i just used it as a chance to explain that to them

it was a fun experience.. at that point.. i went a good 20 years since i built my own machine

it was a fun christmas holiday project

When I am in Best Buy I walk around with my fingers in my ears saying la, la, la to avoid hearing any of the sales people talking to other customers. I would feel compelled to intervene. And no one would benefit from that.

hahah

i minimize my interaction in that store as much as possible.. but agree

i wish microcenter carried mikrotik devices

that would be HEAVEN

sometimes i do kick myself in but with the intel vs amd pickup.. and should of gone i5 instead of i3

Err. FreeBSD 15.1 is much... snappier than 15.0

Interactive latency is way down, comparatively.

Like, under load?

Not even -- I'm talking about zero load fresh boot. There used to be a slight delay with network traffic (it's entirely headless) and now I get zero delay

All fuzzy feelings and subjective, but... very pleased

Call me back when the system is under load and you're using it locally.

Not gonna happen :) but okay

load is "subjective" but I'm pretty happy, lets see what pasting random lines does..

last pid: 46184; load averages: 0.61, 0.58, 0.41 up 0+04:15:26 10:08:00

555 processes: 1 running, 554 sleeping

CPU: 0.6% user, 0.0% nice, 0.1% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle

Mem: 2454M Active, 12G Inact, 8742M Wired, 2056K Buf, 289G Free

ARC: 4950M Total, 1665M MFU, 2723M MRU, 27M Anon, 54M Header, 446M Other

3135M Compressed, 7301M Uncompressed, 2.33:1 Ratio

i used `appjail fetch destroy -v $v default` to remove old versions. they are gone in in the list command. but there are still three mounted datasets per $v around. does anyone know to properly clean up old versions in appjail?

FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE (GENERIC)

congrats

Hi all, question: have you ever tried to install FreeBSD on Flash USB? I don't particulary like that Live CD ISO, it's not very possible to install there a software and other things.

(The point is - I want to have proper rescue USB Flash, with Live CD I can't even install VIM)

does da0 show up with the installer? it should work

ive installed to usb before, yup

even microsd

i requested a bugzilla acct, anyone know how long it might take to hear back? its been 24h+ already

rtprio: It's working already, I had to change /etc/fstab to rw, then do gpart resize, and then growfs /.

It was very, very, very tough. That's really bad such things aren't in some article.

It cost mandays of work...

you said "install to" not "use provided usb image"

big difference

me too, i just ran the iso and chose usb as the disk

rtprio: Ou sorry, you are right, I've forgot I'm asking to something different :D

That was actually my original problem - I can't install anything on Live CD. So i was thinking I will just do full install on Flash USB.

JurassCZ, ive never tried the livecd, but i wouldve thought its similar to say debianlive. where youcan install stuff

TIL

elivoncoder: And how do you rescue then?

w/win 13

whoops

i havent needed to. singleusermode has always been enough for me

i think press 5 in the menu

any of you guys successfully using wpa3 wifi?

elivoncoder: ad Bugzilla, I've also asked for account before 7 day, 2 times, no answer

and don't know what is wpa3 wifi, I have Intel, tried to use iwlwifi and it's unstable and crashing on 15.1 RELEASE

JurassCZ: to rescue, you can usually boot into single user mode, depending on your fuckup

is 15.1 going to be the first laptop friendly release? I've managed to do many complicated things in my life but getting a gui on freebsd is beyond me so I end up using OpenBSD or GhostBSD on laptops, but I'd rather use Free

enabling seatd and running sway takes like 5 minutes

oh, i'm sorry and sysrc kld_list="acpi_video acpi_ibm i915kms"

sbr: If just GUI is so big problem, then I would give up right now

FreeBSD is damn tough

elivoncoder: a few days maybe, depends on how free bugmeister is

my ax210 works good, stable

havent got wpa3 going yet hto

ah thx vex

elivoncoder: I have also ax210, purchased it yesterday.... still some issues on 15.1, I have reverted to use older driver and it;'s even not slower

elivoncoder: It can crash and when it does, he Internet connection is working, but I can't ping to this computer nor use ssh

ive been running 15.1 since before the first rc, and havent had a single issue with it /shrug

ok, good to know. I have had issues also in Live CD, so I suppose it's not my fault

Has anyone had any luck getting wifi on FreeBSD 15.1 to operate in 11ac mode? I've seen claims of 100+ Mbps wifi speeds and mine is stuck at around 15-20 Mbps. When I look at the mode, mine is in 11a and I can't get it to change to anything else.

Hardware is a thinkpad T480 if it makes a difference.

parent interface: iwx0

media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11ac

Buy ax210, it's suppose to be well suported. Althought my is buggy on iwlwifi drivers.

I've tried the iwlwifi driver and while it loads, it's still stuck on 11a mode

The NIC is an Intel AC 8265 wireless NIC.

What is your chipset? I had same issue with my older wifi card, I have bought the ax210

fac3: looks same as me in past, mine was also not working

Like the CPU? It's an i5-8350

Or another chipset?

wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops/Thinkpad_T480 this is a reference guide I was using for some troubleshooting.

do you have right config? What do "sysctl net.wlan.device" says?

Specs are similar

Running it as root gives: sysctl: unknown oid 'net.wlan.device'

sry mistake, "sysctl net.wlan.devices"

try again

That returns: net.wlan.devices: iwlwifi0

ok great, you use newer iwlwifi0. But the wiki.freebsd.org/Laptops/Thinkpad_T480 talks about iwm0, not iwlwifi. iwlwifi are newest drivers.

Yeah, I've tried both with similar results

The wifi drivers on FreeBSD sucks

I've also tried both. You must buy newer wifi card.

Yeah, I knew they historically did. FreeBSD 15.1 though said that it merged newer Linux base wifi drivers that I was hoping to try out.

This machine dual boots Slackware, and on that OS it runs around 400Mbps

or at least it did last night when I tested.

Ooou sht, 400Mbps, I will go delete FreeBSD

However, Slackware never ever

I don't know if it's worth that. Most Linux distros could get similar, but many of them don't have good support for ZFS

Slackware is pretty good. Void is also good.

fac3: Slackware is pretty unmaintained everything - webs, docs...

fac3: why do you need ZFS on Linux?

Yeah, the docs are kind of rough.

Need is a strong word.

fac3: then why it is pretty pretty good when it don't have updated doc and webs?

Boot environments are nice to have on a laptop, and ZFS is a nice thing for servers.

fac3: but on linux you have LVM, so why do you need ZFS?

what snapshots and boot environments does lvm have?

JurassCZ: LVM isn't quite as good as ZFS. It's quite a bit more complex for things like snapshots and backups.

You can do snapshots with LVM, but it's a lot more management on how you do it than it is with ZFS.

rtprio: LVM has spashots as well. Not boot envs, but you cas rollback to LVM snapshot from live os, or from Live CD if you wish.

And it doesn't have a way to send that snapshot offsite on its own.

fac3: You don't need to send snapshot anywhere. You can just use restic. I'm not using send snapshots, because I can't easily skip big movies folders.

JurassCZ: You also have to account for the space of the snapshot when setting up the volumes. ZFS doesn't make you do that math, if there is space, it will snapshot.

Again, it's fair, and LVM is pretty good all things considered. It is just more complex than ZFS is, and it doesn't do things like data integrity.

fac3: I use one volume anyway...

Again, fair. for a laptop it probably doesn't matter. For a server I would argue otherwise

<fac3: How do you mean, when you create LVM snapshot, you have data inegrity in you backup, same as with ZFS

fac3: ok, for server maybe

I know we are talking laptops, and LVM is a perfectly viable solution for a laptop or a workstation that can be easily redeployed. LVM works for servers, but isn't ideal.

Though, I would argue it is probably important to understand how to interact with LVM if you are working in a Unix-y shop

Even if you don't run Linux, DragonFlyBSD still uses it for their volume management. I can't remember about OpenBSD or NetBSD though.

And LVM also doesn't have the ability to do a scrub the same way ZFS does; that is more what I meant about data integrity. Yes, you have a snapshot, but can you validate that your files haven't bit rotted.

fac3: I'm developer, not sysadmin. For me, as OS user, it is important i can create snapshot and do rollback to it. For external backup, ZFS will not save me from complexity, due to lack of folders omitting during send. On freebsd, I would have to use restic anyway.

I don't recall a mechanism LVM has to verify that.

Maybe. I'm not a ZFS or LVM expert, and certainly don't know your workflow well enough to tell you otherwise.

fac3: ok I don't understand it so deeply, I'm just user

I'm agreeing with you. I don't necessarily understand it that deeply either. And again, I'm not a dev nor do I really understand the process a dev goes through.

Apologies if I came across confrontationally

I thought you are sysadmin... but then why do you use ZFS on Linux when you aren't? :D

I've done some write-ups on ZFS and LVM for my blog, but I'm by no means a subject matter expert on either.

You actually don't need to care about such things so much

JurassCZ: I am a sys admin, and generally don't run ZFS on Linux.

Ah ok

Most of my servers are FreeBSD, and the Linux servers are virtualized on top of that.

My workstations are usually ext4 because I didn't understand how to do ZFS on Linux when I deployed them.

Ok now I understand

Anyway, that ax210 cost only about 20$

I may or may not do that. Faster Wifi is a nice to have, but not something I generally need.

If I do, again, I have the dual boot that I can use.

I noticed I'm getting kernel panics when I attempt to transcode a video with VA-API on FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE-p10 with i915kms on a sky lake processor

swee: there is already 15.1

oh seriously? freebsd-update isn't fetching them then

swee, To upgrade from 15.0 to 15.1 using freebsd-update you must tell it that you want to change to that release branch. Use: freebsd-update -r 15.1-RELEASE upgrade; freebsd-upgrade fetch install

right, i forgot freebsd-update separates minor versions too

oh it's swee again

hi

btw what does that ktls sa mean, that i can "download" sh into ping and now i have root?

Does anyone know if pkgbase minor update available via pkg yet?

if you're talking about 15.1 then yes i already upgraded a couple days ago.

boru freebsd.org/releases/15.1R/upgrading/#upgrade-pkg

yep

Thanks lads. Must've read over that in the relnotes...

Well, that was easy.

Yeah, mine worked flawlessly

didn't even have to reboot twice for my login.conf.db file to get regenerated

mfisher, with cap_mkdb?

I was trying to make a joke, but maybe I forgot the specifics... maybe it was that some version a while ago required a second freebsd-update run after a reboot?

I feel like 15.0 had a big update that might have needed something like that. But I really don't remember

trying to upgrade on another host and this upgrade is not working. Current install 15.0 followed the steps from the install page and after upgrading the pkg manager it doesn't do anything when entering pkg -oABI=FreeBSD:15:$(uname -p) -oOSVERSION=1501000 upgrade -r FreeBSD-base

what happens

rtprio FreeBSD-base repository is up to date, FreeBSD-base is up to date. Your packages are up to date. Nothing.

rtprio now I'm trying again to upgrade pkg.

did you update pkg first

rtprio yes. sudo pkg upgrade -yr FreeBSD-ports pkg ---> FreeBSD-ports is up to date. Your packages are up to date. However pkg -v returns 2.7.5

ok, whats the effective url of the freebsd-base repo?

checking /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf vs /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf. Seems if have a wrong url for FreeBSD-Base in this host. pastebin.com/kgVwzdrh

yeah _0 will pin you at 15.0

exacly, just left the { enabled: yes; }

and now it downloading everything.

I think pkg.freebsd.org is a bit overloaded or has some really slow sites behind it. I'm getting 43 Kb/s for most downloads

deimosBSD: can you message me your region/source ip?

this server is in california, "Fetching FreeBSD-smbutils-15.1: 100% 40 KiB 40.7 kB/s 00:01"

if i could figure out how to setup the UC Berkeley mirror, i'd just use that. it's literally 1 hop from me on the same 25gbps switch

deimosBSD: can you message me your source ip?

haha wow

yeap... hahaha

a 3rd system has zero issues :shrug emoji here:

15.1-STABLE FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE stable/15-n283993-c1f725bfb964

mt -f /dev/sa0 status

mt: /dev/sa0: Device not configured

kernel has sa support, and shows the tape drive in dmesg and camcontrol but no dice with mt.

github.com/supaplextor/tech-bucket/blob/main/FreeBSD-15/README.md (pastebin)

I don't understand it... How can it be that ports for FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE contains xrdp 0.10.6, which is version from May 2026? How couldn't be well tested. I thought that FreeBSD is conservative.

Not sure I am following your thought.

ok

JurassCZ: Ports follow their own schedule.

Obviously. So each BSD user is alpha tester for Ports software

In the base system yse

in the ports, more alpha ye

JurassCZ: Sorry. You said you didn't understand, so I thought I'd explain. But now you're saying you do understand. So if there's part of it that you don't understand, please tell us explicitly so we can clarify.

Ok will tell what I think I understand. Because newest software is packed into ports with each FreeBSD version increment, user is continuous alpha tester for software packages whcih are in Ports, with no ending.

JurassCZ: Take quarterly ports into consideration too.

Quarterly, wow... Ok, I will take also into consideration 2 years old software in each newest Debian Stable.

JurassCZ: Old doesn't necessarily mean more secure.

3 months vs 2 years

mason: I'm so happy to have such a secure software... which, however, doesn't work

JurassCZ: Now we're jumping topics. Which software isn't working for you?

We are not jumping so much. I don't want to be alpha tester.

JurassCZ: You can grab any version you want and build it. Ports are just a convenience in most cases.

I can grab any software and build it? Oh well, yes, that's the exact thing I will have to do to don't be alpha tester on FreeBSD.

Good, you're in luck then.

If you are running into a port that isn't working. The best bet would be to open a bug report.

No, the best bet is something else.

If the port is not maintained, you might concider maintaining it.

heston76: He's right. The best bet really is offering a PR with a correction, rather than just reporting it.

Perfect idea. I will do PR with a correction, just so after 3 months a stupid guy will pull the fresh and newest version of some rather crappy software into ports.

I've always want to be a diligent alha tester for fancy new GPL software.

JurassCZ: Did you have a support question?

mason: Yes

JurassCZ: Well, ask it or go away please.

mason: Ok i will ask it

mason: My question is.

mason: I would have suggested that, if solution had appeared to be the goal.

mason: is the FreeBSD user ment to be alpha tester for all that apprs in the FreeBSD ports?

JurassCZ: No, most software has a release cycle as part of their release process. FreeBSD packages stuff up after that, generally.

mason: Just for clarity, you are refering to the upstream release cycle for any particuar application?

heston76: Nothing in particular, no. You'd have to check each project to see what sort of testing model they use.