Software Update: FreeBSD 9.2

Members of the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team have released version 9.2 of FreeBSD. FreeBSD was created in 1993 and is developed as a whole, unlike, say, Linux, whose kernel is maintained by one group of developers and certain applications by others. Because of this, FreeBSD is generally considered more stable and robust than several other operating systems. Downloads for the different processor architectures are available via ftp and bittorrent. Below are the release notes of version 9.2, with the most important changes.

The highlights in the 9.2-RELEASE include the following

• Support for rrpd(8) added to vlan(4). [r245076]
• xz(1) updated to version 5.0.4. [r245128]
• The ZFS filesystem now supports TRIM when used on solid state drives. ZFS TRIM support is enabled by default. [r251419] The following tunables have been added:
  • vfs.zfs.trim.enabled: Enable ZFS TRIM
  • vfs.zfs.trim.max_interval: Maximum interval in seconds between TRIM queue processing
  • vfs.zfs.trim.timeout: Delay TRIMs by up to this many seconds
  • vfs.zfs.trim.txg_delay: Delay TRIMs by up to this many TXGs
• the firewire(4) drivers have been removed from the GENERIC kernel configuration for all architectures. [r246321]
• awk(1) has been updated to version 20121220. [r246373]
• the virtio(4) drivers have been added to the GENERIC kernel configuration for amd64 and i386 architectures. [r247306]
• The ZFS filesystem now supports lz4 compression. [r247309]
• the ocean(4) has been updated to version 4.6.95.0. [r248062]
• OpenSSL has been updated to version 0.9.8y. [r248272]
• the bsdinstall(8) installer now supports installation over HTTP. [r248313]
• DTrace hooks have been enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel. [r249549]
• DTrace has been updated to version 1.9.0. [r249856]
• send mail has been updated to version 8.14.7. [r249865, r249866, r249867, r249875]
• OpenSSH has been updated to version 6.2p2. [r251135]
• less(1) has been updated to version 458. [r251154]
• Add ATA pass-through support to cam(4). [r251302]
• Implementation new rc.conf(5) syntax for hostapd(8). The new format is: ifconfig_wlanX=”HOSTAP”, where X represents the wlan(4) interface. [r252748]
• Import unmapped I/O support from head/. [r251897]
• merge nvme(4) from head/. [r252222]
• Add support for the Chelsio 40G T5. [r252495]
• Add a tunable to increase the initial TCP congestion window from 4 segments to 10 segments. This tunable can be enabled by adding net.inet.tcp.experimental.initcwnd10=1 to sysctl.conf(5). This tunable is turned off by default in FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE. [r252789]
• Update the ixgbe(4) driver. [r252898]
• Update the Intel e1000 driver. [r252899]
• Add support for the HighPoint DC Series Data Center HBA (DC7280 and R750). [r252903]
• Add service-specific setfib(1) support. This is enabled by setting: _fib in rc.conf(5).[r253233]
• Update devices supported by cxgbe(4). [r253776]
• Remove ctl(4) from the GENERIC kernel configuration. [r253860]