5:35 PM - New mports
audio/nas, qmake, qt33, python 2.3, and python 2.4 were added to mports today. linux-thunderbird was updated.
MidnightBSD Developer Journal
Fri, 17 Nov 2006
Thu, 16 Nov 2006
8:40 AM - Vulnerability in Firewire
Here is an advisory that also affects MidnightBSD. A patch was added to cvs moments ago.
-- http://www.kernelhacking.com/rodrigo Kernel Hacking: If i really know, i can hack GPG KeyID: 5E90CA19 ________________________________________________ Message sent using UebiMiau 2.7.2
FreeBSD all versions FireWire IOCTL kernel integer overflow information disclousure 11/15/2006 Notice =================== This bug has been specially discovered for the Month of Kernel Bugs and to the Hackers to Hackers Conference III (http://www.h2hc.org.br/en/). Summary =================== Firewire device is enabled by default in the GENERIC kernel. It defines an IOCTL function which can be malicious called passing a negative buffer lenght value. This value will bypass the lenght check (because the value is negative) and will be used in a copyout operation. Systems Affected =================== FreeBSD all versions NetBSD all versions DragonFly all versions TrustedBSD* all versions Impact =================== This is a kernel bug and the system can be compromised by local users and important system informations can be discloused (basically, a mem dump ;) ) Explanation =================== Firewire interface can be tunned. It provides an ioctl function receiving many parameters that can be changed. The follow is a code fragment from (FreeBSD - dev/firewire/fwdev.c (fw_ioctl function) || DragonFlyBSD bus/firewire/fwdev.c (fw_ioctl function) || NetBSD - dev/ieee1394/fwdev.c (FW_IOCTL function)) file: if (crom_buf->len < len) len = crom_buf->len; else crom_buf->len = len; err = copyout(ptr, crom_buf->ptr, len); We control the crom_buf->len (it's passed as argument to the ioctl function) so, passing it as a negative value will bypass this if statement (our value is minor than the default one). So, our value is used in a copyout function. ptr is defined before this copyout as: if ( fwdev == NULL ) { ... ptr = malloc(CROMSIZE, M_FW, M_WAITOK); ... } else { ptr = (void *)&fwdev->csrrom[0]; ... } This information disclousure lead an attacker dump all the system memory. Solution =================== Attached in this advisory a patch for the FreeBSD 5.5 (it's pretty simple, so, just need to be little changed to the other BSD's) Timelife =================== 11/15/2006 - Advisory Public Disclousure (sorry for the developers, but we are just respecting the Month of Kernel Bugs Timelife) Acknowledgments =================== Filipe Balestra <filipe@balestra.com.br> and Rodrigo Rubira Branco (BSDaemon) <rodrigo@kernelhacking.com> for the discovering, analysis and patch. Contact Information =================== You can reach the authors of this advisory by mail or visiting some websites: http://www.balestra.com.br -> Personal Website of Filipe http://www.risesecurity.org -> RISE Security Research (Rodrigo is member of the RISE Security Team) http://www.kernelhacking.com/rodrigo -> Personal Website of Rodrigo References =================== http://www.kernelhacking.com/bsdadv1.txt -> Actual version of the advisory http://www.risesecurity.org/RISE-2006002.txt -> Related issue Disclaimer (taken from teso-team) =================== This advisory does not claim to be complete or to be usable for any purpose. Especially information on the vulnerable systems may be inaccurate or wrong. The supplied exploit is not to be used for malicious purposes, but for educational purposes only. This advisory is free for open distribution in unmodified form.
--- dev/firewire/fwdev.c.origFri Oct 13 13:12:49 2006 +++ dev/firewire/fwdev.cFri Oct 13 13:13:42 2006 @@ -712,7 +712,7 @@ out: else len = fwdev->rommax - CSRROMOFF + 4; } -if (crom_buf->len < len) +if (crom_buf->len < len && crom_buf->len > 0) len = crom_buf->len; else crom_buf->len = len;
Tue, 14 Nov 2006
1:40 PM - (no subject)
Subversion was updated to the latest release. This should fix the fetch issue some people were having.
Thu, 9 Nov 2006
10:37 AM - Python 2.2
Python 2.2 was just added to mports. We now have 2.1 and 2.2 working on MidnightBSD. The 2.1 port makes a symlink to /usr/local/bin/python but the 2.2 port does not. If you use a port that requires python like subversion, you will need to manually add the symlink if you choose to use python 2.2
10:09 AM - OpenSSH port
OpenSSH port was updated to 4.5p1. Anyone concerned about the possible security issue can install this port.
9:11 AM - mports and openssh
A new version of OpenSSH was released. We are researching the need to update the version in base. The fix list states that there were bugs in solaris and a potential security hole that requires additional interference to compromise.
There have been several additions to ports. One of the most recent additions is xinetd.
Sat, 4 Nov 2006
1:06 PM - New ports
apr and subversion were added today. python 2.1 now creates a symlink as python to enable these ports.
8:28 AM - Update
The python 2.1 port has been fixed. We finally have working python on MidnightBSD. We will attempt to port a recent version of Python soon, but the older version was much easier to get working.
I will be experimenting with the package build system later today. If the scripts work with python 2.1 or can easily be back ported, I should be able to build packages on the next snapshot or possibly beta release. Including packages is a requirement for installing the graphical environment as we want to use ports to ease upgrades and allow us to automate software updates in the future.
I will be experimenting with the package build system later today. If the scripts work with python 2.1 or can easily be back ported, I should be able to build packages on the next snapshot or possibly beta release. Including packages is a requirement for installing the graphical environment as we want to use ports to ease upgrades and allow us to automate software updates in the future.
Wed, 1 Nov 2006
11:49 AM - mports: German
I've added several german mports this morning including additional aspell and ispell dictionaries, acrobat reader and staroffice.
11:48 AM - mports: screen Vulnerability
Ubuntu published a security vulnerability on screen yesterday. I've already patched the mport.
10:57 AM - New Snapshot
A new snapshot was released yesterday for i386. It includes improved hardware support for ATI and Intel graphics cards as well as Intel ICH8 support. mpt, vge, pci, usb, and a slew of other device s were synced with FreeBSD 6.1 Release or 6-Stable. We've also updated base and it includes a recent mports tarball with around 450 ports!
Installation Notes:
1. packages are still not bundled on the isos. The holdup is python support. We need to either rewrite the package split script or get python running correctly (preferred). Python modules are not loading in our experimental port and its marked broken. Do not try to install xorg or other packages in the installer as you will get annoying error messages. This is by far the largest holdup to 0.1 Release.
2. If you have a recent motherboard such as the Intel DP965LT with a third party sata to pata interface on the motherboard, it may not detect your cdrom drives. You can use a usb cdrom to install in this case.
3. If you'd like to update your mports, use anonymous cvs as posted on the website. The tar.gz file on the ftp is older than the one included in this release.
Hardware:
This release is solely for i386, but I'm attempting to cross compile an amd64 snapshot. If all goes well, I will post it on the ftp today or tomorrow.
Testing:
This release has been tested on three systems. All three have Intel processors of various ages... PIII Xeon 550mhz on Generic, Xeon P4 2.0Ghz SMP, D805 2.66 Dual Core. Sadly I no longer have an AMD system to test with.
Feedback:
Please report any issues on our forum.
Download:
You can get this release on the MidnightBSD FTP server or the ISC mirror.
Installation Notes:
1. packages are still not bundled on the isos. The holdup is python support. We need to either rewrite the package split script or get python running correctly (preferred). Python modules are not loading in our experimental port and its marked broken. Do not try to install xorg or other packages in the installer as you will get annoying error messages. This is by far the largest holdup to 0.1 Release.
2. If you have a recent motherboard such as the Intel DP965LT with a third party sata to pata interface on the motherboard, it may not detect your cdrom drives. You can use a usb cdrom to install in this case.
3. If you'd like to update your mports, use anonymous cvs as posted on the website. The tar.gz file on the ftp is older than the one included in this release.
Hardware:
This release is solely for i386, but I'm attempting to cross compile an amd64 snapshot. If all goes well, I will post it on the ftp today or tomorrow.
Testing:
This release has been tested on three systems. All three have Intel processors of various ages... PIII Xeon 550mhz on Generic, Xeon P4 2.0Ghz SMP, D805 2.66 Dual Core. Sadly I no longer have an AMD system to test with.
Feedback:
Please report any issues on our forum.
Download:
You can get this release on the MidnightBSD FTP server or the ISC mirror.
Mon, 30 Oct 2006
2:59 AM - OpenSSH issues
I've isolated the problem with OpenSSH. OpenSSH 4.4p1 requires strtonum. Archite commited it 2 months ago, but he forgot to add it to stdlib.h :)
As such, the function didn't have a correct prototype and caused the function which reads /etc/ssh/moduli to always hit its error handler.
The mport version now appears to work properly. I'll try base later.
Sat, 28 Oct 2006
2:39 AM - Gaming
Our first OpenGL game is working under MidnightBSD. Enemy Territory was running with the nvidia freebsd binary driver tonight at about 70fps @ 1024 x 768 on a GeForce 7300 pcie card while compiling gcc on a dual core 2.66 Pentium D.
For ET fans, there appears to be some kick issues on the server I tested tonight. It could be a cvar violation in relation to "linux" checks. I need to sleep so I won't be investigating it further tonight.
The system is running a kernel from late yesterday prior to the last few commits with SSE.
On a side note, I noticed the generic ide controller detection is picking up the single pci channel on my intel motherboard but not the drives connected to it. There is more information on this in the forum under general hardware support.
Fri, 27 Oct 2006
8:50 PM - A list of drivers updated
ata, fdc, kbdmux, usb, mpt, atkbd, vge, random, pci, and ahb.
8:45 PM - mports
Phil's been hard at work with mports lately. In the last few days he's imported postgresql, php5, aide, mhash, php5-mysql, mplayer, mplayer-skins, xvid, mail/spamd, www/neon, pwgen, bitlbee, postgresql-plruby, p5-DBD-pg, and postgresql-docs.
I'm also added linux-firefox and linux-firefox-devel updates.
8:36 PM - src/sys/dev and cam updates
I've spent a good part of the day updating support for various hardware devices. MidnightBSD now supports Intel ICH8 sata chipsets including the version found on the Intel DP965LT Motherboard. Fixes were imported for usb, atkbd, kbdmux, and kbd. The mpt driver used by several LSI SCSI and Fibre Channel controllers was udated, although it has not be extensively tested yet.
If you purchase a newer system with an unsupported PATA controller like that included with the above mentioned intel board, you can install MidnightBSD using a USB cd/dvd drive. There are some issues with some usb devices and midnightbsd. If you have difficulty, try booting a freebsd 6.2 beta cd. You can install freebsd and then build and install midnightbsd from source. Remember the kernel will not sync well with userland so you must do an installworld before rebooting. You can always install the kernel and boot off kernel.old to installworld if you wish to test first. I'm hoping the new USB driver updates might help with this problem. I've noticed it with a Pioneer DVD burner which is also known to be a bit odd in OS X and Windows.
Thu, 26 Oct 2006
12:02 AM - Firefox 2, WITH_DEBUG for mports, ECHO_MSG cleanup
Firefox 2.0 was added to mports on Tuesday. The www/linux-firefox port is now firefox2. linux-firefox-devel is now an october release of firefox 3.0a.
FreeBSD recently announced some of the SoC project results. We've been reviewing a few of the projects for possible inclusion in MidnightBSD. Two of the ports changes have been added to MidnightBSD's mports. WITH_DEBUG allows you to add common debug flags (-g) or a specified flag to ports to allow them to compile with debuging turned on. This could be useful for port maintainers. Some mports already have a WITH_DEBUG option. We've also fixed some of the erroneous uses of ECHO_CMD and replaced it with ECHO_MSG. For details on the differences, please consult the bsd.port.mk file in your mports/Mk directory.
I realize many of you are waiting for unique features in MidnightBSD. We are working on some new things, but we also want to track FreeBSD enhancements as long as possible. All the BSD projects share from one another and someday we hope to contribute useful code back to the community.
Our security officer has been working on some very interesting improvements. I've been working on several projects at the same time including Python patches, fixing installation problems with the ISOs, and working on adding support for the intel ICH8 chipset used in my new desktop. The IDE controller is not detected on bootup but all sata controllers are working in compatibility mode.
FreeBSD recently announced some of the SoC project results. We've been reviewing a few of the projects for possible inclusion in MidnightBSD. Two of the ports changes have been added to MidnightBSD's mports. WITH_DEBUG allows you to add common debug flags (-g) or a specified flag to ports to allow them to compile with debuging turned on. This could be useful for port maintainers. Some mports already have a WITH_DEBUG option. We've also fixed some of the erroneous uses of ECHO_CMD and replaced it with ECHO_MSG. For details on the differences, please consult the bsd.port.mk file in your mports/Mk directory.
I realize many of you are waiting for unique features in MidnightBSD. We are working on some new things, but we also want to track FreeBSD enhancements as long as possible. All the BSD projects share from one another and someday we hope to contribute useful code back to the community.
Our security officer has been working on some very interesting improvements. I've been working on several projects at the same time including Python patches, fixing installation problems with the ISOs, and working on adding support for the intel ICH8 chipset used in my new desktop. The IDE controller is not detected on bootup but all sata controllers are working in compatibility mode.
Wed, 18 Oct 2006
12:16 AM - rm, ls, amd, GNUstep?
I've commited some minor changes to rm (1) and ls (1) today along with some corrections to the amd (8) rc startup script.
On the GNUstep front, installer changes must be made to add GNUstep and its environment. This can not be completed until the installer allows ports to be installed, etc.
A list of apps to include in a default install have not been determined yet. A word processor, text editor, email client, web browser and media player are obvious needs. I'd like a good sampling of GNUstep applications with the system. I'm going to look at the GNUstep live cd for ideas, but any additional thoughts could be left on our website forums in the GNUstep section. In fact, any applications that you want in base, please post there. We'd love to know what users or potential users actually want or need. Please specify if you *need* it or just want it. As a BSD project, we don't want to include too much where it feels big (4CD redhat install is bad for instance) Our installer should be smaller than Windows Vista + Visual Studio or Mac OS X including developer tools. (hopefully smaller than that)
So far we have been unsuccessful getting Etoile to run on MidnightBSD. Our current plan is to roll out GNUstep and some basic apps with our installer first and then revisit Etoile. This will give their project more time to improve the system and will give us time to get essential components ready. If etoile does not work out, we'll go down a different path.
We've had increasing pressure to release a release lately. I realize everyone is anxious, but I also know we will be heavily judged on this first release.
On the GNUstep front, installer changes must be made to add GNUstep and its environment. This can not be completed until the installer allows ports to be installed, etc.
A list of apps to include in a default install have not been determined yet. A word processor, text editor, email client, web browser and media player are obvious needs. I'd like a good sampling of GNUstep applications with the system. I'm going to look at the GNUstep live cd for ideas, but any additional thoughts could be left on our website forums in the GNUstep section. In fact, any applications that you want in base, please post there. We'd love to know what users or potential users actually want or need. Please specify if you *need* it or just want it. As a BSD project, we don't want to include too much where it feels big (4CD redhat install is bad for instance) Our installer should be smaller than Windows Vista + Visual Studio or Mac OS X including developer tools. (hopefully smaller than that)
So far we have been unsuccessful getting Etoile to run on MidnightBSD. Our current plan is to roll out GNUstep and some basic apps with our installer first and then revisit Etoile. This will give their project more time to improve the system and will give us time to get essential components ready. If etoile does not work out, we'll go down a different path.
We've had increasing pressure to release a release lately. I realize everyone is anxious, but I also know we will be heavily judged on this first release.
12:11 AM - New Snapshot posted yesterday
A new snapshot including the fixed to em and updates to ata was posted on the FTP server. There are also possible fixes for installing mports during install and setting time zones.
More updates to ata will be commited in due time.
Also, we had talked about releasing a beta a few weeks ago. We decided to hold off until the installer issues are fixed. There is also a possible problem with the OpenSSH updates which we must test and correct if necessary.
More updates to ata will be commited in due time.
Also, we had talked about releasing a beta a few weeks ago. We decided to hold off until the installer issues are fixed. There is also a possible problem with the OpenSSH updates which we must test and correct if necessary.
Fri, 13 Oct 2006
10:52 PM - src/sys/dev/ata
I started working on ata tonight. src might be broken on and off during the weekend as i work on it.
Archite is working on mtree and security scripts.
Wintellect has been commiting some ports. Cherokee was added on the 11th. OpenBox and xli were commited earlier in the week.
Development has slowed down this week. Most commiters are quite busy right now. I'm personally still working on getting MidnightBSD to support my new computer.
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