I just updated unbound to 1.19.3 in the stable/3.1 branch.  This fixes a number of CVEs. Anyone using it on 3.1 should consider updating the base system or use the mports version.

MidnightBSD 3.1.4 release

Fixes issues with mport and updates timezone data.

https://github.com/MidnightBSD/src/releases/tag/3.1.4

I've updated the xz version in 3.2-current to 5.4.x and avoided the known vulnerable releases. This aligns with recommendations from several sources.

As far as the calls to switch off xz for everything, that's unlikely in the short term. A lot of software distributed in mports uses tar.xz files. Further, package files generated by mport use it.  Early releases of mport used bzip2 but we migrated many years ago to tar.xz.  We're investigating the possibility of migrating to zstd and are working on updating libarchive to a newer release in base for this purpose.  It will likely not happen for the midnightbsd 3.2 release and will need to happen during a major release cycle.  (4.x? 3.3?) 

The long term risk is that xz isn't taken over or forked by a trustworthy source and CVEs start piling up.  The actual linux specific issues with 5.6.x are not a concern for BSD platforms aside from the real risk of something like this happening again.  (the supply chain attack piece is a danger)  

The harsh reality of open source is that there is a lot of code and it's difficult to review it all.  Companies have been bitten by issues like Amazon Music getting crypto mining node modules years ago or the recent attack on Notepad++ plugins.  It happens.  How we deal with it is what's important.

We've tagged 3.1.4 in git for the stable/3.1 branch and have an amd64 ISO on the FTP.  Still need to build i386.  

This includes updated timezone data and some major fixes to mport package manager.  There were a lot of issues in the 3.1.3 release of MidnightBSD with installing and using packages.

I'm uploading a 3.2 amd64 snapshot to the primary FTP server for MidnightBSD

github has blocked the xz repository which makes it more difficult for OS projects to track what is going on with the malware. Instead of blocking the repo, they should have put a warning up and blocked downloads of the affected tarballs.

We just released mport 2.6.2; it fixes two bugs with mport list and mport list updates that would cause no output to display.

This has been imported into current and stable/3.1 branches

There is an xz vulnerability in 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 that was caused by a malicious payload added via a commit.  https://boehs.org/node/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdoor

At this time, I am unaware of anything in libarchive that is considered dangerous as mentioned on that website.  MidnightBSD does not use the affected versions of xz in base. We have 5.2.9 right now.

There's two security vulnerabilities in the base system unbound.

We've updated unbound to 1.19.1 in 3.2 CURRENT and 1.19.3 in mports.

We're working on getting mports back in shape on 3.2-current.  At the moment, work is underway on the devel/llvm15 port so we can update mesa

I've been working on migrating my PS3 to a WD red 500GB ssd from the original 80GB toshiba hard drive.  The hardware part is easy.  For the software, you have to download the PS3 update from Sony's playstation website and then put it on a USB flash drive on PS3/UPDATE/ with the file named as downloaded.  It will pick it up and load.  Then you do an initial setup and then start the restore process.  (assumes you have a backup from old drive ahead of time)

It takes like an hour to backup and another hour to restore

We're in the process of migrating to perl in mports from base.  Perl went into midnightbsd many years ago (around 0.4 i think) 

There are a few reasons for the change but here are a few:

• Difficulty in updating 

• Delays between releases

• Security fixes are easier

• Less software requires Perl now than when we made the decision

The biggest downsides are with mports as a lot of it still uses Perl.  We're working on that.

It seems that mport install doesn't work sometimes and gives no output.

Workaround:

mport download pkgname

/usr/libexec/mport.install /var/db/mport/downloads/pkgfilename.mport

where pkgname is something like gmake and pkgfilename.mport is something like gmake-3.8.1.mport

perl is not correctly setting enabling man pages if a system uses mandoc. It kind of guesses if nroff is present. This causes many perl ports to not build man pages. Fixed in stable/3.1

We're now forcing man1dir/man3dir and man1ext/man3ext settings in build (missed)

Mandoc (mdocml) includes a man.cgi(8) script to display man pages.  Here's a quick and dirty explanation on how to set it up.

• mport install mdocml 

• Files will be installed in /usr/local/www/mdocml/

• Configure apache

• Configure man directory

create a directory /man on your file system. This is the default path. 

in it, create a file called manpath.conf

it should have a RELATIVE path for one or more directories (per line) that you want to index. 

so /man/midnightbsd-3.1

copy the man1, man2, and so on folders from /usr/share/man for your release. 

extract all of then with gunzip

run makewhatis -a . from the /man/midnightbsd-3.1 folder.  This will create your mandoc.db file. 

Apache config

<VirtualHost *:80>
        Protocols h2c http/1.1
        H2Direct on
        DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/mdocml/htdocs/
        ServerName man.midnightbsd.org
        ErrorLog /var/log/man.midnightbsd.org-error_log
        CustomLog /var/log/man.midnightbsd.org-access_log combinedio
        RedirectMatch ^/$ /cgi-bin/man.cgi
        <Directory /usr/local/www/mdocml/>
        DirectoryIndex man.cgi index.html
        Require all granted
       
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/usr/local/www/mdocml/cgi-bin/"
        <Location "/cgi-bin/man.cgi">
        Options +ExecCGI
        SetHandler cgi-script
       

Here are our plans for 2024:

• 3.2 release - bug fix release with some base system third-party library updates. This is on track to be released in the next few months. TODO: decide if perl will migrate to ports. (likely)

• 4.0 work started - still planning what will be in this release Updating mesa and llvm ports (llvm 12 recently added)

• Migrate from svn to git to magus indexer. (done today) Find ways to cut costs month to month. (spending roughly $300 a month on server/cloud plus on prem infra including business internet connection)

• Determine what we want to do with portsnap. Love to know if you use it.

1\. mport install vm-bhyve
2\. vm init
6\. cp /usr/local/share/examples/vm-bhyve/* /mountpoint/for/vm/.templates/
7\. vm switch create public
8\. vm switch add public em0
9\. vm iso https://midnightbsd.org/ftp/MidnightBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/3.1.3/MidnightBSD-3.1.3--amd64-disc1.iso
10\. vm create myguest
11\. vm install [-f] myguest MidnightBSD-3.1.3--amd64-disc1.iso
12\. vm console myguest

Here's an example template for midnightbsd. 

loader="bhyveload"
cpu=3
memory=4096M
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0.img"
disk0_size="90"

I had a lot of issues getting HPE DL20 gen9 server working with Linux today.  It won't even boot with ubuntu server 23.10 or the LTS release. It would hang with constant resets on the SSA. 

Disabling SSA and going to AHCI mode in the bios allowed me to boot debian 12 after a lot of trial and error.

https://computingforgeeks.com/install-mirantis-cri-dockerd-as-docker-engine-shim-for-kubernetes/

kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16 --cri-socket=unix:///var/run/cri-dockerd.sock