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The release notes for FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system since 4.11-RELEASE. Both changes for kernel and userland are listed, as well as applicable security advisories for the base system that were issued since the last release. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.
This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE on the i386 hardware platform. It describes new features of FreeBSD that have been added (or changed) since 4.11-RELEASE. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.
The snapshot distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the 4-STABLE development branch between 4.11-RELEASE and the future 4.12-RELEASE. Some pre-built, binary snapshot distributions along this branch can be found at http://snapshots.jp.FreeBSD.org/.
This section describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 4.11-RELEASE. Typical release note items document new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bugfixes, or contributed software upgrades. Security advisories for the base system that were issued after 4.11-RELEASE are also listed.
Two buffer overflows in the TELNET client program have been corrected. They could have allowed a malicious TELNET server or an active network attacker to cause telnet(1) to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running it. More information can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:01.telnet.
A information disclosure vulnerability in the sendfile(2) system call, which could permit it to transmit random parts of kernel memory, has been fixed. More details are in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:02.sendfile.
An information leak vulnerability in the SIOCGIFCONF ioctl(2), which leaked 12 bytes of kernel memory, has been fixed. More details are in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:04.ifconf.
Several programming errors in cvs(1), which could potentially cause arbitrary code to be executed on CVS servers, have been corrected. Further information can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:05.cvs.
An error in the default permissions on the /dev/iir device node, which allowed unprivileged local users can send commands to the hardware supported by the iir(4) driver, has been fixed. For more information, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:06.iir.
A bug in the validation of i386_get_ldt(2) system call input arguments, which may allow kernel memory may be disclosed to the user process, has been fixed. For more information, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:07.ldt.
Several information disclosure vulnerabilities in various parts of the kernel have been fixed. For more information, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:08.kmem.
Because of an information disclosure vulnerability on processors using Hyper-Threading
Technology (HTT), the machdep.hyperthreading_allowed sysctl
variable has been added. It defaults to 1 (HTT enabled) on
FreeBSD CURRENT, and 0 (HTT disabled) on the 4-STABLE and
5-STABLE development branches and supported security fix branches. More information can
be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:09.htt.
Two problems in the gzip(1) utility have been fixed. These may allow a local user to modify permissions of arbitrary files and overwrite arbitrary local files when uncompressing a file. For more information, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:11.gzip.
Two security-related problems have been fixed in bzip2(1). These include a potential denial of service and unauthorized manipulation of file permissions. For more information, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:14.bzip2.
Two problems in FreeBSD's TCP stack have been fixed. They could allow attackers to stall existing TCP connections, creating a denial-of-service situation. More information is contained in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-05:15.tcp.
A bug in the smbfs file system, which could allow an attacker to escape out of chroot(2) environments on an smbfs mounted filesystem, has been fixed. For more details, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:16.smbfs.
A potential denial of service problem in sendmail(8) caused by excessive recursion which leads to stack exhaustion when attempting delivery of a malformed MIME message, has been fixed. For more details, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:17.sendmail.
A potential buffer overflow condition in sppp(4) has been corrected. For more details, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:18.ppp.
An OpenSSL bug related to validation of PKCS#1 v1.5 signatures has been fixed. For more details, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:19.openssl.
Several programming errors have been fixed in gzip(1). They could have the effect of causing a crash or an infinite loop when decompressing files. More information can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:21.gzip.
Several vulnerabilities have been fixed in OpenSSH. More details can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:22.openssh.
Multiple errors in the OpenSSL crypto(3) library have been fixed. Potential effects are varied, and are documented in more detail in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:23.openssl.
A bug that could allow users in the operator group to read parts of kernel memory has been corrected. For more details, consult security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:25.kmem.
A bug in gtar(1) has been fixed. Under certain circumstances, this bug could allow an attacker to overwrite files with the permissions of a user running gtar(1). More details on the exact impact of the bug, as well as workaround and patch information, can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-06:26.gtar.
An error in gtar(1), which could in certain circumstances lead to arbitrary overwriting of files in the file system, has been fixed. Although FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE is no longer supported with respect to security advisories, the issue is the same as that described in FreeBSD-SA-07:10.tar.
The ce(4) driver has been added to support Cronyx Tau32-PCI adapters.
The BTX kernel used by the boot loader has been changed to invoke BIOS routines from real mode. This change makes it possible to boot FreeBSD from USB devices.
The bce(4) driver, which supports Broadcom NetXtreme II (BCM5706/BCM5708) PCI/PCIe Gigabit Ethernet controllers, has been added. Unlike the versions of this driver in newer FreeBSD releases, this version does not support jumbo frames or hardware VLAN tagging. For more details, see bce(4).
The mfi driver, which supports the LSI MegaRAID SAS controller family, has been added. Unlike versions of this driver included with newer FreeBSD releases, this version does not include the Linux ioctl(2) layer.
The mpt(4) driver has been updated to a version from FreeBSD FreeBSD-CURRENT. This brings support for FC target mode, SAS HBAs, and U320 negotiations.
The getaddrinfo(3) function now queries A DNS resource records before AAAA records when AF_UNSPEC is specified. Some broken DNS servers return NXDOMAIN against non-existent AAAA queries, even when it should return NOERROR with empty return records. This is a problem for an IPv4/IPv6 dual stack node because the NXDOMAIN returned by the first query of an AAAA record makes the querying server stop attempting to resolve the A record if any. Also, this behavior has been recognized as a potential denial-of-service attack (see http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/714121 for more details). Note that although the query order has been changed, the returned result still includes AF_INET6 records before AF_INET records.
sed(1) now
supports a -l option to make its output line-buffered.
sendmail has been updated from version 8.13.1 to version 8.14.2.
The timezone database has been updated from the tzdata2004g release to the tzdata2008b release.
If you're upgrading from a previous release of FreeBSD, you generally will have three options:
Using the binary upgrade option of sysinstall(8). This option is perhaps the quickest, although it presumes that your installation of FreeBSD uses no special compilation options.
Performing a complete reinstall of FreeBSD. Technically, this is not an upgrading method, and in any case is usually less convenient than a binary upgrade, in that it requires you to manually backup and restore the contents of /etc. However, it may be useful in cases where you want (or need) to change the partitioning of your disks.
From source code in /usr/src. This route is more flexible, but requires more disk space, time, and technical expertise. More information can be found in the ``Using make world'' section of the FreeBSD Handbook. Upgrading from very old versions of FreeBSD may be problematic; in cases like this, it is usually more effective to perform a binary upgrade or a complete reinstall.
Please read the INSTALL.TXT file for more information, preferably before beginning an upgrade. If you are upgrading from source, please be sure to read /usr/src/UPDATING as well.
Finally, if you want to use one of various means to track the -STABLE or -CURRENT branches of FreeBSD, please be sure to consult the ``-CURRENT vs. -STABLE'' section of the FreeBSD Handbook.
Important: Upgrading FreeBSD should, of course, only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files.
This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from http://snapshots.jp.FreeBSD.org/.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
All users of FreeBSD 4-STABLE should subscribe to the <stable@FreeBSD.org> mailing list.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.