We’re excited to share that the FreeBSD Project has been accepted again as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2026.

This marks another year of supporting contributors who want to work on meaningful open source projects while learning from experienced FreeBSD developers.

Learn more about Google Summer of Code 2026:
https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2026/organizations/the-freebsd-project

#FreeBSD #GSoC2026 #OpenSource

The server doesn't boot natively.
It can boot in Linux rescue mode. So:
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 65536 -smp 16 \
-bios /usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd \
-drive file=/dev/nvme0n1,format=raw,if=virtio \
-drive file=/dev/nvme1n1,format=raw,if=virtio \
-netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::80-:80,hostfwd=tcp::443-:443 \
-device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net0 \
-vnc 127.0.0.1:0

A couple of lines modified in /etc/rc.conf and /etc/pf.conf

And the server is responding, while waiting for the KVM console.

#FreeBSD #RunBSD

Alt...

A VNC view of the top on the server - now running inside a VM

bug report filed on my first #freebsd kernel panic in over a decade!

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=293299

No idea if this is interesting or not, but what the heck, might as well file it. I'd rather be told "bad sysadmin, don't do that!" or "replace your disk" than let an actual bug escape.

added a 31st sparse-zvol vm disk, and: kernel panic! #freebsd

When I wrote Absolute FreeBSD, I had to manually force a panic so I could write about it. This is my first actual, proper panic since before 2018!

I feel like a proper hacker.

Alt...

freebsd kernel panic dump screen, with lots of garbage that'll go in my bug report

I just wrapped up an interesting call that was originally scheduled for last week but rescheduled for today. The client is looking for a unique setup, and thanks to having an early re-read of the fantastic The Book of PF - 4th Edition, I was able to propose some configurations that had completely slipped my mind. The client is extremely curious, and this will likely lead to a new OpenBSD deployment in an interesting environment.

At the same time, I received an email from a professor at an Italian university whom I had encouraged to extend his lectures to include BSDs. I piqued his curiosity as well and proposed a session specifically on firewalls, focusing on OpenBSD and pf. He will be reading The Book of PF soon and will likely add it to his students' recommended reading list. I'll probably present them, too.

In short - one book, a thousand new possibilities. Infinite thanks to @pitrh for the massive and wonderful work behind it.

#OpenBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #RunBSD #PF #Firewalling #IT #SysAdmin

Okay, that's the #freebsd disks section of #openzfsmastery done. Partitions, GPT labels, etc.

Tomorrow, #debian!

Want to help me eat while I make this book, and be thanked for it? https://sponsor.mwl.io

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/YTBHYC-swift-on-freebsd/

#FreeBSD #Swift

HPE Juniper Networks is hiring a FreeBSD developer/engineer to contribute to the development of Junos, the FreeBSD-based platform used in their networking products.

The role focuses on designing, developing, debugging, and maintaining system software in a production environment.

Learn more and apply: https://careers.hpe.com/us/en/job/1200521/Senior-Software-Engineer-FreeBSD

It's always encouraging to see continued investment in FreeBSD expertise across industry deployments.
#FreeBSD

The FreeBSD platform was merged into the OCI runtime spec!

FreeBSD is now an official target for OCI containers (it’s been working in Podman as an unofficial target for a while).

#FreeBSD #OCI

It's such a small gesture but it speaks volumes about the community and the love the developers put into it.

Alt...

Terminal output produced by the fortune(6) programme upon login to the FreeBSD operating system. The text says: "You can delete a range of ZFS snapshots (a-z) in multiple ways. The following will delete d and all earlier snapshots: zfs destroy mypool/data@%d To delete d and all later snapshots: zfs destroy mypool/data@d% To delete all dataset snapshots: zfs destroy mypool/data@% Make sure to let ZFS perform a dry run (-n option) first and display (-v) what it would do to confirm that the delete operation is removing exactly what you intended. -- Benedict Reuschling <bcr@FreeBSD.org>," followed by the system prompt "`u@frost ~ %`." Huge thank you to Benedict for submitting these <3