Episode Details

This week we have a FreeBSD Foundation development update, tell you about sprinkling in the TrueOS project, Dynamic WDS & a whole lot more!

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OpenSSH Removes SSHv1 Support

• In a series of commits starting here and ending with this one, Damien Miller completed the removal of all support for the now-historic SSHv1 protocol from OpenSSH.
• The final commit message, for the commit that removes the SSHv1 related regression tests, reads:

Eliminate explicit specification of protocol in tests and loops over protocol. We only support SSHv2 now.
Dropping support for SSHv1 and associated ciphers that were either suspected to or known to be broken has been planned for several releases, and has been eagerly anticipated by many in the OpenBSD camp.
In practical terms this means that starting with OpenBSD-current and snapshots as they will be very soon (and further down the road OpenBSD 6.2 with OpenSSH 7.6), the arcane options you used with ssh to connect to some end-of-life gear in a derelict data centre you don't want to visit anymore will no longer work and you will be forced do the reasonable thing. Upgrade.

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FreeBSD Foundation April 2017 Development Projects Update

FreeBSD runs on many embedded boards that provide a USB target or USB On-the-Go (OTG) interface. This allows the embedded target to act as a USB device, and present one or more interfaces (USB device classes) to a USB host. That host could be running FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS, Windows, Android, or another operating system. USB device classes include audio input or output (e.g. headphones), mass storage (USB flash drives), human interface device (keyboards, mice), communications (Ethernet adapters), and many others.

The Foundation awarded a project grant to Edward Tomasz Napierała to develop a USB mass storage target driver, using the FreeBSD CAM Target Layer (CTL) as a backend. This project allows FreeBSD running on an embedded platform, such as a BeagleBone Black or Raspberry Pi Zero, to emulate a USB mass storage target, commonly known as a USB flash stick. The backing storage for the emulated mass storage target is on the embedded board’s own storage media. It can be configured at runtime using the standard CTL configuration mechanism – the ctladm(8) utility, or the ctl.conf(5) file.

The FreeBSD target can now present a mass storage interface, a serial interface (for a console on the embedded system), and an Ethernet interface for network access. A typical usage scenario for the mass storage interface is to provide users with documentation and drivers that can be accessed from their host system. This makes it easier for new users to interact with the embedded FreeBSD board, especially in cases where the host operating system may require drivers to access all of the functionality, as with Windows and OS X.

• They provide instructions on how to confi