TrustedBSD
by Chris Costello

The TrustedBSD Project was started in order to develop a set of trusted operating system security extensions to the FreeBSD operating system. These extensions include POSIX.1e-compatible ACLs, mandatory access control, event auditing and fine-grained system privileges. Developers are actively extending and refining these features. Read More

Named Chroot
by Hubert Feyrer

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain software, AKA BIND, or "named", is one of the most important pieces in the mosaic that represents the structure of the Internet. Due to this importance, it is also a preferred target for hackers, who want to keep DNS from working, or worse, use security holes in the software to gain control over the machine. Such hacking of a DNS server can result in a break of confidentiality of the data returned from this server, and is, in general, a bad thing. Read More

Backing up Windows from FreeBSD
by Linh Pham

Backing up data is one of the most crucial tasks that any company must face when dealing with networks and servers. Many large companies rely on backup packages from vendors like Veritas and Computer Associates, but not all of those packages are affordable for a company with a small network or will work with FreeBSD. Also, some companies will run into an interesting mix of Windows-based and FreeBSD-based file servers and system administrators must figure out a way to backup both platforms. FreeBSD includes a very powerful backup utility with any installation, called 'tar'. Read More

Getting on the 6bone
by Michael Paddon

By now, you've probably heard of the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6. While it provides many improvements and new capabilities, the driving force behind its adoption is likely to be the much larger (and more flexible) address space that it defines. Continuing growth in the population of IP enabled devices has already put severe stress on address allocation and the routing infrastructure. The roll out of new enabling technologies such as 3G wireless and broadband to the home will predictably create a new wave of demand. One way of dealing with these pressures is to use address translation technologies and accept the consequential degeneration and balkanisation of global connectivity. Another path is transition to a networking technology that can support the demands of today and tomorrow. Read More

Multi-Homed Laptop Issues
by Hellmuth Michaelis

For several years now, I've been using FreeBSD on my laptop at work. Since I am often at different customer sites on any given day, I must adjust my laptop settings according to their network, which means a new IP address, new name server, new default gateway and so on. Editing rc.conf, resolv.conf and friends by hand was tedious. I needed something that was easy to set up, use, develop and maintain. Read More

Help, I've Fallen: Who's Afraid of the CLI?
by Gary Kline, David Leonard, and Dirk Myers

There are ways of solving problems that call for some serious C or C++ coding, or maybe just scripting with /bin/sh or perl; and then there are equally good solutions that use the strengths of the toolset included with Unix by default. In case you think solving a particular problem means having to write a script, we are going to show you how to use some of the power tools that come with your BSD operating system. Read More

Daemon's Advocate
by Greg Lehey

It's been ten years since Linus Torvalds first announced his free operating system ("just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"). BSD has been around much longer than that, but the idea of a free BSD operating system hasn't. Things have changed a lot since then, and it's worth looking at where we are and what lies ahead. Read More