FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE Release Notes
Abstract
The release notes for FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE contain a summary of the changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 12-STABLE development line. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.
Introduction
This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.
The release distribution to which these release notes apply represents the latest point along the 12-STABLE development branch since 12-STABLE was created. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
The release distribution to which these release notes apply represents a point along the 12-STABLE development branch since 12.3-RELEASE. The 12.4-RELEASE is expected to be the final release from the 12-STABLE branch. Information regarding pre-built, binary release distributions along this branch can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/.
This distribution of FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE is a release distribution. It can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/ or any of its mirrors. More information on obtaining this (or other) release distributions of FreeBSD can be found in the Obtaining FreeBSD appendix to the FreeBSD Handbook.
All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing FreeBSD. The errata document is updated with "late-breaking" information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.
This document describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 12.3-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 12-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as MERGED features.
Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 12.3-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.
Upgrading from Previous Releases of FreeBSD
Binary upgrades between RELEASE versions (and snapshots of the various security branches) are supported using the freebsd-update(8) utility. The binary upgrade procedure will update unmodified userland utilities, as well as unmodified GENERIC kernels distributed as a part of an official FreeBSD release. The freebsd-update(8) utility requires that the host being upgraded have Internet connectivity.
Source-based upgrades (those based on recompiling the FreeBSD base system from source code) from previous versions are supported, according to the instructions in /usr/src/UPDATING.
Upgrading FreeBSD should only be attempted after backing up all data and configuration files. |
Security and Errata
This section lists the various Security Advisories and Errata Notices since 12.3-RELEASE.
Security Advisories
| Advisory | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
15 March 2022 | Multiple WiFi issues | |
15 March 2022 | OpenSSL certificate parsing infinite loop | |
6 April 2022 | Potential jail escape vulnerabilities in netmap | |
6 April 2022 | Bhyve e82545 device emulation out-of-bounds write | |
6 April 2022 | mpr/mps/mpt driver ioctl heap out-of-bounds write | |
6 April 2022 | 802.11 heap buffer overflow | |
6 April 2022 | zlib compression out-of-bounds write | |
9 August 2022 | Out of bound read in elf_note_prpsinfo() | |
9 August 2022 | AIO credential reference count leak | |
9 August 2022 | Memory disclosure by stale virtual memory mapping | |
30 August 2022 | zlib heap buffer overflow | |
29 November 2022 (revised) | Multiple vulnerabilities in Heimdal | |
29 November 2022 | Stack overflow in ping(8) |
Errata Notices
| Errata | Date | Topic |
|---|---|---|
11 January 2022 | Incorrect XSAVE state size | |
11 January 2022 | vPCI compatibility improvements with certain Hyper-V releases | |
11 January 2022 | Incorrect PCID mode invalidations | |
11 January 2022 | Incorrect fragmented IPv4 packet handling in libalias | |
1 February 2022 | Regression in i386 TLB invalidation logic | |
15 March 2022 | freebsd-update creating erroneous boot environments | |
22 March 2022 | Timezone database information update | |
9 August 2022 | Kernel memory corruption during SCSI error recovery | |
30 August 2022 | Timezone database information update | |
1 November 2022 | Timezone database information update | |
29 November 2022 | Regression in Heimdal KDC |
Userland
This section covers changes and additions to userland applications, contributed software, and system utilities.
Userland Application Changes
The ar(1) utility does not overwrite the stdout stream pointer to make it compatible with the musl library. It also deprecates the -T flag. 21a6c9bd6f2f (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The cp(1) utility will detect infinite recursion caused by -R flag and squash it. b57954717ddf a605ca25ef68 (Sponsored by Klara, Inc.)
The cp(1) utility will honor properly -H, -L and -P flags. Notably, it will not resolve symlinks encountedered during traversal when either -H or -P are specified. 1d9f60b05128 (Sponsored by Klara, Inc.)
The cp(1) utility will allow -P working without -R as per POSIX. 19413ce66cc0
The df(1) utility will now support using -l and -t flags together. If both are specified, the parameter list of the -t option is applied on top of the selection of local file systems. 741b90dc69ee
The elfctl(1) utility will avoid touching files if no changes are made. e048bd5c0954 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The elfctl(1) utility will detect if host endianness is different from target endianness and swap byte order of ELF note fields instead of failing. c7d961a39893 (Sponsored by Stormshield)
The elfctl(1) utility had some improvements to the manual page. f3cdcf235966 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The elfctl(1) utility had a number of bugs fixed involving operations with multiple features on multiple files, -e being specified multiple times and error handling for the -e flag. bbb92ab05fa2 a528bad95e0c d3cbb4745a13 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The fsck_ufs(8) utility had a segfault bug fixed when using with gjournal(8). f8145bd4bcc0
The growfs(8) utility will not error if the file system is already the requested size. 11f45b8f8009 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The nfsd(8) utility had a number of sanity checks added. 0f2244008573 b5c577931db1 5ad7804beb38 c0ea059da22f
The nfsd(8) utility had a bug fixed when verifying for attributes like FilesAvail. b386392ea909
The nfsd(8) utility had a bug fixed regarding session slot freeing for NFSv4.1/4.2 81091a7ca11a
The nfsd(8) utility had a bug fixed when handling of Open/Create for the pNFS server. d5c176ad6a7b
The sh(1) utility will now read more profile files. It will load each .sh file in /etc/profile.d, then /usr/local/etc/profile, then each .sh file in /usr/local/etc/profile.d/. 73ab1c87c208
The usbconfig(8) utility will use getopt(3) to handle options. 081853844bd4
The usbconfig(8) utility had its documentation improved. 940db7edacb2
The usbconfig(8) utility has been improved by adding a -v flag. bb0b7f405138 1cab5dac1c2d
Contributed Software
The blacklistd(8) daemon will now handle 0-sized messages. 5f7ae464db5b
The dma(8) utility has been updated to snapshot 2022-01-27. 27941a274ebf
The dma(8) mail agent will now exit if invoked with invalid (zero) argc. 647d3bf17cd9 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The dma(8) mail agent will now limit lines to 998 characters, as per RFC2822. 5c1ee92b0eba (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The expat C library for parsing XML has been updated to version 2.4.9. 8a7b2fbbaae4
The file(1) utility has been updated to version 5.43. 91f1a04f9baa
The libarchive(3) library has been updated to version 3.6.0. bbc312a1ec99
The LLVM toolchain suite has been updated to version 13.0.0. 838e2fa19531
The mandoc(1) utility has been updated to version 1.14.6. 6ec92eb155fb
OpenBSM had a bug fixed about free() in au_read_rec error case. 990aa6476eec
OpenSSL has been updated to 1.1.1q. c83325e95a98
OpenSSH has been updated to 9.1p1. 50cb877af1fb (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The sendmail(8) mail transport agent had a bug fixed about authentication with cyrus-sasl-2.1.28. 1ccfac2381c3 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The sqlite3(1) utility has been updated to version 3.39.3. 25fd07c106d8
The telnet(1) utility now silently ignores invalid set ' ' and invalid help help commands instead of having a segmentation fault. eeadef8fd523
The telnet(1) utility had CVE-2020-39028 fixed. f2aa49e7fda5
The telnet(1) utility had CVE-2020-10188 fixed. 229863871f52
The telnetd(8) daemon has been deprecated. 616b1b813891
The tcpdump(1) utility now allow users to set a number on rules which will be exposed as part of the pflog header. 7f944794868f (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The tzdata information was updated to correct DST (Daylight Savings Time) in Fiji and Palestine. 74a0f31dbbd0 89e293e5dcb4
The tzdata 2022f was imported into the tree. df5c24d59089
The unbound(8) utility has been updated to version 1.16.3. 51206a8d11ae
wpa has been updated to version 2.10. This includes hostapd 2.10. ea5113953168
Kernel
This section covers changes to kernel configurations, system tuning, and system control parameters that are not otherwise categorized.
General Kernel Changes
The hwpmc(4) framework had a counter/interrupt state initialization bug fixed for arm64. c8a4404da737 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The hwpmc(4) framework has added IDs for Intel Comet/Ice/Tiger/Rocketlake CPUs. d2138bddf3ec
The iflib(4) network interface had some data races that produced crashes on VMWare guests using the vmxnet3 driver fixed. f43d2e1199b9
The iflib(4) network interface had the vlan processing in the drivers fixed. cf101bd5ceeb
The iflib(4) network interface driver framework had a lock order reversal (LOR) fixed. ea25a6af57e0
The net80211(4) interface had some mitigations included agains A-MSDU design flaws (CVE-2020-24588). 76ee776f4d9f
The net80211(4) interface will now reject mixed plaintext/encrypted fragments (CVE-2020-26147). 00cd5a2f614a
The net80211(4) interface will now prevent plaintext injection by A-MSDU RFC1042/EAPOL frames (CVE-2020-26144). 2d09e4366b67
The net80211(4) interface has improved several validations including SSID length and Mesh ID length. f4d0e8787a09 e7c990ba3f8d
The pf(4) framework now ensures the correct source/destination IP address in ICMP errors. a50876f0ac7a (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The pf(4) framework had some memory leaks fixed. 329c9b9da592
The pf(4) framework provides improved route-to handling of pfsync(4)'d states. 592b4f93632a (Sponsored by Orange Business Services)
The sched_ule(4) scheduler had a bug fixed about a loss of significance when setting kern.sched.interact above 32. b7eded5ea1f1
The vm subsystem had a problem fixed that broke the vm reservation when it was mistakenly unable to provide a satisfactory set of pages. 46549e319c52
Images for installation from DVD have fixes to symbolic links, for easier use of on-disc packages. 7b05f19e9708 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
Devices and Drivers
Device Drivers
The aesni(4) driver for the AES and SHA accelerator on x86 CPUs had a bug fixed about a potential out-of-bounds access. 83d0a7763a92 (Sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation)
The aw_spi(4) driver for the SPI controller in Allwinner SoC has improved I/O stability regarding TX FIFO underruns and RX FIFO overflows. 1e7b0dc00076
The carp(4) protocol now gracefully deals with negative values of net.inet.carp.demotion. 1c16de99bd7d (Sponsored by Modirum MDPay)
The ena(4) kernel driver has been updated to 2.6.1. 1a97579ae67a (Sponsored by Amazon, Inc.)
The if_epair(4) driver now allows multiple cores to be used to process traffic to improve performance. 092da35a0d80 (Sponsored by Orange Business Services)
The if_gif(4) tunnel interface had a panic on shutdown fixed. b4a51fd9c124 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The if_pflog(4) device had a bug fixed regarding packet length. d41caea44ba9 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The if_vlan(4) network interface had a bug fixed that avoids hash table thrashing when adding and removing entries. a5f19abeb719 (Sponsored by NetApp, Inc.)
The igc(4) Ethernet controller had a bug that prevented to correctly update RCTL when changing filters. 73e1138208a5
The ixl(4) driver had some fixes for VLAN HW filtering. 83ca71099913
The ixl(4) driver had some panics fixed. 749c7da9b9b4
The mpr(4) had a panic fixed during firmware update. 956f15e74d66
The mpr(4) and mps(4) drivers had a more robust device mapping implemented. 9d842d84f49a (Sponsored by iXsystems, Inc.)
The ocs_fc(4) device driver had a memory leak fixed. 12e6cbd15853
The ocs_fc(4) device driver had two use-after-free bugs fixed. 241d13765504 fa3e66e9f7cd
The ocs_fc(4) device driver had a possible null pointer dereference fixed. 9199f5e0ba5c
The pfsync(4) pseudo-device had some locking bugs fixed. 7164b77ce2f3 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The pfsync(4) pseudo-device had some NULL check bugs fixed. bbbe18b31795 f3b722fed330 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The pfsync(4) pseudo-device had a defer mode bug fixed. c36006be5424 (Sponsored by Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate"))
The random(4) driver on x86 will now prefer RDSEED over RDRAND when available as per Intel documentation. a68e606c402e
The random(4) device had some improvements that now make entropy sources deregistration-safe. 7878a69e0415
The rk_i2c(4) driver had a number of improvements including the increasing of the number of bytes that can be sent to 32. 342d73431ee5
The snd_uaudio(4) USB audio and MIDI driver had some string computations for iFeature fixed. 43a03be0bb50 (Sponsored by NVIDIA Networking)
The usb(4) driver had a use-after-free bug fixed. bb9bee1ffbb2
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