Anyone using GhostBSD on their desktop or laptop? What are your thoughts on it versus any other BSD variant? Tried to get it going in a local VM but updates / software installs kept failing or taking hours. (Network connectivity is fine, I think their update / package servers are too distant or too bogged down)
@MannDude said:
Anyone using GhostBSD on their desktop or laptop? What are your thoughts on it versus any other BSD variant? Tried to get it going in a local VM but updates / software installs kept failing or taking hours. (Network connectivity is fine, I think their update / package servers are too distant or too bogged down)
@MannDude said:
Anyone using GhostBSD on their desktop or laptop? What are your thoughts on it versus any other BSD variant? Tried to get it going in a local VM but updates / software installs kept failing or taking hours. (Network connectivity is fine, I think their update / package servers are too distant or too bogged down)
I am having the same issue, but with FreeBSD. The mirrors are insanely slow and I cannot be bothered to use them. It's the only thing stopping me from using FreeBSD especially after their Laptop Project this 15 release.
FreeBSD 15.0 is here and update to the @linveo instance was smooth as butter and everything working great!
EDIT: Linveo instance was using pf firewall which didn't have any issues, but proceed cautiously if you have ipfw installed. After 15.0 kernel installation and the first reboot, network was down due to ipfw being very unhappy. Stopping ipfw made networking to work and after finishing the full update process, ipfw continued to work again. Make sure you have VNC accessible or disable ipfw before booting for the first time!
@Otus9051 said: I am having the same issue, but with FreeBSD. The mirrors are insanely slow and I cannot be bothered to use them. It's the only thing stopping me from using FreeBSD especially after their Laptop Project this 15 release.
If GeoDNS is not able to provide you the closest mirror using downloads.freebsd.org, you can check them manually at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/mirrors/. Generally I have had very adequate performance out of the mirrors, even at peak times like today's release date, but of course YMMW.
@Otus9051 said: I am having the same issue, but with FreeBSD. The mirrors are insanely slow and I cannot be bothered to use them. It's the only thing stopping me from using FreeBSD especially after their Laptop Project this 15 release.
If GeoDNS is not able to provide you the closest mirror using downloads.freebsd.org, you can check them manually at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/mirrors/. Generally I have had very adequate performance out of the mirrors, even at peak times like today's release date, but of course YMMW.
I used fastest_pkg and the fastest I can get is around 800kb/s. Definitely not a problem with my internet/vm networking because it can still fetch at 18-20 MB/s, which is the max my internet plan goes. Problem isn't with GeoDNS, but probably some sort of weird throttling/peering issue that I cannot quite put my hands on.
Hetzner EX63 dedicated server installed with FreeBSD 15 via depenguin.me:
chronos@penguin:~/2025-post-backup/ex63$ ssh [email protected]
The authenticity of host 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:iwrKeqa9NGjDx66VtAkXinv/JQsm7+9ta6LFdUE14Ns.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE (GENERIC) releng/15.0-n280995-7aedc8de6446
Welcome to FreeBSD!
Release Notes, Errata: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/
Security Advisories: https://www.FreeBSD.org/security/
FreeBSD Handbook: https://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/
FreeBSD FAQ: https://www.FreeBSD.org/faq/
Questions List: https://www.FreeBSD.org/lists/questions/
FreeBSD Forums: https://forums.FreeBSD.org/
Documents installed with the system are in the /usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/
directory, or can be installed later with: pkg install en-freebsd-doc
For other languages, replace "en" with a language code like de or fr.
Show the version of FreeBSD installed: freebsd-version ; uname -a
Please include that output and any error messages when posting questions.
Introduction to manual pages: man man
FreeBSD directory layout: man hier
To change this login announcement, see motd(5).
Want to see how much virtual memory you're using? Just type "swapinfo" to
be shown information about the usage of your swap partitions.
tom@ultra:~ $ date
Fri Dec 26 19:56:26 UTC 2025
tom@ultra:~ $ sudo su -
root@ultra:~ #
Hetzner used to formally support FreeBSD, had their own rescue images etc everything working great until one day they just simply dropped it. You can still naturally install it on their dedis and it works great, but it was still a sad day.
chronos@penguin:~/2025-post-backup/1650$ ssh [email protected]
The authenticity of host 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:3d9Uut3RMez504W6Q+VxRV9eX01poBTt2xW4RPfTzbE.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE (GENERIC) releng/15.0-n280995-7aedc8de6446
Welcome to FreeBSD!
Release Notes, Errata: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/
Security Advisories: https://www.FreeBSD.org/security/
FreeBSD Handbook: https://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/
FreeBSD FAQ: https://www.FreeBSD.org/faq/
Questions List: https://www.FreeBSD.org/lists/questions/
FreeBSD Forums: https://forums.FreeBSD.org/
Documents installed with the system are in the /usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/
directory, or can be installed later with: pkg install en-freebsd-doc
For other languages, replace "en" with a language code like de or fr.
Show the version of FreeBSD installed: freebsd-version ; uname -a
Please include that output and any error messages when posting questions.
Introduction to manual pages: man man
FreeBSD directory layout: man hier
To change this login announcement, see motd(5).
If you want to recursively copy a directory preserving file and directory
attributes use
"cp -a source target"
-- Lars Engels <[email protected]>
tom@E5-1650:~ $ sudo su -
root@E5-1650:~ #
tom@ultra:~ $ date
Sat Dec 27 01:32:21 UTC 2025
tom@ultra:~ $ uname -v
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE releng/15.0-n280995-7aedc8de6446 GENERIC
tom@ultra:~ $ who
tom pts/0 Dec 27 01:10 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) # IPv4 works
tom@ultra:~ $ curl -6 icanhazip.com > /dev/null && echo Success! # IPv6 works; DNS works
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 22 100 22 0 0 311 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 314
Success!
tom@ultra:~ $ vmstat # virtual memory statistics
procs memory page disks faults cpu
r b w avm fre flt re pi po fr sr nda0 nda1 in sy cs us sy id
0 0 0 4.5T 62G 67 0 0 0 81 2 0 0 10 55 161 0 0 99
tom@ultra:~ $ zpool status
pool: zroot
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zroot ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
nda0p4 ONLINE 0 0 0
nda1p4 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
tom@ultra:~ $ df -h . # Disk space looks right
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
zroot/home 914G 144K 914G 0% /home
tom@ultra:~ $
tom@E5-1650:~ $ date
Sat Dec 27 01:33:14 UTC 2025
tom@E5-1650:~ $ uname -v
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE releng/15.0-n280995-7aedc8de6446 GENERIC
tom@E5-1650:~ $ who
tom pts/0 Dec 27 01:12 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
tom@E5-1650:~ $ curl -6 icanhazip.com > /dev/null && echo Success!
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 20 100 20 0 0 584 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 588
Success!
tom@E5-1650:~ $ vmstat
procs memory page disks faults cpu
r b w avm fre flt re pi po fr sr ada0 ada1 in sy cs us sy id
0 0 0 4.0T 124G 227 0 0 0 321 3 0 0 13 180 208 0 0 99
tom@E5-1650:~ $ zpool status
pool: zroot
state: ONLINE
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zroot ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada0p4 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada1p4 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
tom@E5-1650:~ $ df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
zroot/home 1.7T 140K 1.7T 0% /home
tom@E5-1650:~ $
@Crab Thanks for your kind suggestion! I hear that it might take a while for the zpool scrub to run. Since it is getting a little late here, I will do the scrub and the smartmontools tomorrow. Thanks again!
We systematically examined privileged operations, capabilities, and interfaces that a jailed process can still reach, hunting for memory safety issues, race conditions, and logic flaws. The result: roughly 50 distinct issues uncovered across multiple kernel subsystems, ranging from buffer overflows and information leaks to unbounded allocations and reference counting errors—many of which could crash the system or provide vectors for privilege escalation beyond the jail.
We systematically examined privileged operations, capabilities, and interfaces that a jailed process can still reach, hunting for memory safety issues, race conditions, and logic flaws. The result: roughly 50 distinct issues uncovered across multiple kernel subsystems, ranging from buffer overflows and information leaks to unbounded allocations and reference counting errors—many of which could crash the system or provide vectors for privilege escalation beyond the jail.
Comments
Oops!
Thanks @cmeerw!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
FreeBSD 15 release is just around the corner!
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/relnotes/
My rocking @linveo instance is going to be the first one that'll receive this upgrade.
Tara's Website: A Love Letter to FreeBSD
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100892
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Anyone using GhostBSD on their desktop or laptop? What are your thoughts on it versus any other BSD variant? Tried to get it going in a local VM but updates / software installs kept failing or taking hours. (Network connectivity is fine, I think their update / package servers are too distant or too bogged down)
[ IncogNET LLC ] - Since 2020
[ The Internet Speech & Privacy Company ]
Hi @MannDude! I never tried GhostBSD, so I can't really comment. Best wishes!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
GhostBSD has a tool that allows you to manipulate mirror settings (https://github.com/ghostbsd/software-properties-station)
You can check your current repo configuration like this:
Other possible mirrors can be fetched with this command:
You can switch the current setting with something like:
/etc/pkg/GhostBSD.conf should reflect whatever changes you made.
Hopefully this will help!
I am having the same issue, but with FreeBSD. The mirrors are insanely slow and I cannot be bothered to use them. It's the only thing stopping me from using FreeBSD especially after their Laptop Project this 15 release.
youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
FreeBSD 15.0 is here and update to the @linveo instance was smooth as butter and everything working great!
EDIT: Linveo instance was using pf firewall which didn't have any issues, but proceed cautiously if you have ipfw installed. After 15.0 kernel installation and the first reboot, network was down due to ipfw being very unhappy. Stopping ipfw made networking to work and after finishing the full update process, ipfw continued to work again. Make sure you have VNC accessible or disable ipfw before booting for the first time!
If GeoDNS is not able to provide you the closest mirror using downloads.freebsd.org, you can check them manually at https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/mirrors/. Generally I have had very adequate performance out of the mirrors, even at peak times like today's release date, but of course YMMW.
I used fastest_pkg and the fastest I can get is around 800kb/s. Definitely not a problem with my internet/vm networking because it can still
fetchat 18-20 MB/s, which is the max my internet plan goes. Problem isn't with GeoDNS, but probably some sort of weird throttling/peering issue that I cannot quite put my hands on.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
Hetzner EX63 dedicated server installed with FreeBSD 15 via depenguin.me:
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Hetzner used to formally support FreeBSD, had their own rescue images etc everything working great until one day they just simply dropped it. You can still naturally install it on their dedis and it works great, but it was still a sad day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/wf7h34/hetzner_has_silently_dropped_support_for_freebsd/
On an E5-1650 from the Hetzner Server Auction via depenguin.me:
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
A few basic sanity checks.
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Run zpool scrub and install smartmontools to see how your disks are doing.
@Crab Thanks for your kind suggestion!
I hear that it might take a while for the zpool scrub to run. Since it is getting a little late here, I will do the scrub and the smartmontools tomorrow. Thanks again!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
39C3: Escaping Containment: A Security Analysis of FreeBSD Jails
@Crab
Turned out not to take much time to run zpool scrub. smartmontools is next. . . .
Thanks!
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
@Crab Here are the smartctl outputs for the EX63:
Drive nvme0
Drive nvme1
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
@Crab And for the E5-1650:
Drive ada0
Drive ada1
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!
Video: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/relive/1975
I hope everyone gets the servers they want!