You're viewing the mstdn.social public feed.

Federated feed Local feed

Larvitz :fedora:Larvitz@burningboard.net
Jun 25, 2026, 12:46 PM
New on the blog: FreeBSD Foundationals #3: The Boot Process
From power-on to login: BIOS vs UEFI, the loader & loader.conf, why a tunable is NOT a sysctl, loading modules the modern way with kld_list, wrangling it all with sysrc, plus a security-hardening baseline.
And the headline act: boot environments. `bectl create` before every upgrade. When freebsd-update or pkg eats your box, you reboot, pick the old BE in the loader menu, and you're back in 30 seconds.
https://blog.hofstede.it/freebsd-foundationals-the-boot-process-from-the-loader-to-boot-environments/
#FreeBSD #ZFS #sysadmin #BSD #runbsd #unix
💬 4🔄 21⭐ 12

Replies

Mason Loring Blissmason@partychickens.net
Jun 25, 2026, 1:49 PM
@Larvitz There's no Forth any more, is there?
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/stand/i386?h=stable/15
💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
Larvitz :fedora:Larvitz@burningboard.net
Jun 25, 2026, 2:06 PM
@mason oh. I want aware of that
💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
Patrickpu@social.tchncs.de
Jun 25, 2026, 5:36 PM
@Larvitz Why does pf have to be loaded early? When later you say the kernel module will be loaded automatically?
💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
Larvitz :fedora:Larvitz@burningboard.net
Jun 25, 2026, 5:39 PM
@pu Directly under the example (that was taken from my server), there's this sentence:
"... a good portion of it can often be moved elsewhere"
It works, regardless if you load pf via loader.conf, via rc.conf kld_list or just implicitly via pf_enable.
I'm unsure, what the "best" approach is here. On my older servers, I have it in loader.conf ..On recently installed ones, I ommitted it entirely, since pf_load=YES in rc.conf seems to be enough..
💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
Patrickpu@social.tchncs.de
Jun 25, 2026, 5:41 PM
@Larvitz I wasn’t sure if it applied to pf as well, since I have frequently seen pf being loaded early. Thanks for the clarification.
💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
Mariosmarios@bsd.cafe
Jun 25, 2026, 7:13 PM
@Larvitz thank you for sharing.
💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
Graham Perringrahamperrin@bsd.cafe
Jun 26, 2026, 9:41 AM
@Larvitz nice!
Boosted in Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1ug2410/freebsd_foundationals_the_boot_process_from_the/
💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0