Recent FreeBSD firmware improvements

Like Linux, FreeBSD now also supports UEFI. PC-BSD and TrueOS are FreeBSD-based, as is NanoBSD, the embedded subset of FreeBSD.

Besides UEFI pre-OS tool support, FreeBSD also has Forth-based OpenFirmware /boot/loader, with numerous diagnostic commands (autoboot, bcachestat, boot, echo, heap, help, include, load, load_geli, ls, lsdev, more, pnpscan, read, reboot, set, show, unload, unset, ?).

Earlier this week, PC-BSD 10.1.2 has been released. Amongst the changes I notice two firmware-related improvements for this release:

* Support for encrypted iSCSI backups via Life-Preserver, including support for bare-metal restores via installer media

* Improvements to Online Updater, along with GRUB nested menus for Boot-Environments

Firmware changes aside, they’ve been adding some interesting security features: /-level encryption for ZFS, PersonaCrypt Utility, with Stealth Mode, Tor mode for firewall, etc.

More information:

10.1.2 release:
http://lists.pcbsd.org/pipermail/announce/2015-May/000076.html
http://blog.pcbsd.org/2015/05/pc-bsd-10-1-2-released/
https://www.freebsdnews.com/

FreeBSD and UEFI:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/boot.html
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=uefi&apropos=0&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+11-current&format=html
https://wiki.freebsd.org/SecureBoot
https://wiki.freebsd.org/UEFI
http://bsdmag.org/beyond-bios-the-extended-firmware-interface -efi/

/boot/loader:
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=loader%288%29
http://ficl.sourceforge.net/ficl.html

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