If you’re using ZFS (or looking for a reason to do so), one of the new features in 9.1 is support for multiple boot environments. Imagine the following scenarios:

• you upgrade your operating system, hate it, and wish you could go back to the old version
• you upgrade some software which breaks something else
• you want to perform some tests without permanently affecting the files on your current operating system

Multiple boot environments make those scenarios do-able in two easy to use commands. Before making changes to your system, simply use the beadm create command to create a copy of the current filesystem. Do your stuff. To go back to what the system used to look like, use the beadm activate command to instruct the system to boot into the copy of the previous boot environment and reboot. It really is as easy as that!

Documentation for multiple boot environments can be found in this page of the upcoming 9.1 PC-BSD Users Handbook. This feature became available with the 9-STABLE 20120622 snapshot and will also be in the upcoming BETA1.

FreeBSD/PC-BSD 9.1 are due out by the end of the summer and we are getting close to issuing the first BETA for 9.1. In anticipation of code freeze, Kris is busy getting in the last of the features. Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight some of the cooler features coming in 9.1.

For those of you who would like to try out the features before BETA1 is released, instructions for building an updated control panel are provided below for both PC-BSD and FreeBSD systems. These have been tested on 9.0.

For PC-BSD, in System Manager -> System Packages make sure that Development -> Development-Qt and Development-VCS are installed. You’ll also need to install system source in System Manager -> Tasks.

For FreeBSD, make sure that you have /usr/src/sys and the following packages are installed:

cmake
cmake-gui
gmake
qt4-assistant
qt4-assistant-adp
qt4-designer
qt4-doc
qt4-libQtAssistantClient
qt4-linguist
qt4-moc
qt4-qmake
qt4-qtsolutions-singleapplication
qt4-rcc
qt4-uic
subversion

Once the dependent software is installed, become the superuser, cd to a directory suitable for downloading the PC-BSD src, and run these commands:

svn co svn://svn.pcbsd.org/pcbsd/current/src-qt4
cd src-qt4/libpcbsd/
qmake-qt4 *.pro
make
make install
cd ..
qmake-qt4 *.pro
make
make install

Some icons also rely on updated scripts which can be built using these commands from the original download directory:

svn co svn://svn.pcbsd.org/pcbsd/current/src-sh
cd src-sh
make
make install

On a PC-BSD system, Control Panel will be updated and available from the GUI. On a FreeBSD system, you can start Control Panel by typing pc-controlpanel from an X session. You can also start individual control panel icons using the commands listed in /usr/local/bin/pc-*.

Kris has announced the availability of the next testing snapshot:

The next 20120622 snapshot in the PC-BSD 9-STABLE branch has just been released for i386 and amd64 architectures.

This snapshot provides both users and developers a means to test out new features in the upcoming PC-BSD 9.1 release. This snapshot may contain buggy code and features, so users are encouraged to run it only on non-critical systems.

Changes since the previous Snapshot:

• FreeBSD 9-STABLE from 06-15-2012.
• KDE 4.8.3.
• Fixed a bug creating a /root ZFS dataset on the Server install.
• Fixed a crash in install GUI if using custom pkg set, and going back steps.
• Exclude /etc/pam.d and /usr/local/etc/pam.d from being overwritten during upgrades.
• Fixed an upgrade bug, causing some files to not get overwritten properly.
• Change detection for wifi when showing tray application.
• Set default volume to 100:100 on first boot.
• Fix displaying static IP addresses in GUI.
• Improve network restart functionality, should now properly add default route, and fix issue with losing connectivity after restarting with a static IP.
• Visually improve the AppCafe homescreen layout.
• Add default configurations for i3 / windowlab WM’s.
• Add new service manager GUI to warden, allows enabling, and starting / stopping services inside a jail.
• Add ability to cleanup thinclient installation.
• Improve the install image to not use MFS root, instead operates 100% identical to early stages of FreeBSD installer.
• Shrink memory requirements of installation, can now install with UFS on systems with ~256MB of RAM.
• Add initial support to Warden CLI for creating Linux jails

Highlights for the upcoming 9.1:

• New system installer! Greatly simplified for desktop and server installs.
• New “PC-BSD Server” installation option. Includes command-line utilities like pbi-manager, warden, metapkgmanager and more.
• Support for ZFS mirror / raidz(1,2,3) during installation.
• Support for SWAP on ZFS, allowing entire disk ZFS installation.
• Support for setting additional ZFS data-set options, such as compression, noexec, etc.
• Warden jail management integrated into system. Allows creating jails via GUI, adding packages and other administration.
• First boot setup wizard allows OEM installs to be easily performed.
• New Bluetooth paring tray / GUI utilities.
• New AppCafe improvements and preferences.
• Improvements to wifi utility.
• Fixed bug causing untranslated strings to show up empty.
• Numerous bug-fixes to PC-BSD related utilities.
• Support for creating PXE boot server for remote desktop and installation.
• ZFS beadm support
• And much more!

Errata:

Users running previous snapshots may update now via the online updater. You will first need to apply the “Update Manager” 20120622 update, then the snapshot update will appear.

If you wish to update from 9.0 to this snapshot you may do so by editing the /usr/local/share/pcbsd/pc-updatemanager/conf/sysupdate.conf file and changing the PATCHSET: variable to “pcbsdtest”.

After changing this variable, you may run the updater utility, to download a new update manager. Once this update manager is installed, the online update to the snapshot will appear.

Note: The AMD64 snapshot appears as 20120621 on the mirrors, but it is the same as the 20120622 i386 version.

Download

The DVD & USB images are available via the PC-BSD mirrors. You may select the mirror and files from this URL.

One of the cool new features coming in PC-BSD 9.1 is the ability to install a FreeBSD server (including ZFS, multiple boot environments using ZFS snapshots, and encryption) that includes the command line versions of all of the PC-BSD utilities. You can try a preview version in the latest snapshot or read up on its features in the draft of this section of the 9.1 Guide.

While we could simply call it the “PC-BSD Server Edition”, we’re pretty sure someone can come up with a more creative name than that. For that reason, we’re launching a naming contest. Can you think of a descriptive yet cool sounding name? If so, see the contest details here. The contest opens tomorrow at 11:00 PST and closes at 23:59 PST on June 26th.

Kris has announced the next snapshot in the testing series:

The next 20120605 snapshot in the PC-BSD 9-STABLE branch has just been released for i386 and amd64 architectures.

This snapshot provides both users and developers a means to test out new features in the upcoming PC-BSD 9.1 release. This snapshot may contain buggy code and features, so users are encouraged to run it only on non-critical systems.

Changes since the previous Snapshot:

• FreeBSD 9-STABLE from 05-30-2012
• KDE 4.8
• Fix a bug causing installer to lockup near end of installation
• Fix setup for 8021X configuration via GUI
• Update font configuration to enable AA by default
• Fix bugs doing updates to packages inside of the warden
• Allow new ZFS dataset options during installation
• Bugfixes and enhancements to the update tray notifier
• Check jails for updates via the tray application automatically
• Switch us to using http:// instead of ftp:// for updating, which allows proxy users to connect
• Fixed bug enabling the static IP section via ethernet GUI
• Add support for unattended installs via thinclient PXE
• Add better Proxy configuration via GUI, will now set HTTP_PROXY universally across the system

Highlights for the upcoming 9.1:

• New system installer! Greatly simplified for desktop and server installs.
• New “PC-BSD Server” installation option. Includes command-line utilities like pbi-manager, warden, metapkgmanager and more.
• Support for ZFS mirror / raidz(1,2,3) during installation.
• Support for SWAP on ZFS, allowing entire disk ZFS installation.
• Support for setting additional ZFS data-set options, such as compression, noexec, etc.
• Warden jail management integrated into system. Allows creating jails via GUI, adding packages and other administration.
• First boot setup wizard allows OEM installs to be easily performed.
• New Bluetooth paring tray / GUI utilities.
• New AppCafe improvements and preferences.
• Improvements to wifi utility.
• Fixed bug causing untranslated strings to show up empty.
• Numerous bug-fixes to PC-BSD related utilities.
• Support for creating PXE boot server for remote desktop and installation.
• ZFS beadm support.
• And much more!

Errata:

Users running previous snapshots may update now via the online
updater. You will first need to apply the “Update Manager” 20120606 update, then the snapshot update will appear.

If you wish to update from 9.0 to this snapshot you may do so by
editing /usr/local/share/pcbsd/pc-updatemanage/conf/sysupdate.conf
file and changing the PATCHSET: variable to pcbsdtest.

After changing this variable, you may run the updater utility, to
download a new update manager. Once this update manager is installed, the online update to the snapshot will appear.

There is a bug installing the PC-BSD Server on ZFS right now. If you wish to do so, you will need to remove the ZFS /root dataset beforehand. This will be fixed in the next snapshot.

The VirtualBox OSE additions are not included in this snapshot due to a bug in 9-STABLE. They will be included in the next release.

If it fails to download any additional packages / desktops post-installation, run the following command as root:

pbreg set /PC-BSD/Version 9-STABLE-20120605

Download

The DVD & USB images are available via the PC-BSD mirrors. You may select the mirror and files from this URL.

BSDTalk has an interview with Kris Moore that was recorded during BSDCan. Kris talks about the features going into PC-BSD 9.1. The interview is available in mp3 and ogg formats.