Tag Archives: ZFS

Migrating to FreeBSD -CURRENT with pkgbase using Boot Environments

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Couple of months ago I got my sister a MacBook Air with the new M4 chip, and she was happier than ever. However, I was the happiest, as she gave me her old MacBook Pro 2015.

As always, I installed FreeBSD on it, it was FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE at the time, installed the required drivers, attached a Thunderbolt 3 to Ethernet adapter to it (thank you to whoever made it work via the bge drivers) and… nothing. It’s been sitting on the floor for months now.

Last week I decided I’m going to do my FreeBSD work again. I have a todo list with 20+ action items in them.

But first thing first, I need a -CURRENT machine so I can do my development.

So, here’s a simple guid on how to migrate to FreeBSD -CURRENT using PkgBase.

First we need to setup the pkgbase repo, so pkg can use it. I will be using pkg.FreeBSD.am, which is my regional pkg cache, but other than that, everything is pretty standard.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
root@mbp15srv0:~ # cat - > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD-base.conf
FreeBSD-base {
    url = "pkg+https://pkg.freebsd.am/FreeBSD:15:amd64/base_latest/";
    mirror_type = "srv";
    signature_type = "fingerprints";
    fingerprints = "/usr/share/keys/pkg";
    enabled = yes;
}

Next up, we create and mount a Boot Environment, that way, if we screw something up, we can always come back.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl list
BE      Active Mountpoint Space Created
default NR     /          2.99G 2025-04-20 22:45
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl create 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl mount 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
/tmp/be_mount.6i35

But before we start, let’s make sure we’re on the latest version of pkg, since the devs keep adding cool features for PkgBase.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # pkg install pkg
Updating FreeBSD.am repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf:   0%
FreeBSD.am repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf:   0%
FreeBSD-base repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
New version of pkg detected; it needs to be installed first.
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
        pkg: 2.1.2 -> 2.1.4 [FreeBSD.am]

Number of packages to be upgraded: 1

12 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[1/1] Fetching pkg-2.1.4.pkg: 100%   12 MiB  12.5MB/s    00:01    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[1/1] Upgrading pkg from 2.1.2 to 2.1.4...
[1/1] Extracting pkg-2.1.4: 100%
Updating FreeBSD.am repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf:   0%
FreeBSD.am repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf:   0%
FreeBSD-base repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
The most recent versions of packages are already installed

We need to do pkg update so we get the repo metadata. We’ll also set the ABI to 15, since we’ll be installing that.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # env ABI="FreeBSD:15:amd64" pkg update -f -r FreeBSD-base
pkg: Setting ABI requires setting OSVERSION, guessing the OSVERSION as: 1500000
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...
pkg: Repository FreeBSD-base has a wrong packagesite, need to re-create database
Fetching meta.conf: 100%    179 B   0.2kB/s    00:01    
Fetching data.pkg: 100%   52 KiB  53.2kB/s    00:01    
Processing entries:   0%
Newer FreeBSD version for package FreeBSD-zoneinfo:
To ignore this error set IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes
- package: 1500043
- running userland: 1500000
Ignore the mismatch and continue? [y/N]: y
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD-base repository update completed. 554 packages processed.
FreeBSD-base is up to date.

Now we can do the installation using -r, which will set the root directory. I’m also using -Fy which will fetch-only, and assume yes for everything.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # env ABI="FreeBSD:15:amd64" pkg -r /tmp/be_mount.6i35/ install -Fy -r FreeBSD-base -g 'FreeBSD-*'                                                    
pkg: Setting ABI requires setting OSVERSION, guessing the OSVERSION as: 1500000                                                                                        
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended                                                                               
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...                                                                                                                          
Fetching meta.conf:   0%                                                                                                                                               
FreeBSD-base repository is up to date.                                                                                                                                 
FreeBSD-base is up to date.                                                                                                                                            
The following 554 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                       
New packages to be INSTALLED:                                                                                                                                          
        FreeBSD-acct: 15.snap20250612001522 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                             
        FreeBSD-acct-dbg: 15.snap20250612001522 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                         
        FreeBSD-acct-man: 15.snap20241026125659 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                         
        FreeBSD-acpi: 15.snap20250612160001 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                             
        FreeBSD-acpi-dbg: 15.snap20250612160001 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                         
[...]

        FreeBSD-zfs-dev-lib32: 15.snap20250612160001 [FreeBSD-base]
        FreeBSD-zfs-lib32: 15.snap20250612160001 [FreeBSD-base]
        FreeBSD-zfs-man: 15.snap20250531144220 [FreeBSD-base]
        FreeBSD-zoneinfo: 15.snap20250521200023 [FreeBSD-base]

Number of packages to be installed: 554

The process will require 6 GiB more space.
1 GiB to be downloaded.
[1/507] Fetching FreeBSD-kernel-minimal-15.snap20250613001933.pkg: 100%   39 MiB 861.9kB/s    00:47    

[...]

[371/484] Fetching FreeBSD-smbutils-dev-lib32-15.snap20250612160001.pkg: 100%   86 KiB  87.8kB/s    00:01    
[372/484] Fetching FreeBSD-libsqlite3-dbg-lib32-15.snap20250612160001.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.2MB/s    00:01    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)

And finally, I can do the actual installation. Again, not forgetting about ABI, and BACKUP_LIBRARIES with BACKUP_LIBRARY_PATH.


root@mbp15srv0:~ # env ABI="FreeBSD:15:amd64" BACKUP_LIBRARIES=true BACKUP_LIBRARY_PATH=/tmp/be_mount.6i35/usr/local/lib/compat/pkg pkg -r /tmp/be_mount.6i35/ install
-Uy -r FreeBSD-base -g 'FreeBSD-*'                                                                
pkg: Setting ABI requires setting OSVERSION, guessing the OSVERSION as: 1500000                                                                                        
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected.  Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended                                                                               
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)                                                                                                                             
The following 554 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                       
New packages to be INSTALLED:                                                                                                                                          
        FreeBSD-acct: 15.snap20250612001522 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                             
        FreeBSD-acct-dbg: 15.snap20250612001522 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                         
        FreeBSD-acct-man: 15.snap20241026125659 [FreeBSD-base]                                                                                                         
[...]

Number of packages to be installed: 554                                            
                                                                                   
The process will require 6 GiB more space.                                
[1/554] Installing FreeBSD-acct-15.snap20250612001522...                
[1/554] Extracting FreeBSD-acct-15.snap20250612001522: 100%               
[2/554] Installing FreeBSD-acct-dbg-15.snap20250612001522...            
[2/554] Extracting FreeBSD-acct-dbg-15.snap20250612001522: 100%         
[3/554] Installing FreeBSD-acct-man-15.snap20241026125659...       
[3/554] Extracting FreeBSD-acct-man-15.snap20241026125659: 100%          
[4/554] Installing FreeBSD-acpi-15.snap20250612160001...                
[4/554] Extracting FreeBSD-acpi-15.snap20250612160001: 100%              
[5/554] Installing FreeBSD-acpi-dbg-15.snap20250612160001...            

[...]

[553/554] Installing FreeBSD-zfs-man-15.snap20250531144220...
[553/554] Extracting FreeBSD-zfs-man-15.snap20250531144220: 100%
[554/554] Installing FreeBSD-zoneinfo-15.snap20250521200023...
[554/554] Extracting FreeBSD-zoneinfo-15.snap20250521200023: 100%

Done!

Now we can chroot in and do some changes.

chroot /tmp/be_mount.6i35/ /bin/sh

We will see a lot of files ending with .pkgsave, these are the old files. Some things are required for us, such as sshd_config, master.passwd, sysctl.conf. Now, this is a pretty fresh installation, so I don’t need to do other changes, but you might!

root@mbp15srv0:/ # cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config.pkgsave /etc/ssh/sshd_config
root@mbp15srv0:/ # cp /etc/master.passwd.pkgsave /etc/master.passwd
root@mbp15srv0:/ # cp /etc/group.pkgsave /etc/group
root@mbp15srv0:/ # pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd
root@mbp15srv0:/ # cp /etc/sysctl.conf.pkgsave /etc/sysctl.conf

I think this is a good time to delete the other .pkgsave files. The FreeBSD Wiki says that I also need to delete /boot/kernel/linker.hints

# find / -name '*.pkgsave' -delete
# rm /boot/kernel/linker.hints

Back on the host, outside the chroot, I can finally activate the BE, at least temporarily, so only for the next boot.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl list
BE                   Active Mountpoint         Space Created
15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase -      /tmp/be_mount.6i35 4.62G 2025-06-13 13:05
default              NR     /                  3.07G 2025-04-20 22:45
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl unmount 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl activate -t 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
Successfully activated boot environment 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
for next boot
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl list
BE                   Active Mountpoint Space Created
15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase T      -          4.62G 2025-06-13 13:05
default              NR     /          3.07G 2025-04-20 22:45

A reboot… with fingers crossed!

shutdown -r now

The machine is up and running! 

root@mbp15srv0:~ # uname -a
FreeBSD mbp15srv0.evn0.loc.illuriasecurity.com 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT main-n277903-a14573de29de GENERIC amd64

Let’s make this BE the default now.

root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl list
BE                   Active Mountpoint Space Created
15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase N      /          4.62G 2025-06-13 13:05
default              R      -          3.08G 2025-04-20 22:45
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl activate 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
Successfully activated boot environment 15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase
root@mbp15srv0:~ # bectl list
BE                   Active Mountpoint Space Created
15.0-CURRENT-pkgbase NR     /          7.54G 2025-06-13 13:05
default              -      -          666M  2025-04-20 22:45

Finally, I will re-install pkg (not sure if that’s needed) and update my packages.

pkg bootstrap -f
pkg upgrade

All good! Now I can get to work 🙂

Special thanks to everyone who wrote the Wiki article and to ivy on the FreeBSD IRC channel for answering my questions.

That’s all folks…

Setting ZFS ARC maximum on illumos

I noticed that the memory usage was too high on one of my servers, and as always, the candle was burning from both sides.

I checked the ARC Size, and it was too high

# kstat -p zfs:0:arcstats:size
zfs:0:arcstats:size     15032385536

So I decided to set the ZFS ARC Max, which was new to me, but after going over the docs, all I needed to do was

# echo 'set zfs:zfs_arc_max = 4294967296' >> /etc/system

and then finally reboot

# shutdown -g0 -y -i 6

That’s pretty much it.

Installing FreeBSD with Root-on-ZFS on Vultr using iPXE

The title is pretty self explanatory, so let’s get to it, shall we?

I was configuring a server for a customer today, and one of the things I noticed is that FreeBSD was not available for bare-metal.

This got me a bit worried, because we use a lot of FreeBSD on Vultr… Well that’s a lie. We only use FreeBSD on Vultr.

I logged into our company account and noticed that our bare-metals does have FreeBSD as an icon for the image.

So I decided to check the docs and found this:

What operating system templates do you offer?

We offer many Linux and Windows options. We do not offer OpenBSD or FreeBSD images for Vultr Bare Metal. Use our iPXE boot feature if you need to install a custom operating system.

Well, that’s sad, but on the other hand, iPXE will be very useful. We can boot a memdisk such as mfsBSD and install FreeBSD from there.

To start, we need a VM that can host the mfsBSD img/ISO file. I have spun up a VM on Vultr running FreeBSD (altho it can run anything else, it wouldn’t matter), installed nginx on it, downloaded the file so we can boot from it. Here’s the copy-pasta

pkg install -y nginx
service nginx enable && service nginx start
fetch -o /usr/local/www/ \
  https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/files/images/14/amd64/mfsbsd-se-14.0-RELEASE-amd64.img

This should be enough to get started. Oh, if you’re not on FreeBSD then the path might be different, like /var/www/nginx, or something alike. Check your nginx configuration for the details.

Now we need to write an iPXE script and add it into our Vultr iPXE scripts. Here’s what it looks like

#!ipxe

echo Starting MFSBSD
sanboot http://your.server.ip.address/mfsbsd-se-14.0-RELEASE-amd64.img
boot

Finally, we can create a bare-metal that uses our script for iPXE boot.

Don’t forget to choose the right location and plan.

After the machine is provisioned, you need to access the console and you will see the boot process.

The default root password is mfsroot.

To install FreeBSD, you can run bsdinstall. The rest will be familiar for you. Yes, you can use Root-on-ZFS. No, it can’t be in UEFI, you must use GPT (BIOS).

Good luck, and special thanks to Vultr for giving us the chance to use our favorite tools on the public cloud.

That’s all folks…

Antranig Vartanian

April 26, 2024

I love ZFS…

root@evn0:/var/log/named # du -h -d 1
1.4G    .
root@evn0:/var/log/named # du -A -h -d 1
7.4G    .

BSDCan 2022 Talks and Scary Thumbnail

I don’t know if it’s YouTube that chose this thumbnail or if it was someone from BSDCan, but I’ve gotta say, I love it! xD

But in all seriousness, you can find my talk “Own The Stack: FreeBSD from a Vendor’s Perspective by Antranig Vartanian (ft. Faraz Vahedi)” on YouTube.

There’s a whole playlist, with each talk more interesting than the other.

Looks like I know what I will be doing this weekend ☺️

ZFS compression is so good that it cost me 2 hours

So we have this build machine (build0) where we build FreeBSD in Jails and then we mount the src and obj dirs via NFS or we sync them using rsync to destinations so we can run make installworld on not-so-powerful servers.

Couple of days ago we had a network issue at the data center, the switches crashed and we had to reboot them. Turns out I was running rsync on one of our servers, so I decided to make sure that the files were copied.

Like a lazy sysadmin, I run the following commands on both the build0 server, as well as the remote host.

root@build0:~ # du -h -d 0 /usr/local/jails/f130/usr/obj/
 13G    /usr/local/jails/f130/usr/obj/

root@illuriasecurity:~ # du -h -d 0 /usr/obj/
5.5G    /usr/obj/

Hmm, maybe files were not copied properly? So I remove the obj dir and I rsync again.

Looks like the size is 5.5G AGAIN!

So I do a little bit of piping!

root@build0:/usr/local/jails/f130/usr/obj # find . | sort > /tmp/obj_build0.txt

root@illuriasecurity:/usr/obj # find . | sort > /tmp/obj.txt

zvartnots:~ $ scp illuria:/tmp/obj.txt  /tmp/
zvartnots:~ $ scp build0:/tmp/obj_build0.txt /tmp/

zvartnots:~ $ diff /tmp/obj.txt /tmp/obj_build0.txt

Um, no difference?

Looks like the size reported by du was… confusing?

Okay, let’s check the manual of du(1):

     -A		Display the apparent size instead of the disk usage.  This	can be
     		helpful when operating on compressed volumes or sparse files.

Oops, looks like ZFS compression is enabled on my machine…

Let’s try this again!

root@build0:~ # du -h -d 0 -A /usr/local/jails/f130/usr/obj/
 12G    /usr/local/jails/f130/usr/obj/

root@illuriasecurity:~ # du -h -d 0 -A /usr/obj/
 12G    /usr/obj/

Ok! This makes more sense 🙂

Let’s also check with ZFS.

root@illuriasecurity:~ # zfs get compression zroot/usr
NAME       PROPERTY     VALUE     SOURCE
zroot/usr  compression  lz4       inherited from zroot

I wonder what’s the build0 server is doing?

root@build0:~ # zfs get compression zroot/usr
cannot open 'zroot/usr': dataset does not exist

Hn o.O ? Oh yeah, I wonder.

root@build0:~ # mount | grep ' / '
/dev/ufs/rootfs on / (ufs, local, journaled soft-updates)

Okay, this makes much more sense now 🙂

That’s all folks!

VNET Jail HowTo

So Dan has been tweeting that there’s no good example to get started with VNET Jails with jail.conf, I thought it’s time to write one.

In this example I’ve used FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE

root@jail-host:~ # freebsd-version
12.1-RELEASE
root@jail-host:~ # uname -a
FreeBSD jail-host 12.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE r354233 GENERIC  amd64
root@jail-host:~ #

First thing first, let’s setup a bridge on our host

root@jail-host:~ # sysrc cloned_interfaces="bridge0"
cloned_interfaces:  -> bridge0
root@jail-host:~ # sysrc ifconfig_bridge0="inet 10.0.0.1 netmask 0xffffff00 descr jails-bridge"
ifconfig_bridge0:  -> inet 10.0.0.1 netmask 0xffffff00 descr jails-bridge

Start the bridge0 interface without restarting the other interfaces

root@jail-host:~ # service netif start bridge0

Good! let’s setup a ZFS dataset for Jails 😉

root@jail-host:~ # zfs create -o mountpoint=/usr/local/jails zroot/jails

Good! now let’s fetch the base.txz file. I will be using my closest mirror, you should use yours.

root@jail-host:~ # mkdir /usr/local/jails/.dist-files
root@jail-host:~ # fetch -o /usr/local/jails/.dist-files/FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-base.txz http://mirror.yandex.ru/freebsd/releases/amd64/12.1-RELEASE/base.txz

Perfect!

Now, we will extract the base into the jail.

root@jail-host:~ # zfs create zroot/jails/www
root@jail-host:~ # tar xf /usr/local/jails/.dist-files/FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-base.txz -C /usr/local/jails/www/

Nicely done! Now let’s setup our /etc/jail.conf 🙂

Here’s my configuration.

# vim: set syntax=sh:
exec.stop  = "/bin/sh /etc/rc.shutdown";
exec.clean;
allow.raw_sockets;
allow.mount.tmpfs;
mount.devfs;


www {
    $id     = "10";
    $ipaddr = "10.0.0.${id}";
    $mask   = "255.255.255.0";
    $gw     = "10.0.0.1";
    vnet;
    vnet.interface = "epair${id}b";

    exec.prestart   = "ifconfig epair${id} create up";
    exec.prestart  += "ifconfig epair${id}a up descr vnet-${name}";
    exec.prestart  += "ifconfig bridge0 addm epair${id}a up";

    exec.start      = "/sbin/ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.1 up";
    exec.start     += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${id}b ${ipaddr} netmask ${mask} up";
    exec.start     += "/sbin/route add default ${gw}";
    exec.start     += "/bin/sh /etc/rc";

    exec.prestop    = "ifconfig epair${id}b -vnet ${name}";

    exec.poststop   = "ifconfig bridge0 deletem epair${id}a";
    exec.poststop  += "ifconfig epair${id}a destroy";

    host.hostname = "${name}.jail-host";
    path = "/usr/local/jails/${name}";
    exec.consolelog = "/var/log/jail-${name}.log";
    persist;
}

Now let’s start our Jail!

root@jail-host:~ # service jail enable
jail enabled in /etc/rc.conf
root@jail-host:~ # service jail start www
Starting jails: www.
root@jail-host:~ # jls
   JID  IP Address      Hostname                      Path
     1                  www.jail-host                 /usr/local/jails/www

Let’s check the networking 🙂

root@jail-host:~ # ping -c 1 10.0.0.10
PING 10.0.0.10 (10.0.0.10): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.164 ms

--- 10.0.0.10 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.164/0.164/0.164/0.000 ms

We can do the same from the jail.

root@jail-host:~ # jexec www
root@www:/ # ping -c 1 10.0.0.1
PING 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.087 ms

--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.087/0.087/0.087/0.000 ms

We can also stop all the jails.

root@jail-host:~ # service jail stop
Stopping jails: www.

Okay! Couple of notes 🙂

You can have jail.conf at /etc/jail.conf or /etc/something.jail.conf. The problem with the latter is that if you have jail_enable="YES" in rc.conf without defining jail_list then it will run only the jails in /etc/jail.conf

There are more ways to configure VNET Jails, either with jib or jng, an example is here.

Ideally, it would be nice to have /etc/jail.d/myjail.conf, and I wrote a patch for that (D24570), if you are a FreeBSD developer, please have a look 🙂

FreeBSD Root-on-ZFS Migration

My home server (running this blog) got old, it has only 2G of RAM and a very old hard drive.

I usually like to use laptops as home server, they get the job done! I know I can’t have fancy things like RAID1, but I usually keep my backups on a separate disk/machine anyway.

So, I got my Dell Latitude E5470 next to my 11 years old Dell Inspiron to start the migration process.

Here’s a simple how-to guide for migrating a FreeBSD system from one machine to another.

Snapshotting The Pool

Okay, on the old host let snapshot the pool.

zfs snap -r zroot@migrate

Let’s save that snapshot in a file.

zfs send -R zroot@migrate | gzip > /usr/local/zroot.zfs.gz

This might take a while, grab some coffee 🙂

Now let’s save the ZFS Boot Environment (bootfs) property

# zpool get bootfs zroot
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
zroot bootfs zroot/ROOT/default local

Perfect! now let’s go to the new host! 🙂

Installing FreeBSD

Well, this is simple 🙂 first, install FreeBSD on the new machine. DON’T forget to use ZFS! 🙂

The reason why we are doing this so the FreeBSD installer will handle all the boot loader installation process. If you know how to do this manually, then be my guest (and blog about it).

“Reset” ZFS

Okay, now let’s “reset” that pool

zpool destroy zroot
zpool create -R /mnt zroot /dev/ada0p3 # please check the partition index thought
zpool export zroot # so we can import again with -N
zpool import -N -R /mnt zroot

Restore Old Snapshot

Here we go.

ssh antranigv@pingvinashen "gzcat /usr/local/zroot.zfs.gz" | zfs receive -v -u -F zroot

Aaand we wait again.

So, check you restored all the datasets with zfs list -r zroot

Set the bootfs property.

zpool set bootfs=zroot/ROOT/default zroot

Fingers Crossed and reboot

well, now it’s the time.

shutdown -r now

Done

Hope this helps 🙂

Setting route interface in FreeBSD

I usually blog for myself, so I don’t forget stuff when I need them 😛

I’m usually connected via WiFi to a network, however, FreeBSD’s WiFi drivers are not very… good. I mean they do work and do essential stuff, but it’s slow 🙂 anyways.

That’s why I’m always connected to the network using a wire as well.

The problem that I always encounter and want to solve is to change the default route’s interface after wiring up 🙂

Here’s how you can do that.

# netstat -4rn | grep default
default            10.10.200.254      UGS       wlan0
# route change default 10.10.200.254 -ifp em0
change net default: gateway 10.10.200.254 fib 0
# netstat -4rn | grep default
default            10.10.200.254      UGS         em0

and so on…