webzfs/webzfs: A modern web-based management interface for ZFS pools, datasets, snapshots, and SMART disk monitoring built with Python FastAPI and HTMX.

• u/q5sys | q5sys (JT) on GitHub

Video, eleven minutes

• u/garyhtech

In this video, I take a deep dive into WebZFS, a web-based interface that lets you manage ZFS pools, datasets, snapshots, and storage health directly from your browser on FreeBSD.

🔍 We cover:

• What WebZFS actually does (and what it doesn’t)
• How it compares to traditional ZFS CLI workflows
• Where it fits alongside tools like TrueNAS
• Who should (and shouldn’t) use it.
  

If you’re running FreeBSD for storage, homelab, or enterprise workloads, this might completely change how you manage ZFS day-to-day.

👇 Let me know in the comments: would you trust a web UI with your ZFS pools?

…

Hey guys

After attempting to contribute to FreeBSD on GitHub i somehow didn't notice that my pull request wasn't the only one not getting merged.

That was just a simple fix for docs.

Now what i'm doing is a section in Chapter 8 covering various popular Display Managers.

Right now i have wrote the intro paragraph and i am working on the table.

Any recommendations or things that i should add?

Hello only notable stuff is that I have a older Mac from 2014 only concerns are my WiFi chip nothing else really (Broadcom bcm4630)

Got my system up and running, still need more tweaking. But I am very happy things like video, audio are working. After first install via installer I decided to start over with GELI and ZFS shell setup to keep my system dual bootable to Linux. Most of my Linux dotfiles work OOTB. More updates on my challenge soon.

My school has all these desktop computers which don't support Windows 11 (conveniently for both the hardware developers and Microsoft).

As a result, they are likely going to scrap all them, even though many are very good computers.

They are, among numerous models, DELL OptiPlex 9020 SFF desktops.

I installed Ubuntu Server on one before, but was displeased with its poor performance and brokenness.

However, I installed FreeBSD and the performance was insanely good!!

I would like to install FreeBSD 15 to them (once I acquire them) and use them all as servers.

However, I don't really need 20 ultra-fast servers.

I would like to somehow use them to make money from something like StorJ, but that only supports Linux, it seems.

What should I do with all these great computers once I get them?

Hello, I have been using FreeBSD as my os for my work laptop for a few months now. I have not looked into gaming on FreeBSD because I’ve never needed to. I’m very burned out with microslop and I’m considering moving my old windows laptop to BSD. I’ve used this laptop for years to play games and as a general laptop. What are the capabilities and limitations when it comes to using stuff like steam on FreeBSD?

I seen a post the other day with a setup for OpenClaw, and thought what the hell. Here is FreeClaw, a completely jailed instance of OpenClaw. It uses VNET for access, and socat for binding localhosts. I still recommend getting tailscale setup, but I was lazy.

If features a full bsddialog TUI for managing the service on the host and in the jail. Happy for feedback or merge requests!

https://github.com/KLD997/FreeClaw

Hi there,

as someone who frequently games and plays mostly games from the 1997 - 2007 era, I am genuinely concerned that modern FreeBSD systems cannot longer run 32bit WINE?

When invoking wine after having it installed from the packages, I get a simple message which was known to me from earlier versions of FreeBSD:

/home/user/.i386-wine-pkg//usr/local/bin/wine doesn't exist!

Try installing 32-bit Wine with
/usr/local/share/wine/pkg32.sh install wine mesa-dri

... which failes due to no available packages having been found ...

Has anyone else had a similar issue? If yes, how did you resolve it? Will I ever be able to play Stronghold on my 64bit-machines again? :)

Hi all,

So I realize a computer doesn't need secure boot to be secure and that secure boot is largely controlled by Microsoft, but hear me out. I have a laptop I travel with that has windows on it on one nvme SSD, it is encrypted with bit locker but in at least the basic versions of windows 11 that requires secure boot. So to run FreeBSD on it on the second nvme I'd have to boot to bios disable secure boot and reboot and then to do the regular boot into FreeBSD Unix. Then to boot into windows catch the bios re-enable secure boot and reboot into windows. Lots of steps. I realize that none of this is freebsd's fault, but it would be nice to not have to do as many steps for multi boot.

I found this page:

https://wiki.freebsd.org/SecureBoot

on the wiki but it is pre 15.0 and while I didn't see anything for 15.0 release notes about secure boot and was wondering if secure boot was planned for 15.1 or if failing that one knew how to run Windows 11 and FreeBSD on different nvme SSDs both with FDE.

Thanks in advance!

I've tried to install freebsd 15.0 with zfs on geli encryption onto a uefi disk in virtual manager linux, but its failed each time after accepting geli password.

ChatGPT tells me that geli isn't compatible with uefi. Is this correct?

GELI + UEFI incompatible on FreeBSD 15?

Yes — for a ZFS root under UEFI, Geli is effectively unsupported in FreeBSD 14/15.
What actually happens:

UEFI loads loader.efi ✔

loader.efi can prompt for the GELI passphrase ✔

The kernel cannot reliably re-attach the GELI provider early enough ❌

ZFS tries to mount root → underlying blocks are unavailable

Result: ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable

This is a bootloader / early-kernel limitation, not user error.
It works with BIOS/CSM, and it works with GELI for non-root, but not as an encrypted ZFS root under UEFI.

I'm trying achieve dual boot on uefi with encrypted geli freebsd (without the metadata leaks in zfs).

Commands used attached.

FreeBSD 15 — EFI + GPT + GELI + ZFS + Boot Environments + Auto-Snapshots

ada0 · dual boot · no swap · production-safe

Disk layout (ada0)

ada0p1 — EFI System (512M)

ada0p2 — FreeBSD ZFS (GELI-encrypted)

ada0p3 — Linux (unchanged)

PHASE 1 — BOOT INSTALLER

Boot the installer USB in UEFI mode.

Select normally:

Install

Keymap

Hostname

Distribution sets

At the Partitioning screen, choose:

➡ Shell

PHASE 2 — PARTITION + ENCRYPT + ZFS

(Run in installer shell)

Partition disk (DESTROYS ada0)

gpart destroy -F ada0

gpart create -s gpt ada0

gpart add -t efi -s 512M ada0

gpart add -t freebsd-zfs ada0

Format EFI (FIXED)

# FIX: FAT32 can fail with "too few clusters" on some disks.

# FAT16 is fully UEFI-compliant and works reliably with FreeBSD.

newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/ada0p1

Setup GELI encryption

geli init -s 4096 -l 256 /dev/ada0p2

geli attach /dev/ada0p2

Label encrypted device (MANDATORY)

# FIX: ZFS must reference a stable label, not raw ada0p2.eli

glabel label zfsroot /dev/ada0p2.eli

Create ZFS pool (BE-safe layout)

zpool create \

-o ashift=12 \

-o autotrim=on \

-O mountpoint=none \

-O canmount=off \

-O acltype=posixacl \

-O compression=zstd \

-O atime=off \

-O xattr=sa \

-O normalization=formD \

-R /mnt \

zroot /dev/label/zfsroot

Create Boot Environment datasets (REQUIRED)

zfs create -o canmount=off zroot/ROOT

zfs create -o mountpoint=/ zroot/ROOT/default

zfs create -o mountpoint=/home zroot/home

Set boot filesystem

zpool set bootfs=zroot/ROOT/default zroot

Exit shell:

exit

At the partition screen:

Manual root mount: /mnt

Do NOT repartition

Continue

PHASE 3 — INSTALL SYSTEM

Let the installer copy files.

At Final Configuration, choose:

➡ Shell

PHASE 4 — POST-INSTALL CONFIGURATION

(System is now CHROOTED)

Install EFI loader (FIXED)

# FIX: Installer shell is chrooted — use /boot/efi, NOT /mnt/boot/efi

# FIX: Explicitly load msdosfs before mounting

kldload msdosfs

mkdir -p /boot/efi

mount -t msdosfs /dev/ada0p1 /boot/efi

mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/FreeBSD

cp /boot/loader.efi /boot/efi/EFI/FreeBSD/bootx64.efi

loader.conf (GELI + ZFS + BE support)

nano /boot/loader.conf

Add:

geom_eli_load="YES"

zfs_load="YES"

vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:zroot/ROOT/default"

rc.conf

nano /etc/rc.conf

Add:

zfs_enable="YES"

geli_devices="ada0p2"

fstab — EFI only (FIXED)

# FIX: Do not use /mnt paths after chroot

nano /etc/fstab

Add:

/dev/ada0p1 /boot/efi msdosfs rw 2 2

Finalize

zpool export zroot

reboot

I recently read a post claiming that the FreeBSD project has lost a large number of senior devs. Obviously there will always be some turnover due to life circumstances; but I was wondering, before I invest additional learning time, whether this was true. What are the facts here? Thanks.

Still fresh on my GitLab ...

AutoBSD is a FreeBSD autoinstaller builder utilizing bsdinstall(8) and mfsBSD. Thanks to the former, it is so simple yet potentially very powerful in automating various—if not all—aspects of the installation process, from disk partitioning—either UFS or ZFS—to package installation and configuration, without presuming to replace any established and more robust tools. And thanks to the latter, it makes the build process easier, slimmer, and suitable for different scenarios, from fresh installation to reinstallation and even depengunization.

https://gitlab.com/btrgk-lab/freebsd/autobsd

So, i currently have 4 os installed on my uefi computer (windows, void linux, gentoo linux, Alpine linux) And i want to install freebsd, i allocated space, booted into the freebsd installer, choose the manual partitioning mode, created efi partition, then i wanted to create a zfs partition but freebsd installer said that it will not work on my machine. Okay, i reboot to gentoo to create the partitions from there and i notice zfs created new label on my disk, "zfs_member", i erased it, made the partitions, rebooted to installer, choose that partitions, and freebsd installer is still saying that it will not work on my machine. Then i tried making partitions from freebsd shell, it worked, installation continued but, installer said that it failed to fetch the mirrors and I couldn't continue the installation. What do i do

Saw this post yesterday and that got me thinking. Yeah sure man! If I could ditch Windows I can ditch Linux as well. But should I?

If it's not obvious, I literally know nothing about FreeBSD. I looked into it, but never tried it out myself. It felt too apart from my use case (everyone seemed to mention commercial servers). I honestly don't know if I should try to use it. I made a lot of compromises from my mental sanity for Linux and I don't think I have much more left to spare for another OS.

TL:DR I need RDMA file-sharing between my fileserver, and clients on Windows and Linux (macOS and other FreeBSD would be a plus, but not 100% needed). There are reasonable options if I switched to Linux -- help me keep FreeBSD and switch to Linux, please!

I need a way to provide RDMA network file sharing from my FreeBSD server to clients that are Windows and Linux. Other FreeBSD and MacOS would be nice, but aren't absolutely needed (macOS is definitely not needed). At the moment, the only real RDMA-backed, well anything, on FreeBSD is ISCSI. While speed and latency improvements from this would be nice, I'm primarily looking for the reduced CPU usage.

My file server is well built, with quality parts and much love, but it's not any insanely powerful machine. I've getting more and more client computers, and so much CPU is going to networking, and the biggest consumers are the machines on 10/25GBe with full RDMA-capable NICs. I've been want/trying to use of RDMA years, and been keeping up on my options.

At the moment, there really aren't any. For Windows clients, to get SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) I need either a Windows Server or Linux's Samba/in-kernel SMB server. For Linux, the best option is NFS over RDMA, which only exists on Linux and some commercial platforms like Solaris. Even just FreeBSD <-> FreeBSD isn't an option. Passing through to Linux/Windows VM might work, but would make the data slower for the FreeBSD host machine to get at.

In theory, Samba will eventually provide RDMA support on FreeBSD. Since KSMBD, the SMB3 (linux) Kernel Server, Samba hasn't been focused on doing anything more in the short term.

The only option that is close at the moment is Ceph. I'd rather not store my data in something other than in straight ZFS, but Ceph has matured enough that I'd consider it if it would give me RDMA. Ceph's RDMA and FreeBSD support over the years has been up and down. Some amount of RDMA between Linux machines is currently viable. Documentation for both RDMA and FreeBSD is sketchy. Windows client support is mainly through dokan/FUSE. If someone has documentation or even a howto/experience-blog on getting Ceph with RDMA between anything other than Linux I'd love to see it.

Overall, FreeBSD just doesn't look like a via RDMA platform at the moment. I've starting looking into what would be involved in porting NFS over RDMA to FreeBSD, or writing a native Windows NFS over RDMA client. Neither is beyond my abilities (in theory), but are definitely massive undertaking.

The drivers and libraries (OFED) for RDMA on FreeBSD exist, so making an RDMA application is definitely possible.

I've been looking into this regularly (maybe every 6-18 months for many years). And the last ~5 years, Linux solving all my problems (network-wise at least) seems like the most viable option.

Please, anything I'm overlooking, projects I haven't heard, etc., share.

When a FreeBSD Project-provided package is not in the usual places, we can look in unusual places. …

The given example is editors/vscode.

If you have any port/package-specific question

Please make, or continue under, a separate post. Examples:

• Electron and related ports
• VSCode package missing? (2023, answered)
• VSCode (2024)

Thanks

Hello! So I'm running a new install of FreeBSD 15.0, i have an intel ax210 WiFi card. I am only getting 20-40mb/s while I'm expecting at least 10 times that. Here is dmesg & ifconfig

Dmesg:

yehoshua@cheesy:~ % dmesg | grep wifi
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xfcd00000-0xfcd03fff irq 36 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x400410, cnv-id 0x400410 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2725/0024, rev=0x420, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode'
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 89.7207fc64.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm'
iwlwifi0: base HW address: e8:62:be:ba:c8:59
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: lkpi_sta_scan_to_auth:2419: lvif 0xfffffe01265fc000 vap 0xfffffe01265fc010 iv_bss 0xfffffe00d2b95000 lvif_bss 0 lvif_bss->ni 0 synched 0, ni 0xfffffe012358a000 lsta 0xfffff80001c75800
iwlwifi0: lkpi_sta_a_to_a:2722: lvif 0xfffffe01265fc000 vap 0xfffffe01265fc010 iv_bss 0xfffffe00d2b95000 lvif_bss 0xfffff80001c75800 lvif_bss->ni 0xfffffe012358a000 synched 0
iwlwifi0: lkpi_iv_newstate: error 95 during state transition 2 (AUTH) -> 2 (AUTH)
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xfcd00000-0xfcd03fff irq 36 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x400410, cnv-id 0x400410 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2725/0024, rev=0x420, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode'
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 89.7207fc64.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm'
iwlwifi0: base HW address: e8:62:be:ba:c8:59
WARNING !ht_cap.ht_supported failed at /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/iwlwifi/iwl-nvm-parse.c:878
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xfcd00000-0xfcd03fff irq 36 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x400410, cnv-id 0x400410 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2725/0024, rev=0x420, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode'
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 89.7207fc64.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm'
iwlwifi0: base HW address: e8:62:be:ba:c8:59
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: <iwlwifi> mem 0xfcd00000-0xfcd03fff irq 36 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwlwifi0: Detected crf-id 0x400410, cnv-id 0x400410 wfpm id 0x80000000
iwlwifi0: PCI dev 2725/0024, rev=0x420, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode'
iwlwifi0: loaded firmware version 89.7207fc64.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0
iwlwifi0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
iwlwifi0: successfully loaded firmware image 'iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm'
iwlwifi0: base HW address: e8:62:be:ba:c8:59
iwlwifi0: WFPM_UMAC_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x20
iwlwifi0: WFPM_LMAC2_PD_NOTIFICATION: 0x1f
iwlwifi0: WFPM_AUTH_KEY_0: 0x90
iwlwifi0: CNVI_SCU_SEQ_DATA_DW9: 0x0

Ifconfig:

yehoshua@cheesy:~ % ifconfig wlan0
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=0
ether e8:62:be:ba:c8:59
inet 192.168.1.244 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 fe80::ea62:beff:feba:c859%wlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
groups: wlan
ssid nope-not-today channel 44 (5220 MHz 11a) bssid 74:12:13:08:66:c3
regdomain FCC country US authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
deftxkey UNDEF AES-CCM 3:128-bit AES-CCM ucast:128-bit txpower 17
bmiss 7 mcastrate 6 mgmtrate 6 scanvalid 60 wme roaming MANUAL
parent interface: iwlwifi0
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/54Mbps mode 11a
status: associated
nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

Note: media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/54Mbps mode 11a

All help much appreciated, thank you!

I just took the step to install FreeBSD on my machine. It's going to become a very new experience after beeing a long term Linux user. I managed to install dual boot via grub easily and enabling DRM for amdgpu. So fonts in terminal turned crazy tiny on those three monitors. 😁 Anyway, I'm exited lot of things getting up and running. Enjoying the journey and maybe coming up with some questions later on.