The third BETA build of the 12.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available.

Installation images are available for:

o 12.1-BETA3 amd64 GENERIC
o 12.1-BETA3 i386 GENERIC
o 12.1-BETA3 powerpc GENERIC
o 12.1-BETA3 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 12.1-BETA3 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
o 12.1-BETA3 sparc64 GENERIC
o 12.1-BETA3 armv6 RPI-B
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 BANANAPI
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 BEAGLEBONE
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 CUBIEBOARD
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 CUBIEBOARD2
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 RPI2
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 PANDABOARD
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 WANDBOARD
o 12.1-BETA3 armv7 GENERICSD
o 12.1-BETA3 aarch64 GENERIC
o 12.1-BETA3 aarch64 RPI3
o 12.1-BETA3 aarch64 PINE64
o 12.1-BETA3 aarch64 PINE64-LTS

Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
system.

Installer images and memory stick images are available here:

    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/12.1/

The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.

If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
system or on the -stable mailing list.

If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "releng/12.1" branch.

A summary of changes since 12.1-BETA2 includes:

o An issue with imx6-based arm boards had been fixed.

o An issue with 64-bit long double types leading to link failures had
  been fixed.

o An overflow logic error had been fixed in fsck_msdosfs(8).

o An issue in destruction of robust mutexes had been fixed.

o Support for the '-vnP' flags to the zfs send subcommand had been
  added for bookmarks.

o The ixgbe(4) driver had been updated to prevent a potential system
  crash with certain 10Gb Intel NICs.

o A regression with the zfs send subcommand when using the '-n', '-P',
  and '-i' flags had been fixed.

o The freebsd-update(8) utility had been updated to include two new
  subcommands, updatesready and showconfig.

o Support for 'ps -H' had been added to kvm(3).

o An issue when compiling certain ports targeting Intel Atom CPUs had
  been fixed.

o A use-after-free in SCTP had been fixed.

o A regression that could lead to a system crash when using vmxnet3 had
  been fixed.

A list of changes since 12.0-RELEASE is available in the releng/12.1
release notes:

    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/relnotes.html

Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
updated on an ongoing basis as the 12.1-RELEASE cycle progresses.

=== Virtual Machine Disk Images ===

VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64
architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
(or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):

    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.1-BETA3/

The partition layout is:

    ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
    ~ 1 GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
    ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)

The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image
formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB
respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.

Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI
loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the
virtual machine images.  See this page for more information:

    https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU

To boot the VM image, run:

    % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt  \
	-bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \
	-drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \
	-device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
	-device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
	-netdev user,id=net0

Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.

=== Amazon EC2 AMI Images ===

FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:

  eu-north-1 region: ami-07085de4e26071c9e
  ap-south-1 region: ami-095bd806d8acfffb1
  eu-west-3 region: ami-0314542b8d7579bdd
  eu-west-2 region: ami-06ec921eb87ef4d7b
  eu-west-1 region: ami-0f0051c800be4091e
  ap-northeast-2 region: ami-0f109258a463177bb
  ap-northeast-1 region: ami-0224a1cb8e19333b8
  sa-east-1 region: ami-0536a86bff5f33356
  ca-central-1 region: ami-06709921360dccfa3
  ap-east-1 region: ami-0142af9336f6e529c
  ap-southeast-1 region: ami-0c439e0bc0c567dd3
  ap-southeast-2 region: ami-0fa770b7f07583b48
  eu-central-1 region: ami-0dfca49cf2ba89c43
  us-east-1 region: ami-06884b4e2e511590f
  us-east-2 region: ami-06c687665309d8b17
  us-west-1 region: ami-0dce597e8b07a6c6d
  us-west-2 region: ami-0e1f5ccdd2221b1d6

FreeBSD/aarch64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:

  eu-north-1 region: ami-0914805810f9fcca2
  ap-south-1 region: ami-0862409434d8089f2
  eu-west-3 region: ami-08e6dc501b060fa7c
  eu-west-2 region: ami-000f2362fef121710
  eu-west-1 region: ami-0c7a18e2b216a1b0c
  ap-northeast-2 region: ami-047bc72d91ab47b95
  ap-northeast-1 region: ami-082dcca6b9ac52f3f
  sa-east-1 region: ami-0a9fd8ffffc889430
  ca-central-1 region: ami-0d513e584801de3fa
  ap-east-1 region: ami-089a6b231886f692f
  ap-southeast-1 region: ami-09c6f305a761c8712
  ap-southeast-2 region: ami-0ee5e02b85aecbef3
  eu-central-1 region: ami-08321cbac28d28d71
  us-east-1 region: ami-0a9c2fdd733536b50
  us-east-2 region: ami-0a5b46f4260ed9ca5
  us-west-1 region: ami-01aca4de517a623fe
  us-west-2 region: ami-0ac8b561fb3597d89

=== Vagrant Images ===

FreeBSD/amd64 images are available on the Hashicorp Atlas site, and can
be installed by running:

    % vagrant init freebsd/FreeBSD-12.1-BETA3
    % vagrant up

=== Upgrading ===

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386
systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier
FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:

	# freebsd-update upgrade -r 12.1-BETA3

During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by
merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically
performed merging was done correctly.

	# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before
continuing.

	# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new
userland components:

	# freebsd-update install

It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible,
especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example,
FreeBSD 11.x.  Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat11x and
other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted
into the new userland:

	# shutdown -r now

Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove
stale files:

	# freebsd-update install