FreeBSD 14.3-BETA1 Now Available

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 04, 2025

The first Beta build of the 14.3-RELEASE release cycle is now available.


Installation images are available for:


o 14.3-BETA1 amd64 GENERIC
o 14.3-BETA1 i386 GENERIC
o 14.3-BETA1 powerpc GENERIC
o 14.3-BETA1 powerpc64 GENERIC64
o 14.3-BETA1 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE
o 14.3-BETA1 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
o 14.3-BETA1 armv7 GENERICSD
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 GENERIC
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 RPI
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 PINE64
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 PINEBOOK
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 ROCK64
o 14.3-BETA1 aarch64 ROCKPRO64
o 14.3-BETA1 riscv64 GENERIC
o 14.3-BETA1 riscv64 GENERICSD


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/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.3/


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 Git to do a source based update of an existing
system, use the "releng/14.3" branch.


=== Virtual Machine Disk Images ===


VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, aarch64, and riscv64
architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
(or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):


    https://download.freebsd.org/releases/VM-IMAGES/14.3-BETA1/


BASIC-CI images can be found at:


    https://download.freebsd.org/releases/CI-IMAGES/14.3-BETA1/


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.


=== OCI Container Images ===


OCI container images are available for the amd64, i386, aarch64, and riscv64
architectures, and can be found at


    https://download.freebsd.org/releases/OCI-IMAGES/14.3-BETA1/


There are three images:


    static  - suitable for statically linked workloads
    dynamic - suitable for dynamically linked workloads
    runtime - suitable for shell workloads


The OCI images can be imported into local Podman container storage using
'podman load':


    % podman load --input ./FreeBSD-<version>-<arch>-container-image-runtime.txz


or copied to an image registry using 'skopeo copy':


    % skopeo copy \
        oci-archive:./FreeBSD-<version>-<arch>-container-image-runtime.txz \
        docker://myregistry.example.com/test/runtime:latest

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