FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE — what changed since 14.4
FreeBSD 14.5 shipped on 8 September 2026 as the sixth release of stable/14. It is a maintenance release: security backports, contrib updates, driver fixes and a long tail of small userland corrections rather than new subsystems.
Security
The advisory table runs from SA-26:05 through SA-26:63 — roughly fifty advisories since March. The headline items are three remote code execution bugs (RPCSEC_GSS packet validation, malicious DHCP options in dhclient, and Wi-Fi scanning in the installer), several local privilege escalations (execve, a second execve TOCTOU race, setcred stack overflow, ptrace validation), and a cluster of kernel use-after-free bugs in tty, file descriptor syscalls, TCP RACK, IPv6 multicast, the device pager and sound(4). Also patched: pf silently dropping rules and overflowing on crafted SCTP, KTLS arbitrary file overwrite, a wg(4) MAC-validation gap, an ASLR bypass via procctl, Arm errata that could bypass page-table permission changes, and multiple rounds of OpenSSL, OpenZFS, unbound, ldns, iconv and libnv fixes. Ten errata notices cover tzdata, an AMD INVLPGB TLB bug, timerfd, a page-fault zeroing bug and early Intel microcode loading.
Contrib software
LLVM 21.1.8 (and clang now defaults to ld.lld), OpenSSL 3.0.21, ncurses 6.6, xz 5.8.3, libarchive 3.8.7, unbound 1.26.0, ldns 1.9.2, expat 2.8.1, file 5.47, less 704, libpcap 1.10.6, tcpdump 4.99.6, tzdata/tzcode 2026c, openresolv 3.17.4, mandoc 2025-09-26, plus refreshed root CA bundle (NSS 3.123.1), PCI and USB ID databases.
Kernel and libc
inotify arrives in 14-STABLE: inotify_init/add_watch/rm_watch syscalls plus libc wrappers, for Linux source compatibility (Klara-sponsored). A new sysctl/tunable can block unprivileged and jailed-root reads of the kernel environment. libc gains C23 sinpi/cospi-family functions, a rewritten resolv.conf sortlist parser (address sorting works again) and a stricter resolver option parser that now rejects malformed values.
Userland
pwd(1) defaults to -L (POSIX). sh(1) history minimum raised to 128. daemon(8) gets -m for output file mode. rc.firewall can read address lists from files. ipfw(8) bundles an ipfw15 fallback so rules load correctly under a 15.x kernel mid-upgrade. lpd(8) finally honours the port in /etc/printcap — broken since IPv6 support in 2000 — but the whole lpr suite is now deprecated and may be gone before 16.0 (CUPS or LPRng from ports instead). local-unbound-setup handles IPv6-only hosts. mt(1) knows LTO-10. /etc/protocols refreshed from IANA.
Drivers and hardware
acpi(4) enables the Darwin OSI by default so dual-GPU Macs run on the integrated GPU (hw.acpi.apple_darwin_osi to toggle). ahci(4) adds a Marvell 88SE9128 variant. smartpqi(4) gains new controllers and 32-bit passthrough buffers. asmc(4) drops 32-bit Intel Macs. Two new keyboard layouts (br.lenovo, us.intl.acc). msdosfs handles surrogate-pair filenames, so emoji on FAT32 work.
Boot loader
bsdinstall again creates a UEFI boot entry (regression fix). loader.efi fix for boot failures on amd64 when loading microcode or many modules. lualoader gets be-list/be-switch and a local.lua hook to filter boot environments; it also follows symlinks when hunting kernels. Nvidia modules are blacklisted from early loading to avoid panics. ZFS rc now runs before tmp, fixing read-only ZFS roots with tmpmfs. powerpc64le boots under QEMU again.
Docs
New or expanded man pages for sbintime(9), dwcotg(4), mq_getfd_np(3), libusb20 functions, GEOM unit clarifications, jail(8) from distribution sets, bhyve -c topology syntax, and a C++ section in style(9).
Upgrade
freebsd-update fetch && freebsd-update install, then freebsd-update -r 14.5-RELEASE upgrade; source users track releng/14.5. 14.5 is supported until 30 June 2027, 14.4 until 31 December 2026, the 14 series until 30 November 2028.
Links
Release notes: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.5R/relnotes/
Announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-announce/2026-September/000316.html
Errata: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/14.5R/errata/
Download: https://download.freebsd.org/releases/ISO-IMAGES/14.5/
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