Dear friends and followers,

With the best wishes for the holiday season attached we hereby humbly
present our 17.1-BETA images and thank everyone for their early input,
valid questions and generally keeping us on our toes throughout the
past months.  The next major release features FreeBSD 11.0, the SSH
remote installer, new languages Italian and Czech, state-of-the-art
HardenedBSD security features, PHP 7.0, native PAM authentication
against e.g. 2FA (TOTP), as well a rewritten Nano-style card images
that adapt to the media size to name only a few.

These will be the only beta images.  They are not suitable for production
environments.  Release candidate builds will start in January in order
to provide production-ready images.  Checksums can be found below this
announcement.  Direct download links from our capable mirror providers
are as follows:

https://opnsense.c0urier.net/releases/17.1.b/ (Europe)
http://mirrors.nycbug.org/pub/opnsense/releases/17.1.b/ (US East Coast)
http://mirror.sfo12.us.leaseweb.net/opnsense/releases/17.1.b/ (US West Coast)

https://opnsense.org/download/ (full mirror list)

Here is a list of hand-picked major features that were worked on since 16.7:

o system secondary console support with new EFI and Mute options
o installer now boots up with SSH for headless remote installation
o Italian as a release language (contributed by Antonio Prado)
o Czech as a release language (contributed by Pavel Borecki)
o HardenedBSD ASLR and PIE compilation for most binaries
o HardenedBSD SEGVGUARD to prevent ASLR brute force attacks
o PHP 7.0 compatibility and general GUI speed improvements
o improved password security (contributed by OSnet)
o FTP proxy plugin (contributed by Frank Brendel)
o PAM authentication module, e.g. 2FA on SSH
o IPsec tunnel isolation mode for interoperability
o Intel em(4) driver version 7.6.2 as a plugin
o micro versioning/migrations for config items
o constraint support for config items
o rewritten Nano images with growfs(8) support
o authentication methods are now fully pluggable
o firewall rules are now fully pluggable
o Tinc VPN Plugin
o FreeBSD 11.0

Known issues in this version:

o The inherited 6rd kernel patches are not included in standard
  FreeBSD 11.0.  The impact on 6rd setups is currently unknown.
o The installer character set is not entirely correct due to the
  default console switch to vt(4).
o Fundamental WiFi stack changes in FreeBDS 11.0 may still affect
  overall operability.
o Insight and Health statistics import from the early installer do not work.
o The LibreSSL version will not be available until the final release.

Any help in making 17.1 the best it could possibly be for its final
release at the end of January 2017 is highly appreciated.  Please do
not hesitate to contact us through any of the known channels:

o Twitter: https://twitter.com/opnsense
o Forum: https://forum.opnsense.org/
o GitHub: https://github.com/opnsense


Stay safe and merry,
Ad, Franco, Jos and Shawn

--
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = 6ed4e335757f5f58e34f3f59984a06183612ed0cffd5a9238f85b1a156a56039
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = 70b89467d6dc9cadaa7c855764a8bb91f0fe118bba60074ab1d8f41362a7042a
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = affae7605fde77827e975597de5280db746f85c1ed38794ce647a6ad7c2f945d
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-vga-amd64.img.bz2) = 6f99cc3d0ef8d328eb43985b8d01cffe2e7f65e886015c65c84c062e33f15fbb
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = b799f8260ae1a55848c126d7be52c51e92ae3d11c0eaf347a506e7e59c92fd9c
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 86186e5b5af8be2818385497f8bdf5c3128c7864e502502676424193bcce9461
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = 7b20afc07fc2ca45b6cee66c855d2576170a04684dae0cb65243a8abaa9be684
SHA256 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-vga-i386.img.bz2) = 1fc58fade2e15a30afec82b3fff553344557e6903b69c2f48e20976373543d1e

MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = 221b6b63642051518cd190b63775d5a5
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = 67ff68890113bb2b4223a2336cfc5d01
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = e757bef2fcb5e444cad8b7d8991314fe
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-vga-amd64.img.bz2) = c2c56a542856fd0b84f299d7dd783b17
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = c210c342a6d618e7c1ebcdefdf1e3f9d
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 1c036f6707f9922c40748be44592462a
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = ff07d0d4f9e62a99896de8228ceba41b
MD5 (OPNsense-17.1.b-OpenSSL-vga-i386.img.bz2) = 3f67a06ca99137d135d1fc9713912aff
