The FreeBSD Project

FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE Announcement FreeBSD 14.5: announcement signed checksum files installation instructions hardware information release notes errata readme schedule Date: September 8, 2026 The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE. This is the sixth release of the stable/14 branch. Since this release is occurring late in a legacy stable branch, there are few new features; rather, the focus is primarily on maintenance. As such, changes since 14.4-RELEASE consist mostly of bug fixes, driver updates, and new versions of externally-maintained software. For a complete list of new features, supported hardware, and known problems, please see the online release notes, hardware compatibility notes, and errata list, available at: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/14.5R/relnotes/ https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/14.5R/hardware/ https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/14.5R/errata/ For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/ Availability FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE is now available for the amd64, i386, aarch64, armv7, powerpc, poerpcspe, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures. FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded as described below. SHA512 and SHA256 hashes for the release ISO, memory stick, and SD card images are included at the bottom of this message. PGP-signed checksums for the release images are also available at: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/14.5R/signatures/ A PGP-signed version of this announcement is available at: https://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/14.5R/announce.asc The purpose of the images provided as part of the release are as follows: dvd1 This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, the documentation, debugging distribution sets, and a small set of pre-built packages aimed at getting a graphical workstation up and running. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. This should be all you need if you can burn and use DVD-sized media. Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. As one example of how to use the dvd1 image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work: # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. disc1 This contains the base FreeBSD operating system. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages. Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages. As one example of how to use the disc1 image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work: # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. bootonly This supports booting a machine using the CDROM drive but does not contain the installation distribution sets for installing FreeBSD from the CD itself. You would need to perform a network based install (e.g., from an HTTP or FTP server) after booting from the CD. Additionally, this can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) for the amd64 architecture and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages. As one example of how to use the bootonly image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work: # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. memstick This can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to do an install on machines capable of booting off USB drives. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages. As one example of how to use the memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work: # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. mini-memstick This can be written to a USB memory stick (flash drive) and used to boot a machine, but does not contain the installation distribution sets on the medium itself, similar to the bootonly image. It also supports booting into a "livefs" based rescue mode. There are no pre-built packages. As one example of how to use the mini-memstick image, assuming the USB drive appears as /dev/da0 on your machine something like this should work: # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. FreeBSD/arm SD card images These can be written to an SD card and used to boot the supported arm system. The SD card image contains the full FreeBSD installation, and can be installed onto SD cards as small as 5 GB. 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. To write the FreeBSD/arm image to an SD card, use the dd(1) utility, replacing KERNEL with the appropriate kernel configuration name for the system. # dd if=FreeBSD-14.5-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img \ of=/dev/da0 bs=1m conv=sync Be careful to make sure you get the target (of=) correct. Pre-installed virtual machine images are also available for the amd64 (x86_64), i386 (x86_32), AArch64 (arm64), and RISCV (riscv64) architectures in QCOW2, VHD, and VMDK disk image formats, as well as raw (unformatted) images. FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE is also available on these cloud hosting platforms: FreeBSD Amazon® EC2™: FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMI IDs can be retrieved from the Systems Manager Parameter Store in each region using the keys: /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/base/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/base/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/builder/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/builder/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/cloud-init/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/cloud-init/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/small/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/amd64/small/zfs/14.5/RELEASE AMIs are also expected to be available soon in the AWS Marketplace at: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-sxzreyutwngxy (UFS) https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-4csbncujmsgbk (ZFS) FreeBSD/aarch64 EC2 AMI IDs can be retrieved from the Systems Manager Parameter Store in each region using the keys: /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/base/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/base/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/builder/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/builder/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/cloud-init/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/cloud-init/zfs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/small/ufs/14.5/RELEASE /aws/service/freebsd/arm64/small/zfs/14.5/RELEASE AMIs are also expected to be available soon in the AWS Marketplace at: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-axdyrrhr6pboq (UFS) https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-7xtubzy4v4oo4 (ZFS) Google® Compute Engine™: Instances can be deployed using the gcloud utility: % gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE \ --image freebsd-14-5-release-amd64-ufs \ --image-project=freebsd-org-cloud-dev % gcloud compute ssh INSTANCE Microsoft® Azure™: FreeBSD virtual machine images are expected to be available on the Azure Marketplace at: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/marketplace/apps/thefreebsdfoundation.freebsd-14_5 Support This point release, FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE, will be supported until June 30, 2027. The previous point release, FreeBSD 14.4-RELEASE, will reach its End of Life at December 31, 2026. The FreeBSD 14 release series will be supported until November 30, 2028. Additional support information can be found at: https://www.FreeBSD.org/platforms/ https://www.FreeBSD.org/security/ Acknowledgments Many companies donated equipment, network access, or human time to support the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 14.5 including: The FreeBSD Foundation Juniper Networks New York Internet Sentex Data Communications Tarsnap 365 Data Centers The release engineering team for 14.5-RELEASE includes: Antoine Brodin <[email protected]> Package Building Dave Cottlehuber <[email protected]> Release Engineering Sergio Carlavilla Delgado <[email protected]> Release Engineering Marc Fonvieille <[email protected]> Release Engineering, Documentation Craig Leres <[email protected]> Release Engineering Xin Li <[email protected]> Release Engineering, Security Team Liaison Ed Maste <[email protected]> Release Engineering Deputy Lead Colin Percival <[email protected]> Release Engineering Lead, 14.5-RELEASE Release Engineer Vladlen Popolitov <[email protected]> Release Engineering Muhammad Moinur Rahman <[email protected]> Release Engineering Lexi Winter <[email protected]> Release Engineering Alexander Ziaee <[email protected]> Release Engineering Trademark FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation. ISO Image Checksums amd64 (x86_64):