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FreeBSD 5.4 Released

Posted by timothy on Mon May 09, 2005 07:36 PM
from the still-free-too dept.
Announcements Operating Systems Software Unix BSD
FreeBSD 5.4 is out. Reader KFW excerpts from the announcement: "The Release Engineering Team is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD Stable development branch. Since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE in November 2004 we have made many improvements in functionality, stability, performance, and device driver support for some hardware, as well as dealt with known security issues and made many bugfixes." Here are the release notes.
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FreeBSD 5.4 Released 50 Comments More /

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  • how... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09 2005, @07:40PM (#12483533)
    Ok...So how much is FreeBSD 5.4 going to cost me?

  • congrats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moz25 (262020) on Monday May 09 2005, @07:46PM (#12483579) Homepage
    Congrats to the freebsd team.

    I have one (uneducated) question though: they mention a number of security fixes. How long does it generally take for a fix/patch to come out on freebsd compared to linux (or the other bsd variants)? I'm considering experimenting with it, but the relative comfort of packaging systems I'm familiar with makes it sort of hard.

    • Re:congrats (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09 2005, @07:52PM (#12483620)
      Generally the mailing list comes out with patches much quicker than other flavors of *nix. 24 hour turn around times with patches is not uncommon for FreeBSD (They pride themselves with security)
      • Netbsd and openbsd are just as fast as freebsd with the fixes, and so are most linux distros. Its really only commercial unix vendors that are slow with the fixes.

      • Re:congrats (Score:5, Informative)

        by cperciva (102828) on Tuesday May 10 2005, @02:12AM (#12485943) Homepage
        24 hour turn around times with patches is not uncommon for FreeBSD

        In all honesty... 24 hours is very unusual for us. I can think of one case where it happened recently, but that was when we rushed an advisory out in order to fit into the 5.4 release schedule.

        A more typical time is 3 days, since we want to test carefully to make certain that a "security fix" never ends up breaking something else.
    • you can usually measure it in hours

      openbsd ... it's probably already been fixed for a few months

    • Re:congrats (Score:5, Informative)

      by jwthompson2 (749521) <jwthompson2.gmail@com> on Monday May 09 2005, @07:56PM (#12483648) Homepage

      As fast as they are fixed, which in reality ends up being comparable to Linux, just listen on the appropriate mailing lists and follow the step-by step instructions. There are also some automated utilities in the ports collection that ease security updates. The BSD ports system will take care of most of your packaging concerns as well since it is an actively updated collection, although most require compilation from source there is the binary alternative, package, which should be easy enough for most RPM folk I would imagine.

      Check out this link [freebsd.org] regarding packages and ports.

    • Re:congrats (Score:2, Interesting)

      by saleenS281 (859657)
      As fast if not faster than linux. Also, IIRC (don't flame me, correct me if I'm wrong) most linux variants of packaging systems were derived from BSD. As for worrying about about the packaging system... you only need two utilities, and two config files. cvsup-without-gui and portupgrade. It's literally as simple as portinstall *package you want*. And if you want it updated portupgrade *package to be updated*. You just have to keep your ports tree up to date and you'll have the most up to date versions

    • Re:congrats (Score:4, Informative)

      by drmerope (771119) on Monday May 09 2005, @11:45PM (#12485270)
      Let me fill in some holes others left out. New releases are announced as having fixed security problems, but that is a comparison against the previous version's original ISO image only.

      Security fixes are backported to earlier versions. Those versions still officially maintained have fixes backported by the security officers. Older versions tend to also get fixes but merely by the work of interested committers. Thus it isn't usual to see fixes being backported to releases as far back as 4.3.

      What do I mean by backported? Users can update their /usr/src directory and rebuild. More recently a binary update service has been available.

      Thus there is for example 5.3-RELEASE, and 5.3-p5.

      Generally speaking, there is no need to wait for new releases to get fixes. Fixes are painlessly and automatically available almost overnight.

      All of this applies to the software officially maintained by the FreeBSD system--i.e., anything in the "base system" Other software generally gets fixes in ports soon after the upstream version has a fix... but backing this is the port-audit database. port-audit is maintained by the security team and lists all the known vulnerabilities against third-party software. A cron job mails you warnings about vulnerable third-party software. The ports system warns you about vulnerable software and libraries when you attempt to install (even when a new install depends on an already installed but vulernable library.

  • Remember, cvsup is your friend! (Score:4, Informative)

    by nubbie (454788) on Monday May 09 2005, @07:48PM (#12483588) Homepage
    Using CVSup [freebsd.org] and then Rebuilding "world" [freebsd.org]
      • Wrong on both counts:

        1) The stable branch does include security fixes

        2) The ports collection is not branched, so there's no possibility for "several ports downgraded" in the "4.x series". The only situation in which ports are downgraded is if there are serious problems with the newer version, and a reversion to the previous version is a net gain.

  • The end is near. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis (629047) on Monday May 09 2005, @07:51PM (#12483615)
    Sarge was frozen.

    FreeBSD has risen from the grave.

    It's hailing here in northern California in may.

    The end is near, put on your glasses and anti-radiation suits boys, we're in for a ride.

  • Torrents are your friends: (Score:5, Informative)

    by rkrabath (742391) on Monday May 09 2005, @07:59PM (#12483662) Journal

    ##### Disk One [freebsd.org] #####

    ##### Disk Two [freebsd.org] #####

    Of course, in their infinate wisdom, the coders of slashdot have decided to make my life difficult with their damn lameness filters

  • VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:3, Interesting)

    by green pizza (159161) on Monday May 09 2005, @08:18PM (#12483764) Homepage
    No mention of it in the release notes, I wonder if USB finally works properly on the VIA CLE266 / VT8235 chipset. That's the only thing that keeps me on Linux.

  • Help promote their new torrent option, (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Help promote their new torrent option, seed it for a bit me me and the 5 others doing it currently.

    http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/ [freebsd.org]

    if you can, join the all seeds ; )

  • Free BSD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by a3217055 (768293) on Monday May 09 2005, @08:34PM (#12483848)
    Congrats Well awaited, will install and give it a try. Sorry not top of the line hardware... But then what about Debian, Debian is like dreamer in high school. J/K But BSD is well welcomed, I run BSD on my laptop but after some stand offs it is one of the most nicest systems I have used. But I always ask this to the Linux guys at my compnay ( ps I also run linux ) why did linux get the market it has now and not BSD ? Even thought BSD has a lot of cooler things . . . PS Apple OSX is not BSD, it is a lot like your lil'sister who gets involved with the wrong type of guy in the adult industry.

    • Re:Free BSD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dmaxwell (43234) on Monday May 09 2005, @08:59PM (#12484083)
      But I always ask this to the Linux guys at my compnay ( ps I also run linux ) why did linux get the market it has now and not BSD ?

      Just plain marketing for one. *BSD can and probably is better by any number of measures. "Better" doesn't always equate to "sexier".

      The other reason is that GPL can be more business friendly than the BSD license. The trick here is that the GPL is picky about which businesses it is friends with. For strategic reasons, a company like IBM can open something up but place the contribution under the GPL. It is perfectly free from an end user point of view but will require re-implementation on the part of a competitor who wishes to use knowledge from the code in question. This takes nothing away from scenarios where the BSD license is more "business friendly". Personally, I find the "moral" arguments around all of this induce finger drumming. If the choices were BSD or nothing or GPL or nothing then I expect we'd see much less funding of interesting projects by business.

        • Re:Free BSD (Score:4, Informative)

          by dmaxwell (43234) on Tuesday May 10 2005, @07:04AM (#12487035)
          I'm a Linux user myself; but let's give props where props are due. One measure in which most any BSD is better is integration. BSD has been maintained as a coherent system since before Linux has even existed. Their userland has a bit less evolution and tad more design in it. The init scripts are arguably better due to their relative simplicity. As for features that BSD lacks, that can be a feature as well. Simplicity often =='s robustness. The individual flavors also have their own merits. There is OpenBSD's well known penchant for correctness and security. NetBSD runs on even more arches than Debian.

          I'll also point out that the BSD's tend to be more predictable in their quality from release to release. There have been some real brown paper bag kernel releases and distros like RedHat and Mandrake have pulled boners on their own.

          I'll bet a real BSD fanboy could probably think of a few more.
    • Apple OSX is not BSD, it is a lot like your lil'sister who gets involved with the wrong type of guy in the adult industry.

      I couldn't have said better! Mod me offtopic if you will, but please stop saying MacOS X == BSD!

  • tail -f *log (Score:4, Funny)

    by _Sharp'r_ (649297) <sharper&booksunderreview,com> on Monday May 09 2005, @08:36PM (#12483854) Homepage Journal
    From the release notes:

    "The -f option of tail(1) utility now supports more than one file at a time."

    That enhancement alone is worthy of upgrading!

    • Re:tail -f *log (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That enhancement alone is worthy of upgrading!

      Never heard of xtail [unicom.com]? It was released in 1989 and does exactly that.

  • 5.4 Dedication (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09 2005, @09:21PM (#12484253)
    The FreeBSD 5.4 Release is dedicated to the memory of Cameron Grant [dbsi.org]. Cameron was an active FreeBSD Developer and principal architect of the sound driver subsystem despite his physical handicap. His is a superb example of human spirit dominating over adversity. Cameron was an inspiration to those who met him; he will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.html [freebsd.org]
  • which is it? :)

    • Re:Better SMP support? Better MySQL performance? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's a few things from the release notes that might help with MySQL and/or SMP: A number of bugs have been fixed in the ULE scheduler. A bug in Inter-Processor Interrupt (IPI) handling, which could cause SMP systems to crash under heavy load, has been fixed. More details are contained in errata note A number of bugfixes for libpthread have been merged from HEAD. Anyone from FreeBSD know for sure if the fixes above will help bring FreeBSD up to par with Linux as far as MySQL performance on SMP machin
      • Anyone from FreeBSD know for sure if the fixes above will help bring FreeBSD up to par with Linux as far as MySQL performance on SMP machines go?
        Probably not, because certain very busy people have -- once again -- forgotten to turn off INVARIANTS in the threading libraries' Makefile :-(

        I doubt, many benchmarkers will bother turning these off on their systems and recompiling libthr/libc_r ...

    • Re:good stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dabigpaybackski (772131) on Monday May 09 2005, @08:54PM (#12484038) Homepage
      I've thought the same thing on more than one occasion, but the time for MS to have made that decision was years ago, before they spent all that money on anti-Unix advertising.

      It would be hard for them to talk their way out of the rhetorical position they're in, where (it is claimed) Unix is inferior/dead/too expensive.

      It's too bad, because I think they would be in a stronger position had they gone the Apple route. Can you imagine how different things would be if they had released a Unix-based OS a couple of years ago? Unthinkable.

      • Re:good stuff (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jbplou (732414)
        You think they could be in a stonger position then they are now. They own the desktop market, have a good position in the server market, own the office suite market, own a decent development and business integration and back end software market(think SQL Server, .NET...). How else could they improve in position in your eyes, no wait lets not worry about your eyes lets worry about reality. Microsoft is doing fantanstic business wise, sure IBM and HP rank higher on the fortune 500 but microsof doesn't do h

      • Re:good stuff (Score:3, Insightful)

        by netdur (816698)
        microsoft did release UNIX based OS years before they did release ms DOS, and they called it xenix [wikipedia.org], anyway... to have UNIX as OS doesn't help anything, I have IE6 running over wine on linux, lately when I start it (mainly I use IE to test my web site) IE display pop-ups with different ads every time! my homepage set to "about:blank" so the only thing I can think, I have malware running over wine on my linux box, installed trough some hole in IE, in other hand, surfing net via firefox is secure, whatever
    • Herr_Nightingale (556106): I just wish Microsoft would pull an Apple and stick a GUI on top of it. Sigh. Longhorn would come a lot sooner (mid-2010?) if they took this route. Plus it might not suck hairy donkey balls then.

      I've always wanted the same thing, sadly however the majority of ./ would just call Microsoft theives, etc... but its okay for Apple to do it...

      I'm also waiting to see how receptive ./ is of the [potentially] new Apache project.. an implimentation of Java. Lets see if they treat it th
      • FreeBSD 5 is now the stable branch, and 4.x became legacy.

        Please enlighten me, how is FreeBSD 5.x flaky?

        The ports system works almost perfectly for me (FreeBSD is my main desktop and it is on one of my test servers). Keeping curent is simply a matter of make update && portupgrade -a every morning (I don't even run cvsup manually), with the occasional hiccup that is easily solvable by yourself or with a little help from TFM, freebsd-questions@lists.freebsd.org, or freebsd-ports@lists.freebsd.org.

      • Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:4, Informative)

        by sp0rk173 (609022) on Monday May 09 2005, @11:22PM (#12485143)
        If you want support for the latest hardware, you either need to run Linux, or FreeBSD 5.x, and FreeBSD 5.x is somewhat flaky.

        Not true. Device drivers are usually backported unless they depend on some system difference between 4.x and 5.x. I've never noticed any hardware incompatibilities between versions and i've used both extensively.

        The next one is a doosy...

        The FreeBSD ports system is not all it's cracked up to be. Stuff is constantly breaking.

        I honestly have not encounted a break in any major apps in ports in the past 3 years. It's evolved a lot since you last used it, i guess.

        The desktop apps just aren't maintained carefully enough (not surprising, since FreeBSD is not a major desktop OS). After a cvsup, you get left wit a system in a state where you can't upgrade one piece of software without breaking a lot of other software. Portupgrade is a disaster -- I've never seen a better way to bork a system than to unleash portupgrade on it.

        No, no no. Not true. I had a production system with apache, php, postgresql, gnome, KDE, etc installed (it was a workstation/light-use webserver for a lab i was working in). I installed it at 4.5, last time i touched it it was at 4.11, all ports upgraded (using cvsup and portupgrade), only one install point. After being a FreeBSD user for about a year. If I can do it, in a production environment, without any break in's or security issues, anyone can. My webserver here at home has been running 5 since 5.2.1, same deal - all things installed from ports, only one point of install, all upgraded by cvsup and portupgrade. No problems. Then there's my workstation, it runs Gentoo, Windows, Solaris and FreeBSD 5.3. FBSD has been installed since 5.3 first made -RELEASE, runs gnome 2.10 (which hit ports before it hit portage, ~1 week after official release). Only one install point, constantly updated using cvsup and portupgrade. Gentoo? Great little distro, but i've installed it at least 3 or 4 separate times due to major breakages or just aggrivation with portage. I don't hold it against portage, it's just still maturing.

        Your report couldn't be further from my experience. Ever since i started running freebsd back four years ago i've been able to keep an up-to-date, stable system without much difficulty.
        • If you read the ext2 notes, it is not supported very well. Nevertheless, I have never had any issues with it - except for dirty filesystems after boot. One of them devs sent a patch (Michael Nottebrock) - download it here. [unideb.hu] - that will unmount your ext2 filesystem before running the rest of shutdown procedure.

    • Re:Might be a stupid question, but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by menkhaura (103150) <espinafre@gmail.com> on Monday May 09 2005, @09:58PM (#12484533) Homepage
      Create a standard-supfile with the following content:

      *default host=cvsup2.FreeBSD.org
      *default base=/usr
      *default prefix=/usr
      *default release=cvs tag=RELENG_5_4
      *default delete use-rel-suffix
      *default compress
      src-all

      (I like to put it under /etc). Then you can run the following command:

      cvsup -g -L 2 /path/to/your/standard-supfile
      Go make some coffee while your sources are synchronized, then read the Handbook to learn how to build the beast.

      • making your own world (Score:3, Informative)

        by n0dez (657944)
        If you already cvsup'ed your sources,
        make buildworld
        make buildkernel
        make installkernel
        reboot

        boot in single user mode, then
        mergemaster -p
        make installworld
        mergemaster
        reboot

        Voila, you should be running 5.4-RELEASE at this point :)
    • cvsup.
      pkg_add -rv cvsup-without-gui, then take a look at the example supfiles in /usr/share/samples/cvsup
      Once you've brought the system up-to-date (if you just want to go to 5.4, set the release tag to RELENG_5_4), follow the instructions in the Handbook [freebsd.org] on building the world.

      That handbook section covers all the stuff I've mentioned above. The Handbook is your friend.

    • I've had absolutely no problems with 5.2 and 5.3. 5.0 and 5.1 were a bit flaky, but that's long gone. There is no performance downgrade. Stop listening to the DragonFly fudsters, FreeBSD 5.x is fast and stable.
        • With minimal/no tinkering I could get a full Apache2+MySQL+mod_php rig up from pkgsrc in DragonFly BSD. X is another matter, but it's been done.

          There are worse problems than that though. I recall having mysterious behavior (also seen on mailing lists) when trying to forward things to a local FTP proxy, which is the only way to have transparent FTP NATting with PF (and IPFW/natd just didn't work at all, but I might have just missed something: it's been years since I last used it). So it has some caveats as

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