FreeBSD 5.4 Released 268
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.
Sorry guys (Score:1, Funny)
I'm really sorry everyone, but a story like this is just begging for it.
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-02.htm [mwscomp.com]
FreeBSD:
I'm not dead!
CART MASTER:
What?
CUSTOMER:
Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
FreeBSD:
I'm not dead!
CART MASTER:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is.
FreeBSD:
I'm not!
CART MASTER:
He isn't?
CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. Netcraft confirms it.
FreeBSD:
I'm getting better!
It's not dead... (Score:1, Funny)
I mean, why do you think Linux was started in Finland?
Re:Sorry guys (Score:5, Funny)
how... (Score:5, Funny)
Fifty Dollars. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fifty Dollars. (Score:2)
Re:Fifty Dollars. (Score:2)
Must be a linux user, we freebsd users shower.
Re:how... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:how... (Score:4, Funny)
correction, 2.0, not 1.0! (Score:2)
FreeBSD 1.0 cannot be run unless you have a Unix license. I'm not sure what this would cost you, but SCO is selling licenses to Linux users for $699.00, so my guess is about that. However you need to ask SCO, as they are the only ones legally selling such a license.
For Freebsd 2.0 the requirement of a Unix license was eliminated (there were only 7 files to re-implement).
Re:correction, 2.0, not 1.0! (Score:2)
For Freebsd 2.0 the requirement of a Unix license was eliminated (there were only 7 files to re-implement).
I belive that requirement is no longer valid. It was based on the licensing of V7/32V Unix which was released [linuxdevcenter.com] by Caldera in January 2002
faculties (Score:2)
Depends. How much did your hardware cost, and how much do you value your sanity? ;)
No, actually, FreeBSD was pretty sweet last time I tried it. I'd be all in favour of it, if it was ported to more archs.
Better SMP support? Better MySQL performance? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Better SMP support? Better MySQL performance? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Better SMP support? Better MySQL performance? (Score:2)
I doubt, many benchmarkers will bother turning these off on their systems and recompiling libthr/libc_r ...
congrats (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Commercial flavours of unix maybe. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:congrats (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:congrats (Score:2)
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.
Am I the only guy that finds that really scary? I mean, I agree, we need to be pretty sure that a security fix isn't going to break other things....but my stress level on day 2 of knowing that my sshd has a remote-root-exploit would be pretty damned high. I would hope that my distro could check for breakage during the first day, before I start sucking down antacids to
Re:congrats (Score:2)
This is why security issues are usually not publicly disclosed immediately. A window of a few days between informing vendors and public disclosure allows vendors to prepare and test their patches.
Obviously, if there is a publicly disclosed remote root vulnerability in sshd, FreeBSD would fix it as soon as possible.
Re:congrats (Score:3, Interesting)
openbsd
Re:congrats (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:congrats (Score:4, Informative)
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
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)
Avoid CVSUP on a server (Score:2)
THere is a stable cvs tree but it does not include security fixes. At least thats what i saw. Also in the FBSD 4.x series I saw several ports downgraded for some bizaare reasons. Why I dont know
I broke my system several times from cvsing up
Re:Avoid CVSUP on a server (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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.
Know your weather! (Score:2)
Quick summary:
* Hail is ice pellets produced by strong thunderstorms, and is most likely in the summer (as that's when strong thunderstorms are most likely to occur).
* Sleet is re-frozen precipitation, caused by snow that has been melted and re-frozen on its way down.
While it is quite likely you were indeed experiencing hail, not sleet, hail is not uncommon in May if a strong front passes through.
2/3 isn't bad though, I'd give a 70% forecast that the end is indeed near. In th
Re:The end is near. (Score:2)
Torrents are your friends: (Score:5, Informative)
##### 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
Bloody Thieves!!! (Score:5, Funny)
What is it with you people???
You make me sick.
Re:Bloody Thieves!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Torrents are your friends: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Torrents are your friends: (Score:2)
While you're there, check out the plush daemon [freebsdmall.com]. Your girlfriends will love it :D
Re:Torrents are your friends: (Score:2)
Do they make hand puppets now as well?
*runs*
VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:3, Informative)
Re:VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:2, Flamebait)
I never had a problem with my KT333 board.
Of course, it was running Windows.
Re:VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:2)
Well it shouldn't be impossible, just improbable.
Re:VIA CLE266/VT8235 USB support (Score:2)
Help promote their new torrent option, (Score:2, Informative)
http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/ [freebsd.org]
if you can, join the all seeds ; )
Re:Help promote their new torrent option, (Score:2)
Mostly I want to see if 5.4 can disklabel my Alphaserver 1000A disks. 5.3, 5.2.1, 5.2 can't even boot, and 5.1 can't label the disks
Free BSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
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:2)
That doesn't explain the pre-commercialization days of Linux. Is the GPL really more business friendly than the BSD license for a one man firm ten years ago? Hardly! They weren't worried about proprietary companies "stealing" their shell scripts because too many other one-man Linux outfits were "stealing" it instead!
Instead Linux's popularity can be attributed to two other things, in my opinion. First, BSD got bushwhacked by
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
Imo the big problem of freebsd was (is?) that it is an OS by specialists for specialists (and specialist wanna bees). These people were not interested in marketing and helping out newbies they were focused on building the best OS available.
The early Linux community was very different in thi
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
So, uh, do you have numbers around? AFAIK even some freebsd hackers admit that linux is kicking their asses in more than one field. It's not strange to see post from freebsd users benchmarking databases etc. against suse/redhat and getting better numbers with them. And let's not start talking about features.
So no, Freebsd is not "just better" and linux is not just about ma
Re:Free BSD (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong. I like FreeBSD, and I've used it quite a bit.
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
I couldn't have said better! Mod me offtopic if you will, but please stop saying MacOS X == BSD!
Re:Free BSD (Score:2)
While Apple's OS X has a very NextStepish Mach MicroKernel, the entire userland is from FreeBSD 5.
I'm sitting at a Tiger workstation right now, and if I open a terminal window and type "man ls" I will get the _exact_ same man page a FreeBSD 5 system shows. All the userland utils in OS X understand the same switches as the FreeBSD userland utils. They are the same.
It's like "GNU/Linux" really. Linux is Linux, but it heavily relies on GNU userland utils, so
tail -f *log (Score:4, Funny)
"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)
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)
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.htm
Re:5.4 Dedication (Score:2)
I'm having a beer for all the people who have overcome their physical and mental handicaps and done everything they could to function normally in society, as hard as it might have been. And also for their families who helped them through everything and never stopped loving.
stable development? (Score:2)
Does SATA work right now? on SIS965L southbridge (Score:2)
And also, how is the support for SIS190 Ethernet? Sorry about posting these questions here, but I haven't received much response in the kernel mailing lists (atleast not on Linux).
Re:Does SATA work right now? on SIS965L southbridg (Score:2)
Does it have decent ext2 support yet? (Score:2)
Re:Does it have decent ext2 support yet? (Score:2)
Miniinst iso (Score:2, Interesting)
-eventhorizon
Installation Bug, Anyone Else Seen It? (Score:2)
"Fatal error: Invalid realloc size of 0! - PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT"
message. There are a few google references (some people see it at 54%, some at 63%) and there was once a bug report on it. The bug report seems to have vanished, but when doing a test install on an unused computer, i saw the same thing. (I do the test install, because you a
Re:good stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Of course Apple's got the hardware lock-in too..
Re:good stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
Now they've got decades worth of software designed for the very non-Unix NT kernel, so switching isn't much of an option, nor would it necessarily produce better peformance or stability.
had they gone the Apple route. Can you imagine how different things would be if they had released a Unix-based OS
Apple sel
Re:good stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Re:good stuff (Score:3, Funny)
l
*pop*
Clippy on Unix:
It looks like you're trying to write a cross-platform, intelligent forking, self-sustained, multi-thread application. Do you need help with that?
User: Fuck off clippy. I just wanted ls!
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
I've always wanted the same thing, sadly however the majority of
I'm also waiting to see how receptive
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
While I'd love to see a highly usable layer on top of a highly usable base system, I'd rather see more sensible software come out for Windows. I have begun to admit that Windows is still ahead in a l
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Windows already has a POSIX layer, and the common unix utils (google for "microsoft services for unix"). its about 250mb but at first glance looks ok.
They could do the same for w32 apps.
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
They dont need to port the 'drive' naming system (c:, d:, etc) as its retarded (maybe provide a *high level* emulation for it).
device drivers in win2k didn't work in xp, xp's wont work in longhorn so if they scapped blackcomb or whatever its called and replaced it with freebsd+somewin32stuff
Re:good stuff (Score:2)
I respect UFS for being very well balanced: it scales okay, it is reliable even after crashes (with SoftUpdates anyway), it performs well on most tasks even without clever journalling, and the lack of journal means it is suitable for even very small volumes (whereas ReiserFS seems to carry a unive
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
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:2)
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
Not extensively enough to try Bluetooth on 4.x
I had a horrible situation where I had to dual boot for my Wavelan (4.3) and my Bluetooth (5.1)
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
Can someone please set me in the right direction with some basic guidelines like:
(1) What version should I use? I assume 5.4 is too new, but 4.x is too old, right?
(2) Are the defaults too conservative? If so, how should I tune it for webserving (i.e. what are some sane settings)?
(3) How well does SMP work? Is it pretty much out-of-the-box, or do I need to mess around with it?
(4) Are there a
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
FreeBSD 5.x is a bit flakey compared to v4.x, but plenty stable when compared with Linux. Not trying to flame Linux users out there, but modern releases of Linux (ie. not Debian-stable) are far more unstable than FreeBSD 5.x.
This is really ridiculous. I've practically never heard anyone
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
Either you don't know what you're talking about, or this is a troll. FreeBSD has binary packages for almost all of it's ports available. The only exceptions being those that can't be distributed for legal reasons.
Systrace support in Linux is considered unstable. If you wanted systrace (which is a very good program), you
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:2)
For the record, BSD supported USB before Linux did. While you're correct in that Linux is likely to have at least partial support for new or odd hardware before FreeBSD, it's certainly not always the case.
The desktop apps just aren't maintained carefully enough (not surprising, since FreeBSD is not a major desktop OS).
Sorry, but I definitely can't agree with that point. I'v
Re:I hope it's better than 5.3 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Might be a stupid question, but... (Score:4, Informative)
*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
cvsup -g -L 2
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)
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
Re:Might be a stupid question, but... (Score:2)
pkg_add -rv cvsup-without-gui, then take a look at the example supfiles in
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.
Re:GUI to desktop (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what's 5.4 like for 4.x users? (Score:2)
Re:So what's 5.4 like for 4.x users? (Score:2)
Re:So what's 5.4 like for 4.x users? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:So what's 5.4 like for 4.x users? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Damn (Score:2)
Re:Alpha? (Score:2)
See here [freebsd.org].