Some people already submitted this news last week, but it wasn't until today that it became official: the FreeBSD team has announced the release of FreeBSD version 9.0. As you may expect from the major version number change, this is releas eis packed with new stuff.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2008-02-01
Member since:2010-05-28
I used it for quite some time now, and had no issues at all. Which does not mean that there are any, if you want to be sure, take a look at the mailing list archives: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/
Unfortunately ZFS version 28 is the last one released by Oracle to the public. Later versions will not be available, so the good stuff like encryption will probably not come to FreeBSD for quite some time.
Member since:2007-03-26
Anyone experienced with ZFS on FreeBSD want to comment on its stability?
I've been running FreeBSD 8.1 (I think) for about a year and ZFS has been rock solid.
I've also run ZFS on Nexenta and OpenSolaris, and quite honestly, I prefer FreeBSD as I've not experienced any performance issue with ZFS but also I get the added bonus of a more preferable (for me) OS.
I'd definitely recommend it.
Member since:2005-07-11
We've been using ZFS since it hit 7-STABLE way back when. Other than some growing pains around memory usage and poor vdev setup (don't do a single 24-disk raidz2!!), things have been very stable.
We just put into production 2 FreeBSD 9.0 storage boxes (one upgraded from 8.2, the other clean install of 9.0) using raidz2, lzjb compression, and dedupe. These are backups boxes running our custom rsync scripts to backup over 150 servers every night, creating snapshots every morning, and pushing the data to an offsite server during the day.
The things to note for using ZFS on FreeBSD:
- use 64-bit hardware and version of FreeBSD
- stick as much RAM as you possibly can into it
- use the fastest drives you can afford (avoid Green drives)
- be sure to stick an SSD in the system for use as L2ARC (read cache)
- if you can afford a fast SSD, use it for SLOG (write cache)
If you are going to play with dedupe, you need at least 16 GB of RAM, preferably more. And your RAM needs will only increase as you add data to the pool (the rough calculation is about 1 GB of RAM per TB of deduped data in the pool). You can use an L2ARC device to lower the RAM requirements, but that only helps so much.
If you want performance, go with mirror vdevs. If you want storage space, go with raidz2 (or even raidz3) vdevs with small numbers of drives per vdev (keep it under 10). The more vdevs in the pool, the better the overall performance of the pool (meaning a 24-disk pool using 1 raidz2 vdev will be much slower than a 24-disk pool with 4x 6-drive raidz2 vdevs).
It may take a little tuning of /boot/loader.conf settings to make things perfectly stable, although the auto-tuning in 9.0 has improved a lot. All we set now is the vfs.zfs.arc_max to about 80% of RAM.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2005-09-30
I think it's time I give FreeBSD a try.