The fourth release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is out. This will be the last Release Candidate, unless a major problem is discovered as part of RC4 testing the final release will be made early next week. This RC contains fixes to all known major issues.
FreeBSD 5.4-RC4 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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I just like the attitude of the developers behind FreeBSD. They are looking for a clean stable release. This is what FreeBSD is known for.
Keep it up guys
until it’s finally released. It’s taken a long long time for the 5.X series to come along, but this release will seem to mark a major step forward.
FreeBSD 5.3 was rough around the edges, but it seems that the FreeBSD 5.X series is starting to polish out a bit. I put emphasis on a bit because it still needs quite a ways more to go.
I can’t wait until everything is out from the Giant Lock and is MPSafe. I can’t wait until the fine grained multi-threading and multi-processing is completely debugged and working like it should.
I truely hope that FreeBSD performs as well or better than its designers have dreamed. It will be nice when FreeBSD is back up on top once again in terms of stability, ease of maintenance, scalability, and speed. The latter two seems to be what the FreeBSD team is currently working on, since FreeBSD has always been stable and easy to maintain.
Good work FreeBSD team! Keep it going!
I have been using FreeBSD for about 6 months now, I would not call myself *nix savy ( actually I am a newbie). Despite that fact FreeBSD is so easy and simple to use, comes with all the packages is uber fast. Well compared to Linux (I have mostly used ext3fs) UFS 2 is much faster. I can’t wait for FreeBSD 6.0 final to be released. Keep up the good work guys.
I think you are confusing Linux and FreeBSD version numbers, it doesn’t work the same way.
On my notebook, I found FreeBSD 5.4 rc3 to be a great OS. The finale is hopefully only better. Too bad, it doesn’t seem to have filtered it’s way down to the mirrors yet. Get to work yous bums.
No, he’s not. He’s presumably talking about 6.0 release, from the 6-current branch (after a code-freeze).
after following the erratic ups and downs of the linux release cycle, following FreeBSD releases feels like watching paint dry.
But I guess it’s worth it for results like this:
This RC contains fixes to all known major issues.
I trust that freebsd will soon be the best free *nix.
Its a truly mature, stable, clean, secure, fast, scalable and easy system to use.
Software management is just great and after 5.4 it will be an option for huge servers as well.
Cheers
I trust that freebsd will soon be the best free *nix.
It already is. (Flame on!)
The only thing FreeBSD is lacking seems to be the full-on desktop stuff, like having icons for USB drives pop up on the desktop when inserted.
This means we’ll have the 5.4-REL soon
(although for a long time till now I have only -STABLE and -CURRENT)
Good, good – am running 5.4 rc3 atm – smooth as a whistle.
After reading that link, it doesn’t look like the OS was the problem. The software that they suspect opening the hole is phpBB which is notorious for its security issues.
You can have the most well protected lock in the world, but it’s of no use if you leave the key on the floor in front of it.
I wouldn’t mind waiting a bit longer in order for them to finish off the things remaining on their To Do list. I know the remaining items are just “Desired Features” but those are some really nice features/fixes to have for 5.4-RELEASE. I would especially like at least the first two done.
Here’s a link to the To Do list:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/todo.html
it was probobly misconfigured to. if you running unsecure php stuff it should be done in a chroot and som kind of wraper like cgi-wrap or su_exec and not in something horrible like mod_php. if they exploit the thing they should have the same perms as the phpbb user and that user should not be allowd to do more than it needs to do. misconfigured unix is not safer than misconfigured windows
This is kinda off topic (and not intended to start a flame war), but whenever FreeBSD comes up, invariably someone throws out the “FreedBSD is technically superior to Linux” comment. I have a basic yet decent understanding of the low level world of what OS’s actually do, and I was wondering if anyone would care to elaborate on some differences.
When I was getting started in the *nix world, I decided I wanted a functional box that I could learn from and tinker with as well as get work done on, and for some reason, I was partial to the idea of a source based OS. I loaded Gentoo on one disk and FreeBSD on the other. I eventually found that Gentoo had a much larger repository, so finally I wiped out the FreeBSD partitions and turned them into extra storage.
I did like FreeBSD though, but I never could tell from the Joe-Blow Desktop user standpoint what was so superior.
You can’t tell from a desktop, except maybe for ports? But Gentoo has it’s own port system. After running FreeBSD for 4 years I can’t tell from a desktop standport which one is better.
What did you mean by repository? Precompiled software? The current port count at fresports.org is 12806 if that counts for anything. And I know that is not precompiled, but many are.
After having a friend use linux and mucking up his system I would say fixing a broke install is better on FreeBSD. It could be the devil I know vs the one I don’t, but the things I had to do to get him running were out of the way I thought.
I’m using FreeBSD 5.4 rc3 at work and it’s really a great OS.
But stop tell it is better than Linux! Kde on FreeBSD is slower, don’t know why but Kde on Debian was faster.
And when you build something, Kde become really slow(with ULE too)! On Linux, since 2.6, i haven’t this kind of problem.
“When I was getting started in the *nix world, I decided I wanted a functional box that I could learn from and tinker with as well as get work done on, and for some reason, I was partial to the idea of a source based OS. I loaded Gentoo on one disk and FreeBSD on the other. I eventually found that Gentoo had a much larger repository, so finally I wiped out the FreeBSD partitions and turned them into extra storage. ”
As Jason said, freshports has 12806 and the standard FreeBSD ports tree has 12804: http://www.freebsd.org/ports . On a side note, I thought Gentoo had something 5k – 8k in their ports collection. Not trying to spread FUD, if some would like to correct me about the number of ports and packages in their ports system. Please feel free to do so.
On a side note, FreeBSD installs most 99% of the applications in /usr/bin. It makes it nice and tidy for the system.
On a side note, FreeBSD installs most 99% of the applications in /usr/bin. It makes it nice and tidy for the system.
You meant /usr/local/bin, right?
Since you are running both stable and current versions of FreeBSD, is there any performance difference between them. I have pentium 4 3,2 ghz machine and somehow feel that FreeBSD 5.3 is a bit slow and as it supports the older system (pre-pentiums) maybe not optimized for the faster computer systems out there. I would basically like to know if FreeBSD 6.0 would be taking advantge of the faster systems.
Another thing I also tried PC-BSD, the sound works on my compter when I use PC-BSD but not when I use FreeBSD, although PC-BSD is a fork of FreeBSD 5.3m weird, I guess.
Another thing I also tried PC-BSD, the sound works on my compter when I use PC-BSD but not when I use FreeBSD, although PC-BSD is a fork of FreeBSD 5.3m weird, I guess.
This is probably because many of the sound card modules are not loaded in the kernel by default, whereas PC-BSD probably has sound_load=”YES” and snd_driver_load=”YES” in /boot/loader.conf (the first setting loads the sound subsystem, while the second loads all sound card drivers).
Remember, FreeBSD is first and foremost a server-oriented OS, so sound and multimedia are assumed to be extras for those who want them. No one wants their server running unnecessary drivers and kernel modules.
Every OS has its share of zealots of course (gentoo anyone?) so don’t take it too seriously if someone tells you that his or her favorite OS is superiour to the competition. Technically superiour? What the hell does that mean? I’m a big fan of FreeBSD, and I’ve been changing linux-distroes relatively frequently before I found it (RH 7.3 >> Mandrake 9.0 >> 9.1 >> Debian >> FreeBSD). I’ve been using it for more than 1.5 years now (began with 5.1) – and I don’t feel any need to try out linux again. Why? Well, to me it was much much easier to learn – as I said in a post at the beginning of this thread. It is very very clean (no files outside hier). It has good performance (yes, I saw the microbenchmarks, yet I don’t feel any less responsive on the desktop than any of the linuces I have tried, which includes slackware as well with 2.6.x kernel). And most importantly: it is more exciting for me. There is always something interesting happening in FreeBSD-land, and I can track every improvement in an incremental way. It is very easy to track the -STABLE development branch, which is perfectly OK for a home desktop.
So everyone has his or her own reasons for using an OS. If I ask a long-time debian user why he uses that distro, he will have a similar list to mine. That doesn’t mean debian is technically superiour. And when I say that I like FreeBSD much much more than linux, that doesn’t mean that either. Even if you find such statements in each FreeBSD thread, that is far from being a common notion among it’s users (check the linux section on bsdforums.org – and you’ll see that bsders perception of linux is usually very positive.) Nevertheless, it is very hard to explain why I would chose FreeBSD over linux anytime without provoking some quite touchy linux users. This is not a wich OS is better contest, it is why I like this OS kinda information sharing.
So a few more things. Polishment – it is felt throughout the system. In the ports, in its web interface (www.freshports.org) where you can create a watchlist for your installed packages, get email notifications about updates, see what other users watching the same port are interested in, etc. Another random feature that cames to my mind: I recently bhought and LCD monitor. I was looking for good settings for console. And there it was in the manpage of vidcontrol:
The following command will set-up a 100×37 raster text mode (useful for some LCD models):
vidcontrol -g 100×37 VESA_800x600
To have it applied for all terminals at boot, that took a one liner in rc.conf:
allscreens_flags=”-g 100×37 VESA_800x600″
Another little thing: FreeBSD console. Each terminal has its own buffers. You can freely scroll back the amount you want (you can set the number of lines) – just press scroll-lock, and than you can use pageup/down or the arrow buttons. Scrollback buffers won’t be erased when switching to and X terminal for instance, they are completely separate. Useful when I want to copy and paste (my usb mouse worked out of the box on consol as well, you can even set the graphics of its cursor) the output of a failed compile into a problem report for instance.
So ‘it’s the little things’. There are lots of little things that make FreeBSD very attractive. The excellent system wide documentation (better manpages, example files in /usr/share/examples, handbook, etc.). atacontrol (for swapping out ide drives on the fly, which worked better for me in freebsd’s atacontrol than with hdparm in linux). This are just random examples that occured to me right now, the list is much longer
So: this is mainly the question of preferences. Technically superiour is not true, and few bsd users (but you’ll often bump in those few on ./ or osnews) think like that. I can only describe it as more fun, or more exciting (maybe even from a technical perspective: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95211&cid=8187733) but not technically superiour.
But stop tell it is better than Linux! Kde on FreeBSD is slower, don’t know why but Kde on Debian was faster.
Yes, I’ve noticed that – for the same version, binary KDE on FreeBSD seems fractionally “less snappy” than binary KDE on Linux (both using kdm aswell) – has anyone else noticed this ?? – it is quite subtle though.
You might want to contact freebsd.kde.org or join their IRC channel on freenode for a chat. they might suggest compiling with optimization from the port instead of using bin packages.
The only thing FreeBSD is suitable for is servers or desktops with 2 processors or less. Anything over 2 processors, run a Linux system or Solaris.
thanks… i agree about everyone having reasons for sticking with a certain os. i just never knew if the whole technical superiority thing was a zealot myth or had some merit.
I 2nd molnarcs on his reasons. I’ve dabbled on and off with linux for a number of years (got my start using Mandrake 7.2), but something would always come along and frustrate the crap out of me. Then about a year ago I started tinkering with FreeBSD and fell in love with it. I loved it because it was so polished and everything wasn’t so confusing. The ports collection, no more dependency hell or broke ass RPM’s (I spent too much time with Mandrake). It’s easy to maintain the ports tree, and install AND upgrading (via portupgrade) is stupid easy. I also like how everything installs to /usr/local/ and not /anywhere/I/damn/well/please/. It’s basically a lot of little things just work and work like they’re supposed to so you can concentrate on doing what you want to do (like me typing up this rant in Firefox running on top of Enlightenment running on top of xorg running on top of FreeBSD 5.3).
I am using FreeBSD 5.4 RC4 now when FreeBSD 5.4 final is released I would like to upgrade. Is there any method like apt-get or yum on FreeBSD that can be used for upgrading, kindly help.
Probably the easiest way is updating from source, via the very well documented “make world” route:
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/makeworld.html
Yes! It is quite easy, and well documented in the handbook.
If you know how to update sources with cvsup, this is what you need to do:
the proper tag in the standard-supfile will be RELENG_5_4. Once you update (cvsup -g -L 2 standard-supfile) you’ll have the sources for 5.4 in your /usr/src.
1) Read /usr/src/UPDATING
2) cd /usr/src && make buildworld
3) If you specified your kernel config file in /etc/make.conf, then the next command is make buildkernel
4) make installkernel
5) reboot into single user mode (4th. choice in boot menu)
6) mount -a (to have /usr mounted)
7) cd /usr/src
8) mergemaster -p (which will check for differences in your config files, and will offer to merge the differences
9) make installworld
10) mergemaster (without -p)
11) exit (or just reboot).
Now you’ll have 5.4-RELEASE on your puter. On my athlon 2400+ this takes about an hour. Ports don’t need to be updated, so whatever you have installed, will continue to work.
Which reminds me about another great thing: FreeBSD keeps the compiled OS in a self contained library – /usr/obj. If you don’t delete that, you can easily recover from even the worst situations. Basically if you have the /usr/obj library, it takes 5 minutes to reinstall the entire OS (and you won’t need mergemaster, just type make installworl in single user mode). For instance, once I issued a chown -R blah:blah in the wrong directory (root!) – after which everything stopped working (even midnight commander). Such situation would warrant a reinstall in most linux systems I have tried – but since I still have make working (and sh), which are really really difficult to screw up, I managed to repair the system in five minutes. It gives a certain sense of security if you know that a complete reinstall of your OS is one command and 5 minutes away
)
Thanks a lot guys, I thought it would be difficult to upgrade but I think I can manage it now.
Care to back that statement up, Adam, or are you just going to continue trolling?