FreeBSD 4.9-RC4 Available on the Main FTP Site
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
And we were all hoping for -RELEASE
Oh well, I’m certainly glad they’re taking the time and effort to test and debug as much as possible before the release.
Just install RC4 and pretend it is RELEASE 🙂 I’m using a 4.8 tree cvsup’d to 4.9 on the 8th October, and its nice and stable, no problems so far. FreeBSD is a nice OS. It even had GNOME 2.4 in ports before Gentoo did (and one of my Gentoo boxes refuses to upgrade to GNOME 2.4 because of blocked packages, sigh). I’m looking forward to 5-STABLE.
Just install RC4 and pretend it is RELEASE 🙂 I’m using a 4.8 tree cvsup’d to 4.9 on the 8th October, and its nice and stable, no problems so far.
My only systems still running FreeBSD 4.x are production servers at work, which are all currently running RELENG_4_8. I’d prefer not to upgrade them until at least 4.9-RELEASE.
I’ve been using FreeBSD on my laptop and pc for a few months now, pretty happy with it. However, I’m still looking for a decent explanation of RELEASE, STABLE, CURRENT, 4.X series, 5.X series…..and all that jazz. I’ve read stuff on their site, but I guess i’m still not getting it, anybody care to dumb it down for me? Thanks.
The FreeBSD handbook has answers to all your questions:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags….
-STABLE -> developement release, changes a lot, almost never breaks
-CURRENT -> *bleeding edge* developement release, changes a lot, breaks a lot
-RELEASE -> at some point the stable or current branch are freezed, debugged a lot and some iso images are created. Also if you track release you track a bugfix branch that changes very little and never breaks
does that helps?
-RELEASE -> Just that, a release version
-SECURE/SECURITY TRACK -> Release plus security-related fixes
-STABLE -> Release plus all new developments that are deemed to be stable enough for production servers. Very solid.
-CURRENT -> *bleeding edge* developement release, changes a lot, breaks a lot…alot.
Most newbies think they want CURRENT cuz it’s n00, c00l and l33t. If you’re new to BSD you want STABLE.
I run FreeBSD on my faster box (dual 1ghz Xeon) and Linux on my slower box (dual 500mhz). On FreeBSD I tend to build from src so the extra mhz are worthwhile. I upgrade my Linux box using rpm’s so I don’t need as much horsepower.
So am I correct in assuming that each branch has these categories? For example:
4.X has: RELEASE, STABLE CURRENT
5.X has: RELEASE, STABLE, CURRENT
By the way, thanks for the quick replies.
5.x ONLY has CURRENT. It hasn’t reached a stable enough point to have a STABLE tree. It will likely have one some point after 5.2, although possibly 5.3.
I’ve been using 5.X at home lately. I’ve sometimes thought about going back to the 4.X branch but since it’s only a ‘home’ workstation/server I guess I don’t need to run STABLE.
I wonder what’s gonna happen after 4.9 though. Is development going to continue, or is it just going to go into maintenance mode? I think it would be strange to have a FreeBSD 4.10 version. I guess it’s just going to go to maintenance mode.
Although, there’s always DragonFlyBSD which is basically the 4.X branch of development. That’s definately going to be further developed. I’m quite interested to see how that competes with the FreeBSD 5.x series.
Hmm. Weird. I downloaded some ISOs from the FreeBSD mirrors and they were marked 5.1-RELEASE…maybe that’s why I keep running into problems.
>o am I correct in assuming that each branch has these categories? For example:
almost
– currently stable and current are split between the 4.x and 5.x branch. So:
4.X has: RELEASE (security fixes) and STABLE (=stabilized stuff from CURRENT)
5.X has: RELEASE (security fixes) and CURRENT(=bleeding edge)
Both have the same ports, but some won’t work (I encountered Tripwire now) in 5.1 – but most important ones do: using 5.1 with KDE 3.1.4, XFCE4, Mozilla 1.5, etc.
)
Just installed FreeBSD 4.9-RC4; I am very impressed. Installation was smooth without glitches or errors (took about 15 minutes with “All” plus Gnome 2.4). Gnome 2.4 just rocks (have yet to install and try the new Kde); it’s solid, stable and fast. This is the first time I am using Epiphany 1.0 (actually writing from within); have to admit it’s seducing me to ditch Mozilla and Konqueror. Booting and shutting down is very fast. This release is the best FreeBSD I have seen so far (better than 5.1). I am looking forward towards the STABLE release.
Ive run FreeBSD as a hobby since version 2. Its a great OS and i havent touched Linux since i started with it. The only problem ive had is im unable to mount any floppy disks since version 5.0. The exact same command i used in 4.7 doesnt work in 5.0 or 5.1 (mount /dev/fd0 /mnt).
Apart from that its been great.
Try mount /dev/fd0a instead.
Does 4.9 have disadvantages over 5.1?
I am now running 5.1, but the precompiled Java won’t work on that, and I also have some hardware problems. Does 4.9 have other large disadvantages? Can I easily switch without losing /usr/home? Do I need to reinstall all ports?
Thanks in advance for answering my questions.
You probably will have much less issue with 4.9, if you have any.
4.x branch is largely incompatible with 5.x because the latter introduces new technology that must go through testing before it becomes stable. IMHO, an attempt to ‘switch’ from one to other without complete reinstallation sounds like a very bad idea.
The mounting of floppies is discouraged anyway, you are far better off just using mtools.
Can I easily switch without losing /usr/home? Do I need to reinstall all ports?
/usr/home *if* it is an independent partition of the BSD “slice” will stay intact (if you install 4.9 with no mistakes
. Make a back up to a fat partition to be safe.
You will have to download the installed ports again (you might get newer versions of the applications anyway).
The 4.9 (4.8) will not have hardware issues … and the java will work. (it is an older version of thye j sdk than Linux’s java but it works normally with no cutting edge features).
Looking forward to 4.9 stable CD set (new kde and gnome versions + Epiphany and Mozilla).
Also try to make a /mnt/flop instead of mounting the floppies in /mnt.
This *might* be a default permissions issues so make it (chmod a+rwx, chown wheel) for /mnt/flop.
The german mirror only had 4.9 RC 3, so I have installed that one. Until now, I have not had any problems, in each case not more than with 5.1
The only problem is that it seems 4.9 can’t open 5.1’s UFS partitions. The 4.9 bootloader can’t even boot 5.1, it says the partitions “don’t have ufs”. It’s not that the slices are corrupted, because 4.9 does use the swap slice of 5.1
Btw… I installed 4.9 in the place where I had NetBSD, so I have 5.1 and 4.9 next to eachother now.
FreeBSD 4.x uses UFS, but 5.x uses UFS2. So maybe thats why it couldn’t boot.
That’s also what I thought. Now I only need to find a way for booting 5.1, so that I can access my /usr/home…
And I just found a problem with 4.9: The Gimp 1.2 won’t start on it, at the beginning of extension_script_fu it hangs.
Now I only need to find a way for booting 5.1, so that I can access
All FreeBSD CD disk 2 has a ‘live’ system to boot into and make maintenance or access other partitions. Might be hard to learn for thr first CD2 boot times you do.
(I only use stable 4.x and this have live CD2)
You aren’t specifying the filesystem type *grabs random floppy, old AOL floppy it is*:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
mounts fine.
Right, I installed the FreeBSD boot manager using the floppies and a holographic shell. It turned out that that the boot0 that 5.1 installed was only able to boot Windows, not Solaris or FreeBSD 4.9/5.1
Luckily I also have a set of NetBSD floppies, with which I installed the NetBSD loader. That one worked fine, and I could even add custom descriptions to the entries.
Now on the next boot of FreeBSD 4.9RC3, when starting GDM a kernel panic occured, after which a bunch of essential gdm-files were serverely damaged (read: removed by fsck)…
Maybe I should upgrade to RC4 🙂
“Maybe I should upgrade to RC4”
The final version, 4.9-RELEASE, should be out very soon, possibly on monday – See the announcement:
http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=15497
Of course, there’s still time to test 4.9-RC4 and report all bugs that you can find, so that 4.9-RELEASE will become as bug-free as possible. 🙂
“Maybe I should upgrade to RC4 :-)”
FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE will be out very soon, possibly on monday. So, if you would still like to test 4.9-RC4 and report all the bugs you can find in order to make sure that they are fixed and 4.9-RELEASE works well with your hardware, you’d better hurry. 😉
Hooray! I upgraded to rc4! So far it works great.
Note: upgrading in multi-user is a baaaaad idea: during the upgrade you can login as root without password! And the upgrade destroyed the 5.1 loader again (it seemingly updated the /boot/loader of all root partitions), but with the boot floppies of 5.1 I could burn a CD of my home directory and unpack it in 4.9.
Wait till the release, I just tried RC3 on my gw box, the 20 gig just popped and replaced the hard drive. So I figured what the hell and installed RC3 (latest 4.9 release at that time).
I updated the ports collection, then began to build stuff.
Turns out that half the builds kept on crashing on me, after a while something just wouldn’t go. Tried reinstalling gmake and gcc, and a bunch of other stuff. I till had issues.
So I installed 5.1 (what I had on before) and the system is working fine.
I’d wait till the final release.
Hey, anyone can tell me if smp works well on FreeBSD?
Thanks!
Ok.. The files for download are sitting all ripe for the plucking…. yes… yes… and YES… 4.9 has been released….
Go get’m boys and girls…. well since this is an old article…. no one is probably reading this comment…. so ha… i get dibs…
have fun..