This is expected to be the last of the 4.X releases, and will be an Errata Branch. Well-tested fixes to basic functionality will be committed to the branch in addition to the normal security fixes. Most developers are now focused on 5.X or the cutting-edge development in HEAD.
FreeBSD 4.11 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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I have cvsup’ed and “make buildworld”‘ed it already. Looks good, in the tradition of the rock solid 4.x series.
This is great news! One of the best operating systems on the planet
I just got done downloading and burning the mini iso. I’ll be installting it on an old Compaq Prosignia 200 in a few minutes.
The 4.X series of FreeBSD has been the best thus far. Well, the last of the 2.2 series (2.2.8) was pretty good too.
I’m looking forward to the 6.X series since I’ve become quite disenchanged with the 5.X series. I hope the 6.X series to have met all the goals from the 5.X series and then some (i.e. major performance improvements in SMP and UMP machines).
We will miss you.
Why the 5x bashing? You make it sound like nothing is happening there what so ever. It has improved drastically since 5.3. I don’t see a single reason releng_5 won’t meet it’s goals.
Does any one know if usb 2.0 FreeBSD 4.x is stable or even supported? I have tried it with 5.3 and the kernel would crash when ever I plug a usb hard drive into it.
Hmmm. I’ve never even heard of any problems with USB2 with 5.x. I know I’ve never experienced any with external USB2 drives all the way back to the 5.0 previews. Perhaps it’s tied to some specific hardware in your configuration that I’m not using?
Why the 5x bashing? You make it sound like nothing is happening there what so ever. It has improved drastically since 5.3. I don’t see a single reason releng_5 won’t meet it’s goals.
Someone said that FreeBSD developers are too honest – they don’t know how to promote their OS. Just check their errata page for 5_3-RELEASE – it doesn’t sound like a good release or even stable. That said, for many many users (I would say at least half of them) it would/was safe (I say was because companies moved to 5.3 in droves without a prob) to upgrade to 5.3. The improvements in RELEASE are too many to enumerate. Also, RELENG_5, has many improvements/fixes compared to release. I know it is a development release, but this has a very different meaning than you would expect from a developmen-kernel in linuxland, so I would say that it is quite safe to run RELENG_5 even in a production environment (or: it is as safe as running linux 2.6.x kernel – minus the security problems). THIS IS NOT LINUX BASHING – please don’t flame, just check the problems with 2.6.x releases and check the problems with RELENG_5 or even 5.3_RELEASE. You won’t see much of a difference between the number of issues. Nevertheless, FreeBSD suffers from continuous trolling on each and every newssite – sometimes a single troll under various names can spam every site with FUD – including freebsd mailing lists, and you know how it works: if it is repeated over and over and over again, those who don’t use it or don’t know better, will believe it or they would be at least suspicious about FreeBSD.
As to honesty: I believe this is very much appreciated by FreeBSD users appreciate. FreeBSD developers take errors and security issues very seriously. They are not out there to conquer the world or something, and the freebsd userbase (which outnumbers any single linux distribution) steadily grows, despite the bad name some trolls gave to FreeBSD.
That said, 5_3-RELEASE is not without its problems (that is why I likened it to linux 2.6.x) – it is far from being perfect, but if you follow -CURRENT development or check the STABLE mailing list from time to time, you’ll see that there are lots of improvements already in -STABLE.
2.0 USB – I don’t know about 4.x. I know that a new usb mailing list was created, and developers are very busy in porting back (for it was originally written in FreeBSD) enhanchments from net/openbsd to the ehci driver. It gets better and better each day, however, I don’t really know it’s status in 4.x. I’m tracking 5-STABLE, but I still have sporadic crashes with my flash drive (although last time I tried was in december) – so I use UHCI for now (which is rock solid). Others reported success in using various usb devices via ehci (cdburners for instance). I would check the usb mailing list for more details on the status of usb 2.0
I’m not bashing it, I’m just saying I’m not entirely happy with it (I meant to say up there that I was disenchanted with the 5.X series). The long list of issues in the errata page is also disconcerting.
But, guess what. The mini-iso I downloaded and burned to CD would for some reason not find my first SCSI drive. It would find the second one just fine. It thought the second SCSI drive was da0, which is shouldn’t be. It might be a hardware issue, but it’s kinda hard to troubleshoot. I’ve had previous version of the 4.X series on this machine long before (FreeBSD 4.6.2 was the last of the 4.X series on this machine). I wonder if something has changed since then.
I previously had OpenBSD 3.6 installed on that drive, but I seriously doubt that makes a difference to FreeBSD.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded the mini-iso for FreeBSD 5.3-R and tried installing that. Suprisingly, the 5.3-R install found my first SCSI drive.
Seems like I might have to the 5.3-R route after all, unless someone is kind enough to help me figure out why the 4.11 install can’t find my SCSI drive.
Actually, I’m downlaing another 4.11 miniiso from a different FTP server just in case that one was screwed up for whatever reason.
The EHCI driver works … if you have the right hardware.
A lot of people use it on 5.x without problems … and a lot of people can crash a 5.x system simply by pointing a USB2 device at it. 
I don’t know if it has been back-ported to 4.x or not.
Does any one know if usb 2.0 FreeBSD 4.x is stable or even supported? I have tried it with 5.3 and the kernel would crash when ever I plug a usb hard drive into it.
I had an 80GB external USB2/FW HD, I’ve transfered data with both USB2 and FireWire (firewire is faster, but that’s another matter altogether). Both worked fine, USB2 did take a little more time than FireWire to get mounted, but it did work fine. This is FreeBSD 5.2.1-p9 I’m talking about.
I’ve tried 5.3 too and it seems really solid, I can’t wait for them to integrate some of the stuff back into the kernel.
-mojo
I just read something interesting in the 4.11-RELEASE errata page. Here’s the statement that I read:
This errata document for FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE will be maintained until the release of FreeBSD 4.12-RELEASE.
I don’t know if that’s just some canned statement they put in at each realease or what, but it would lead people to believe that there might be a 4.12 RELEASE. You know what I mean?
I add ehci and recomiled the kernel(I did not find something that said to make world, so I skiped it), rebooted, plug in device and it hard locked, then I rebooted with the device still attached, and the kernel crashed on boot, then I unpluged the device and booted, then it did not crash. The motherboard is a Asus p4c800 deluxe.
I’m looking forward to the 6.X series since I’ve become quite disenchanged with the 5.X series. I hope the 6.X series to have met all the goals from the 5.X series and then some (i.e. major performance improvements in SMP and UMP machines)
Just a nit pick, there is no such thing as disencharged. It is *disenchanted* 🙂
Regarding SMP/UMP machines, there is always a slight penalty when it comes to scalability/performance and throughput. Its about weighing up the costs and evening the plus’s and minus’s out.
With that being said, the 6.x is looking good, and I think with the move to a time based release schedule rather than a features based one will fix alot of problems, but with that being said, I still prefer to the features based schedule as so long as the schedule is rigidly stuck to. That is, once the feature set has been put down in stone, nothing is added or removed from that feature set. The problem is with most feature based releases, there are no fixed features, new ones as constantly added resulting in feature creep.
The better idea is to come up with a balance between shipping and features.
@Kaiwai – Yeah, you’re right about the spelling. I only caught that after I posted it. I did mention that I spelled that wrong in my reply post to that other person and corrected my spelling (at least I think I spelled it correctly the second time). Good eye, though!
Yes, the 6.X series looks to be quite promising. It’s funny, I wasn’t crazy about the 3.X series either, and now the 5.X series, both of which are odd numbered. Although, I liked 2.2.8 version, the 4.X series (4.6.2 being my favorite). Maybe I have a thing for even numbers. *shrug*
I too prefer basing a release on features. I also agree that if they do that they need to keep to a rigid schedule. I’m sure that’s not easy to do on a project completely supported by volunteers working in their spare time.
So far, it’s pretty amazing the type of work people can do in their spare time. The quality of BSD operating systems is extrordinary considering that most of them don’t get paid to do this kind of work. I think it’s pretty cool.
Nevertheless, FreeBSD suffers from continuous trolling on each and every newssite – sometimes a single troll under various names can spam every site with FUD – including freebsd mailing lists, and you know how it works: if it is repeated over and over and over again, those who don’t use it or don’t know better, will believe it or they would be at least suspicious about FreeBSD.
I’ve seen trolls aplenty againt FreeBSD lately by NetBSD and DragonFly advocates. As a Linux user looking for a BSD to try out, it’s frustrating trying to separate the honest constructive criticism from the flamage.