FreeBSD Archive

FreeBSD 5.3: “Stable” But Not Production-Ready

Submitted by Jem Matzan 2004-12-21 FreeBSD 36 Comments

After much development and four previous releases, FreeBSD-5 has finally gone stable with version 5.3. But don't mistake a stable codebase with stable software. While the development team will no longer accept major changes to the base system, FreeBSD 5.3 still has bugs and problems. NewsForge has the review.

Review: FreeSBIE 1.1 – Free System Burned In Economy

Guest post by Dan Gonzalez 2004-12-20 FreeBSD 15 Comments

Version 1.1 of FreeSBIE, a FreeBSD Live CD, was released last week, and here's a first look. Update: Screenshots via OSDir.com.

The first Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11

Submitted by Anon_User 2004-12-20 FreeBSD 18 Comments

The first Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here. For the "ULTRA" conserative, this appears to be the last release cycle for the 4.x branch.

Implementing Hardware RAID on FreeBSD

Submitted by Nix_User 2004-12-17 FreeBSD 13 Comments

RAID has been around for over 15 years. Why use RAID? For me, the reasons are redundancy and reliability. I don't like disk failures. By running RAID, a disk failure will not take down my system; it still runs after a disk fails. When a disk does fail, I still have my system, and I can find another drive, add it to the system, and be ready for the next failure. Read More at ONLamp.

FreeBSD: ULE Scheduler Status

Submitted by Sammy the Christmas Ham 2004-12-14 FreeBSD 25 Comments

Since the decision to demote ULE in favor of the 4BSD scheduler as the default for FreeBSD's 5.3-Release, many improvements to both schedulers have been committed. At the time it was marked broken, ULE was especially needy in light of the status of its maintainership, performance issues, and its unreliable nature in conjunction with threading and kernel preemption. Having resolved these problems, Jeff Roberson announces to -current that the ULE code is now in working order, kerneltrap reports.

Upgrading to FreeBSD 5.3

Eugenia Loli 2004-12-07 FreeBSD 3 Comments

Dru Lavigne finally had a chance to upgrade her home systems to FreeBSD 5.3. Here are her working notes for both a fresh install and an upgrade from 5.2.1 to 5.3.

FreeBSD Project Discussions on SysInstall, FS

Submitted by Assad Maseed 2004-12-07 FreeBSD 41 Comments

It is interesting to note that FreeBSD developers are giving consideration to phasing out sysinstall in favor of a new install program for FreeBSD. A Journaling FS like ReiserFS also seems to be on the cards for future FreeBSD releases, Kerneltrap reports.

FreeSBIE 1.1 is released

Submitted by Berdt van der Lingen 2004-12-06 FreeBSD 33 Comments

As you might already know, FreeSBIE is a LiveCD based on the FreeBSD Operating system, or even easier, a FreeBSD-based operating system that works directly from a CD, without touching your hard drive. Today, FreeSBIE 1.1 is released.

Keeping FreeBSD Up-to-Date: A Security Odyssey

Submitted by TTF 2004-12-05 FreeBSD 19 Comments

This article presents a multiple ways to keep the FreeBSD operating system up-to-date. It takes a FreeBSD 5.2.1 RELEASE system through a subset of security advisories to explain the different sorts of patches an administrator might apply.

FreeBSD on Bochs

Guest post by Vivek Mohan 2004-11-19 FreeBSD 4 Comments

This article, is a description of my efforts to build a minimal FreeBSD system from scratch and run it under the Bochs emulator. Inspired by "FreeBSD From Scratch" by Jens Schweikhardt, this article extends its ideas by using a file backed virtual disk, as the installation directory and harddisk image under Bochs.

Painless FreeBSD System Updating

Submitted by TTF 2004-11-13 FreeBSD 36 Comments

One of the greatest advantages that *BSD has over other Unix variants is the cvsup/make world process. Unlike most Linux distributions it isn't necessary to wait months for a new version to be released for you to upgrade your system. The cvsup/make world process allows you to update your system at any time.

FreeBSD for Linux Users

Submitted by TTF 2004-11-12 FreeBSD 41 Comments

This article covers some of the big-picture differences from the perspective of a Linux user being introduced to FreeBSD.

My workstation OS: FreeBSD

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-10 FreeBSD 70 Comments

"When you have to get work done (especially if you're self-employed) it's important to choose the right tools to enhance your productivity. If your work has something to do with a computer, the operating system is especially important. Of all of the OSes that I have used and reviewed over the years -- and I still have all of them available -- I prefer FreeBSD's "new technology release" as my main workstation operating system. Why? Because I can get more work done with it." Read the article at NewsForge.

What’s new in FreeBSD 5.3 at LWN

Submitted by TTF 2004-11-08 FreeBSD 39 Comments

The final release of FreeBSD 5.3 should be up on the mirrors within the next two weeks. In all likelihood, this will be the first "production release" of FreeBSD 5.x series, so perhaps this is a good time to take a look at the new features in this much anticipated release.

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Available

Submitted by Bascule 2004-11-07 FreeBSD 102 Comments

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE is now officially available. This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. New features from 4.x include massively upgraded SMP scalability including the new KSE M:N threading implementation, and the new ULE constant time scheduler (currently switched off per default). All in all these features bring scalability of kernel features on SMP systems (at least small to midrange systems) more or less on par with the Linux 2.6 kernel series with the NPTL threads library.

FreeBSD 5.3-RC2 Available

Submitted by Bascule 2004-11-01 FreeBSD 28 Comments

Release announcement of the FreeBSD 5.3-RC2 release available here.

FreeBSD 5.3-RC1 Released

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2004-10-20 FreeBSD 27 Comments

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC1. This will likely be the only Release Candidate before the final release of 5.3.

LiveBSD 5.3 with KDE 3.3 and BSD Installer Beta 1

Submitted by GeekGod 2004-10-18 FreeBSD 20 Comments

LiveBSD has just released a LiveCD based on FreeBSD 5.3 which is a heavily modified FreeSBIE that includes an installer that can be invoked via NCurses, CGI and even QT.

FreeBSD Documentation: An Interview with Tom Rhodes

Submitted by FreeBSD_User 2004-10-14 FreeBSD 34 Comments

FreeBSD has been known for excellent documentation and here is a rare sneak peak behind the scenes of the FreeBSD document project with FreeBSD's very own Tom Rhodes.

Building Diskless Clients with FreeBSD 5.2

Submitted by Nix_User 2004-10-09 FreeBSD 4 Comments

Having prepared the FreeBSD 5.2 Netboot server, we can begin to configure our diskless workstations. Let's prepare the kernel and add it to the two-part filesystem (accessible for reading only and accessible for reading and writing) and finally create rc-scripts.