FreeBSD Archive

FreeBSD 5.1 Release Schedule; Bluetooth Stack Update

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-02 FreeBSD 20 Comments

BSDForums reports that the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has posted the schedule for the Release of FreeBSD 5.1 late spring. FreeBSD roadmap, posted earlier at BSDForums.org, outlines the future of FreeBSD-5 stable releases, specifically 5.1 and 5.2. Also, Maksim Yevmenkin has announced another set of updates to Bluetooth stack for FreeBSD. He has made many code fixes, added new firmware driver support for Broadcom BCM2033 based devices, updated man pages and more. The Bluetooth stack is developed only for the 5-CURRENT branch. OSNews featured an in-depth interview with the FreeBSD Core team a few days ago discussing the 5.x branch among other topics.

A Small FreeBSD UFS2 FAQ

Guest post by Dan Naumov 2003-04-23 FreeBSD 16 Comments

Since the introduction of the UFS2 filesystem (to the general public) in FreeBSD 5.0, there have been many questions from BSD users asking what does it actually mean for them. Recently when browsing the freebsd-current mailing list, I stumbled across a micro-FAQ about UFS2, which might be of interest to OSNews readers.

UFS2 Now the Default Creation Type on FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT

Eugenia Loli 2003-04-21 FreeBSD 8 Comments

FreeBSD's Robert Watson says that effective today, newfs(8) and sysinstall(8) will create UFS2 file systems by default, unless explicitly specified.

New NSS for FreeBSD; DHCP for FreeBSD

Submitted by Dan 2003-04-18 FreeBSD 2 Comments

J. Vidrine says he is about to commit a new name service switch (NSS) implementation for FreeBSD.

Getting to Know FreeBSD 5.0

Guest post by Carl G. Mathisen 2003-04-09 FreeBSD 102 Comments

I have read many OS/distribution reviews in the last couple of years, but it always seems like it is distros like Red Hat, SuSe and Mandrake (and the fairly new distro, Lindows) that get all the attention. The light has sometimes moved towards other less "user friendly" distros as Slackware, Debian and so forth, but the main concern of the authors has always been the distros meant to be used by Joe User.

FreeBSD 5.x Boots on x86-64; Shatters 4GB RAM Barrier on IA32-x86

Eugenia Loli 2003-04-09 FreeBSD 12 Comments

Daily Daemonnews reports that support for PAE and bigger than 4GB Ram on x86 has been committed to FreeBSD -current. Also, Peter Wemm posted a message showing a dmesg output of a real AMD Clawhammer x86-64 processor booting up 5.0-CURRENT.

FreeBSD 4.8 Released

Submitted by Dan 2003-04-04 FreeBSD 79 Comments

FreeBSD's Murray Stokely announces the availability of FreeBSD 4.8, the latest FreeBSD-stable release, which has dealt with known security issues, and added initial support for Firewire, HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies.

MacOS HFS and HFS Plus ported to FreeBSD 5.x

Eugenia Loli 2003-03-22 FreeBSD 13 Comments

Yar Tikhiy has ported Apple's HFS and HFS Plus filesystem module and tools from Darwin to FreeBSD 5. He says that the port is experimental - he is looking for your help with testing and feedback. Read the announcement at BSDForums.

FreeBSD 4.8 RC2 / i386 Now Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-03-18 FreeBSD 14 Comments

FreeBSD Release Eng. Team's Murray Stokely announced the availability of FreeBSD 4.8 RC2 for i386 and he says that the alpha build is in progress.

FreeBSD: January-February 2003 Status Report

Eugenia Loli 2003-03-15 FreeBSD 10 Comments

Scott Long recently posted this year's first FreeBSD status report. The document begins with a quick look at the recently released FreeBSD 5.0, then looks to the future roadmap with the 5.1 maintenance release coming within a couple of months, and the stable 5.2 release by the end of the summer. Also mentioned is the upcoming 4-STABLE release, 4.8 (24th March), which includes XFree86 4.3 and support for HyperThreading. Read the detailed report at KernelTrap.

FreeBSD 4.8-RC1 Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-03-03 FreeBSD 25 Comments

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely announces that FreeBSD 4.8-RC1 i386 mini ISO and FTP installation directory are on ftp-master. He says that the Alpha release will be available shortly. The plan is to make FreeBSD 4.8 available only for i386 and alpha platforms. Subsequent 5.1+ releases will have FreeBSD available for all platforms including sparc64, ia64, etc. Read the announcement at BSDForums.org.

Journaled File System Available for Testing on FreeBSD-Current

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-17 FreeBSD 21 Comments

The Journaled File System for FreeBSD (JFS4BSD) Project has the goal of porting the JFS Technology from IBM/Linux to FreeBSD. It uses a log-based, byte-level file system that was developed for transaction-oriented, high performance systems. Scalable and robust, its advantage over non-journaled file systems is its quick restart capability: JFS can restore a file system to a consistent state, fsck times go down, and it is easy to fall-back to the last good state of the filesystem in a matter of seconds or minutes. The jfsutils is under a compilable state on FreeBSD. Read more at BSDForums.
Our Take: Anyone's working on porting SGI's XFS to FreeBSD?

FreeBSD 4.8 Release Schedule Announced, Firewire Updates Added

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 FreeBSD 17 Comments

The new FreeBSD 4.8 Release schedule has been announced. Hidetoshi Shimokawa has added new functionality to Firewire on this scheduled FreeBSD 4.8 release. New features include built-in DV support, improved recovery process & timeout stability and Write/ioctl support for /dev/fwmem0. He has not tested this on PAL and is looking for volunteers.

The Roadmap for FreeBSD 5-STABLE

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 FreeBSD 53 Comments

FreeBSD team's Scott Long lays out a roadmap for FreeBSD-5 stable in this informative email. He says that although the latest release of FreeBSD 5 marks a major milestone in FreeBSD's history, there are significant improvements necessary in the areas of SMP, kernel lockdown, performance, network driver stability, ACPI and much more. He also presents a tentative schedule for the rest of the year for FreeBSD 5.1 and 5.2 releases.

Bluetooth Stack for FreeBSD Release/Updates

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-11 FreeBSD 6 Comments

Maksim Yevmenkin announces the latest engineering release of the Bluetooth stack for FreeBSD. Updates include new in-kernel RFCOMM implementation with SOCK_STREAM interface, OBEX support, setup scripts and minor bug fixes.

FreeBSD From Scratch

Submitted by James 2003-02-07 FreeBSD 23 Comments

This article describes the efforts at "FreeBSD From Scratch": a fully automated installation of a customized FreeBSD system compiled from source, including compilation of all your favorite ports and configured to match your idea of the perfect system. If you think make world is a wonderful concept, "FreeBSD From Scratch" extends it to make universe. This article, describes the visions in BSD security features and how to build a secure OS.

FreeBSD 5.0 Looks to the Enterprise

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-04 FreeBSD 15 Comments

"After three years in the making the FreeBSD Release 5.0 operating system has been made available to the general public. Released towards the end of January, the OS provides first-time support for Sun's Sparc64 and Intel's IA64 platforms. And while some effort has been put into AMD's Hammer architecture, there is presently no usable support for the 64-bit mode of Hammer, said FreeBSD engineer, Scott Long." Read the article at LinuxWorld.

Matthew Dillon Lost Commit Access to FreeBSD

Submitted by Jonathan 2003-02-03 FreeBSD 72 Comments

One of the most prolific and active developers of FreeBSD, Matt Dillon, responsible for a lot of the latest advances in the FreeBSD kernel, lost his right to commit code to the source tree. The FreeBSD Project didn't give a solid reason on what lead them to this decision. Last year, OSNews interviewed Matt about his (truly immense) work on FreeBSD.

Nov-Dec 2002 FreeBSD Bi-Monthly Status Report Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-26 FreeBSD 3 Comments

From BSDForums: "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long presents the FreeBSD November-December 2002 status report. Key highlights of the report include the anticipated FreeBSD 5.0 Release Bluetooth stack development, busdma driver conversion project, DEVD, C99 & POSIX Conformance Project, FreeBSD Package Cluster work and much more!"

FreeBSD: a Victim of Isolation and Linux’s Hype?

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-25 FreeBSD 154 Comments

It's been a week since FreeBSD 5.0 got released. Many argue that this release is the most important and most technically advanced, ever, for FreeBSD. I am truly disapointed though on the way the media have responded to this release.