I have mentioned this before about releasing a new major version of FreeBSD at such short intervals. Now I am wondering what path the FreeBSD community is taking in regards to server and desktop use. Stuff I would love to see in FreeBSD 7.x (CURRENT) before 7.0 release which looks like it isnt going to happen Multi IP Jails - waiting since 4.x, patches done for both 5.x and 6.x but never commited. Dynamic tcp windows - I think is patched but not heard if commited. More hardware support - FreeBSD still has poor hardware support when compared to other OS's, in particular vendors such as realtek nics. A more user friendly installer so datacentres stop been put off FreeBSD. Work on the network code so STABLE stops panicing and lagging on low amounts of ddos that 4.x barely flexed at and even 5.x could cope with. The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a result of this? The viability of upgrading FreeBSD to a new major version at least every 2 years is small, can choose not to upgrade as security patches will exist but ports only get supported on the latest STABLE tree now and I expect 5.x development will be killed off like 4.x was when 7.0 hits release. Why cant 7.0 be released when more long awaited features are added and then not as STABLE tree only as CURRENT (like 5.0 was) and if 7.0 is considered stable then 7.1 can be STABLE branch. I consider 6.2 to be the first release in 6.x branch close to proper stability and that release is under a year old before a new major release is due. Please dont flame me as I am a avid FreeBSD server user not a fan of linux so not been a troll this is a serious post. Chris
On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 04:30:50PM +0100, Chris wrote:> The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest > ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago > and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers > running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a > result of this?I'll leave the src release discussion for others, and just remark that this claim is entirely false: every release cycle has had a longer ports freeze than this one, with the same consequences. We don't take freezes lightly, and the alternative is to import a bunch of incompletely tested changes that will cause untold chaos for our users. I'm sure you wouldn't advocate that. Kris (for portmgr)
On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 16:30 +0100, Chris wrote:> Stuff I would love to see in FreeBSD 7.x (CURRENT) before 7.0 release > which looks like it isnt going to happen[snip]> More hardware support - FreeBSD still has poor hardware support when > compared to other OS's, in particular vendors such as realtek nics.Do you actually have a card which isn't recognised or doesn't work? I can only see one open PR about an unsupported Realtek NIC, and that is a specific 3 port NIC, which is probably trivial to support. I note also that Realtek do provide FreeBSD drivers for all of their PCI network cards. If you are having problems, open a PR, and include information about the card, a verbose dmesg, and the output of "pciconf -l" at the bare minimum.> A more user friendly installer so datacentres stop been put off FreeBSD.Although work on a new installer is "ongoing", nobody ever seems to be clear what the problems are with the current installer that they are trying to fix. I believe PC-BSD uses a different installer, which is the current candidate, although I personally prefer the current one. I'm guessing a new installer never make everybody happy.> Work on the network code so STABLE stops panicing and lagging on low > amounts of ddos that 4.x barely flexed at and even 5.x could cope > with.Again, 6.x is proving very stable for a *lot* of people. What sort of problems are you seeing? URLs to posts on mailing lists would be fine. As there are so many people using 6.x for huge work loads, it may well be something specific to your workload/hardware etc, in which case you may well have to help with debugging.> The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest > ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago > and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers > running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a > result of this?Kris has already responded to this.> The viability of upgrading FreeBSD to a new major version at least > every 2 years is small, can choose not to upgrade as security patches > will exist but ports only get supported on the latest STABLE tree now > and I expect 5.x development will be killed off like 4.x was when 7.0 > hits release.[ I speak purely as a FreeBSD user myself, here] Information on EoLs of various releases is available at http://www.freebsd.org/security/ - showing that support for both both 5.5 and 6.1 extend over a year from now. Given the current plan is to release 7.0 some time this year, there's at least 6 months of overlap there. And given 6.3 isn't yet released, and "will be supported by the Security Officer for a minimum of 12 months after the release", there will be a fair amount of overlap there too. And I wouldn't be surprised if at least one more 6.x release is designated an "extended support" release.> Why cant 7.0 be released when more long awaited features are added and > then not as STABLE tree only as CURRENT (like 5.0 was) and if 7.0 is > considered stable then 7.1 can be STABLE branch.http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/version-guide/past-schedules.html explains this far better than I ever could.> I consider 6.2 to be > the first release in 6.x branch close to proper stability and that > release is under a year old before a new major release is due.Again, without knowing what issues you saw, I'm not sure anyone can answer that. The only real issues I am aware of with 6.0/6.1 that weren't fixed with errata patches were either quota, IPv6 or CARP related.> Please dont flame me as I am a avid FreeBSD server user not a fan of > linux so not been a troll this is a serious post.Please don't take my response as a flame :) Gavin
> Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 16:30:50 +0100 > From: Chris <chrcoluk@gmail.com> > Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org > > I have mentioned this before about releasing a new major version of > FreeBSD at such short intervals. Now I am wondering what path the > FreeBSD community is taking in regards to server and desktop use. > > Stuff I would love to see in FreeBSD 7.x (CURRENT) before 7.0 release > which looks like it isnt going to happen > > Multi IP Jails - waiting since 4.x, patches done for both 5.x and 6.x > but never commited.No idea.> Dynamic tcp windows - I think is patched but not heard if commited.It should be in 7.0. 7.0 will have really major network improvements. I even had one vendor tell us that if we wanted to improve the performance of their 10GE card, we should switch from Linux to FreeBSD-current.> More hardware support - FreeBSD still has poor hardware support when > compared to other OS's, in particular vendors such as realtek nics.An on-going issue. Linux simply has more people working on device support, so it often (but no always) gets support first. Current does have several new network devices including more wireless NICs.> A more user friendly installer so datacentres stop been put off FreeBSD.While sysinstall is ugly, I find it very easy to use and use it for non-installation stuff (fdisk and bsdlabel) for its friendlier user interface. I have never been happy with GUI installers although a re-write if sysinstall would probably be a good thing.> Work on the network code so STABLE stops panicing and lagging on low > amounts of ddos that 4.x barely flexed at and even 5.x could cope > with.This is probably better, but I have not done much testing.> The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest > ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago > and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers > running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a > result of this?Now this is totally bogus. The freeze before the 6.0 release was VERY long and several have been longer than this one has been so far. The ports collection is one of the greatest things about FreeBSD and having lots of ports break when a major one (such as Xorg) is updated is very difficult and takes a lot of time to build test everything. Just creating an upgrade procedure that works for everyone running FreeBSD of any supported version is a major effort.> The viability of upgrading FreeBSD to a new major version at least > every 2 years is small, can choose not to upgrade as security patches > will exist but ports only get supported on the latest STABLE tree now > and I expect 5.x development will be killed off like 4.x was when 7.0 > hits release.??? I should leave this to others, but in the past FreeBSD has received heavy criticism for taking too long between releases. I guess you just can't win. Yes, V5 development is pretty well at an end (though V5 was not one of FreeBSD's better releases and I never used it on production systems), but V6 support will continue for quite a while.> Why cant 7.0 be released when more long awaited features are added and > then not as STABLE tree only as CURRENT (like 5.0 was) and if 7.0 is > considered stable then 7.1 can be STABLE branch. I consider 6.2 to be > the first release in 6.x branch close to proper stability and that > release is under a year old before a new major release is due.The release of V5.0 was as a development release because V5.0 had so many changes from V4 that all developers had to know that there were going to be problems, but the RE team also realized that, if they did not draw a line in the sand, it would only get worse. I am VERY sure that RE and the developers NEVER want to go through that again. As of today, CURRENT is in pretty excellent shape, but it still does have a few issues and more will certainly pop up when it is released. No one who has any experience is going to drop 7.0 on any critical system. I run it on one desktop and my laptop. I am NOT going to install 7.0 on my DNS servers or any other critical system. Depending on how things go with 7.0, I will probably install 7.1 on most systems. I may be braver than most, though (or more foolish).> Please dont flame me as I am a avid FreeBSD server user not a fan of > linux so not been a troll this is a serious post.I'm not flaming (yet), because you ask some good questions and are probably suffering from fading memory of prior releases. (I know that I try to forget a couple of them.) -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 224 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20070517/4824c96a/attachment.pgp
Chris wrote:> and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers > running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a > result of this?This looks like another call to have RELENG_x branches on ports, with which I agree.
On Wednesday 30 May 2007 22:08, Kostik Belousov wrote:> > The second one is more accurate as I didn't copy it from a blurry > > photo :) > > Could you, please, show the complete output from the boot, including > btx banner ?That's it.. With my i965 system I don't appear to be able to get it to boot from USB without trying the RAID array as I have to press F5 to get it to boot from USB (even if I pick USB-HDD in the BIOS boot menu) So I press F5 and then it prints what I wrote.. F1 DOS F2 FreeBSD F5 Drive 1 Default: F2 (I Press F5) - int=0000000d ... ... BTX halted -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20070530/eec368e7/attachment.pgp
On Wednesday 30 May 2007 22:52, Kostik Belousov wrote:> > > > - > > int=0000000d ... > > ... > > BTX halted > > You boot from the hard drive, right ? Then, boot2 shall be changed > too, since it uses btx. You should apply the patch, build the world, > then install _both_ new boot blocks using bsdlabel, and loader.Ahh I see, my bad! -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20070531/56b98f4c/attachment.pgp