FreeBSD Security Officer
2009-Oct-18 13:09 UTC
[FreeBSD-Announce] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 6.3 EoL coming soon
Hi all, On January 31st, FreeBSD 6.3 will reach its End of Life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of this release are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a newer release before that date -- more conservative users will probably wish to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.4 or FreeBSD 7.1 (which are both extended-support branches), while others will probably wish to upgrade to FreeBSD 7.2 or the upcoming FreeBSD 8.0. The freebsd-update(8) utility can be used to upgrade i386 and amd64 systems from 6.3-RELEASE (or 6.3-RELEASE-pX for some X) to 6.4-RELEASE using binary updates (i.e., without compiling from source) as described in the 6.4-RELEASE announcement; given an adequate internet connection, this process usually takes 15 minutes or less. The current supported branches and expected EoL dates are: +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Branch | Release | Type | Release date | Estimated EoL | |-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------| |RELENG_6 |n/a |n/a |n/a |November 30, 2010| |-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------| |RELENG_6_3 |6.3-RELEASE |Extended|January 18, 2008 |January 31, 2010 | |---------------------------------------------------------------------| |RELENG_6_4 |6.4-RELEASE |Extended|November 18, 2008|November 30, 2010| |---------------------------------------------------------------------| |RELENG_7 |n/a |n/a |n/a |last release + 2y| |-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------| |RELENG_7_1 |7.1-RELEASE |Extended|January 4, 2009 |January 31, 2011 | |-----------+------------+--------+-----------------+-----------------| |RELENG_7_2 |7.2-RELEASE |Normal |May 4, 2009 |May 31, 2010 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ When FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE is released, it will receive "Normal" support, i.e., it will be supported for at least 12 months. -- Colin Percival Security Officer, FreeBSD | freebsd.org | The power to serve Founder / author, Tarsnap | tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid