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Abysmal support? At best, I tinker too, but I've never had an issue with the native JDK1.3.1 for FreeBSD. It runs Forte, Limewire, etc. pretty well (can't vouch for more serious apps). One issue is that there is no native plugin for Mozilla. Maybe that's your beef? If so, I heartily agree.

This is much like the jail() of BSD. This does not give any of the benefits of a clustering arrangement. That is, the benefit of having a cluster is that you can distribute process across multiple machines and run from a common storage server. Although this technology is very useful (and can be applied in all sorts of ways- We run Bind in a jail) it does not provide extra process space if only running on one machine.

Having sufficient RAM is the largest factor in commodity grade webhosting services, so having mutlitple instances of a cluster on the same machine does not really make sense, when the whole point of a cluster is to give faster computation and access time.

btw- we offer both of these services here, and we do it on FreeBSD.

Alright, this for all you people who always pipe up and say "but linux has had this for years" when
an announcment about a BSD happening is made. BSD HAD HAD THIS FOR A LONG TIME (couple of years). This sounds and looks astonishly similar to the BSD jail() written by PHK but with a messier interface. It is good stuff and hosting companies already use it a lot. Thanks for your time.

Back to the linux zealots.

Before you start thumping your chest about how superior or cutting edge *Linux is, go look at these two links
A slashdot story pointing out how without the FreeBSD ATA code, the Linux kernel would be 'lacking'
The FreeBSD press release announcing the code is stable

If The Reg actually researched the story, Andy would have notice it is not a 'first' but more a 'dead heat' between the 2 leading software libre OSes. Instead, The Reg does more hyping of *Linux.

Well, it's good to see that Linux has caught up, but the article is not correct that Linux is the first OS to support 48-bit ATA; FreeBSD has had this support for over a month now.

See for example: this file which is one of the files containing the ATA-6r2 code, committed to FreeBSD on October 6.

Take a look at the jail(8) and jail(2) manapges.

Take a look at the jail(8) and jail(2) manapges.

okay, let's review...

The Inquirer has a story posted March 31, 2001 about the UP1500. it says the product is "is intended to arrive in July". it is now November.

these mailing list posts (including some by yours truly), show that the Samsung page in question, has been around since at least April 2001 and so has a page which has listed the UP1500 as "Under Development" ever since.

now, i'm no expert, but i think it is fairly safe to call this vaporware. maybe the motherboard will come out at some point, but for right now, it's silly to treat it as news.

(i will refrain from making commentary about how certain news *cough* organizations should check their sources before posting stories. oops! i just did.)

You're correct. Paper docs for OpenBSD are extremely minimal; the only book that I've ever seen specific for it was the Linux/OpenBSD firewalls book you mentioned.

OpenBSD forked off of FreeBSD a few versions back, I'm not sure exactly when. Some things are quite similar still, but of course details like driver names have changed. (I run FreeBSD 3.4 and even in FreeBSD 4, there are many, many changes to the names of common devices, even the atapi cd driver has a new name.)

Conceptual stuff of course would be highly similar. Both are BSDs, so follow the rules of BSD operating systems. Therefore, if you buy a *nix book on a specific topic, you can usually use the examples they give for BSD (as opposed to SysV or Linux) and they'll work.

That said, you can look at the FreeBSD handbook on the web: I think I got the url right; it'll give you an idea of what's in it and you can try stuff out, see if they apply to your OpenBSD installation. The other main ref for FreeBSD is The Complete FreeBSD, by Lehey, which I sometimes read in the bookstore. (Big-box stores, love them to death. :) Sometime I'll scrounge some money together and buy a copy.

there is essentially 1 book for FreeBSD.

Do they comment on the kernel config file better?

I'd say a device driver book would be nice

Here you have all the info you need to learn about FreeBSD.

Gah. This will teach me to check my links before sending them. The above link is dead (probably has been for a long time). xrobots can be downloaded from the FreeBSD project ftp site. It should compile on just about any platform with X. Gnome also ships with a version called "gnobots" and an enhanced version called "gnobots2".

IDC, the highly respected industry auditing company, confirmed this week that stories posted by michael account for more than 80 percent of all stories posted to Slashdot at weekends. This news serves to reinforce what we've known all along: Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, finishing dead last in signal:noise ratio tests. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there is a possibility that there won't be any future at all for Slashdot, due to the actions of michael - a known censoring dictator, as well as an self-admitted torturer of cats. michael continues to lose the respect of all slashdot readers. censored posts die like leaves from a tree during fall, trampled beneath the feet of jack-booted thugs.
Worryingly, the number of stories posted by michael during the week is also on the rise.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers:
Slashdot leader CmdrTaco states that there are 70000 users of Slashdot, down from previous estimates of several hundred thousand.
[Side note: the decline of Slashdot has mirrored the decline of Linux bandwagon jumping failure VALinux]
How many of those readers comment on stories by michael? Let's see. The number of posts to stories by michael averages roughly 110, each poster usually making multiple comments. About 40 different users typically respond to stories posted by michael. Therefore about ((40/70000)*100%) = 0.06% of all Slashdot users care about stories posted by michael. This is consistent with expected results when correlating the estimated audience of all the posts noting michael's hypocrisy and control-freak tendencies. Evidently the users of this weblog choose not to feed that particular troll. Many even choose to no longer visit.

Due to the troubles of VALinux, abysmal sales and so on, Slashdot is in danger of being sold to the highest bidder - the bandwidth costs far outweigh the pitiful earnings from the banners and advertisments posing as stories. Soon Slashdot will be dead, its corpse raped by the censorship policies of the least favorite editor. Readers leave in droves, the herd instinct that brought them here now carries them away.

All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in readership by the crucial virgin geek market. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will require the removal of Michael Simms from an editorial position. This seems unlikely to happen, and all the while Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.

UPDATE:
It now seems that Linux bandwagon-jumping failure, VA-Software (formerly VALinux, formerly VA-Research) has finally accepted the inevitable. The pitiful and predictable demise of the still over-priced (at ~$1) startup creates more doubts as to the future of Slashdot. Larger adverts and new editors seem unlikely to save Taco's dream. Michael remains, though he has partially relinquished his censorship duties to his partner in deceit, the geek chick jamie. His debt to society is, as of typing, still unpaid.

I most certianly agree. See hier(7) for a good explanation of how the filesystem hierarchy is supposed to look.

The question asked for information about partitition schema, not file systems. And yet almost every post so far has been about file systems.

IMHO, if you want a superior partition scheme, you should not use the linux system, which is identical in structure to the Microsoft DOS system. Instead, read about the BSD partition (and slice) system. See section 2.5.2 of the (new) 2d edition handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/install-steps.html

In BSD, the Microsoft-Linux concept of partitions is preserved as "slices" that exist to hold collections of files systems. (In FreeBSD, you can man hier(8) to read more about this. Unlike linux, where every vendor puts things in /opt, /etc/, /usr/local, and so on, the BSD system is very rigid--there's even a man page about where things belong.)

Another option in BSD is the use of what are called "dangerously dedicated" system where the entire disk becomes one slides, with no other partition. Read more about this in the handbook. There's even information about working with different flavors of partition types.

I suppose to give 'equal time' we should give a link to the Microsoft/Linux partition scheme, so here one is:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7-Man ual/ref-guide/ch-partitions.html

FYI-- here's some news you won't see on /.'s main page: The FreeBSD handbook (first link above) was just (48 hours ago) released in its second edition. This is a significant documentation change, and all the daemons are celebrating. Join us!

Lessee... how many winders boxes do I have here... hmm.. zero.. now what?!??!

Not that MSN is remotely interesting to me anyway... All the good bits are available here and other places (like theregister.co.uk for example).

Still sucks that they shut other browsers out. Wasn't the web meant for universal interoperability and cross-platformness? How is a BLIND person going to read that site? Have they any idea how many blind people use lynx? trust me, a LOT of visually impaired people use lynx, because their braille lines can understand it better than a full blown click and drool interface.

• diskless workstation
• portable dial-up access solution
• custom demo-disk
• embedded controller (flash or EEPROM)
• firewall
• communication server
• replacement for commercial router
• diskless home-automation system

PicoBSD's applications are really small. Fitting a whole OS onto a single floppy diskette is quite beneficial, and often means that the expensive hard disk can be eliminated. There are also several other small Unix clones, including Minix and Alfalinux (Slackware on 2 floppies). BBIAgent Router is simply amazing: it's a single-floppy Linux-based router and firewall.

Hasn't anyone figured out Red Hat's release schedule yet? Like clockwork, April and October. Every six months, a new release. Downloading ISOs after August or February is a waste of time...

And this is (contrary to what is said by the original poster) about half the rate of FreeBSD releases, where releases are normally cut from the STABLE branch quarterly.

Target date for FreeBSD 4.5: 15th January 2002.

FreeBSD? :) [/joke]

Try FreeBSD -- No crap. Just great software.

To ask for support, you must have to do something up-and beyond most situations? Typically the manual is the best source.... read it like its your new bible, as it really does touch most mainline issues. I even use the manual to teach linux newbies how to do their typical tasks, rather than wishing them luck searching for a good linux-howto style article.

Secondly, the phone support bussiness is not very profitable at this point in time due to the economic situation in the USA. The people qualified to handle the support phones cost more than your average tech support people do, as they need special experience, and trainning.

The best solution for you would be to read the manual, and if you have something really freakish, then you should get a consultant under contract. Typically you can setup phone support service for a fee, however, I duno if your gonna get 24x7. I guess it depends on how much your willing to spend. =)

Take a look here at the freebsd website. There are freebsd consultants floating around, you might say...... you might consider advertising in the mailling lsits for some of the more choice people willing to do the work... you never know.

good luck

To ask for support, you must have to do something up-and beyond most situations? Typically the manual is the best source.... read it like its your new bible, as it really does touch most mainline issues. I even use the manual to teach linux newbies how to do their typical tasks, rather than wishing them luck searching for a good linux-howto style article.

Secondly, the phone support bussiness is not very profitable at this point in time due to the economic situation in the USA. The people qualified to handle the support phones cost more than your average tech support people do, as they need special experience, and trainning.

The best solution for you would be to read the manual, and if you have something really freakish, then you should get a consultant under contract. Typically you can setup phone support service for a fee, however, I duno if your gonna get 24x7. I guess it depends on how much your willing to spend. =)

Take a look here at the freebsd website. There are freebsd consultants floating around, you might say...... you might consider advertising in the mailling lsits for some of the more choice people willing to do the work... you never know.

good luck

Did you look here? I'd find it hard to believe that there aren't three there that would be willing to draft up something for phone support, especially that many of them consult network/server installations.

I can't say about the modem, the list archives are the best place for that. About the kernel though, go to the freebsd handbook and you'll find the latest instructions on kernel compilation.

Actually, Beastie, The BSD Daemon makes a cameo appearance as (pitch)forklift operator:
artist's depiction

Well, you're entitled to your spins, but the core team is elected by the committers and the process of becoming a committer is a meritocracy (i.e. showing interest and contributing good code will likely lead to commit privleges). Still, I understand where you're coming from: misinformation is fun, right?

So possibly all of you subscribers might want to look for a new distributor.

Does the uncertainty of having a retail publisher for FreeBSD have anything to do with the fact that 4.4 was released as a 4-iso set for download? Heck, as long as you guys keep doing that, who needs a publisher? I'll just donate to The FreeBSD Foundation.

Who needs corporate suits mucking things up? Rock on FreeBSD!

Hmm, no.

FreeBSD is still very much alive, and development of both 4-STABLE and -CURRENT continue as ever. AFAIK, none of the people being laid off are core team members or even really active source developers. Most of them work(ed) on documentation and improving the FreeBSD product line (CD box sets, etc.).

At the moment the release date for 5.x has been pushed out until late next year, partly because we've lost a few developers to real work, but also because we bit off more than we could chew... Rewriting the kernel for preemptive fine grain threading is a big task.

Other aspects of the project continue to be very actively developed. The Ports collection is almost at 6000 ports.

It is really sad to see people laid off, but this is just a side effect of the dotcom crash.

Regards,
-Jeremy

Hah, always got to have the last word, eh andre?

I think that fact alone proves it:

phk > andre

Congradulations on being an "industry insider" - that's a real accomplishment, isn't it? Being able to implement some code to the specs that someone else designed, that's really something I wish I had the privilege of doing. Oh wait, I don't.

You know, phk is the man behind devfs, jail(8), and md5 password hashing - and the list hardly ends there. I'd say that's a tad more respectable then being some goon chosen to sign papers and implement someone else's design. We refer to that sort as "code monkeys" - sure they know C, but they're still monkeys.

Quit over-estimating your own worth. You could be easily replaced by any of the top 150 people on this list, that is if any of them could be convinced to sign away their sole for an NDA for something as limited as producing GPL'd source code.

Following that idea, it would be cool to port UML to MacOS X. (Would that automatically work on FreeBSD?)

1.Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/license.html BSD copyright notice
• http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.h tml FreeBSD copyright notice

end of line

1.Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/license.html BSD copyright notice
• http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.h tml FreeBSD copyright notice

end of line

See here. In essence it allows you to create virtual machines programmatically.

The real trouble is that very few widely used operating systems can properly jail an executable. FreeBSD tries, but the jail facility in FreeBSD doesn't get used enough to establish that it's safe.

NSA Linux, which has mandatory security, is a big step in the right direction. A good exercise would be to make Mozilla run uner NSA Linux but insist that downloaded code run in an untrusted compartment, so it couldn't do much.

how do you sandbox the implementation?

If you're running FreeBSD, jail. I don't think linux has a decent jail system call, though, and chroot wouldn't really be effective enough.

Point taken, to some extent, but for FreeBSD, there's pkg_update .

First, free BSD-type licenses. Obviously using a completely free license like BSD would scare people off (see, look how everybody has stopped using Apache these days because it isn't GPL?).

And obviously, the huge number of developers makes the normal version of the second worthwhile license a little difficult to work with. I mean, how on earth are you meant to send beer to that many people? Fortunately, there is an alternative.

Probably the best license in the world.

1) Get:
- 1U 4bays rack mountable chassis from Sliger Designs
- 3WARE 6410 Escalade IDE controller (Choice of 0/1/0+1/5 Raid) on a 90 PCI riser card
- 4 x 75/100GB ATA100 drives (maybe DiamondMax)
- MicroATX mainboard with NIC and Video integrated on board (invest in RAM not in processing power - 750/850MHZ should be more than sufficient)
- Minimum Linux/*BSD OS booting from a read-only 16 to 64MB flash IDE device, loading kernel and a customised Ramdisk root filesystem, mounting Raid devices in R/W mode, starting SAMBA (and/or Netatalk).
A good starting point is Linux Bootdisk HOWTO

2) Choose 0+1 Raid and you get quick and completely redundant 150/200GB storage that can survive the full failure of one disk.

3) Want remote grafical managment from a standard web browser? Go for Webmin or SWAT.

growfs will let you grow filesystems (which I already did, and it works fine), but I don't think it also lets you shrink them. It will especially come in handy when you have some concatenated vinum volumes (the FreeBSD LVM and RAID implementation), that you want to enlarge. You might take a look at growfs(8).

no /proc

no ALSA sound drivers

no hardware accelerated graphics in the kernel

much worse SMP support than current Linux kernels

The FreeBSD ports system is maintained seperately to the OS itself, and so you can generally install what ports you want. For popular software, the ports are normally updated within about one week of the release of a new version, although this varies heavily, epecially if the new version has some problems on FreeBSD.

For a lot of ports, you'll find that there are two versions in the ports tree, a "stable" version and a "devel" version. For example, the stable version of Apache is currently 1.3.20, and the devel version 2.0.16.

If your machine is slow, then you can install packages. These are built fairly frequently for the -STABLE branch, and can be found at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/. Or you can use 'pkg_add -r apache' (for example), which will fetch the latest stable package for apache and install it.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, then try reading Chapter 4 of the FreeBSD Handbook (linked in the story above).

Regards,
-Jeremy

cvsup is your answer. It grabs the newest sources, and then you can compile them and install them on your own with make world. It saves bandwidth and is pretty cool in general.

A change in your firewall rules to allow cvsup will not affect your security.

heh, and you forgot a big website named Yahooo also runs FreeBSD....

Maybe you should look at a nice list http://www.freebsd.org/gallery/gallery.html

People may find my wireless LAN -- they may even DHCP an IP address from it, but they won't be able to actually do anything once they do. :-)

Yeah, works very well if doing so between major releases, but going from 2.8 to 3.1 was a major pain in the ass.

Read the handbook for more information, and of course the installation and upgrade notes of the actual release.

From the FREEBSD.ORG site...

We will continue to bring you new releases from both our FreeBSD-stable and FreeBSD-current branches, both as developer's snapshots and as regular full releases. The next scheduled release on the -stable branch will be FreeBSD 4.4 on September 15, 2001. The first release on what is now the -current branch will be FreeBSD 5.0, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2002.

So it looks like FreeBSD 4.4 will be tomorrow... but I suppose a day early is possible.

CVSup was broken, period, not just on FreeBSD. The OpenBSD folks apparently discovered it first, according to the XFree86 developer mailing list. The author, John Polstra, who happens to be a FreeBSD developer, has made fixed binary packages available for FreeBSD 2.2, 3.5 and 4.x in pkg_add format here, along with fixed binaries for Red Hat linux 6.2 and Debian GNU/Linux, requiring a manual install, and the source for those with other OSes.

Hope this helps.

Tony.

There are binary packages available for FreeBSD 4.x, 3.5 and 2.2, Red Hat Linux 6.2 (reported to work on 7.1 also), and Debian GNU/Linux potato(?) here (all i386), as well as the fixed source for CVSup for those running other O/Ses. I'm sure the maintainers would appreciate donated packages for additional platforms if you build your own from source.

Hope this helps.

Tony.

Brett Glass is a complete fool. His rants are ignored by most. Check out the bikeshed discussion in the FreeBSD FAQ or the full email on the subject.

Brett Glass is a complete fool. His rants are ignored by most. Check out the bikeshed discussion in the FreeBSD FAQ or the full email on the subject.