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FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #1 Released
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The FreeBSD developers just announced the release of an official snapshot of the upcoming FreeBSD 5.0 which should be expected in November. Time to try out amazing new feature like background fsck, FFS snapshots, KSC, devfs, SMPng and many more. Check the Release Notes for detailed information." Read on for a list of ISO mirrors, too.
Thanks to AEtherSPOON, you can spare the main servers and use one of these FTP mirrors to grab the ISO:
Do any of the linux distros have a beta release program as excellent as FreeBSD's?
Sounds interesting, but fsck isn't something you should run in the background. I mean, do you really want to be writing to the disk at the same time you're checking for errors? Maybe it's just my parinoia. If the developers pull this off safely and with no or barely any noticable slowdown, my hat is off to them.
I'm a repairman in an imperfect world.
local: 5.0-DP1-install.iso remote: 5.0-DP1-install.iso
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for '5.0-DP1-install.iso' (675971072 bytes).
644 MB 00:00 ETA 226 Transfer complete.
675971072 bytes received in 2569.77 seconds (256.88 KB/s)
Cable Rules!
From the FreeBSB-5.0/DP1 release notes:
Supporting 386 chips is a good idea, but it should not be the default. I would like to be certain that the kernel that I build is taking advatage of the new features that my processor offers.(and you think I'm kidding don't you? The 2.4 series was damned by having two masters - trying to become stable - while trying to not change anything important. 2.5 has been sailing along).
Also, are they really gonna kill of Tara? No, wait, different show. Sorry!
OK, this post shows up every time we get a BSD story. Does somebody have a bot posting them automatically or what? Is it the same person who does that strange "Steven King is Dead" bot? And what's the point?
if you know how Softupdates works in FreeBSD,
you'd know it's safe to run in background, when
Softupdates is turned on, the only inconsistent status when system crashed is losted block which not belong to any file, so runs fsck just move them back to be resued.
You should be able to get it to hash passwords using MD5 instead.
Sorry about that... :(
Anyone know how the snapshot feature is supposed to work, or have any experiences with it that they'd like to relay?
.snapshot directories.
.snapshot were the ghosts of ~ past. Which was -very- nice when you changed or deleted something and then change your mind about it hours, days, or weeks later. One could go back in time, and retrieve any of several periodic revisions of anything which had been modified.
It sounds similar, if not identical, to what an ISP of mine used around 1994-1995 (and perhaps still do). They had a NetApps filer for their users' home directories, which provided a few
Inside of
Incidentally, the aforementioned shell box was also running FreeBSD, although a much earlier incarnation than that being discussed here.
Kid-proof tablet..
Thats not the real Theo. Its really spelled Theo de Raadt, not DeRaadt. Its just some troll who likes to think he acts like him.
-----Ripped Directly from FreeBSD CVS Server --/usr/src/sys/ufs/ffs/README.snapshot
/var filesystem, run the command:
/var/snapshot/snap1 /var
/var filesystem and /var/snapshot/snap1. Note that snapshot
/var/snapshot/snap1:
/var/snapshot/snap1 -u 4 /dev/md4 /mnt
/var filesystem /mnt. Everything will be in the same state that it
/mnt
Using Snapshots
To create a snapshot of your
mount -u -o snapshot
This command will take a snapshot of your
leave it in the file
files must be created in the filesystem that is being snapshotted.
I use the convention of putting a `snapshot' directory at the
root of each filesystem into which I can place snapshots.
You may create up to 20 snapshots per filesystem. Active snapshots
are recorded in the superblock, so they persist across unmount
and remount operations and across system reboots. When your
are done with a snapshot, it can be removed with the `rm'
command. Snapshots may be removed in any order, however you
may not get back all the space contained in the snapshot as
another snapshot may claim some of the blocks that it is releasing.
Note that the `schg' flag is set on snapshots to ensure that
not even the root user can write to them. The unlink command
makes an exception for snapshot files in that it allows them
to be removed even though they have the `schg' flag set, so it
is not necessary to clear the `schg' flag before removing a
snapshot file.
Once you have taken a snapshot, there are three interesting
things that you can do with it:
1) Run fsck on the snapshot file. Assuming that the filesystem
was clean when it was mounted, you should always get a clean
(and unchanging) result from running fsck on the snapshot.
If you are running with soft updates and rebooted after a
crash without cleaning up the filesystem, then fsck of the
snapshot may find missing blocks and inodes or inodes with
link counts that are too high. I have not yet added the
system calls to allow fsck to add these missing resources
back to the filesystem - that will be added once the basic
snapshot code is working properly. So, view those reports
as informational for now.
2) Run dump on the snapshot. You will get a dump that is
consistent with the filesystem as of the timestamp of the
snapshot. Note that I have not yet changed dump to set the
dumpdates file correctly, so do not use this feature in
production until that fix is made.
3) Mount the snapshot as a frozen image of the filesystem.
To mount the snapshot
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f
mount -r
You can now cruise around your frozen
at
was at the time the snapshot was taken. The one exception
is that any earlier snapshots will appear as zero length
files. When you are done with the mounted snapshot:
umount
mdconfig -d -u 4
Note that under some circumstances, the process accessing
the frozen filesystem may deadlock. I am aware of this
problem, but the solution is not simple. It requires
using buffer read locks rather than exclusive locks when
traversing the inode indirect blocks. Until this problem
is fixed, you should avoid putting mounted snapshots into
production.
Performance
It takes about 30 seconds to create a snapshot of an 8Gb filesystem.
Of that time 25 seconds is spent in preparation; filesystem activity
is only suspended for the final 5 seconds of that period. Snapshot
removal of an 8Gb filesystem takes about two minutes. Filesystem
activity is never suspended during snapshot removal.
The suspend time may be expanded by several minutes if a process
is in the midst of removing many files as all the soft updates
backlog must be cleared. Generally snapshots do not slow the system
down appreciably except when removing many small files (i.e., any
file less than 96Kb whose last block is a fragment) that are claimed
by a snapshot. Here, the snapshot code must make a copy of every
released fragment which slows the rate of file removal to about
twenty files per second once the soft updates backlog limit is
reached.
How Snapshots Work
For more general information on snapshots, please see:
http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
so FreeBSD 5.0 won't be using gcc3? Guess I'll have to wait for 5.1 or 6.0...
- Murray
We pulled a snapshot of FreeBSD 5.0 a year ago.
Here's a few tid bits:
uname -v
FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #0; Mon Oct 30 20:41:51 EST 2000
root@servername_here:/var/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
uptime
1:55PM up 367 days, 2:31, 1 user, load averages: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
Running flat out since it's only compile from cvs.
The parent is a troll, or the author is not amongst the results of query * from users where clue>0;
My FreeBSD boxen (including production machines) do enjoy these "warm, fuzzy" features, they do work, they do not cause crashes, and moreover FreeBSD is much more secure "out-of-the-box" than certain Linux distros *coughRedHatcough,* AND FINALLY, SMP is not a new feature.
uh, you might want to fix your personal website then, troll-ass. Folks, don't reply to this bogus loser ... do your research.
Well, when working on an OS is a full-time job for you, yet you give the work away for *FREE*, you tend to have a hard time making money. In fact, you can't reasonably do it.
Just ask any of the Linux companies (that's why Redhat makes up the cost of physical production of CD's, etc., then sells tons of support and services -- there's no money to be made in "free").
No pre OsX macintosh used for any kind of computing activity of any kind can stay running without a reboot for more than 5 1/2 hours.
Bitter experience.
"The kernel is now aware of the concept that there are smaller units of scheduling than a process (but only one thread per process is allowed at this time)."
;)
The one feature I've been waiting for the most isn't quite there -- kernel-land threads.
Still though, I'd rather have it right than 'ready'.
besides, I'm relieved that I can continue to listen to my euro trance shoutcast stream uninterrupted by ISO image downloads
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
same bitter experience....
I cvsup daily and buildworld at least weekly. It's quite stable. Early on (maybe 3 months ago) I would get odd kernel panics (I was doing silly stuff, like memory mapping gigabyte files). But it's very solid now.
Not to sound trollish, but you can't beat FreeBSD among the free UNIXes. It's pretty well laid out, thought out, and maintained. It's stable, too. And, IMHO, there's no linux package management system nearly as good as that on FreeBSD.
It's certainly impressive and all, but -- if you aren't interested in recompiling it, playing with it, keeping track of its progress, possibly helping out with development/debugging -- why are you using -current at all? Was there some crucial feature which you needed and couldn't find in -stable?
Mr. Hubbard of FreeBSD argues that the "pioneers take the arrows". The Linux project has recently been putting out lots of new feature-laden kernels that don't work. My guess is the Linux crowd largely drives the XFree86 project, because that would explain why its support for FreeBSD is buggy and lags behind Linux. I haven't had any problems with unworkable features in FreeBSD. 4.stable is twice the O.S. that 2.2.X was. Theo's bunch probably doesn't have anything near the resources that FreeBSD has for launching their own SMPng project. OpenBSD focuses more on "correctness" and security more than anything else, and OpenBSD users probably do as well. But the OpenBSD project will have a lot of preexisting BSD code to borrow from once FreeBSD and NetBSD SMP implementations are finished. It's a matter of time (and interest).
Well, at least you obsessively hate an inanimate object instead of a person. If you were talking about someone you knew, people would think you were a potential basket case. I notice now that the project has put out a bleeding-edge release, your posts have become less formulaic but more frequent. Lots of people here have some piece of software that they are enthusiastic about, not something they passionately hate besides Microsoft, but Microsoft and it's unrivaled hype machine is seen as a threat. If the BSD's are as obscure as you say they are, they don't deserve your time much less your contempt, seems to me.
But I think your motives are personal. Perhaps you posted too many RTFM type questions on *BSD project mailing lists and the replies you got stigmatized you, made you feel inadequate or inferior. Perhaps we'll never know.
running for more than 5 1/2 hours, you're not really using the computer. I got to the point where I could hit the programmer switch without looking, like it was just another part of touch typing.
Sigh, at least get the name right, even if you have no id ea how the technology works.
-sirket
I like Tara too, and not just because she's the most interesting Lesbian to appear on prime time for quite a while. But she's doomed. It's all Amber's fault. Amber is multi-talented and sexy. Especially sexy when she's singing or incanting. But she isn't sexy in a Hollywood way. No character played by her can survive for long.
Please replace "an unfairly maligned jerk" with "a fairly thouroughly maligned jerk" in my grandparentparent post. Bed is a poor substitute for Slashdot, but despite the nasty aftertaste, bed leaves less of a hang over.
I would be willing to forgive Tara if she relented in contribution to the virus (read: pollution) of emotional radicalization propeganda, better known as "Soap Operas". I understand that many young and foolish actresses can get caught up in it, just as many naive talents get stuck in pornography, or even prostitution. Unfortunately, the product of the Soap Opera is far more insidious than pornography, and that makes it more dangerous to human society. Please, at least graduate to a weekly cable TV series if broadcast TV is out of your reach. Even pornography would be a more honest living. But take responsibility for your actions, and GET OUT of the hysteria glamourization industry.
Please, consider Sarah Michelle Gellar a role model. She escaped, and is a very productive part of the entertainment of the human race. Soaps are not even "romantically morbid", they are proactively morbid.
...
As I see it, Slashdot is useful for entertaining and occasionially enlightening information and opinion. I depend on moderation for topics that I find marginally interesting, but for precious few topics I am willing to trudge through all 300 posts looking for the gems that might get overlooked that relate to significant interests of mine. I am willing to participate in moderation to serve others that find similar value from Slashdot, with the understanding that those who come before me can provide a similar service.
In this light, I find that "overrated", and especially "underrated" can be valueable, as not all posts fall into easily defined categoties of usefulness, but one shold still be able to say "Hey, you really should have a look at this!" On the other hand, I strongly feel that "offtopic" is a damaging moderation, if only that it serves as double duty against "crapfloods" and similar classes of senseless babble. Sometimes poor topics, like poor grapes, can produce the finest wines in offtopics posts that have more value than the topic from whence they were born. I truly wish that a distinct CRAPFLOOD-style mod were implemented to complement the overused "offtopic" moderation. It would provide much greater value than the "insightful/informative/interesting" triumvrate. Thus, if I were feeling uninspired, I could remove the penalty from OFFTOPIC for a more diverse, less rigidly structed Slashdor experience. When time becomes valueable once again, I can restore the offtopic penalty. Even better, I could assign a double penaly to CRAPFLOOD - I would never do that to TROLL as I would miss out on some oo Slashdot's best posts.
TROLLs are posts that engourage responses, and as such have value, even if they tend to be inflammatory or offtopic. BSD is Dead should be handled by REDUNDANT. Screenwidening posts and garbage characters could easily be caught by the CRAPFLOOD label, which would allow a realaxation in the "lameness filter" resulting in less frustration for posters. If these measures were implemented properly and used successfully, I might not be against removing OVERRATED. UNDERRATED is important as long as TROLL carries a penalty.
I don't follow your anti-Offtopic argument at all. If you're going to have descriptive upmods and downmods (not an idea I'm in love with, but Rob seems attached to it). then "offtopic" is the most widely applicable one. Even if we didn't have spam, crapfloods, and trolls, "offtopic" would still describe a lot of posts. Every online discussion is subject to topic drift. Our current conversation is a prime example! If a moderator notices this post, it will probably get downmodded as "Offtopic". I have absolutely no problem with that.
Perhaps your dislike of "Offtopic" has to do with the usual concern with "unfair" downmods and consequent loss of Karma. Now, a lot of bad downmods bother me, but I think too many Slashdotters are pathologically obsessed with this issue. Having a clever post be slightly less visible is unfair, but it's not the end of the world. And if you're a reasonably good Slashdot citizen, you have a enough karma to spare for a few downmods now and then.
I can't help but observe that the people who are most vehement and obsessive about "unfair" downmods are the ones with the least to say. They have a few thoughts that they themselves are in love with, and can't understand why most other users are unappreciative. Such folks need to do a little growing up.
It's called Fast File System for a reason, you know.
(That reason being that it was faster than the SysV filesystem when BSD first separated from ATT Unix; really, the whole history of Unix is kinda interesting.)
If you want. For building system from, however, the BSD people actually like to regression test things BEFORE putting them out as part of the default distribution. I realize, being a likley Linux user, this must utterly asound and confound you, but try to imagine people giving a shit about stability and ease of use over immediate integration of the latest packages of whatever type.
The less I know about soaps, the less I retch. I was kidding when I pretended that I knew who she was, as an intro to my over the top soap-style dramatization ("slipped SMP into their drink"). I was referring to how Sarah is no longer in a daytime soap, so I no longer hold hostility to her, and forgive her for her shady past. I hope that Amber is not held back for not being emaciated if she is talented, but I was really bluffing about the whole thing. Really, I'm sorry for bringing any of this up.
----------
I hope you aren't insinuating that I fit into the category you caracterized in your last paragraph; earlier in this thread you complimented one of my posts! I won't pretend that I don't enjoy a slight thrill or even validation when one of my posts is modded up to 5, but that is not at all why I use Slashdot. Sometimes I feel compelled to post useful info to to correct misinformation about subject that I feel fairly knowledgeable about. Enough knowledgeable people use slashdot that occasionally I find surprising posts that enlighten me, broadening my horizons, or at least provide new directions for further research. The Moderation system is a valueable part of this system. I don't care about my personal karma; I care that useful or just interesting posts stand out from inane crap or abusive noise. I don't mean MY posts, I mean other posts, so that I can see them when I browse at +2, +3, or +4, depending on how piqued my interest in the subject is. Unless I am intimately interested in a topic or moderating, I'm not willing to slog through at -1 just to find the hidden gem that hasn't been revealed. I actually depend on the moderation system to work for me.
I am sorry that my post wasn't clear... what was is that made it hard to uderstand? was it just too long? I have been accused of being too "long winded" on slashdot in the past. If that's the case, just stop reading here, thanks.
I don't see slashdot as a concise news site. I guess I treat it as a collection of perspectives, but with a lower bar for entry than, e.g., Kuroshin - and IMHO, Slashdot scales better. I don't dislike OFFTOPIC because I don't want to lose my precious karma, I already have my +1 bonus, as you can see, and if I really cared, I could post anonymously to protect my little stash. I dislike OFFTOPIC when it obscures somebody else's post that I find interesting. The very nature of the beast is that the discussion will stray from the story - On today's Star Wars article, there was a post describing how Pulp Fiction is a blatant Rip-off of a previous Japanese movie. This is completely off-topic, but that is not a bad thing - I find this more interesting than the original story. Now I have to rent "City on Fire" to see the jewel heist that is only alluded to in Resevoir Dogs, and I am looking forward to this. This illustrates my point that OFFTOPIC is against the spirit of the site, and OFFTOPIC could be destigmatized by introducing another tag - one which more accurately describe content free posts.
You claimed that your earlier post was marked OFFTOPIC twice, and rightly so. I am not going to argue against that, of course it was offtopic. But you posted it in the first place, and my eye was caught by the gruesome visage of the phrase soap opera. This compelled me to post, but I was not the only one - obviously many people were interested enough in your post to respond. Responses to your post were moderated up as interesting. Don't you get it yet?!? Obviously, your off topic post was valueable.
The dillema here is that many posts in this thread are both "offtopic" and valueable, which introduces a double standard. Similarly there are mony "trolls" that deservingly reach level 5 moderation. I usually want to see those "interesting" posts that are "offtopic" or "trolls", while sometimes I don't. The answer is another moderation category, which can distinguish posts that are clearly "content free" as opposed to just containing content that is "inflammatory" or "digressive".
Do you understand? Your post was OFFTOPIC, sure, but it is also valueable to at least 13 posters, two moderators, and yourself - not for "karma", but for discussion! I LIKE OFFTOPIC POSTS when I am looking to kill time. That is where I find the value in Slashdot - in the community and their communication.
Check out your preferences. The only "upmods" and "downmods" are OVERRATED and UNDERRATED. Everything else is configurable. That is why descriptive mods are a great idea. I can have FUNNY be a downmod if I am looking for pertinent information, while neutralizing REDUNDANT penalties and double raising INFORMATIVE and INSIGHTFUL. If I am looking to entertain myself with diverse perspectives, I can raise FLAMEBAIT, TROLL and OFFTOPIC - unless these are being used to negate FP and nonsequiter racist diatribes. Perhaps OVERRATED would be best for these style posts, but even you called for the elimination of that tag. Some tag along the lines of "useless, content-free, noise, crapflood" would solve this problem nicely.
I hate defragmenting my drive every so often. Computers should be able to run indefinitely on their own!
Does FreeBSD or any other OS already have background defragmenting that does not cause danger to the files on disk with regard to crashes?
We are going to need a background defragmenter anyway as soon as non-volatile ram is here (like MRAM). Or doesn't RAM (HEAP?) fragment in the first place?
I'm no expert but I've never heard of it. And I do think it's a basic necessity.
Can anyone please tell me if background defragmenting of HD or RAM is already here or not?
And if not, please tell me if you think we'll see something like this anytime soon.
thanks.
- -- Truth addict for life.
>Does FreeBSD or any other OS already have background
> defragmenting that does not cause danger to the files on
> disk with regard to crashes?
Here's these freebsd guys, they work hard and produce yet another amazing trick. Then you go and ask for something completely different.
On the other hand, yeah, you're right. Unconscious defrags, that would be ultra cool. DEAR FILESYSTEM PEOPLE: WE WANT IT ALL. ALL AT THE SAME TIME, without THINKING.
Personally, I want my laptop to be able to crash, in the middle of building software, and it's no big deal. Recently I had the battery run out while building, and the root partition wouldn't fsck anymore. Wasted!! (suse 7.1 running 2.2.18; build partition was ReiserFS, root partition was ext2. I'm sure other linux's are ==ly suspect.) I cleaned thoroughly and reinstalled (root is now ReiserFS).
Not what you would call consumer friendly.
Extra credit: after rebooting, resume the make, from where it left off.
:-)
Marketing-driven companies end up over-marketing their products. Engineering-driven companies end up over-engineering
Funny thing is, she actually reads a lot of it. But she gets very impatient if she gets a long message whose basic point is not terribly obvious. I think she's sort of offended at the assumption that she has an infinite amount of spare time, or at least an amount of spare time equal to that of each of her correspondents multiplied by the total correspondent count.
Her word for lengthy email is "biblical". Rather appropriate.
All of which is my way of saying -- could you boil that down a bit?
P o r t a g e on Linux
www.gentoo.org
By far the fastest OS on the planet.
Thank you for reading.
Use
www.gentoo.org
er,
s ho ts/i386/ISO-IMAGES/
:-)
from: http://snapshots.jp.freebsd.org/
ftp://snapshots.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snap
Burn it, and you can install latest FreeBSD by CD-ROM. These images are updated every 06:00 GMT (about an hour to finish). All CD-ROM images are "bootable"; you can install FreeBSD without floppies.
Bootonly" CD-ROM is only 3 megabytes, contains CD-ROM boot image and some installation documents. No ordinary distributions are not in this CD-ROM image. You can fetch whole distribution via network or other media.
"Live" CD-ROM is a bootable (single-user mode) live filesystem. All FreeBSD base distributions are extracted to this. You may want to use this image instead of fixit.flp, since all commands are available. CAUTION:I don't know why, but 5-current kernel can't mount CD-ROM for root filesystem. As a result, live-current.iso boots fine but that's all (if you have any other filesystems for root). Of course you can use live-current.iso as a live filesystem CD-ROM (mount and browse/copy files).
"Duplex" CD-ROM contains both 4-stable and 5-current distribution. No kidding you... when it boots, you can select which version of FreeBSD to install. Maybe suitable your freebsd-users-group event
----
Jason