Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD v.4.6 (NOT) Released
A FreeBSD fan writes "FreeBSD 4.6 was just released. It's a relief to see it arrive after a myriad of delays and excuses caused it to be held back. As always, with every new version, FreeBSD becomes even faster and more secure than before. Please be sure to find a mirror here before downloading." Update: There's been an update to the story, please note that "something fishy is going on"
Murray Stokely writes "We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers. Are you trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD? The release is not ready yet, and will not be until the front page of FreeBSD.org is updated and a PGP signed announcement message is posted to announce@FreeBSD.org." So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
I guess it's a good thing about having a script that automatically updates the source tree and does the make world every other night :)
Oh wait, it's not out yet.
Dumb fucks.
I wonder if you can install Lunix: Penguin Job on BSD?
(cvsupping to 4.6-RELEASE as we speak)
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
Recent convert from Linux, Happy B-day FreeBSD.
:)
Now what should I grab, since I'm using 4.6rc1
Dude, Whatever.
I'm a little surprised a poster would say the reasons behind the 4.6 release being late are excuses.
EVERY RELEASE HAS DELAYS
This is not a corporation. We do not keep a schedule. We release it when it's ready, slashdot be damned. Don't like it? Jump ship, goodbye, we don't need you on our team. You're not good enough mindshare to work on this project or take part in it.
Congratulations to the core on another release of FreeBSD, keep 'em coming strong.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
damn't, is it that hard to say "oops sorry"
I live in a giant bucket.
How is something not being released news? I dont recall ever seeing a "Linux kernel not being released yet" because we screwed up again story on Slashdot? What gives? Do you people CHECK the stories or just post?
In fairness, something can be secure at release and less secure as time elapses due to new attacks, new software, etc. In that sense, "more secure" doesn't imply "more security" as much as "secure by more current standards."
You not thinking it's that simple doesn't jive with the fact that the release engineering team releases it, not you. Try to keep that in mind.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
I honestly don't think it's that simple. Why are release notes up for it?
Interresting[sp?] point. Why were there so many magazines, websites, books about WindowsME (I think that's the one, I can't keep track of it anymore. I mean the successor of WindowsNT) before the product was on the shelves in the shops? Why are there all these technical documents / HOWTOs already available on the websites before the product is available? It's called preparations! Nobody was able to buy WindowsME before that day, but everybody had read about it and everybody had seen books about.
Why did I get 10 submissions celebrating it's release?
If you go to this url:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ you will see a list of release-notes, erratas and announcements. Add some creative surfing to it et voila, there is your 4.6 announcement.
I've tried to find it, but no, I couldn't find any direct links to the release notes. Only with creative surfing I could find it.
So, oops, sorry, really don't do it for me, no, not yet.
There is a damned good reason for it:
Murray Stokely writes "We have gone over this for the past 2 releases now. I thought I had made it clear that you were not to publish information about FreeBSD being released until you saw a signed PGP message from one of the release engineers.
Screwing it up once, "no problem just don't do it next time". Screwing it up twice, "I told you how this was going to be done, can you *PLEASE* do it right?". Screwing it up three times... Now that's a sign that there is something really wrong.
bash$
murray 2002/06/10 13:34:09 PDT
Modified files:
. avail
Log:
Lock src/ for 30-45 minutes while the RELENG_4_6_0_RELEASE tag is
created.
Revision Changes Path
1.185 +1 -1 CVSROOT/avail
That is why people submitted it. They read too much into the tagging of the release. As subsequent mail noted, the release is not yet out and tags may be slid. Release notes are not directly linked. Simple enough?
Unfortunately, the MIT paper you speak of is completely out of date. Softupdates, dirpref, and plenty of other enhancements to FFS have been added since FreeBSD 2.0, a release which was old news when that website was last updated in June of 1999! The fact that a big cache in memory trumps numerous small writes to a disk hardly comes as a surprise to anyone (but you're SOL in the event of a sudden power failure). I'm really sorry that Linux bigots out there (most of them probably unable to compile hello_world.c) feel threatened by the continued success of BSD, but it's a free country. It's nice that projects like Gentoo have gotten a lot of their ideas from the BSD's instead of fostering a community of illiterate pukes who do little but spread FUD (much like their favorite enemy in the commercial software realm), but they appear to be the exception and not the rule.
-- /."
Evan "standing next to his grain of salt, not to scale, whenever I read
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
As the person who committed the 4.6 release documentation to the FreeBSD Web site, I can pretty authoritatively say why these files were there in advance of the release. The reason is so that when Murray (or whomever else) makes the release announcement, the pages pointed to by the release announcement are already on the main Web site. It basically makes it easier for users to find the information they need.
But these pages had (have) no inbound links to them at all. The fact that some people had to do some "creative surfing" to actually find the release documentation should really have been a clue that the release wasn't ready yet. If we *had* released, wouldn't it be kind of silly to keep this information obscured?
This wouldn't be such a big deal except we had a very similar situation in 4.5 with someone posting a bogus release announcement to Slashdot (and having it slip past the editors). I really hope there isn't a third time.
Oh yes. I'm also the person who wrote the so-called "delays and excuses" message. I didn't see it as making excuses for anything. I wanted to give our users some explanation as to why things would be delayed.
Peace,
Bruce A. Mah
(Member, FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)
All the code is readily available on the cvsup servers? Whats the big deal about a release? I'd rather see 5.0-RELEASE wait another 6 months and get the finishing touches on SMPng and the sparc port, as well as all the other cool stuff I've surely missed. Good code takes time, and will come if it's not rushed.
yes, "creative surfing" may get you to the most recent release notes on some of the mirrors, and the release files might be there as well. but as long as there are sites that haven't been updated yet people will pound on the other mirrors even more.
*cough*slashdot effect*cough*
so, please give the freebsd folks a fair chance of populating all the mirrors. if you really can't wait for the hottest release, you have have been tracking -stable via cvsup anyway.
Since when have you ever seen a pile of volunteered contributions without a fishy or off one in the stack? Even over and over.
Slashdot may get a million submissions a day, but they only post about ten or twenty of them. That gives them plenty of time to actually check out the story.
This is the third time this has happened with a FreeBSD release, and it's happened to Linux distro releases as well. Is Slashdot deliberately trying to destroy their credibility?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"something fishy is going on"
:p
:)
Something fishy you say? That would mean a penguin had something to do with it! Unless of course demons eat fish too
Well now I just have to wait for FreeBSD.org to give the official word then adownloadin' I will go
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Well, then post "I hear rumurs that FreeBSD 4.6 is released, although if you look at their official site, it isn't". No-one would object to that, other than that it's a stupid thing to post.
/. but for something you can check with a visit to one web site, that you've been asked not to report prematurely twice in the past....
It's not like people expect detailed fact checking on
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I was interested to se that Murray Stokely asked if the poster of the story was "trying to help the spread of trojanned copies of FreeBSD" Why would he think that? It is a serious thing to alledge. Is it likely that someone was trying to?
What credibility? This is a forum for a bunch of like minded people to gather on the net. Just like everything else, consider the source. /. is dead on about some things, and horribly off about others, just like a bunch of techies in the break room waiting for coffee to brew.
Of course, so is the "credible media", which consistantly refered to the nonexistant "anthrax virus" for a few months. It's high school level science to know the difference between a virus and bacterium, and every major news outlet has a high paid science editor, plus several consultants. And yet the media got it wrong over and over again.
Me? I take stuff on Slashdot as someone calling a neat "fact" over a cube wall - you check it out yourself.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
So I think we're all clear on how murray feels about this.
Yeah, he feels that the editorial staff are a pack of unprofessional assclowns who can't be bothered to perform the sort of rudimentary fact-checking demanded of the average high school newspaper.
And hey presto, he's right.
--saint
ALL of the release stages are detailed on this page. And actually, the simplest way to verify whether or not 4.6 is really released is to take a look at the FreeBSD FTP site. After the 4.6-RELEASE directory and the ISO directory is populated on the main server, the mirrors will be updated and the hammering can begin. I could be wrong, but for the time that I've been running FreeBSD, the binaries are usually available before the actual announcement, so if the binaries aren't there, there is no release.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Hehe, Slashdot really is a load of shit sometimes. The editors clearly can't learn from pervious mistakes, and would never keep a job going in real-life professional journalism.
Actually, it is just that simple. There is an explanation for all of this.
Why did you get 10 submissions that the release was out? Because the release has been tagged in the cvs tree, that's why. This doesn't mean that it's been released, just that we know what versions of what files (may) make up the release. It may only take an hour of so to build the release itself, but it takes a lot longer to build all the packages, get the stuff shipped to the mirrors and all the other things the RE people have to do before they can announce the release.
Why are the release notes on the website? Easy, the website is part of the cvs tree. The website build system has been building the release notes for 4.6-RELEASE for weeks (if not months). With that said, I note that the 4.6 release notes are NOT linked anywhere, but it does provide access to the handy release schedule.
Part if the issue here, IMO, is the transparency of the Project itself (this is a good thing). People can see the release happening in real time as each part is completed, so I can see how some people would jump the gun a bit and start submitting stuff to
As for Murray? Well, I understand his feelings, but I may have taken a different path to the same result...
I have the 4.6-mini iso, the binaries are out and full iso's will be available soon, so in other words they're doing the smart thing and saying that we'll say its released when all the mirrors have the files needed, rather than say its released and not have it available for a couple of days.
-mutter- something something something...
Don't feed the trolls!
I agree that it's silly. However; are you hinting that there is a computing product (or any technical product for that matter) for which this rule does not apply? I'd like to know what it is ;)
The (real) announcement came out a couple hours ago; presumably it will appear on the freebsd.org website at 0800 UTC when the site is rebuilt.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Delivered-To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc: bmah@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE is now available
From: bmah@FreeBSD.ORG (Bruce A. Mah)
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 16:34:26 -0700
Sender: owner-freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG
I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE, the very latest release on the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE in January 2002, we have made hundreds of fixes, updated many system components, and addressed a wide variety of security issues.
One of the most significant changes in FreeBSD 4.6 is the adoption of XFree86 4.2.0 as the default version of the X Windows System. We encourage users (particularly those upgrading from older installations of XFree86) to consult the relevant section of the FreeBSD Handbook for information on installing and configuring XFree86 4.2.0. This information can be found on-line at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/x11.html
On systems with the doc distribution installed, it can also be found at:
A number of enhancements to network device drivers have been made, as well as updates to the ATA storage subsystem.
Some contributed programs have been updated, such as sendmail (updated to 8.12.3) and the ISC DHCP client (updated to 3.0.1RC8).
For more information about the most significant changes with this release of FreeBSD, please see the release notes:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/relnotes.htm
It is also useful to peruse the errata file, as it contains late-breaking news about the release:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.6R/errata.html
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities (including a schedule of upcoming releases), please see:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/
Availability
------------
FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE supports the i386 and alpha architectures and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for the i386 are available now. Final builds for the alpha architecture are in progress and will be made available shortly.
We can't promise that all the mirror sites will carry the larger ISO images, but they will at least be available from:
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.lt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/FreeBSD/
If you can't afford FreeBSD on media, are impatient, or just want to use it for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO images, otherwise please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following companies have contributed substantially to the development of FreeBSD:
FreeBSD Mall, Inc. http://www.freebsdmall.com/
FreeBSD Services Ltd. http://www.freebsd-services.com/
Daemon News http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html
Each CD or DVD set contains the FreeBSD installation and application package bits for the i386 ("PC") architecture. For a set of distfiles used to build ports in the ports collection, please see the FreeBSD Toolkit, a 6 CD set containing extra bits which no longer fit on the 4 CD set, or the DVD distribution from FreeBSD Services Ltd.
FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Trantor, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Before trying the central FTP site, please check your regional mirror(s) first by going to:
ftp://ftp..FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD
Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.
More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html
For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The FreeBSD Handbook. It provides a complete installation walk-through for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/install.html
Acknowledgments
---------------
Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours to finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 4.6, including Compaq, Yahoo!, and The FreeBSD Mall.
In addition to myself, the release engineering team for 4.6-RELEASE includes:
Murray Stokely : Release Engineering Lead, i386 Builds
Robert Watson : Release Engineering
John Baldwin : Release Engineering, alpha Builds
Brian Somers : Release Engineering
Steve Price : Package Splits
Will Andrews : Package Splits
Kris Kennaway : Package Building
David O'Brien : XFree86 Integration
Please join me in thanking them for all the hard work which went into making this release. Many thanks are also due to the FreeBSD committers , without whom there would be nothing to release, and thousands of FreeBSD users world-wide who have contributed bug fixes, features, and suggestions.
Enjoy!
Bruce A. Mah
(For the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)
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