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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.
(cvsupping to 4.6-RELEASE as we speak)
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
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.
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$
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)
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
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?
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
Not exactly. In-between a -RELEASE, the stable branch is not guaranteed to always be buildable or working.
/testing is probably a good idea.
/etc in sync, or parts of the base system changing under you in preperation for the next release.
/usr/src/UPDATING.
RELENG_4 is the STABLE development branch most people who track STABLE use; this is where prereleases arrive and things are merged from current (MFC); the biggest recent change was an MFC of the new ATA subsystem. New versions of sendmail and smallish changes to the rc system can happen here too.
Although MFC'd stuff is only done so after a lot of testing, and commits to this branch are usually fine, it is still a development branch. Treating it somewhat like Debian
For a truely stable up to date system, you should track the RELENG_4_<release> branches, which are the security-update branches for individual releases. Track RELENG_4_6 for 4.6 and you know you won't need to worry too much about running mergemaster to keep
If you track RELENG_4, you should be prepared to at least watch stable@freebsd.org and keep an eye on
And while we're on the subject, remember that cvsup is quite IO intensive; keep your cvsup's conservative. Once a day is usually a bit over the top, and just serves to increase the load on the servers. http://freshports.net/ and ports@freebsd.org are good resources to help decide when it's worth supping.