FreeBSD Freezes Code For 4.7 Release

SirGeek writes: "According to the Daemon News and the FreeBSD site a code freeze has taken place in preparations for the impending 4.7 release on October 1st."

Comments

All together now

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not dead, its just frozen.

Re:All together now

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat like Ted Williams.

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

is that a posthumous release ?

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

was that a posthumous comment ?

Repeat Repeat Repeat

[jpt.d]

Editors, please look these up - this must be the third or fourth repeated article within the last week.

Re:Repeat Repeat Repeat

[LinuxGeek8]

Editors, please look these up - this must be the third or fourth repeated article within the last week

Duh, are you sure you posted under the right topic? I cannot see a duplicate article for the freezing of FreeBSD 4.7 in the BSD section.

Yes yes.

[neroz]

_WHAT IS NEW IN 4.7_?

Re:Yes yes.

[MavEtJu]

If you would have read the release process document you would have seen the link to the Testing Guide for 4.7 (pre-)release which explains what should be checked carefully in this (pre)-release.

Reading the article doesn't take so long, you probably spend more time in replying to it.

re: whats new in 4.7

[sideone]

im not too sure whats new, but i hope they have improved jail mgmt. As per the release schedule, the 4.7 PreRelease was out as of the first of sept! And as far as i know, the releases will come out 1 per quarter.

sideone
ITBitch.com - Your reason for leaving work

One important thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Please keep in mind that it will not be released until at least the 2nd or 3rd week in October, as per the usual release lateness.

Token rings galore

[mnmn]

Many companies here in Toronto have dumped massive amounts of Token ring cards and switches. a 16mpbs pci card manufactured in 98 costs $2.5 and a 16 port switch costs $14. Massive reason for their drivers to be ported to FreeBSD. For now i'll just let the internet thru my freebsd nat firewall, then into the debian box into the switch and over to other computers. and hey the total latency chopped off here is about 2-5ms.. acceptable

Re:Token rings galore

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive reason for their drivers to be ported to FreeBSD

Then write the drives, or stop whining.

Re:Token rings galore

[dmadole]

Some Olicom token ring cards are well supported under FreeBSD. The support contains some binary code from Olicom, so it is not compiled in by default and resides in the contrib directory. But it's easy to enable and has been solid for me.

I'm not much of a token ring fan, but my printer (IBM Network Printer 17) came with a token ring card. Instead of buying an ethernet server for $150 (I only paid $300 for the printer) I got five Olicom PCI cards ($15 for all) and a twisted-pair token ring hub ($10) on eBay. Dropped one card into my server and set up routing. Handles lpr just great.

Why all the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any substantial basis for the slew of "bsd is dying" posts? Is this based on any current and tangible information? Or is it simply based on OS jealousy and the simmering resentment that Linux users may feel over the BSD-based OS X taking developer mindshare and media spotlight away from Linux?

In short...what's the basis for this?

Re:Why all the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments like this show why it is necessary to provide accurate information about the state of *BSD's market share and development process. If one person, upon encountering a *BSD is dying post, stops subscribing to misinformation such as that in the parent post, it should be considered a worthwhile pursuit.

Re:Why all the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. So let's see some accurate information. And I don't mean cut-and-paste trolls that are from the dot-com era, either. I also don't mean cut-and-paste repeats of documents that show nothing beyond a project having personality conflicts (a phenomena that Linux is immune to, certainly).

Again, I have to ask...what is the reason for all of the anti-BSD vitriol? I think that it's nervousness of a percieved loss of mindshare/mediashare...but if it's due to something else, please tell me what that something is.

And I can't see posts such as "it's not dying, it's frozen" convincing anyone of anything other than /. is full of sophmoronic junior highschoolers. ;)

Re:Why all the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

simmering resentment that Linux users may feel over the BSD-based OS X taking developer mindshare and media spotlight away from Linux?

I wouldn't look that far into it. The troll posts here are just some sad kids with nothing better to do. It just so happens that the "BSD is dying" posts always seem to do quite well at baiting unsuspecting readers -- moreso than Goatse links, "xyz found dead at 52" etc. etc etc.

As for your other point, I'm a Linux and FreeBSD user and I'd be very interested to hear about this "mindshare" that's being lost to MacOS X. I don't see Linux developers moving in droves over to Apple's OS; I don't see any major articles worrying about the future of Linux now that a hardware-specific proprietary-GUI OS based loosely on BSD is around.

Get with it. MacOS X is great, but considering both it and Linux have miniscule fractions of the desktop market, nobody's going to fret just yet. And while it remains a half-closed OS usable only on expensive single-vendor hardware, it's not going to take any real attention away from Linux.

When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

They think they're saving money, but they're really not.

Remember, nobody ever got fired for buying genuine Microsoft Windows!

FreeBSD 5?

[Moderator]

Is the last release before FreeBSD 5?

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[thanjee]

Yes this is most likely the final release before 5.0 comes out.

The 5.0 current code is planned to be frozen on the 20th of October 2002, with an expected release on the 20th of November 2002.

That will give us plenty of time to go and buy FreeBSD 5.0 and give it to our relatives for christmas :)

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Habbie]

5.0 is supposed to be released November 20, according to the FreeBSD site
but note that that is still a -CURRENT tree. 4.8 is the next -STABLE release after 4.7, planned for February 1.

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Herr_Nightingale]

Aren't you the popular one at gift-giving festivals! ;O)

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Arandir]

I think you've misunderstood the release documents. 5.0 is -CURRENT now, today, in the present. But after November it will be the -RELEASE and -STABLE branches. They will continue to backport some fixes to the 4.x branch.

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Beetjebrak]

Even then I'd not use 5 in a mission critical setting just yet. As far as I can tell (haven't installed it yet, last time I tried it didn't work) it's got so many changes that some vital stuff is still bound to be broken and the team seems to be rushing the thing out. They have to, after last year's debacle, to maintain some credibility.
I'll stick with the final 4.x release+patches until 5.1 sees daylight. That is, I sure as hell will put 5.0 on my home box, but not at work! ;-)

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Arandir]

Yup, never trust a x.0 release, no matter who releases it.

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[mbadolato]

And actually, I remember seeing a release schedule which stated that they wouldn't recommend the general population to use 5.x until 5.2.

I just looked, this was the only reference I could find (note this schedule was done before the decision to push 5.x to 11/2002 instead of 11/2001)

2001-04-20: FreeBSD 4.3 released
--
2001-08-20: FreeBSD 4.4 release date
2001-11-11: FreeBSD 5.0 release date [EARLY ACCESS]
2001-12-15: FreeBSD 4.5 release date
2002-03-15: FreeBSD 5.1 release date [GENERAL ACCESS]
2002-04-20: FreeBSD 4.6 release date
2002-07-15: FreeBSD 5.2 release date [BEGIN -STABLE]

Re:FreeBSD 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD 5 is fine. GET DP1 ISO, install from disk [with everything]. go to /usr/ports, install CVSUP.
CVSUP it.
[pick a closer server that cvsup3]
begin file :==: (/usr/local/etc/cvsup/)
*default host=cvsup3.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/usr
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs
*default tag=.
*default delete use-rel-suffix

src-all
ports-all
end file :==:

Enable SMP if you have, prune the GENERIC config.

make -sk buildworld
make -sk buildkernel KERNCONF=YOURSTRULY
make -sk installkernel KERNCONF=YOURSTRULY
sync; reboot
(in single user mode: boot -s from the loader
prompt)
mergemaster -p (be very careful with this, i opt to blow away whats there from teh template files from CVS, override, destroy, do whatever here to get yours system up to sync - also the P rebuilds the password database this is CRUCIAL)
make installworld
mergemaster
sync; reboot

I have never seen a "bleeding edge" system more coherent and useable than FreeBSD 5 in development. I am utterly impressed with it. The Joker that claims never use a .0 release is probably used to the crap shoveled out by RedHat. FreeBSD is not a fly by night operation. Most anytime one syncs with CVS and builds it works. From my experience, its CURRENT is better than most free *nix's -STABLE.

I have wishes when I use FreeBSD. Sure I wish 4.4BSD had more toys by default, sure I wish that more "ports" were considered "core" and that bash2 was the default shell. But the truth is that never have I see a free operating system with so much attention to WORKING. This operating system has proven itself to me to be more stable, faster and better written drivers than Linux.

It doesn't surprise me to see JUNOS, the operating system for the massive Juniper M routers, is directly based on FreeBSD. Now if that isn't aprecation [opposite of deprecate ;p], I don't know what is. I can't think of anyone doing something that big with Linux and proving commercial reliability, availability and extensibility.

You see by keeping *nix lean and tight, and properly documenting and structuring the source code without random "this is fucked up" "this is kludged crap, please fix" in comments (grep through the Linux source tree for an edification on profanity and unclear documentation), this OS is able to be an OS by definition. not a crap pile of scraped together cruft masquerading as such. Gentoo, I have tried, is heinous. RedHat is awful - I use this as the only alternative to FreeBSD, but I am actively involved in a project now that is porting from Linux to FreeBSD, for several good reasons; reliability, kernel polling for ethernet drivers that prevent livelock, and better performance, particularly, believe it or not, with SMP. Slackware is unmanageable, Debian, why bother? Just use FreeBSD. -STABLE has more than that piece of crap does in ports. The rest have irritated and disappointed.

1 oct

[thanjee]

Cool, FreeBSD 4.7 will hopefully be released on the 1st of October this year :)

The main improvement I want to see on this version is the ability to do a net install on my laptop using a Xircom CEM33 pcmcia ethernet card.
Pity the Xircom project has pretty much closed, it was my last best hope, one of these days I should just go buy a better ethernet card, or maybe a CD-ROM.....lol

Re:1 oct

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD 4.6 isos, free.
3com 10mbit pc card on ebay, $10.
Not having to complain about stupid Xircom card on /. like a fucking idiot, priceless.

Re:1 oct

[Anonymous Coward]

$10? shit, I'll give you $5 to take some off my hands. Ethernet cards are worth less than food stamps these days.

IBM ServeRaid support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone currently writing the drivers for the IBM serveRAID? I've had a look through the linux drivers, but it's so far above my head I can hardly see it.

SX-6000 support?

[Openadvocate]

Does anyone know if support for the SX-6000 controller will be included?
According to this mail from Søren Schmidt, he had added them to current in July.
I am not too familiar in how it works with the updates.
I saw that 4.6.2 could see the driver, although as TX-100's think, but when it came to see the drives as one, it failed and the installation found no discs to install to.