FreeBSD 4.9 RC1 Ready For Testing

wumpus188 writes "FreeBSD Release Eng. Team's Murray Stokely announces the availability of first release candidate for FreeBSD 4.9 (RC1). He is requesting everyone to download and test, including helping with finding bugs. As indicated in the Release Engineering Team's testing agenda, more testing should be done with PAE systems to test device compatibility and performance. In particular, active systems with 12 gigs of RAM or more should be thoroughly tested to make sure the various memory allocation algorithms in the kernel still scale properly."

Comments

Hmmm

[scumbucket]

I guess this means that BSD isn't dying after all.
Sorry, couldn't resist......

active systems with 12 gigs of RAM or more

[Tumbleweed]

> In particular, active systems with 12 gigs of RAM or more should be thoroughly tested

Yes. Both of them. Sheesh.

Re:active systems with 12 gigs of RAM or more

[konmaskisin]

There's hundreds of BSD users with this equipment.

Re:active systems with 12 gigs of RAM or more

[Tumbleweed]

It was a joke, son. Laugh.

(murderous Homer mode on) I...said...laugh... (off)

RC1 already?

[aliquis]

If I remember things right I got mails every now and then with complains about how bad this and that worked from the freebsd mailinglists.
I usually don't read that many mailinglists so maybe that is common and no trouble but I wouldn't have belived they was considering a release already.

Re:RC1 already?

[__past__]

It is still at least 1.5 months until 4.9 is released, according to the release schedule, and generally the FreeBSD team will accept delays in the interest of stability and not rush out something half-baked. 5.0 has been delayed more than one year, IIRC. During such a timeframe, certain other free Unix-like OSes change half of your supposedly stable kernel under your back and accidentally eat your file systems three times without bumping the minor version number.

4.9 RC1

[secolactico]

Eh? I'm almost positive that I cvsup'ed to 4.9 RC1 a couple fo weeks ago (and for my non-production needs, it's pretty stable. It probably would be for my production needs but I'm still at 4.7 in those machines).

Re:4.9 RC1

[ffsnjb]

Your kernel is probably tagged as 4.9-PRERELEASE, as all of mine are.

Re:4.9 RC1

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I'm at 4.9 PRE as well. Is there a way to track 4.8, but get enhancements as well as security changes, but not move to 4.9 until its actually released?

Re:4.9 RC1

[Strog]

RELENG_4 gets you the 4-Stable branch and you'll get all enhancements and security fixes. It will also get you 4.9PRE and briefly 4.9-RELEASE when it gets to that. RELENG_4_8 will get you 4.8-RELEASE plus security patches.

It sounds like you already have what you want. If you don't want uname to say 4.9PRE then hack /usr/src/sys/conf/newvers.sh to say what you want and you'll have it all. :P

Re:4.9 RC1

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Thanks, lots of info. Does RELENG_4_8 get any updates besides security fixes?

I'm not really worried about uname as much as stability. Not sure how 4.9-PRE compares in stability to tracking RELENG_4_8.

Re:4.9 RC1

[phoenix_rizzen]

RELENG_4 tracks -stable. This is a moving target and isn't always stable or usable. All new developments in the 4.x branch are made here, and all new releases in the 4.x branch are tagged from here.

RELENG_4_X tracks 4.X + security fixes. Security fixes and super-major bug fixes are the only things that get added to this branch. No new features will be added here.

RELENG_4_X_Y_RELEASE will get you 4.X.Y release, the same code as is put on the CDs.

Re:My prelim bug report

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder. You are so stupid to look for a pulse on a computer.

Better check your own pulse on your neck. Seems you lack blood flow to the brain.

OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[Viol8]

Is the 5.x series stable enough yet to use in a serious enviroment or should I stick to 4.x for
the time being? Even though I use FreeBSD (though admittedly only as a backup OS to Linux) I'm confused by their release policy. At what minor
version increment do current release branches become stable or are we supposed to just hope for the best?
If 5.0 was as unstable as I've heard in certain situations why was it ever released , why don't they just do the same as the linux kernel
team and keep releasing beta versions until things seem ok?

Re:OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[joaobranco]

If you want stability, use STABLE releases, (4.8, 4.9 in a few days/weeks).

If you want the bleeding edge, you can try CURRENT (HEAD, 5.1). But they call it bleeding edge, because you might cut yourself, you know.

That said, I am using a 5-CURRENT machine to write this. I haven't had major troubles with this. But, if you aren't the kind of person who would use a odd-numbered kernel in linux, you should stick with STABLE releases. I have all my production machines in STABLE, I only use CURRENT in my "expendable" machines (like my own workstation).

There is information on which branch is STABLE - Production (at this moment its last release was 4.8, soon will be 4.9) and which branch is CURRENT - Technology Preview (at this moment, the last release was 5.1, will be 5.2 in a while) on the freebsd home page (www.freebsd.org).

Re:OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[Viol8]

Any ETA of when 5.x will become STABLE? Since I like the new features but I can't put up with a flakey server.

Re:OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[platipusrc]

5.1-RELEASE isn't flaky really, but the stable release branch will probably come about at either 5.2 or 5.3, depending on what the FreeBSD team decides.

My workstation running 5.1 was up for 60 days no problem. Only reason it went down was because of the nvidia kernel module, which you probably wouldn't be using on a production machine anyway.

Re:OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[__past__]

Don't hold your breath. The current estimated release date for 5.3, which will become RELENG_5, is march 2004.

Personally, I plan to switch when 5.2 is released, though. Mostly for the filesystem snapshots and background fsck. I too use FBSD 5 on my personal workstation and have scince 5.0-RELEASE, without any problems, so I don't worry too much.

Re:OK , maybe this is a stupid question but....

[rayvd]

Well, I don't know what you'll be using the server, but we have a 5.1 box processing about 5000 messages a day (virtual domains, MySQL, SpamAssassin and Anomy Sanitizer). It gets a fair bit of load and I have had zero issues with it whatsoever.

5000 messages a day is fairly light by a lot of standards though, so that is all I can speak to.

Re:*BSD is dying

[penguinstorm]

wow - this is a brave comment to make, especially hiding behind the mask that is 'anonymous coward'.

There's ample ammunition for the argument that FreeBSD is dead, but there's equally ample ammunition to support the view that FreeBSD development is strong. Given that it sits at the core of Apple's OS X, there is substantial opportunity to gain from this.

I think that the death of FreeBSD as an OS is premature: the death of commercial releases may be real.

I vastly prefer messing around with FreeBSD: faster, more stable and equally productive when compared to most Linux releases.

And Red Hat? Well, they've done a great job commercializing the thing, but does anybody actually like using it? It's a compromise - albeit a good one for some purposes. If I were installing desktops, it'd probably be my FreeOS of choice.

Re:*BSD is dying

[Viol8]

You must be new here. The BSD is dying troll have been around for ever it seems. I'm not sure if he thinks he's being funny, annoying or he's got a gripe
against BSD itself. Either way he needs to seek help IMO.

4.9 is coming along nicely

[puzzled]

The OpenSSH/OpenSSL bugs are mostly ironed out, watch for bind9.2.4 in /usr/ports/dns - a new subdirectory, and other than that it looks ready to go - I've been pushing it on my intel DNS/ssh/qmail boxes since a few weeks after code freeze and its been very, very, very stable.