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FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality."
And yes, before the Linux hordes flames me to death, yes I know that Linux kernel does have Opteron support and has been more or less 64-bit compatible since the DEC Alpha days.
I'm talking about the distribution. I am considering buying a dual Opteron in January but all the Linux distros seem to be betas. A quick search on Google reveals that the distros have serious problems. In particular, X doesn't work and compilers fail completely.
FreeBSD reports Opteron as tier-1 hardware, so how is it?
What's the status of pf on FreeBSD? And what's the preferred packet filtering/firewall setup these days?
The last I checked, circa 4.8, you had to recompile the kernel just to get a NAT "router."
Has NAT-ing and filtering drawn any attention in the 5.x series?
I ask because FreeBSD has about the best host adapter/hard drive support in the business [possibly better even than NetWare] - if you've got an old hba and an old hd, FreeBSD will load the drivers and do the LBA translations to perfection. I've seen countless motherboard/HBA/HD combinations where e.g. Windows 2000 just can't get the LBA translation right. Or OpenBSD, for that matter.
Which brings me to the question of Theo. Since I'm interested in NATing/PFing/SSHing, most people would say, "Then you want OpenBSD," to which I say, Yeah, some of Theo's goals are laudable, but, quite frankly, the guy's a kook, and guts of his operating system don't work all that well.
I'd rather use something designed by grown-ups.
"NOW is the time to fix them so that they can be tuned and maintained prior to the 5.3 Release when the code is marked stable..
Shouldn't this read something like:
NOW is the time to fix them so that they can be tuned and maintained so that the 5.3 Release can be marrked stable.
In other words, the code should be marked stable when it IS, rather than at some arbitrary release level.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Indeed, the developers have done alot of hard work making FreeBSD an excellent OS. I've been using 5.x since it came out and have few complaints. Even for a developer release I've found 5.x to be rock solid, with high quality in mind, and quick time to fix any problems that do come up (mostly port maintainers keeping up with 4.x->5.x changes :)
I recently deployed 5.1 on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4208XDVD and an older IBM Thinkpad 600X. Neither of them correctly probed my Cardbus controllers without specifying the size of allocated memory to the controller. I also had difficulty once the controllers came up, in that none of my wireless cards would work. (Orinoco Gold, MS Wireless Broadband Adapter)
Has anyone else had Newcard difficulties with the FBSD 5 release train? I've read of quite a few workarounds to get Cardbus working correctly. I have yet to recompile a new kernel removing Newcard - is it worth it altogether?
Merry Christmas Slashdot!
-Pat
Puhleeze.
I had three BSD servers that would crash (sometimes often, sometimes sporadically) quite often that I had to switch over to Linux and NT.
BSD users outright lie about the OS.
Allowing freedom includes allowing people to do things you don't necessarily agree with. I used to defend the GPL consistently, but I'm starting to feel like "Free as in Speech" should also include unpopular speech, and that's what the BSD license protects that the GPL does not.
I think you're working off the false premise that copyrights are not an inherent restriction of peoples freedom. The GPL solves this problem by "fighting fire with fire" the FreeBSD license doesn't.
The logic is sorta similar to ..."I think people should be free to own slaves".
The FreeBSD license disreguards that copyrights "the right to restrict what other people copy that is at their disposal" is inherently biased as anti freedom to begin with.
I personally feel that ipfw/natd are a terrible combination, and are confusing and frustrating to use, to boot. I have been able to do everything I need to ipfw/natd, however. My major complaints were:
1. Cannot dynamically reload rules of ipfw (your connection can be broken after a flush, and before new rules).
2. Poor (really no) integration of natd/ipfw.
3. Weaker rules/macros than pf.
The FreeBSD pf port is coming along nicely. I am currently using it with a kernel loadable module and a startup script, both of which are installed by the port. You do still have to recompile the kernel:
You need these options:
"device bpf" and "options PFIL_HOOKS"
The port will tell you to do this when you install it. My transition was very easy, and immediately I was happier with pf. I had never used it before, and I prefer it immensely. I use it to do firewalling and NAT, and they are integrated, of course.
So, I'd say the status is...good! I'd prefer not to have to rebuild the kernel, but I'm used to that by now.
-Dan
There are so many things in these new technology releases that I am so lookiing forward to implementing on my own machines once this branch becomes stable. GEOM Based Disk Encryption and LOMAC are among them.
The background fsck saved me a couple of times before I got UPSs for them, and the new GENERIC SMP kernel will be great once I get my new dual Opteron.
All in all FreeBSD is doing great, and I'll never go back to Linux; there's no incentive, nor need.
Well, I have to say, having just installed a FreeBSD (5.1) server in my house, I am blown away at the stability and easy configurability of this thing. I built the computer it is running on for $160.00 with (obviously) cheap parts and it is perfrominig like I had really spent some money on it. This was much easier to install software for and configure than any of the Linux distros I have used in the past, including the vaunted RedHat. Stable and fast. That's what I like, and this isn't even the current fork. :-)
From this non-developer's perspective, proprietary software will always live in conflict with OSS - SCO as another example - and the BSD license gives companies the means to do BSD harm. They take without giving.
This is one of the big flaws I find with GPL logic. Information should be free because it is an endlessly renewable resource. However we can't just let the information be out there without a license because some evil company might do it harm!
I've recently switched from Debian Linux to FreeBSD 5.2. I was running a pair of RAID-1 arrays off a Highpoint HPT372 RocketRAID 133 controller using Highpoint's rather lackluster, "open source" driver. Of course, contacting them about FreeBSD support greater than 5.0 has yielded nothing useful, so now I am on the hunt for other solutions.
I've come across offerings from 3ware, notably the 7006-2. What caught my eye about this card (well, all of them from 3ware) was that it's actually a hardware-based ATA RAID adapter (where as RAID functionality is implemented in software for most ATA controllers out there). Does this mean that I can use this card without any driver hell? Will a RAID-whatever array simply appear as another /dev/a[dr]* device or is it not that simple? (By the way, I care little about CLI tools for rebuilding the array. I am content to use the card's BIOS to do management.)
Of course, if I can solve the problem with my Highpoint, that'd be useful too. Currently, if I create a RAID-1 array, the two real disks appear as /dev/ad4 and /dev/ad5 but I also get a /dev/ar0 device. However, if I simulate a disk failure, none of the devices appear. It appears to me like FreeBSD indeed supports the RAID functionality of this card out of the box, but a bit of minor tweaking is required.
The bottom line however is I wouldn't mind buying a a RAID adapter with functionality implemented in hardware. That'd be better overall. I just want to make sure it'll work with flying colors in whatever OS I choose to use.
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