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FreeBSD 5.3 on the Horizon
underpar writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that FreeBSD is nearing a code freeze. August 15th is the deadline which will be followed by the usual beta testing and a final release hoped for by October 1st. ZDNet interviewed the software engineer leading the release work, Scott Long, for the article. He says: 'The 5.3 release will be the first one where we see the real benefits of that. The multithreaded network stack will outperform everything we've done before, for running applications such as Apache or MySQL.' Status reports can be found on the FreeBSD website." I've been using the last technology release of FreeBSD for some time now, and am really looking forward to the 5.3 release, as well as the 5-STABLE branch that's rumored to follow soon after.
Can someone please explain how FreeBSD goodies like updated 5.3 code would make it's way into Mac OS X? How long might it take, what bits, etc, have moved in past releases?
A patch I wrote for the CVS versions of Apache/APR to Add KQueue support has been added to the FreeBSD Port version of Apache.
Just make the port with "WITH_EXPERIMENTAL_PATCHES=1" and you can get a 10-25% boost in performance. (depends on your traffic patterns..)
Its a quick way to get more performance out of Apache on FreeBSD, without waiting for the 5-STABLE branch.
-Paul Querna
A "bullock" is a masculine cowlick...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I got into FreeBSD about 6 months ago and have not looked back. I was frustrated with RedHat and heard good things about the BSDs.
I have been tempted to check out OpenBSD, because of the networking. This FreeBSD 5.3 status announcement mentions work being done integrating PF (updates?) and ALTQ (new to FreeBSD?)
I'm working towards a site-to-site VPN deployment (hubs and spokes, of course) and am debating FreeBSD vs. OpenBSD. IPSec, queueing and redundancy (dynamic routing, perhaps DBU, and something like CARP) are requirements. Managability is important. "Room for growth" (transparent proxies, accounting, file/print services) would be icing on the cake.
I figure it all could be made to work either way. Is FreeBSD's IPSec and firewall (IPFW/PF) as solid os OpenBSD? How about queueing? I'm a "seasoned newbee" on BSD... My experience is with the FreeBSD 5.x branch, but I'm not sure what all is changing with 5.3. I figure on diving into OpenBSD someday, it's just that time can be hard to come by.
Any advice out there? Am I giving anything up if I commit to Free vs. Open BSD?
Did you consider switching to Slackware from Red Hat?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Using samba, if you share Fat32 and write to it from the network, you end up with corrupted files.
I hope it has been fixed, but I somehow doubt it since it's been around for at least 2 years (earliest bug report was on 4.6RC) so it exists in -stable as well.
A native port is already there! /usr/ports/java/jdk-1.4.2
p.s. If you want a prebuilt binary of jdk-1.4.2, then complain to Sun. They're the ones that prohibit the distribution of Java packages for BSD.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
are we finally get 'em? :)
Check out:
http://www.freebsd.org/java/install.html
Short Version:
It has been available for quite some time. I don't know what you are thinking, but its very easy to get a native Java on FreeBSD...(Read Subject)
"The JDK(TM) it produces is de facto compliant, but use in a production environment is still at your own risk."
But thanks for your words of encouragement. That "We don't want you" crack must make you feel really good.
Ok, first of all, linux compatability isn't any slower than running native binaries. Its just syscall translation, simple mapping of what linux syscalls the app is using corespond to what freebsd syscalls to do the same thing.
And you really can't blame FreeBSD for Sun having horrible license restrictions on java. If java were free it would already be ready for you. But because its not, there is a serious lack of people who are willing to sign away their life and ability to ever sue sun so that they can do the work of porting something they don't want anyways just for you.
Anyone know if vinum_geom will be stable in time for 5.3-RELEASE? Or if there's a native GEOM raid solution? I'm personally looking forward to having a large GDBE encrypted RAID array.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry man, I'm an American. We don't use that one too often.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Anyone who commits gets "iced"...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The following has been brought to you by IANAT (I Am Not a Troll).
/etc, the fact that YaST didn't like me seeing the cluttered /etc, and this nagging feeling that it was a system of patched together parts, rather than a well-tested, stable "distribution" (note: I'm knocking the distro, not the kernel, and only slightly).
I've been using FreeBSD since long before it was apparently dying, since maybe the 2.x branch. I never tried Linux until this past year, because I live under a rock on the dark side of the moon.
I tried SuSE, and it was great and all -- the setup was really nice -- but it's not there yet. In fact, I backed over it with 5.2 immediately afterwards. Why? Well, for day-to-day use, I didn't see any difference between Linux and BSD -- except the cluttered
When it came down to it, FreeBSD and a daily-updated ports tree seemed to "click together" better than Linux. For most other day-to-day use, there wasn't a huge difference, though I will say BSD was a tad 'snappier'.
I urge those who haven't tried FreeBSD before to give it a chance. It's not that hard, and it is not, contrary to popular opinion, "better for servers". I play UT2004 and America's Army daily on my BSD box with no problems (thank you native nvidia drivers). What causes most people to gawk after seeing Linux is the text-mode installation -- which is just text menus, but still menus. (I've seen some installation programs that can make you wonder.. OpenBSD, I'm talking to you.)
Last month I introduced FreeBSD to someone who had never, ever used *nix in any form before. After about an hour explaining different concepts (slices, ports and packages, rc.conf), she was off and running and actually, almost sadly, hasn't asked for my help once since then. She had X and KDE up and running within the day.
So give it a try. We have no evil plan. (Except that, yanno, our mascot is related to Satan)
See also: http://www.freebsd.org/java/dists/14.html
It's Sun compliant, just like 1.3. What do you want? An insurance policy? It's fscking open source software for chrissake.
For the record, we use native 1.4 on 15 fbsd 4.10 boxen (using tomcat/freemarker) for production enterprise systems with 4K+ users slammin' the boxes each day. No problems so far.
But I suggest you keep waiting. We'll be sure to send you a certificate or 'notice of native compliance' or something. Juuuust keep waiting...
Native binaries, blessed by Sun, available on FreeBSD. Yes I know I should complain to Sun. Yes I know it isn't FreeBSD's fault. But would it kill the FreeBSD developers to try to work up a relationship with Sun?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all of FreeBSD is like that. Take a look for yourself.
In fact, I have yet to see any software package that says it is guaranteed to work without problems, all the time, under all circumstances, without first paying *huge* support contracts and getting a guarantee from the software company.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Use of most software in a production environment is generally always at your own risk anyway, unless you're paying lots and lots of money.
FreeBSD's JDK works, works well, and has for some time. Whether it meets your standards or not is up for debate, but you can certainly test it with the applications you need to run and see for yourself.
Not that I'm defending the tone of the grandparent post (though I did laugh a little). I'm a BSD user, and I don't care if you use it or not, but I'm not going to be a dick to actively dissuade you.
Game... blouses.
out of curiosity ... do you have an opteron you can try that on? =)
vodka, straight up, thank you!
YES!
I want to be able to deploy a server on more than just faith. Five nines uptime is not something you can shoot for with a JDK that is deployable "at your own risk".
"For the record, [...] 4K+ users [...] each day [...]"
Let me know when your usage grows by three orders of magnitude. When you have problems at that point, then I will listen to you. Until then I'm forced to decide between a multitude of shitty Linux distributions, the godawful expensive Solaris, or Apple (?!). Like I said, I really want to go back to FreeBSD.
It's an open secret Netcraft just copies all their statistics out of the Farmer's Almanac.
One factor that led me to switch back to Gentoo was the choppyness while working on the desktop environments. At that time I was using 5.1. So say if I was playing the audio/browsing/compiling etc, the computer would freeze for a moment.
Activists United
wow
2nd paragraph of the FreeBSD Java page
that was a tough one to find!
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Complete with multiple cds (cd 1, livecd/commercial, packages 1, packages 2) and everything; or are they still in beta?
I find it rather funny that most of the responses claim that I haven't looked at the ports tree. On the contrary, I have kept very close tabs on the advancement of Java under FreeBSD. Back when our app ran under 1.1.8, we happily deployed FreeBSD. I will be first in line to deploy it again when the 1.4 JDK is bumped up to production-ready.
My debian machine lost it's harddrive recently, coincidently about one hour before I had to head out of town for the weekend. So I needed to install something on some random harddrive and get my email server backup, quickly. Well, all I had laying around was the 5.1 install cds that I had downloaded when they were announced on /., with the intention of trying out FreeBSD sometime in the nebulous future. So I installed FreeBSD for the first time ever, and have all my accounts added back, along with the various services I needed (named, smtp, and ssh) on and configured, in about 45 minutes. That included going through the install with no documentation at all (my internet connection was also routed through the debian box). That was very impressive, to me at least. Now, granted, after I got back I spent every night for a week dinking around figuring out how things are different, switching from sendmail to postfix, upgrading from 5.1 to 5.2.1, adding ext2 support to copy over all my data, setting up X and sound, setting up support for my Zire 72, and playing around with ports until it became second nature.
/etc/rc.conf is nice (once you figure out what's supposed to be in there). It's a bit of a pain when trying to run various things (like nagios), where scripts and whatnot are written for Linux and break subtly (or completely) on FreeBSD. However, that's generally a one-line fix of some sort (change an argument passed to ps or nslookup, for instance), so it's not a huge deal. I've never liked Gentoo, and doing a 'portupgrade -a' makes me long for 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. I really like the kernel configuration, it works like a champ. I've recompiled my kernel probably six or seven times (chasing various hardware and software settings), and I've never had a single thing go wrong. I really wish it supported my APC usb-based UPS, but it doesn't.
:-)
So, my thoughts having been on FreeBSD for a couple months? Honestly, I dunno. I haven't noticed any speed difference at all, despite many a BSDer's claim to the contrary (this is a 750Mhz Duron with 1.25GB ram). I had to switch out my soundcard (Envy24-based Chaintech for an SB64 I had laying around) because it wasn't supported. The support for my Zire seems to be much nicer (I've always had problems in Linux with USB-based Palms, and tools like KPilot). I really like the init system, and
In summary, when I change hardware in the near future, I'll probably end up putting debian back on. The expanded hardware support, removal of all those little 'bumps' in making software work correctly, and ease and quickness of upgrading and installing software make debian win out. However, if it wasn't for Debian, FreeBSD would be my choice. I use (and administer) Redhat WS3 at work, and I'll take BSD over it any day of the week
Of course, my ideal setup would be a G5 with OSX as my desktop, and OpenBSD on my server. That would be kinda doable if I still had seperate computers for workstation and server (Linux as desktop, OpenBSD on server), but the ever decreasing pool of working hardware forced me down to one. And I'm not masochistic enough to run OpenBSD on the desktop...
I wish. ;-)
If you were keeping "very close tabs" you wouldn't be so caught up in word choice and would be able to say why (from a technical standpoint) the current Java version doesn't work for you.
Maybe you've been refreshing that page every few months, but I doubt you've been keeping close tabs on anything.
You're free to use whatever you want for whatever reason you want. No need to pull my leg.
Game... blouses.
From the article
FreeBSD 5.2[3] will also introduce a software layer that lets Windows network drivers work with FreeBSD. This layer, dubbed Project Evil, means that wired and wireless network cards should be able to work with FreeBSD even if the manufacturers have not written any drivers for the operating system.
This is totally awesome! FreeBSD network drivers are very reliable, but hard to come by for very new devices (eg. wifi). I would totally use this feature even with some reliability sacrifice.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
FreeBSD is *NOT* a very good platform for deploying Java. It can be done, but it is a poor choice. The main reason is that FreeBSD still lacks a robust thread implementation. This problems with threads causes Java to barf frequently. Unless you are into major pain, stay away from Java on FreeBSD.
NetBSD.jpg
...and you require 5 nines reliability you are living in cloud cuckoo land if you think you can get what you are asking for gratis.
Stop being so cheap and shell out some dosh with Sun if you really need fanatical support and guaranteed operation. Although, if you're supporting that many people and it's as mission critical as you are saying then cost should be no problem, so I'm inclined to think you're just trolling on the whole Java issue.
I've stress tested my companies J2EE product on a FreeBSD box, pusing it to its limits and had zero problems, however, YMMV.
I am NaN
as always . . .
Ah, I see. I made the mistake of not asking if it had hit "-STABLE" yet. (Which, apparently, it hasn't. Wasn't it scheduled to do so at 5.2 or 5.3?)
damn
i'm about to start building a fbsd cluster to run java stuff. it guess it's p4/4.10 for now
amd64 is supposed to be supported in java 5 though
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Mod the parent up, please !
I don't get. I'm really not into flame wars of any kind. But it so happens more and more often - good technical comments are modded down for political reasons.
Java support is great. It's been there for a while. The problem (traditionally) has been that fbsd won't run an app container or ejb container (I was told with a shrug, that it "had to do with threading"). Has that been fixed yet?
As a life-long practicing Christian, active in my local church, with many practicing Christian friends, I just can not in good conscience use an operating system that uses an image of Satan as its mascot.
Context is everything. The BSD "daemon" is in no way supposed to lead people in worship or in any other way lead people to violate commandment #1. In fact, as an open source project, I feel that projects such as FreeBSD and Linux best represent the kind of software development the Acts early church of the Apostles would do: communal. Honsetly, it is not menat the celebrate satan or represent some sort of mystic iconography.
Microsoft, on the other hand (which you currently use in favor of BSD), is a perfect example of immoral greed (if you mods disagree; fine. I'm just calling it how it looks from here), which I find much more morally reprehensible than a cartoon devil; because unlike the cartoon, it is real.
So, as a recent convert to Christianity, I find a great moral symbol in the fact that I run 100% open source at home, as opposed to corporate mammon.
How do you sleep at night, without assurances from your vendors that their software or hardware will never fail?
Other folks have responded. I'll just point out that the mascot is not Satan. Just as the mascot for the Duke Blue Devils and the icon on Underwood Devilled Ham are not Satan either. There isn't any thing holier about commercial products that have angels as their icon and the Anaheim Angels are not automatically the more righteous baseball team. (Back in the 80s there were baseball players with the name Teufel and Gott. It was not the apocalypse when they faced off.)
You have your faith and its symbols, ethics, and morals. It is a serious question as to how you integrate this into what some may call your secular existence. If you honestly believe that either God, Beelzebub or you will be confused as to your allegiances and as to what your mortal life means, then, you're right, stay away from FreeBSD.
Now, unlike the duality of heaven and hell, there are more than two points on the operating system spectrum. Other unix-like operating systems which do not use a devil mascot are NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux (many distros), and Solaris x86. The latter is a Unix operating system. Seek and you shall find.
What does the daemon mascot have to do with using the operating system? Just don't make it your wallpaper, and you should be fine.
No data, no cry
Except in this case, he's 100% wrong. The threading issue was a problem with early versions of the port. It's now been fixed. If you just read what google gives you, and don't bother to check the mailing lists, you'll end up with stale complaints that are no longer a problem.
> Did you consider switching to Slackware from Red
> Hat?
Or at least Gentoo with it's Portage?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
So I was a Gentoo zealot for two years, it helped to teach me (more than I wanted to know) about Linux.
I got fed up with power-management issues on my employer-supplied laptop computer (a nice machine, but not Linux-friendly) and purchased a Macintosh PowerBook. Very nice, not as clean as Gentoo, but it got me interested in *BSD.
My server was running Gentoo SeLinux until last week. I've installed FreeBSD 5.2.1 and I am *very* happy with it as a stable, secure server platform.
Linux, Apache, etc. have lent legitimacy to Open Source, and BSD license is attractive to many who cannot otherwise use Open Source. So *BSD is helping spread Open Source, and to otherwise improve the quality of the aggregate code base.
Since Gentoo was developed by someone who liked BSD but wanted the device-driver support of Linux, I feel that most of my skills transfer very quickly. I feel that my learning curve on FreeBSD helps me better understand Mac OS X, which has an installed base of about 12 million computers (if Apple is to be believed).
BSD is dead? Hmm. I rather doubt it.
I haven't tried Gentoo so I can't comment on it, but I suggested Slackware since it's supposed to be the most UNIX like Linux.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I'm not a Java developer, so I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that every Java app I've tried to run, has. A few applets don't, but that's par for the course on any platform.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So, as a recent convert to Christianity, I find a great moral symbol in the fact that I run 100% open source at home, as opposed to corporate mammon.
What is your opinion on Free Software funded by greedy corporations?
There are a variety of Java engines for FreeBSD. All are compilable/downloadable from ports. FreeBSD has native engines and I'm using this Sun engine for FreeBSD for my projects:
java version "1.4.2-p6" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2-p6-koinu_17_apr_2004_23_41) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2-p6-koinu_17_apr_2004_23_41, mixed mode)Secondly, the linux emulation is fast. It's as fast as linux. I play various commercial 3D Linux-Games on FreeBSD and they run all fine. There is also no native acrobat reader for FreeBSD and I start it sometimes using linux emulation. There are no differences in speed, in my opinion.
by stability you mean a new way to get root on linux every month?
Care to give one real example?
I didn't stumble across one java program that would barf on a recent CURRENT.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
> You're absolutely right. However there's a difference between the developer claiming "usable for most tasks. However [...]" and a developer claiming a version is a "Production" version.
And in all my experiences (I know, anecdotal evidence, but still, obne that is confirmed by many others who tried) 'usable for most tasks' in the FreeBSD world is a lot more usable then 'production ready' in the Windows world, and even in the Linux world.
> I find it rather funny that most of the responses claim that I haven't looked at the ports tree. On the contrary, I have kept very close tabs on the advancement of Java under FreeBSD. Back when our app ran under 1.1.8, we happily deployed FreeBSD. I will be first in line to deploy it again when the 1.4 JDK is bumped up to production-ready.
Have you actually tried it?
I have been running the FreeBSD native port for a long time, both server and client side, and it simply works, period.
There is an issue, that issue is Sun's source code licensing. That is however not a technical issue, and if you can build it, it is very usable for a production environment also.
I'm currently playing with the 1.5 jdk.
Could you point us at such a page about Linux? or should we conclude it is dying?
> Java support is great. It's been there for a while. The problem (traditionally) has been that fbsd won't run an app container or ejb container (I was told with a shrug, that it "had to do with threading"). Has that been fixed yet?
First of all, the issue you talk about is with the prebuilt jdk 1.3 as sanctioned by SUN.
The issue is that it supports green threads only, not native threads.
My experience with a jdk 1.4.2 built from the source is that it does support this, and that anything I tried (and that is not just some applets, but also tomcat + servlets and jboss + servlets) work perfectly well.
> Native binaries, blessed by Sun, available on FreeBSD. Yes I know I should complain to Sun. Yes I know it isn't FreeBSD's fault.
What is more, this is not only a problem for FreeBSD, but for each and every OS that SUN doesn't feel like 'blessing'. Many Linux distributions suffer from related licensing problems and cannot distribvute JAVA binaries either.
> But would it kill the FreeBSD developers to try to work up a relationship with Sun?
It is why there is a jdk 1.3 binary for FreeBSD. The relationship between FreeBSD developers and SUN isn't really the issue, SUN's attitude, resources and unusable source code license are the issue.
It is a major annoyance for anyone who wants to do anythign with JAVA whatsoever and who cannot pay SUN for the resources (when SUN doesn't feel like it has a reason to do it itself ofcourse)
When I clicked on "Read More..." there was no posting viewable for this article, just a message which read " Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Does this happen often?
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Read this and this.
In short, to BSD users your argument is laughably silly and makes you look like an ignoramus.
I may be wrong, but I honestly think that most reasonable people will not interpret a cartoonish picture of a devil-like creature wearing sneakers as any indication of satan worship
I myself have walked into my church (I'm Catholic) wearing a FreeBSD daemon shirt.
> I haven't tried Gentoo so I can't comment on it,
:)
> but I suggested Slackware since it's supposed to
> be the most UNIX like Linux.
Yep. I cut my teeth on Slack.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
What an obvious troll.
This guy is way out there
Running freebsd on 1650's just fine. Remind me why we are replying to this troll?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Do you honestly believe that a talking paperclip is less evil than the FreeBSD Daemon?
I used Linux since Kernel 2.0.12 (Ago-Sept'96), and my first installs were Slackware, so the text based install looks familiar to me. A graphical install in my case brings nothing. The only FreeBSD I tried was release-4.7, and the install didn't want to install X together with the other packages, I hope that changed ;-). Getting X and KDE to install was a bit hard, the packages had to be installed one by one... no idea why.
On the other hand, for mc, text terminal without color and "dumb" mode was something I didn't like (specially dumb mode), as a programmer, Ctrl-O simplifies my life a bit :-). (Mey be a config or termcap problem... no idea, hint!).
I'm looking forward to a new release... Hope next time I'll have more luck.