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FreeBSD 5.3 Beta1
Tezkah writes "From the announcement: 'The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA1. This is the first BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. It is intended for early adopters and those wishing to help find and/or fix bugs. The 5.3 release cycle will continue with weekly BETA builds while bugs are being fixed and features finalized. The schedule is at www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/schedule.html . Be sure to check the "Known issues" below, there are known problems still being worked on at this time.' New features include fully threaded and multi-processor safe network stack, X.org instead of XFree86, many ACPI enhancements, GCC updated to 3.4.2, gdb updated to 6.1.1, binutils updated, and much more. Expect 5.3 to be released in full on October 3rd, if everything goes according to schedule!"
Oh where, oh where is my BSD?
I just loaded Beta 5.3
It's gone to heaven, so I've got to be good,
So I can see the OS when I leave this world.
I'd started to load it in my roommate's Dell,
the hard drive was taking it pretty well.
During the load, it crashed the heads,
the distro was stalled, *BSD was dead.
I couldn't stop, so I yanked the cord.
I'll never forget, the sound , oh Lord--
the screamin' drives, the speaker's blast,
the painful scream that I-- heard last.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
That load took it away from me.
It's gone to heaven, so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
When I woke up, the sparks were pourin down.
There were admins standin all around.
Some burned-out chips had fallen on the tiles,
but somehow I found my disc of files.
I lifted the CD, the devil winked and said,
"Load me darlin just a little while."
I held it close, I kissed the label--our last kiss.
I found the love that i knew i had missed
well now it's gone, even though I loaded it right
I lost my *BSD and the Dell-- that night.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
I tried to load it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
When I next went to Slashdot, where so many had trolled.
Any so many times "BSD's Dead!" was told.
Tears fallin' on the keyboard, I checked "Anonymous"
and I eulogized *BSD, in memory, of us....
When I logged on next, my post was modded down.
In my heartbreak and sorrow, treated like a clown....
No matter what the mods do, it's in my heart and head
We'll always know "*BSD IS DEAD!"
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
I tried to load it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
For those of you running 5.2.1 and planning on doing a source upgrade, make sure you check the /usr/src/etc/group and /usr/src/etc/master.passwd files and add the new groups and users into your own, otherwise your buildworld will fail about half way through.
As well, you can't build a new kernel until the userland is upgraded, the "config" program and kernel options have been upgraded.
Otherwise, the upgrade went well, and it does seem faster than the previous releases.
Success is as dangerous as failure, hope as hollow as fear.
# expect -v
expect version 5.38.0
That's funny, I'm already up to 5.38! Damn consequences of time travel.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
source http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mergemas
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Watch out for our brand new Linux distro: LinSux! (by FreeBSDrules productions)
:-D
;)
Our brand new distro is based on every existing Linux distribution. Indeed, as the name suggests, it's based on the very common denominator of all of them.
Since we felt than the other Linux OSs weren't patchworked enough, we decided to assemble an OS out of pieces coming from every possible Linux distribution. Why? Well, cos we totally *love* chaos & anarchy. To tell you the truth, it's because in a chaotic environment our hacking lameness, poor planning skills & shallow academic computer-science background (if any...) have a fat chance of getting unnoticed. And the best part is, we're totally proud of it!
We modified the Linux IP stack, and we managed to make it up to 2.5% slower than the original! And this is, indeed, an amazing result: until the last minute, we weren't very confident this was actually possible. Let me take the chance to thank all the people involved in this long and costly process: guys, that would have been impossible without your efforts, thank you so much. There isn't really room enough for all your names, but I wanna let you know that your sacrifices proved the point: even the most hopeless task is within reach when you have faith. There'll always be a place in my heart for all of you.
Last but not least: we felt that around Linux there wasn't enough political crap. The fact concerned us a lot, and we decided to take action: now, our license requires you to declare explicitly that you're a loser, and that you hate the following:
1) proprietary software;
2) people who have ideas and use them to get rich;
3) Bill Gates.
Sorry Linux pals, declaring it implicitly is no longer enough.
See ya at the next release!
The LinSux developers team
Oh, btw... FreeBSD forever.
is the binary upgrade any better?
Hehe. Very nice, my friend.
:)
Props to whoever modded this funny
why does the handbook tell you to run mergemaster -p after buildworld? I thought mergemaster was supposed to prepare your system for installworld, and that buildworld was just for compiling the system (not installing it).
I used to be intimidated by installing freebsd by source, but after having gone through the buildworld process, I find it's really easy to keep freebsd updated. Just cvsup one server and rsync the rest. While I've always done installs and upgrades by CD, I think I'll be doing 5.3 from source. Then again if I'm going to have issues, maybe I'll stick to CD's anyway.
Does anybody know if there's already a supported hardware list available for FreeBSD 5.3? I'd be happy to switch to FreeBSD 5.3 as soon as my Conceptronic 54g Wireless PCI Card is supported :)
Based on their todo list, it looks like there's still a lot that needs to be done before 5.3 is even close to out-the-door.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
You should only need to run mergemaster -p before the installworld stage (despite the description of the option in mergemaster). Doing a buildworld should not require any special users or groups.
/usr/src/UPDATING) is:
The official procedure (from
make buildworld
make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
mergemaster -p
make installworld
mergemaster
I wish that the installer was a little bit better. Just about every Linux distro that I installed found my video card and set up X perfectly. For some reason FreeBSD never could seem to automatically configure my video card corectly. It was a while ago and I cannot even remember what kind of card that it was but I do remember at the time having a total nightmare trying to get it installed. Going to FreeBSD newsgroups and IRC channels to get help but I never did get it to work right.
Well, time to bring out the lavalamps!!
$man mergemaster #you nitwit
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
A few weeks ago I upgraded my 5.2.1 laptop to 5-CURRENT, and the build stopped with a message about mergemaster right at the very beginning. No need to wait around an hour to discover your mistake...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I'm on a slow connection, so I'll give this beta a try sometime this weekend, but I have tried 5.2 current and had some problems trying to do a truly minimal install. (Note: I've been mostly a Debian user).
Are there any tricks to installing just the very basics? I have two needs for two seperate machines, actually. I would like one such install to have just enough to serve as my gateway, dns, and web server (but not mail). I would like another very simple install to run just X and Mozilla-Browser (the browser-only, GTK1 version).
Here's the problem: every time I try to do a custom minimal installation, I still end up with about 170+ MB installed. Yet when I google for suggestions, I keep reading stories about folks managing to get X, Mozilla, and maybe AbiWord all into their tight 100 MB install.
So, what's the trick?! I'm baffled and would like to learn!
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
The BSD people get so pissed off at the *BSD is dying posts, that one would think they would be above childish retaliation in the form of linux trolls. I am a linux user, and I accept that someone might want to run an OS other than the one I use. Why are 90% of free-OS users so childish, and loyal to their OS? Because, God forbid, people who like one OS could read stories about it without trolling.
The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.
Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).
If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).
You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few others), alth
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be an Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Satan It won't be easy, you'll think it strange When I try to explain how I feel That I still need your shell after all that I've done You won't believe me All you will see is an OS you once knew Although she's patched up to the nines At sixes and sevens with you I had to let it happen, I had to change Couldn't stay all my life down at heel Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun So I chose freedom Running around trying everything new But nothing impressed me at all I never expected it to Don't cry for me BSD lovers The truth is I never compiled cleanly All through my alpha days My mad existence I kept my promise Don't keep your uptime And as for features, and as for usefulness I never invited them in Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired They are illusions They are not the solutions they promised to be The answer was here all the time I excite you and hope you loathe me Don't cry for me BSD lovers Don't cry for me BSd lovers The truth is I never left beta All through my alpha days My mad existence I kept my promise Don't keep your uptime Have I outputted too much? There's nothing more I can think of to say to you But all you have to do is look at me to know that every line of code is crap
Once I had a cat who had feline leukemia, and we tried to keep him alive, with numerous trips to the vet. But, in the end, the disease just overwhelmed him. He had such a hard time. If I had another cat with the same diagnosis, then I would just have it put away immediately. Not being dismissive, but just realistic.
You are a very kind to have nursed FreeBSD along and looked after it. At least this pathetic OS is being looked after. It is not out there frantically searching for a "home". No, it's found its final resting place.
If FreeBSD does have to be euthanized, this is not a cruel act - it will pass away immediately without suffering.
To scratch that itch, I've written a replacement that works on full directories, and use so-called 3-way merges. This means that it retains a copy of the unmodified /etc from the install point, and use that to automate the entire prosses. The replacement is available from /usr/ports/sysutils/etcmerge
In case you did not take a backup of /etc before the installer got to do any mods (and who does?), I've made tarballs of the reference etc directories for a series of releases available from http://people.freebsd.org/~eivind/etc/.
Feel free to mail me with any questions about it etc.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
> I thought mergemaster was supposed to prepare your system for installworld, and that buildworld was just for compiling the system (not installing it).
/etc directory mostly.
/etc directory (ie: make.conf, and in this case, the groups and password files)
mergemaster is for upgrading your
There are cases where make buildworld depends on what is in your
So no, it is not to prepare your system for an install, it is to upgrade your configuration for the new version.
Hmm, looks like I'll have to skip beta 1 for my smp machine.
Built and installed it earlier this week, and it crashes under heavy load.
The problem is documented and should be fixed in the next beta, so guess I'll have to wait for a bit there.
Just thought I should post this in case others want to try.. be sure to build yourself a non-smp kernel just in case..
Except for this specific issue, it seems to work quite nicely.
Personally, I never install X during the initial install. Typically, I install everything but X, then cvsup the src and ports trees, and then build world. I then install X from the ports tree.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
DeForest Kelley's prescient observation:
I tried to use FreeBSD 4.3 and actually had it running on a single proc box, but I couldn't get X to run. I asked a question about this on the FreeBSD mailing list, and posted the error I was getting, but I got a whole bunch of flames about what a fucking idiot I am and why don't I just go use NetBSD if I want something simple. So I tried NetBSD, but I couldn't get through the install process. After the second CD, it kept getting stuck on a "Insert Next Floppy" message, even though I was installing from CDs. I asked about this on the NetBSD list, twice, but no one ever answered. Instead, they kept talking amongst themselves about whether to support some ARM chip or something. I guess I could try OpenBSD, but I heard it's only for servers anyway.
my own prescient observation:
Is this going to be the long awaited 5-STABLE?
yes. RTFA
Wow, FreeBSD 5.3 is being released soon. That's just amazing, you know, since all those idiots on slashdot never shutup about how *BSD is dying. I think they've been saying that for over 3 years now... yet FreeBSD continues to evolve. They release several versions per year and somehow people think it's dying. Amazing.
but at least Linux is alive. *BSD is dead. Only amateur hobby hackers are keeping it's corpse from fully rotting.
I don't like very much seeing my witty post (the joke about new linux distro) modded down, while any kind of crap, as long as it's about bsd's "death", is modded up - in other articles as well.
I dropped by just few days ago, and I'm already saying: Bye Bye, moronic slashdot moderators - and for good.
BSD vs. Linux.