Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD 5.3-BETA5 Available
Nirbo writes "FreeBSD 5.3-BETA5 is now available! Get it while it's hot! Here is the mailing list post. Remember folks, this is currently the last beta that will be released for 5.3, we're only a week from a Release Candidate, and two weeks from a release!"
Cast:
Mr. Praline: John Cleese
Shop Owner: Michael Palin
A customer enters an operating system shop.
Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint. (The owner does not respond.)
Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?
Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this operating system what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, *BSD...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, it's uh,...it's resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead operating system when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Owner: No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable OS, *BSD, idn'it, ay? Beautiful kernel!
Mr. Praline: The kernel don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
Owner: Nononono, no, no! It's resting!
Mr. Praline: All right then, if it's restin', I'll wake it up! (bashes at the keyboard) 'Ello, Mister *BSD! I've got a lovely fresh kernel update for you if you show...
(owner hits the keys)
Owner: There, it spewed some debug output to the command line!
Mr. Praline: No, it didn't, that was you hitting the keys!
Owner: I never!!
Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
Owner: I never, never did anything...
Mr. Praline: (yelling and typing into the console repeatedly) 'ELLO COMMAND PROMPT!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock cron job!
(Rips out hard drive from computer case and thumps it on the counter. Shoves it back inside the case and reboots the system - blank screen.)
Mr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead operating system.
Owner: No, no.....No, it's stunned!
Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was finishing an I/O task! *BSD stuns easily, major.
Mr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That operating system is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of responsiveness was due to it bein' in the process of recompiling itself after a particularly comprehensive code update.
Owner: Well, it's...it's, ah...probably pining for some dilettante dabbling.
Mr. Praline: PININ' for some DILETTANTE DABBLING?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I started Emacs?
Owner: *BSD prefers swapping everything out to the hard drive! Remarkable variant, id'nit, squire? Lovely kernel!
Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining the system when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been printing any text at all to the screen was because of all the WORRYING COMPILER WARNINGS encountered while it was being rebuilt.
(pause)
Owner: Well, o'course it was spitting out those warnings! If I hadn't updated the kernel with an unstable development build, you might have had your FTP server compromised [slashdot.org], and VOOM! Bye bye to your business.
Mr. Praline: "Server"?!? Mate, this OS wouldn't "serve" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!
Owner: No no! It's pining!
Mr. Praline: It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This OS is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! [lemis.com] It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting
The link in the write-up is bad; here's one that works.
"Remember folks, this is currently the last beta that will be released for 5.3" Not quite accurate "We will add at least one more beta (BETA6)to accomodate testing."
Does anyone know if ULE is put back in as the default scheduler? The 4BSD scheduler is stronger, and better in almost every aspect, but unfortanly not on the desktop where you'll notice the difference.
The reason I ask is that my less than experienced FreeBSD users that have cron'ed cvsup and buildworld might complain that performace when using VLC is decreasing; it's annoying to have to explain possible reasons without knowing.
The mentioned disabled PREEMPTION option seams to indicate this, but I'm not familiar with that option as I'm very happy with the old RELEASE which has another option (options SCHED_ULE).
Im using gentoo - running linux
kernel-2.6.8
(SMPx2way with low latency and pre-emptive enabled)
What are the main differences between the latest FreeBSD kernels and the linux ones.
A lot of people say FreeBSD is better because "its more stable" or "it has a more mature kernel" I've seen little evidence to substantiate these common claims. Whilst they may have been true some years ago are they really true today?
Apart from the cool things like the ports system and userland differences, licensing differences aside- At the core level of the kernel what makes a new FreeBSD kernel better than a new linux kernel?
(Genuine Question)
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
"What has happened?" said Dumbledore sharply, looking from Fudge to Professor McGonagall. "Why are you disturbing these people? Minerva, I'm surprised at you - I asked you to stand guard over *BSD - "
"There is no need to stand guard over it any more, Dumbledore!" she shrieked. "The Minister has seen to that!"
Harry had never seen Professor McGonagall lose control like this. There were angry blotches of colour in her cheeks, her hands were balled into fists; she was trembling with fury.
"When we told Mr Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonights events," said Snape, in a low voice, "he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a Dementor to accompany him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where *BSD -"
"I told him you would not agree, Dumbledore!" stormed Professor McGonagall. "I told him you would never allow Dementors to set foot inside the castle, but -"
"My dear woman!" roared Fudge, who likewise looked angrier than Harry had ever seen him. "As Minister for Magic, it is my decision whether I wish to bring protection with me when interviewing a possibly dangerous OS-"
But Professor McGonagall's voice drowned Fudge's. "The moment that - that thing entered the room," she screamed, pointing at Fudge, trembling all over, "it swooped down on *BSD and - and -"
Harry felt a chill in his stomach, as Professor McGonagall struggled to find words to describe what happened. He did not need her to finish her sentence. He knew what the Dementor had done. It had administered its fatal kiss to *BSD. It had sucked its soul out through its mouth. It was worse than dead.
HTH, kthnx.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the mornings hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.
As ever, HTH.
I'd just like to apologize for the link being bad, I don't know how it happened... I copied it from my browser, and tested it, but somewhere along the lines, I must have not noticed somethign happening. :p, Thanks to the one who posted the link in a comment.
Yeah, I know. It's a beta. However, these have been the most dishearteningly buggy, betas of FreeBSD I've ever had the sad misfortune of using.
New features pushed in every beta, while "older" new features are removed due to flakeyness, and lack of testing.
Old drivers fail to work because of half-assed attempts to make them work with the new fine grained locking model, and little attention paid to the new ACPI code.
I sometimes wonder if FreeBSD 5.x will ever be stable or usable. Too much emphasis on new features, not enough on quality control and simple bug fixes.
These guys are sure doing their very best to follow in Linux's footsteps.
At least there is always DragonFly, if the FreeBSD folks don't get their act together. I mean, DF was forked from 4.x just over a year ago, and already it has an almost completely multithreaded and multiprocessor safe network stack, a modern, message-passing system with a modern kernel threading subsystem, a great framework for a M:N threading implementation, asynchronous message-based system calls, and the beginings of an infrastructure that will allow some drivers and compatibility layers for other operating systems to be run as seperate, userspace processes. Not to mention the fact that DF is being redesigned at it's core in order to natively support both clustering and NUMA machines.
This compared to FreeBSD 5.x, which forked from 4.x over three years ago, and still has major issues getting anything resembling a multithreaded/MP safe networking stack. It really does look as if they took the hard way.
Like Linux, FreeBSD seems content on reimplementing the same tired technologies as have all of the big UNIX vendors, in nearly the same ways, for the sake of being the same. There is nothing innovative in either one.
Still, like a fool, I continue to download these FreeBSD 5.3 betas, hoping that eventually, one of them will give me a glimpse of the stability that FreeBSD has long been known for. But perhaps it's too late, and DragonFly really is the way of the future...
This is the real FreeBSD arrogant ass in action. No wonder they lose people every day with people like Smorgrav.
Glass
However, when I tried recompiled my kernel with options PREEMPTION, I had two complete lockups under heavy load (compiling in the background, running KDE, etc). During beta4, I removed options PREEMPTION for this reason. Now I've put it back, and I experience similar problems. I got error messages repeatedly (and the OS stopped responding for a few seconds now and then) when downloading files (with roughly 500Kb/s from network shares. Perhaps the same errors would pop up in other circumstances of heavy disk I/O. The messages were like this:
After removing PREEMPTION, problems went away. Note that I used preemption with SHED_4BSD, not ULE!On the other hand, 5.3 will be an excellent release. Other than problems with preemption (which I don't quite understand, I mean preemption, so I would be glad if someone explained to me what it does exactly!), the BETAS were quite stable. In BETA5, the old problem of floppy not working with ACPI on some chipsets (I have via) is solved. Start up time is very fast, I think it is faster than 5.2.1. (it starts up roughly 2x faster than slackware with 2.6.7 kernel on the same box.) Perfomance on the desktop is similar to previos 5.x releases (and I have a few problems with KDE 3.3 now).
Oh yes, another question. options PREEMPTION is listed under the SMP section of /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES. Is preemption SMP specific? From the few things I've read (and the even fewer things I could understand :() I didn't think it was. Can someone explain this to me? And: does preemption help with latency? (I have problems with sound in some games, and I think they are latency related).
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 the 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
Seriously, why don't you take a look at the dozens of posts identical to yours that show up in every single fucking story in the BSD section.
Unlike many who have posted here, I actually read the article ;)
Here's a great sleeper / not widely publicized feature:
NDIS Binary Compatibility
a.k.a. "Project Evil".
FreeBSD i386 can use binary Ethernet and WLAN network drivers written to the Windows XP NDIS 5.1 specification. It is a little cumbersome to convert a NDIS driver into a FreeBSD Kernel Loadable Module (KLD)
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
Uhm no, I think I'll refrain for taking your advice here.
You see, the thing is, that DragonFly can quite easilly be seen as an operating system that has been in beta since it's inception (well before the first release was made, it was announced that the "first release" would be more of a technical preview, rather than a production release), and yet it's quality has been consistently higher than both the beta releases of the FreeBSD 5.x branch, but higher quality than the FreeBSD 5.x releases.
Surely, you'd be nuts to run either in a production environment at the present time, but experience and records (mailing lists of both project's) indicate that DragonFly is the more reliable choice, despite the fact that it's newer, and using a less widely used architecture. The changes in DragonFly have been small, and gradual, evolutionary, so as to not break things for long periods of time. With every single beta release, the FreeBSD folks have added new features, or removed previously new features due to limited testing (which is a situation that is hardly helped by removing them from prime testing environments such as well, beta releases).
Of the core goals shared by both projects, the DragonFly team has consistently done more with less (fewer developers, less time, etc.) and have a more stable code base to show for it. Sure, it may be missing some features that FreeBSD 5.x might have done a half-assed job of implementing as of the time of this writing, but the features in DragonFly are far more likely to work for all the attention to detail and the sheer quality of the developers work, combined with the saner choices of simpler, less difficult to debug abstractions (like LWKTs and the serializing tokens, the message passing system etc.).
For as long as I've known of and used FreeBSD, I've been a tremendous fan, so don't take this as fanatisism for a competing system. To me however, DragonFly is merely a more worthy upgrade path from the FreeBSD that I've come to trust and rely on, than is the monstrosity that is FreeBSD 5.x.
"Project Evil" is available on DragonFly as well. It was ported over from the excelant FreeBSD code.
Although I'm not sure about the other BSDs, or of Vanilla (Linus') Linux, I'm fairly certain that this will soon be fairly mainstream in all non-Windows operating systems at least until proper open source drivers are developed for all operating systems in question.
*S*TONE
*D*EAD
Here Here. I completely agree. When all of the underpinning of DFLY are implemented and they get their ports system up, I can see a lot of FreeBSD users moving to it in droves. Maybe then the FreeBSD team (well, what's left of it) will take notice.
..the guy squealed like a pig!
VS BETA3
Beta3 had problems with doing a make update and 5.2.1 on a multi-processor Xeon box was 'rebooting'. 5.0 and Windblows NT 4 on the same hardware lacked the reboot feature.
JDK1.4 even built under BETA5.
All the little fork'n processes look good.
Beta 6 is out the mailing list post