FreeBSD 5.3 Release Candidate Released

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FreeBSD 5.3 Release Candidate Released

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @01:41AM from the now-it's-on-probation dept.

Cronopios writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has just announced the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC1. This will likely be the only Release Candidate before the final release of 5.3, so please give it a try and report/fix any bug you find. You can read the announcement, check the schedule and the 'Known Issues' (problems that are still being worked on at this time)."

135 comments

Bind version changed by Cronopios · 2004-10-20 01:46 · Score: 5, Informative

An important difference is that BIND 9.3.0 has replaced BIND 8.x as the default name server.

--
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
1. Re:Bind version changed by Dann+Casey · 2004-10-20 10:21 · Score: 1
  
  Well, nows a better time then ever to setup Bind 9 using MySQL. It's a very nice system. Several DNS servers using the same DB (if you wish), and my personal favorite - No more need to restart named if you make changes to a record!
2. Re:Bind version changed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 13:17 · Score: 0
  
  There any good documents or howtos on plugging Bind9 into a sql database?
3. Re:Bind version changed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 01:34 · Score: 0
  
  But that way it takes an SQL-query for every DNS-lookup...
4. Re:Bind version changed by realdpk · 2004-10-21 14:34 · Score: 1
  
  Worse yet, an SQL query to a MySQL server.
Very good news by synq · 2004-10-20 02:01 · Score: 1

This is very good news.

I've been working with 5.3 beta 7 for the last few weeks. It is such a great system!

Perl 5.8.something is on there and even applications like WebGUI work like a charm. :)

I hope the official will be out soon. :)

--
sig not found
1. Re:Very good news by gtoomey · 2004-10-20 03:44 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I've been doing the same, & the only problem I found was that I could only boot in safe mode with an nforce motherboard. KDE is looking good.
  I'll try it my wireless usb adaptor soon.
2. Re:Very good news by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  Um, perl isn't a part of the base system anymore so if you wanted perl 5.8 instead of 5.6 there's really nothing holding you back.
3. Re:Very good news by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 05:23 · Score: 0
  
  How come they took perl out? (I'm curious)
4. Re:Very good news by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 08:37 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Well, once you branch a release you cannot make radical changes, that's why 4.x still has gcc 2.95 and why it has that ancient copy of perl. Because 5.x will be the -STABLE branch for years they decided it would be more practical to wipe perl out of the base and let people install it from ports. This way you can install 5.6 or 5.8 or whatever version you need/want.
  
  This wasn't done in 4.x because it would be against POLA (principle of least astonishment). A 4.10 system should work the same way 4.0 did unless a change is justified. You just cannot change the version of perl on a production system. Once all the perl scripts in base were replaced by sh+awk or C equivalents (so the system can work without perl), perl was taken out and the user is given the option to install a package during installation.
  
  Jaysen
5. Re:Very good news by jaseuk · 2004-10-20 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  Plus removing perl saves alot of disk space in the minimal system which really helps if your trying to run on a 32MByte flash card for instance.
6. Re:Very good news by sp0rk173 · 2004-10-20 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  I had a similar problem on my AMD 64 box, I don't know if this problem is related to yours, but compiling a kernel without ACPI worked like a charm.
7. Re:Very good news by inquisitor · 2004-10-20 20:36 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Have you got plug-and-play-OS turned on in your motherboard BIOS? If you do, turn it off; FreeBSD 5.x (and some later 4.x) has problems with the option, and Windows doesn't need it anymore. I didn't have to turn off ACPI that way...
  
  (This is occasionally listed as "Device Configuration" or whatever, like on my Toshiba laptop, in which case the right answer is "All Devices".)
8. Re:Very good news by molnarcs · 2004-10-21 13:17 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, it just occured to me: compiling the kernel without acpi is the suggested way. From /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/NOTES:
  # Note that building ACPI into the kernel is deprecated; the module is # normally loaded automatically by the loader. device acpi options ACPI_DEBUG options ACPI_MAX_THREADS=1
Binutils upgrade by theapodan · 2004-10-20 02:02 · Score: 2, Informative

Basic binutils are upgraded too, but I find it particularly interesting that the Darwin msdosfs tools are getting incorporated into the BSD tree.

Cool.
Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 02:03 · Score: 1, Interesting

So how come they're not using the new scheduler?
1. Re:Scheduler? by DashEvil · 2004-10-20 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  Okay Hawkins.
  
  I'm sorry that you're such an idiot.
  
  --
  -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
2. Re:Scheduler? by DashEvil · 2004-10-20 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  Oh my God! He replied to me with anonymous copy and paste trolling! I had better go out and buy his OS right now!
  
  --
  -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
3. Re:Scheduler? by 1UnixGeek · 2004-10-20 06:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  There appear to be bugs in the new SMP scheduler (SCHED_ULE) that no one can track down that cause mysterious crashes and lockups when a system is run under heavy load. The real issue seems to be that only a couple people in the project understand the complex kernel threading model enough to be able to find and resolve bugs, and even they don't seem to be able too most of the time ?
4. Re:Scheduler? by molnarcs · 2004-10-20 06:30 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Is that you again. Back to provide some more fun?
  Don't listen to this guy. He has been spamming every -bsd related announcment for weeks now. He is selling an os called HawkinsOS which is still beta. Trolled FreeBSD mailing lists as well, and when he was pointed out (politely I might add) that he might be violating some of the copyrights in the BSD os (not the BSD copyright, but other copyrights included in the base system) he went mad and started a crusade against FreeBSD developers. Began with PHK and DES, but by now, as you can see from the thread I linked to above, he has an issue with everyone, even documentation folks.
  This is a hoax folks. He claims to have sold 2000 copies of HawkinsOS, which is basically FreeBSD beta!!! He claims to have developed patches making FreeBSD 'enterprise ready' (meaning: in his opinion, FreeBSD isn't. lol: tell it to yahoo, or netcraft, or even apache.org!), but if you check his site (the spelling mistakes, the prices) or any of the threads he started, you'll see how 'serious' he is.
5. Re:Scheduler? by Brandybuck · 2004-10-20 10:36 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  That's all I wanted, respect.
  
  You had an awfully funny way of trying to get it then. You don't crosspost inflammatory screeds to virtually every FreeBSD mailing list and then expect warm and hearty congratulations. If you act like an asshole you'll be treated like an asshole.
  
  --
  Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
6. Re:Scheduler? by welsh+git · 2004-10-20 17:38 · Score: 1
  
  > If Dag-Erling and Poul-Henning hadn't been acting like a couple of condescending a*holes
  > I'd have released my patches (more than 8,000 lines of code so far) under a BSD license.
  > That's all I wanted, respect. I didn't get any, so no patches for you.
  
  No, you're being a tit. Even if D-E and P-H had behaved the way you describe, it's no reason to not provide your code to the project. - It's not like they make money off it.. You are taking it out on all the FreeBSD users out there...
  
  But of course, the REAL reason is that your code simply doesn't exist, or doesn't work.
  
  Just suppose your tweaks do work. If they are not available to anyone else, that makes your OS proprietary. Why would anyone prefer your OS and your support over a free FreeBSD system and the ability to get support from any of a wide group of companies ?
  
  --
  Sig out of date
7. Re:Scheduler? by welsh+git · 2004-10-21 00:30 · Score: 1
  
  Out of interest, I don't suppose you have the stats for the same operation on Freebsd 4.10 (or any other 4.X) ?
  
  --
  Sig out of date
8. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 04:59 · Score: 0
  
  Not sure, I think there were a few FBSD4 results on the freebsd-current thread.
  
  Have a look at this though, I really do not believe my eyes:
  
  http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=freebsd-current& m= 109837326801326&w=2
  
  This is straight up linear reading off the filesystem and it they don't think it is a good benchmark?!?
  
  None of the @freebsd guys seem even the slightest bit concerned that OpenBSD is literally doubling their performance. Even if this was a completely artificial test, it is a good indication that something is wrong.
  
  But the sad fact is, it isn't an artificial test at all. Think fileservers, web servers, large database systems, video/audio editing, basically anything to do with large files will suffer.
  
  Looks like FreeBSD is on the merry road down the shitter :\
9. Re:Scheduler? by bofkentucky · 2004-10-21 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  Does the openbsd system implement softupdates (or whatever they are calling it these days)
  
  --
  09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
10. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  Not sure, but it wouldn't make any difference to this test which is straight reading.
11. Re:Scheduler? by setagllib · 2004-10-21 22:15 · Score: 1
  
  Personally I noticed and was particularly worried by 5.x disk performance, where 4.x got almost the theoretical limit for any drive I used (but NetBSD seems to beat it by 10MB/s on average, sometimes even a couple of meg above theoretical limit - implies good VM and cache system really).
  
  There are lots of things wrong with FreeBSD 5.x that have pushed FreeBSD from being (a couple of years ago) "fastest open-source operating system for x86" to one of the slowest. The SMP locking may have made SMP machines a bit better (so long as you don't have a keyboard or mouse... they're still Giant-locked, among many other drivers everyone uses) but UP has suffered tremendously, even if it is more 'responsive' (arguably so: has anyone tried reading off a CD and doing anything else?).
  
  Linux seems to be going in a different direction, with 2.6's problems (over 2.4) being identified, investigated, resolved, tested, and replaced with new problems (see kerneltrap, half the forum threads are about recent Linux breakage). This is very unlikely to end, especially with the new development model ("testing, what testing? let vendors fix it").
  
  NetBSD and OpenBSD: The only solutions now. Who wants to start a petition (or is there one?) to have NVidia and other drivers ported to these platforms? The FreeBSD ones work well, but are largely useless in light of the aforesaid regressions in quality and performance.
  
  --
  Sam ty sig.
12. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 23:49 · Score: 0
  
  There are lots of things wrong with FreeBSD 5.x that have pushed FreeBSD from being (a couple of years ago) "fastest open-source operating system for x86" to one of the slowest. The SMP locking may have made SMP machines a bit better (so long as you don't have a keyboard or mouse... they're still Giant-locked, among many other drivers everyone uses) but UP has suffered tremendously, even if it is more 'responsive' (arguably so: has anyone tried reading off a CD and doing anything else?).
  
  Correction, the "self proclaimed fastest open-source operating system for x86".
  
  Linux seems to be going in a different direction, with 2.6's problems (over 2.4) being identified, investigated, resolved, tested, and replaced with new problems (see kerneltrap, half the forum threads are about recent Linux breakage). This is very unlikely to end, especially with the new development model ("testing, what testing? let vendors fix it").
  
  No, not at all. Linux 2.6 is getting more stable all the time. All software has bugs, you know. IIRC FreeBSD 4.10 *introduced* data corruption bugs with large files and softupdates, and I think 4.9 was the SMP-abortion release... I'm not saying that to troll, because I still think of FreeBSD 4 as nice and stable, just pointing out that it is inevitable.
  
  It may surprise you, but Linux 2.6 does get quite a bit of testing. It gets literally thousands and thousands of CPU hours testing of *every* point release with hosts of different regression tests from companies ranging from Intel, to SGI, IBM, HP, OSDL, etc. not to mention all the developers themselves doing their own testing. Then there are the distros and end users...
  
  Also, the kinds of races and memory ordering problems that get exposed in two minutes on a 32 CPU POWER5 or a 512 CPU Altix would probably be not much more common than hardware faults on 2 and 4 way x86s.
  
  So don't worry about Linux, they can take care of themselves. Just keep your mind on the job and run your own race.
13. Re:Scheduler? by setagllib · 2004-10-21 23:54 · Score: 1
  
  If they get so much testing, how come all these huge bugs slip through to release? 2.6.8...
  
  In something as huge and complicated as Linux has become, it's hard to test everything, but at the very least they could make things clean enough that changing something in one place doesn't break a completely unrelated system, which has happened in the past. Sure it's still better than some systems but if Linux really is going to lead the open-source 'operating system' [sic] market it'll have to do better than that.
  
  --
  Sam ty sig.
14. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-22 01:34 · Score: 0
  
  If they get so much testing, how come all these huge bugs slip through to release? 2.6.8...
  
  What all these huge bugs? Just tell me two or three of the larger ones.
  
  I know of one, a single NFS brown paper bag bug because Linus has never been good at doing releases (doesn't do full release candidates) He'll be doing them from now on though.
  
  In something as huge and complicated as Linux has become, it's hard to test everything, but at the very least they could make things clean enough that changing something in one place doesn't break a completely unrelated system, which has happened in the past.
  
  No, it is just that the huge volume of work going on is sure to show up with some breakages now and again. Again, expect it to be a lot better when Linus starts doing proper -rc releases though.
  
  You make it sound like FreeBSD has more than 2 people who can comprehend the deeper magic inside their kernel. And things like their prized SCHED_ULE scheduler being utterly broken for months and months and nobody can fix it. Nobody even knows what is *wrong* with it for Christ's sake.
  
  Sure it's still better than some systems but if Linux really is going to lead the open-source 'operating system' [sic] market it'll have to do better than that.
  
  Well in case you were stuck under a rock for ten years, Linux _is_ the leader in open source operating systems market. What I say to you is, the free BSDs will have to do a *LOT* better if they don't want to keep getting further behind.
  
  By the way, why did you pretend to quote 'operating system' and then add a [sic] like it had been misspelled or misused? Weird.
15. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-22 04:45 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, it has for years. You specify that in the fstab.
16. Re:Scheduler? by setagllib · 2004-10-22 12:31 · Score: 1
  
  Because Linux is not an operating system any more than an engine is a car. We're talking about Linux, which, on its own, is pretty useless.
  
  That is, in fact, a heavy argument many use in favor of BSD (less important thanks to Linux distributions, many of which suck though), that you get a whole operating system, not just a kernel. You don't have to choose and integrate every component by hand.
  
  And I wasn't saying great things about FreeBSD's core now, if you read other posts I've made I do in fact slander it as a hurtful trainwreck, but still the releases manage to be more stable and more tested (I have no idea where you pulled those 4.10 issues from... URL?) and certainly more likely to be adopted by serious users, than any given Linux 2.6 release (accepting that 2.4 is as stable as it will ever be).
  
  --
  Sam ty sig.
17. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-22 18:49 · Score: 0
  
  So, in other words you just said "all these huge bugs slipped through to release" because you thought it sounded good at the time... but you really had no idea?
  
  By the way, in traditional computer science, an Operating system is a kernel (and if it is a microkernel, then it is the kernel + services). That is what I use.
  
  If I'm doing 'operating systems programming' then I am working on the kernel. No other possibility... well _maybe_ libc... definitely not ls, X, or GTK programming.
  
  That is the definition I use anyway.
18. Re:Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-22 19:19 · Score: 0
  
  > By the way, in traditional computer science, an
  > Operating system is a kernel (and if it is a
  > microkernel, then it is the kernel + services).
  > That is what I use.
  
  When you install an OS, you're not just copying a kernel to a filesystem.
  
  Pack in in and take it back to DeVry.
19. Re:Scheduler? by molnarcs · 2004-10-25 06:03 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  For your interest: this is a copy & paste job from FreeBSD current mailing list. The thread name is "FreeBSD 5.3b7and poor ata performance," and by now it is solved. It looks like it was a hw misconfiguration issue.
  This also flies in the face of this troll's claims of FreeBSD developers are uncooperative *sholes. Follow this thread to its end, and you'll see that even though the original poster (as DES rightly claims) was quite confrontative, they went out of their way to reproduce the issue. Robert Watson even commited some code to help trace down similar problems. And some stats from the same guy later, when the problem was solved:
  Transfer rates: outside: 102400 kbytes in 1.897858 sec = 53956 kbytes/sec middle: 102400 kbytes in 1.934135 sec = 52944 kbytes/sec inside: 102400 kbytes in 2.735875 sec = 37429 kbytes/sec
4x vs 5x performance by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 02:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hi

I have been following news for quite a while now and I have tested several fbsd releases form
4.X and 5.2.1 releases from all I have noticed is that I liked 4.X very much especially the memory management, harvest performance, actually the overall performance and the widely available documentation, well that's one of the main reasons why freebsd is known to me.

Know you guys coming close to the 5.3 -stable release alot of users are going to upgrade/switch, right, because this is what we have been waiting for. What about the performance that 4.X had? Will the performance be equal ? Will it be having better performance? Even on low end machines? And especially sinds freebsd is becoming more and more ready for desktop use, performance is a big issue on desktops.(look at Gnu/Linux for example, which I have been using for a very long time know, and all I can remember is that almost all of the releases have scheduling/latency issues. When I was using 2.2/2.4/2.6 All I have seen where low latency patches. What about freebsd?

I'm so exited to try out the new freebsd release. Butt a couple of questions are desired first.
As all you have noticed the above^ part, will fbsd have the same performance or better? When will this be ready 5.3.X ? Could I get some more accurate information about this? Since I'm planning to use it on my desktop.

I have only been reading the bsd section at slashdot so I don't know much about the progress you guys are making on the feature release. Is there a offical news site for freebsd users? Like openbsd has *deadly.org.

What about the compile flags freebsd RC is using compared to 5.3 -stable will there be a lot of changes? What about gnome packages? Will 2.8 make it in 5.3 stable (iso)?

If those things are taking a while to be there, does fbsd have any kernel patches like linux does to improve desktop performance? For example like: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

Joe
1. Re:4x vs 5x performance by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 19:56 · Score: 0
  
  > However, you might be interested in my project,
  > HawkinsOS [hawkinsos.com], which solves all these
  > problems and adds some new features, like proper
  > usb 2.0 support.
  
  Do you provide the source to this system?
2. Re:4x vs 5x performance by hugo_pt · 2004-10-23 00:05 · Score: 1
  
  "As all you have noticed the above^ part, will fbsd have the same performance or better? When will this be ready 5.3.X ? Could I get some more accurate information about this? Since I'm planning to use it on my desktop." You don't want a 5.3.*X* release, as 3-numbered released on FreeBSD are used to address critical bugs. Let's hope it stays 5.3-RELEASE/STABLE, heh.
FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 02:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

Am I the only one that feels that FreeBSD 5.X has gone in the wrong direction?

I run FreeBSD 5.X on my desktop since I don't feel it's ready to replace the production servers running happily with 4.X; and 5.X and the desktop feels very sluggish and slow in many areas compared to 4.X.

Maybe 5.X is faster on SMP, but on uniprocessor I think it's definitely a set-back compared to 4.X.

I feel FreeBSD 5.x is not yet ready, even it's almost 2 years late based on the original predictions(5.X-STABLE at least).

I don't want to start a flamewar, it's just that I cannot get rid of this bad aftertaste that 5.X left me with.

I really really hope FreeBSD improves over time - it was a fine OS. Meantime DragonFlyBSD is something to keep an eye on ... it sounds promising, although only time will tell...
1. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by martin · 2004-10-20 03:17 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Looking at the 5.3 issues on questions@freebsd.org most people wouldn't trust 5 as stable yet, and on a uniprocessor most say 5 is slower than 4.x.
  
  I do note there are tentative plans for a 4.11 release, but as most of the work is concentrating on 5.x it's existence maybe a still birth.
  
  BTW MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) is based on 5.x rather than 4.x technology so someone's trusting enough..
  
  And yes 5.2.1 is definitely fast on SMP systems then 4.10.
2. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by agshekeloh · 2004-10-20 03:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  5.X still has all of the debugging options on by default.
  
  This can cut your performance by a good 50% or so.
  
  Debugging gets turned off last thing before release. (I'm not sure if a RC has debugging or not, mind you, but the BETAs certainly do.)
3. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by a_hofmann · 2004-10-20 04:18 · Score: 2
  
  The 5.x branch is not targeted at production use before it's first stable release.
  
  As an other poster already said, the unstable and rc branches contain debugging code that cost performance. Don't let the stability of 5.x fool you into thinking it to be a final system yet. The team did a great job introducing loads of new features, pushing FreeBSD on top of current technology again, but polishing these new features (which actually should bring 5.x to beat 4.x performance wise afterwards) will mainly happen in the end of the release cycle, after all those nasty showstopper bugs have been fixed.
  
  If you really need drivers or features only present in 5.x, you are in an unlucky situation for the next months.
  Otherwise stay with 4.10, the fastest ia32 desktop operating system in existance...
  
  The future will bring us 4.11 with selected feature backports of 5.x and 4.x lightning speed, and soon afterwards a 5.x that will rock the CPUs like current stable branch does... :)
  
  No need to be hasty, younglings...
4. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 05:18 · Score: 1
  
  I tried everything, even turning off debugging and SMP and recompiled the kernel. It helps a bit, but it still feels sluggish. I will wait until -RELEASE comes out, and if the proformance is still not whre it should be then I'll start seriously looking at the alternatives ...
5. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 05:19 · Score: 0
  
  This is suspicious answer. Why exactly is fbsd smp model wrong? If you answer that with a sound argument, then only I'll think you're not a troll.
6. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  I was not talking about SMP, I was specifically referring to uniprocessor performance. I also clearly stated that I do not know about SMP performance.
7. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by 1UnixGeek · 2004-10-20 05:31 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The thing that *really* is of concern for the future of FreeBSB 5.x is the very complex SMP/Thread coding model in is used in 5.x and the fact there only seems to be 2-3 individuals on planet earth that are able to fix and fix bugs in the code. (See the recent posting(s) in the -arch mailing list for some examples of this. This is really a cause of major concern for the future of 5.x. Matt Dillon (aka the Dragonfly BSD project) has constantly been sounding alarm bells about this but no one on the project seems to be concerned at all about this issue.
  
  With the many bugs in 5.x that cause many mysterious crashes and lockups in SMP systems, and that fact that only several people on planet earth seem to have the detailed knowledge of the code to find them, this should be a major source of concern for anyone considering using 5.x in any sort of production application ?
8. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Brandybuck · 2004-10-20 05:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If you have not already done so, TURN OFF the debugging switches in your kernel. Non -RELEASE versions of 5.x are going to have major performance issues simply because they've got so many debugging switches on. So turn them off, or wait for -RELEASE to appear in a couple of weeks.
  
  --
  Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
9. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 05:55 · Score: 0
  
  The apology Hawkins is looking for is an apology for telling him to STFU for his continual and relentless trolls. This is the guy who posts to kernel lists similar to "I know you people are idiots but would you please explain why you..."
  
  Hawkins is either a deliberate troll, or so socially inept he needs to return to his parent's basement. Either way he shouldn't expect an apology until he grows up.
10. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by DashEvil · 2004-10-20 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  Do note that word of these `patches' that fix all of FreeBSD 5's problems only started showing up after he left the mailing list. When he left he was ranting about how FreeBSD is the greatest OS ever.
  
  I guess there are two reasons for him bringing up these patches.
  
  1) People mocking him for taking FreeBSD, rebranding it, and trying to sell it for lots of money.
  2) To try and trick people into giving him undue respect.
  
  --
  -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
11. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by guroove · 2004-10-20 06:20 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't taking out the smp lines in the kernel config fix the problem of slow performance on single CPU systems? I have had 5.3-Beta on an old 433 MHz system for a few weeks now, and I have been using it as my home NAT machine. It routes packets way faster than by linksys router did, and seems to be much faster than a similar system I installed at work that runs FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE.
  
  --
  Someone stole my old sig.
12. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  I tried disabling both debugging and SMP, and it helped, but still seems FBSD 4.X is still MUCH faster on the desktop and UP system.
  
  Also note, that these is just the "feel" of the desktop. I did not perform any serious benchmarks and other things, so it is 100% subjective.
13. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by molnarcs · 2004-10-20 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  I ran FreeBSD 5.3 since beta3 on my desktop, and beta 5 (booo!!!) on a server (don't start shouting at me, it is a low traffic webserver/firewall/nat - I know, I know...). Desktop performance: with ULE (I don't need preemtption) it is simply fantastic!! Sometimes I have to check if portupgrade/make is still running, because I almost can't tell the difference (playing movies - divx/xvid - in mplayer, using openoffice, whatever). Don't qutoe me on this (this is totally subjective!) but I feel KDE 3.3 more responsive on FreeBSD (but I'm not sure, so the difference, if there is any, is really small) than on slackware 10 (custom built 2.6.7 kernel). If desktop use is any indidication of general performance, I must say that 5.3 doesn't seem slow at all, compared to previous versions or of linux.
  Some criticism: for the reasons listed above, I am really sad about the switch back to SCHED_4BSD. And it was their mistake. A lot of us felt that ULE was stable enough to become the default in 5.2.1. ULE is/was just stable enough (w/o preemption) to become the default for a 'new technology release'. It is my default scheduler since december last year, and didn't have a single crash related to it, except in beta 5 when I tried preemption. Think about it: that would have given 9 months to expose/fix bugs, not a few weeks in a beta cycle. With SCHED_4BSD, at least on the desktop, FreeBSD barely perfoms better (if at all, my comparison is mandrake 9.1) than a 2.4.x based linux distro.
  I'm just updating the server btw to rc1. A lesson learned by playing with betas: I have to do portupgrade -fa to have ports use the correct libraries (no prob on the server, it has only ~30 packages or so). It was a hassle on my desktop puter however. Anyway, the server ran smoothly (apache 2.0.50, php 5, mysql 4, and pureftpd, up 25 days now). It was portscanned a number of times + suffered a minor flood attack (according to the logs), but had no problems with that. So, I'm a satisfied 'customer.' One thing: don't listen to troll(s). The HawkinsOS guy is a known troll (and more: sells FreeBSD rebranded as HawkinsOS for a lots of money, w/o delivering anything, so he is also your friendly "Nigerian royal family member" as well. Claims to have lots of patches for well, anything, making FreeBSD 'enterprise ready', but won't show you unless most FreeBSD quit the project and apologize - for pointing out some copyright violations in his project btw!!!). He is becoming more and more agressive as his hoax is being exposed, so beware!).
14. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by DashEvil · 2004-10-20 07:25 · Score: 1
  
  Unlike you, they have a product that I can download and test. However, since you're such a reputable person I'll just take your word for it! ;)
  
  --
  -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
15. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Drishmung · 2004-10-20 08:09 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  BTW MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) is based on 5.x rather than 4.x technology so someone's trusting enough..
  That's just the BSD subsystem---i.e. userland. Memory and I/O in particular have almost nothing in common with BSD and so FreeBSD UP vs MP performance etc. are not going to have any effect on Darwin.
  I'd be interested to know long it will be before the ports tree has reasonably complete support for 5.3.
  
  --
  Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
16. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 08:16 · Score: 0
  
  I've pointed that out several times. Their answers are either: "Works for me" or "John Baldwin has some uncommitted code in his p4 repo". Sorry but John having code in his private repo won't help me fix the bugs I'm encountering on my test servers. What happens when 5.3-RELEASE comes out and there are still bugs while John's code keeps rotting in a private repository?
  
  The fun thing is, it costed Matt Dillon his commit bit for pointing the truth out. Now that it's crystal clear that this development model (read: 2 people know the code out of 2 hundred developers) is never going to work. They copied Sun's MP model, except Sun had far more than 2 guys working part time on the kernel. Thank you, Matt Dillon, for warning us about it.
17. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Baki · 2004-10-20 08:17 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Did you recompile the kernel without WITNESS option?
  The beta GENERIC kernels have lots of debugging which slows down a lot.
18. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, that's the first thing I tried.
19. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 09:14 · Score: 0
  
  Probably only John Baldwin and Julian Eicher are the only ones capable of working on and resolving the bugs that are present in the current FreeBSD 5.x kernel/scheduler/threads SMP model. John has been merely sitting on the sidelines for the last few moths and 'observing' but very rarely offers solutions/patches to any of the mysterious problems causing panics and systems lockups under load. Just casually browsing the FreeBSD arch/current mailing lists will confirm this to anyone that is interested..
  
  With that said, FreeBSD 5.x is in a *very* precarious position right now, with folks that probably risk running any of their production boxes with such and unstable/buggy OS.
20. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by devphaeton · 2004-10-20 09:44 · Score: 1
  
  Is it really the OS itself that is sluggish, or is it Xorg and X type apps that are sluggish?
  
  Two different things, and it could all be perception. ;)
  
  --
  
  do() || do_not(); // try();
21. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  Well, actually it's X + KDE.
22. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by DashEvil · 2004-10-20 09:59 · Score: 1
  
  I've got a better idea. It's called put up, or shut up.
  
  --
  -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
23. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by molnarcs · 2004-10-20 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  How sluggish KDE is? For me it works quite nicely (see my post below) - even though I load up a load of things at startup (lots of applets, oooqs - openoffice quick starter -, etc.). I'm only asking because if it is extremely sluggish, check if you have tcp/udp blackhole set to 2/1 respectively - that slows things down quite a bit. I know, of course, that 'it works for me' is not particularly helpful though.. :/
24. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by daft_one · 2004-10-20 14:09 · Score: 0
  
  I just had a Matrix moment... "Do you really think that's Hawkins you're posting with? Hmm."
25. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by joaobranco · 2004-10-21 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  I'd be interested to know long it will be before the ports tree has reasonably complete support for 5.3.
  
  That's easy: now.
  
  The ports tree supports both branches, and most updates are tried on 5.x before 4.x, so the ports support for 5.3 is quite good.
  
  Anedoctal evidence: all but one of the ports I tried to use work on 5.3 (the exception was a direct connect client). That include ALL that comprises a full workstation (Linux feature complete, so to speak).
26. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 06:02 · Score: 0
  
  I know that you are not who you say you are (or you are an idiot in the truest form), but why don't you just post the code anyways? Don't wait for an apology; show the community that you are the prophet that you claim to be.
  
  Or, keep those patches to yourself, and no one will give a fuck. No one is going to tongue your balls for code that may not exist.
  
  A wise man once said "SEND PATCHES."
27. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by ozzmosis · 2004-10-21 08:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Actually they were removed on September 7th
28. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by the+real+darkskye · 2004-10-21 16:24 · Score: 1
  
  Lets see, your network was comprimised by developers from an "inferior" OS and YOU want me to use your OS?
  
  Are you sure you're not actually Billy G?
  
  --
  Music is everybody's possession.
  It's only publishers who think that people own it.
  Fuck Beta
  ~John Lenno
29. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by innosent · 2004-10-21 16:46 · Score: 1
  
  Of course, if his code is anything like his spelling, we're better off without it.
  
  --
  --That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
30. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by j3ll0 · 2004-10-21 23:01 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry mate....when you can actually publish a 'commercial' page to the web that is free of spelling errors, I'll take you seriously.
  
  Quiet tip....it's near the bottom, and something /.'ers look very closely at.
31. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by martin · 2004-10-22 23:35 · Score: 1
  
  This is true - MACH kernel underneath, but alot of the stuff about the relatively small kernel is 5.x based, more than the pure userland stuff.
  
  The MACH kernel is very small is needs alot more 'support' from userland stuff than GNU/linux or FreeBSD does. I guess it depends on where the code breaks are for MACH and how much of the 5.x kernel is added on to it in terms of drivers etc.
32. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by hugo_pt · 2004-10-23 00:07 · Score: 1
  
  I love 5.2.1 on the desktop, avoid it on servers. The only servers I have with 5.2.1 are the ones with dual processors, all others run 4.10-STABLE and have been up for many, many months. I'll wait and see how 5.3 does. I won't be upgrading my desktop (at least for now) which is running 5.2.1-RELEASE, because I'd need to rebuild pretty much everything -- and we all know how XFree86 and GNOME upgrades tend to be a pain in the ass. As for the server market, I'm waiting on 5.3 for two months now for a dual xeon, and I'm confident it will do very well; I have one server with 5.3-BETA5 and my gateway at home runs 5.3-BETA3 -- Both without stability/performance issues!
33. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by phoenix_rizzen · 2004-10-24 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  Correct. And the SMP options have been removed from GENERIC for 5.3-RELEASE. This means that a default install of FreeBSD 5.3 will include a non-SMP kernel. They will be including docs for creating an SMP kernel after installation, and are investigating a method for shipping both a UP and SMP kernel, giving the user a choice of which to install. They don't expect that to come through until 5.4, though.
  
  Here's the Head's Up message posted to the -current mailing list.
34. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by SillyNickName4me · 2004-10-25 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  > Anedoctal evidence: all but one of the ports I tried to use work on 5.3 (the exception was a direct connect client). That include ALL that comprises a full workstation (Linux feature complete, so to speak).
  
  Just as anecdotal..
  
  ever got multimedia/mjpegtools to build on 5.x?
  (its about the only reason for me to keep compat4x support around on my fbsd 5 workstation)
  
  Most of the ports tree does work quite well tho.
35. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by SillyNickName4me · 2004-10-25 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  I won't comment on what you said about Matt and his work other then that I have seen work from him on AmigoaOS as well as in FreeBSD, and that I respect him as a knowledgable programmer and developer, abeit a bit stubborn.
  
  The followign however deserves a comment I think.
  
  > Now that it's crystal clear that this development model (read: 2 people know the code out of 2 hundred developers) is never going to work. They copied Sun's MP model, except Sun had far more than 2 guys working part time on the kernel. Thank you, Matt Dillon, for warning us about it.
  
  SUN's mp model has been looked at since very early on in the 5.x branch (read the smp mailinglist from 3 years ago and you will fidn a lot about it for example), it is not something that suddenly popped up after Matt lost his commit bit or such.
  
  SUN had to develop the model and the implementation. FreeBSD seems to want to build a better implementation of it. If they manage(d) or not I do not know, but what I do know is this:
  1. They can learn from the mistakes SUN made.
  2. They don't have to develop the model, just the implementation.
  3. SUN didn't exactly get theirimplementation done all at once, and there is quite a bit of documentation on the model, their implementation, the pitfalls they encountered and on possible solutions.
  
  Those 3 things will at least result in needing way less resources then SUN had to acomplish a potentially better implementation in the same or less time.
36. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Drishmung · 2004-10-25 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  Darwin is a monolithic kernel, a mixture of Mach, FreeBSD and IOkit.
  My understanding is that IOkit is quite different from Mach or FreeBSD---to the extent that drivers have to be pretty much rewritten from scratch. I also thought (though I'd be happy to be corrected) that the memory subsystem, and in particular the multiprocessor stuff, was mostly Mach. In fact, mostly 'Darwin' by now.
  If the 'problematic' bits of FreeBSD 5.x are in the memory, threading and driver sections, then I would not expect those to have much relevance to Darwin, and hence would be no barrier to Darwin adopting the rest of FreeBSD 5.x as much a possible.
  I appear, from the above link, to have a little dismissive of the contribution of FreeBSD as 'just' userland.
  
  --
  Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
37. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by anholt · 2004-10-26 08:07 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Desktop sluggishness is something that gets complained about a lot, and I know I hate the feel we have on the desktop right now. Currently, scheduler work has been focused on 4BSD with server loads, notably mysql. SMP performance with supersmack (mysql test) has gone up something like 50% in the last few months, thanks to netperf and 4BSD scheduler improvements. What would be nice to see is somebody fixing ULE (the new scheduler) both in terms of server performance and fixing those remaining bugs, since it is known to be significantly better in terms of desktop interactivity. However, its author only has sporadic FreeBSD time and others find ULE to be very scary, so it's not getting fixed currently.
  
  However, I do think that we'll see interactivity continually improve at this point, as Giant keeps getting pushed out of more subsystems.
5.3-STABLE or not? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 02:30 · Score: 0

Does anyone know if this is going to be the long awaited STABLE branch?
1. Re:5.3-STABLE or not? by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 02:31 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, this is going to be -STABLE. Work on 6.X has already begun on the -CURRENT branch.
2. Re:5.3-STABLE or not? by stox · 2004-10-20 06:31 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yes, it is:
  
  5.3-STABLE FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE #0: Sun Oct 17 13:50:02 CDT 2004
  
  --
  "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
3. Re:5.3-STABLE or not? by ozzmosis · 2004-10-21 09:05 · Score: 1
  
  5.3-STABLE FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE #0: Sun Oct 17 13:50:02 CDT 2004
  
  actually that's not QUITE true.. well yet anyways.
4. Re:5.3-STABLE or not? by SillyNickName4me · 2004-10-25 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  > actually that's not QUITE true.. well yet anyways.
  
  Interestingly enough, it IS what a kernel built from approx 1 week old sourcecode claims to be.
what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 02:46 · Score: 0

I want to try fbsd (currently running Debian) but I need to know if I can use external usb 2.0 hard drive. Any suggestion? (yeah I went to freebsd.com and saw the docs say usb 2.0 is incomplete/buggy, but maybe that applies to the older release?)
Well I'm gonna switch anyway, been wanting to for some time, but it'd be nice if the usb stuff works...
1. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by PinkFluid · 2004-10-20 02:52 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  My experiences with USB on FreeBSD is very positive. I tried three different digital cameras and two external disks, mouse etc. and everything was autodetected, although I never tried a USB 2.0 mass storage device. The best thing to do is try out it yourself.
2. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 04:28 · Score: 0
  
  The only problem I've found with usb is the fact that I can't install 5.3 rc1. When sysinstall comes up, my usb keyboard doesn't respond. It works fine to get into the BIOS, and 4.10/5.2.1 work fine, just 5.3. I have found this bug in the database, and the work around is to install with a ps2 keyboard. But I don't currently have one!
3. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by molnarcs · 2004-10-20 10:22 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  My experiences with USB on FreeBSD is very positive.
  Likewise. Works better for me than hotplugd Recently when helping out a friend with suse, I didn't know how to make a flashdrive work. Partly this is because of my negligence: I forgot a lot about how linux works. Hotplugd was running, yet the system didn't gave any indication of what happens when I plugged it in. On the other hand:
  Plug in flash drive in freebsd (5.x) :
  umass0: Super Talent Flash USB 2.0 Flash Drive, rev 2.00/10.00, addr 2 da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0 da0: <S Talent Flash Drive 2.0 1000> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device da0: 1.000MB/s transfers da0: 123MB (252928 512 byte sectors: 64H 32S/T 123C
  plug out flash drive
  umass0: at uhub0 port 2 (addr 2) disconnected (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): lost device (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): removing device entry umass0: detached
  plug out my usb mouse (samsung optical)
  ums0: at uhub1 port 1 (addr 2) disconnected ums0: detached
  plug mouse back in
  ums0: vendor 0x055d product 0x1030, rev 1.00/0.04, addr 2, iclass 3/1 ums0: 3 buttons and Z dir.
  Note that even Z dir is detected :) These messages all appear on the first console. Now about the bad things: crappy usb2 support. You need device ehci in your kernel config file, and currently, ehci is in want of a maintainer, because it is quite buggy. It doesn't bother me too much, but I think it is high time now for FreeBSD to have better USB 2 support.
4. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 15:08 · Score: 0
  
  not to mention the great support HawkinsOS has ;) And you can buy it for only 1000$ if you order 8 copies. Quick, send the money now. The first 100 customers will have a spetial offer from one of our Nigerian contacts in the former royal family!
5. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 02:30 · Score: 0
  
  ...and if you wanna hang out with some of our *2,000* customers, don't forget to check our *community* section! :-D
6. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-21 20:01 · Score: 0
  
  http://www.hawkinsos.com/community.php
  
  > This service is currently not available.
7. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by setagllib · 2004-10-21 22:27 · Score: 1
  
  Lucky - if I have EHCI in kernel, USB hubs don't work (the hubs are found but no devices beyond them).
  
  FreeBSD's hotplugging architecture is pretty backward though, especially for USB (and you can only use one keyboard at a time). You have to have a user-space daemon spawn moused for mice and kbdcontrol (not even in default usbd.conf) to set the newly inserted keyboard as the default.
  
  I don't know about OpenBSD (assuming it's more like NetBSD), but NetBSD and Linux do this all kernel-level, including transparently mixing multiple keyboard and mouse inputs, and don't need anything in user-space (assuming drivers are already in kernel or modules are loaded). This is clearly the better way to approach USB.
  
  I have not tried EHCI in NetBSD but don't see any reason for it to be broken. As per the features list: "NetBSD was the first free OS to provide USB support, and was using USB on Apple Power Macintosh machines before Apple had MacOS X even booting."
  If they can get it that Right first time, getting it Right in the next generation should come naturally.
  
  Unless somebody has evidence to the contrary :P
  
  --
  Sam ty sig.
8. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by R.Caley · 2004-10-21 23:07 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know about OpenBSD [...] but NetBSD and Linux do this all kernel-level, including transparently mixing multiple keyboard and mouse inputs, and don't need anything in user-space [...]. This is clearly the better way to approach USB.
  Why?
  Generally speaking everything which needs to be in the kernel is an indication of a kernel design failure. Ideally the kernel would be empty:-)
  
  --
  _O_ .|< The named which can be named is not the true named
9. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by R.Caley · 2004-10-22 00:21 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Bullshit you idiot.
  Such a persuasive technical argument, I am sure we are all almost as impressed by your insight as by your inability to work out how to log in.
  
  --
  _O_ .|< The named which can be named is not the true named
10. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by PinkFluid · 2004-10-24 22:15 · Score: 1
  
  Errr. I bought a USB 2.0 disk yesterday, and to my disppointment, FreeBSD doesn't support USB 2.0 very well. man ehci(the USB 2.0 controller driver) says that the driver is currently buggy and does not build by default.
11. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by SillyNickName4me · 2004-10-25 06:11 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm, it seems to build... but not work very well here.
  
  On one system it causes problems with usb hubs conencted to a 2.0 controller (on a pci card), while the same hubs work on the same machine with the same kernel but connected to the onboard 1.1 controller. My other FreeBSD machine simply crashes while detaching/reattaching for a 2.0 device during boot of the kernel.
  
  Maybe the later might be fixable by using modules for usb devices instead of having themn in the kernel tho.
12. Re:what's the status with usb 2.0 ? by FullMetalAlchemist · 2004-10-31 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  It's simple logic. Any idiot will understand this, and if they don't they just have to take a CS101.
  
  Hell, even Linus appear to understand it.
  
  Form the last paragraph, if you're too lacy to read the short article:
  The kernel is definitely maturing in the sense that a lot of the exciting really _new_ things are all in user space, and the kernel is sometimes called upon to make them easier to work with...
How? by captnitro · 2004-10-20 04:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

I have a question. I have a number of small systems of varying specifications (all x86) and I'd love to be in on stress-testing 5.x; I'd love to have been in on testing all the BETAS. But my daily operations in FreeBSD are limited to working in Gnome or XFCE under a few IDEs, compiling ports, doing some maintenance work on servers, playing games, reading Slashdot, etc., none of which I find particularly stressful to the system. If it was, I would be inclined to believe it was a port problem, not a system problem.

What is the best way to stress test FreeBSD that will put it through its paces?
1. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 12:56 · Score: 0
  
  Do a make buildworld with lots of parallel makes:
  
  make buildworld -j4
  
  or check out the /usr/ports/benchmarks directory
2. Re:How? by hugo_pt · 2004-10-23 00:10 · Score: 1
  
  renice -20 kills pretty much any OS.
Something of note by the+real+darkskye · 2004-10-20 04:58 · Score: 4, Informative

If you've been tracking 5.3-Beta and want to switch to the RCs and eventual RELEASE, don't forget to change your cvsup tag to RELENG_5_3 else you will end up with 5.3-STABLE, which isn't.

--
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
1. Re:Something of note by phoenix_rizzen · 2004-10-24 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  For those tracking the release, the RELENG_5_3 tag for cvsup is working. Right now, there's not much difference in the source trees for RELENG_5 and RELENG_5_3, and changes could still be made to the RELENG_5_3 tree, so it's not the official release bits just yet.
  
  But, you can start updating your cvsup supfiles in anticipation. :)
anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by CaptainPinko · 2004-10-20 05:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

when I first saw the schedule when it said October 17th I was betting on Halloween, but now I think it may be longer. With that many Known Issues and one marked as "errata candidate" and with that many "Needs Testing" I'm guess that either a) FreedBSD 5.3 will be released in the Beginning of December (last of the majour BSDs to release) or b) 5.3 will be called the first stable but 5.4 will really be.
Anyone have any predictions?

--
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
DragonFlyBSD by ceallaigh · 2004-10-20 09:47 · Score: 4, Informative

If you have concerns about the path being taken for FreeBSD 5.x, I highly recommend you take a look at DragonFlyBSD.
DragonFlyBSD
DragonFly is an operating system and environment designed to be the logical continuation of the FreeBSD-4.x OS series. These operating systems belong in the same class as Linux in that they are based on UNIX ideals and APIs. DragonFly is a fork in the path, so to speak, giving the BSD base an opportunity to grow in an entirely new direction from the one taken in the FreeBSD-5 series.
1. Re:DragonFlyBSD by archen · 2004-10-20 10:48 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Kernel stuff aside, does Dragonfly lean towards the 4x userland or 5x userland?
2. Re:DragonFlyBSD by Xenophon+Fenderson, · 2004-10-21 14:18 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  God, what I wouldn't give for a slashbot who didn't quote verbatim the source web site without giving proper attribution (at least use BLOCKQUOTE). And if I had a dime for every story whose description as submitted by the user included a sentance directly from the web site as if it were their own, I would be a rich man today.
  
  /rant
  
  --
  I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
3. Re:DragonFlyBSD by setagllib · 2004-10-21 23:09 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  It was forked from 4.x so large portions of userland are still 4.x's, but have had imports that bring many components up to 5.x and beyond (e.g. RCNG from NetBSD/FBSD5.x, gcc 3.4 snapshot [not default nor exclusive since some kernel/boot bits aren't compatible]).
  
  DragonFly BSD is a "too good to be true" project, I would have to say. Its developers are highly talented and very quick in their work, and the stability has been very high given the massive changes made to vital kernel facilities. Sure there have been bumps but that always happens.
  
  I have to say on the other hand, though, that DragonFly BSD's development appears to be like Linux (innovative code instead of sticking to tried-and-true [but assumed outdated] designs) but with higher quality and less contribution from randoms. It's progressing amazingly quickly and with minimal regressions, compared to FreeBSD 5.x which took years to get even near stable and has suffered enormous regressions in performance (except on SMP, the only thing it does much better than 4.x).
  
  For DragonFly to really break the FBSD 4.x mold, it'll take a lot more surprising work. The keyboard system is just silly (one keyboard at a time?), and requiring a user-land daemon to support even mice is unheard of in modern systems. These are problems persisting without any resolve in FreeBSD, and would need to be addressed in DragonFly BSD if it's to share the stage with NetBSD 2.0 and Linux (which both have much cleaner device behavior).
  
  --
  Sam ty sig.
Re:anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by molnarcs · 2004-10-20 10:34 · Score: 4, Informative

I think 5.3 will be quite STABLE. On the other, I don't think 5.3 is a real 5.x release. I know it sounds silly, but as long as the old 4BSD sheduler is the default scheduler, I consider it something like a hybrid. I know this is just one thing of the many improvements/features of the 5.x branch, but this is the one (as a desktop user) I feel mostly. Of course I use ULE, but this switch back (for the sake of PREEMPTION) gives me the feeling of incompleteness.
Hopefully, as soon as the release process is over, they will switch back to ULE in -current (officially, that is. in every dmesg/kernel config file I have seen on current, most developers run ULE). And I hope 5.4 will be the ULE release!
So, to answer your question: yes, 5.3 will be STABLE (and not only in name. the whole 5.x series is fairly stable, at least beginning with 5.1, or at least as stable as your average linux distro). I think it will be out on my birthday :))) (nov 11). But I also think that 5.x will be really ready when they have ULE back as default (ditch preemption if it needs be, ULE is so much better in every other aspect).
Re:anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by CaptainPinko · 2004-10-20 11:17 · Score: 1

looking over various 4.x release dates I'm guessing5 months till 5.4 and ULE as default.

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Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
ndiscvt by Burb · 2004-10-20 23:32 · Score: 4, Informative

The ndiscvt tools that allow you to convert your NDIS network drivers into kernel modules works really well (at least in BETA7). I'm very impressed. (My only gripe was that it had problems reading my .INF file because it was unicode; I converted to ANSI and all was well). I can now run a pretty good GNOME desktop on my Acer laptop with wireless access.

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1. Re:ndiscvt by innosent · 2004-10-21 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone tried this with the Intel Pro Wireless (Centrino) cards? I've to a T42 coming soon, would like to have it work on the Intel card, otherwise I'll have to find an Aironet on ebay. I've seen it mentioned as an example, but do the drivers really work well, or is it worth getting more compatible hardware?
  
  --
  --That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
5.x performance issue's by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 23:32 · Score: 0

Entropy harvesting in the interrupt and incoming packet paths currently involves a large number of mutex operations. In order to improve performance, it is desirable to reduce the number of mutex operations substantially. Improvements in the harvesting locking scheme have been merged to 6.x, but are considered too risky at this stage to be merged to 5.x until after 5.3.

So you'll have to wait.
Re:My take on FreeBSD 5.x design by Chreo · 2004-10-21 07:39 · Score: 1

Is Matt Dillon aware that you are copy/pasting his reply to R. Watson from current@frebsd.org?

This is getting embarrasing for you

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Life is what happened when Good Intentions met Harsh Reality (the brother of the more infamous Chaos).
Re:My take on FreeBSD 5.x design by welsh+git · 2004-10-21 12:56 · Score: 0, Redundant

Spot the difference.. He's substituted "HawkingsOS" for "DragonFly" !

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-curre nt /2004-September/036930.html

I hope these anonymous postings are not really by "Hawkings", but just some people pretending to be nutjobs...

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Sig out of date
Re:My take on FreeBSD 5.x design by welsh+git · 2004-10-21 13:01 · Score: 1

Spot the difference.. He's substituted "HawkinsOS" for "DragonFly" !

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current /2004-September/036930.html

I hope these anonymous postings are not really by "Hawkins", but just some other people pretending to be nutjobs...

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Sig out of date
HawkinsOS Cured My Halitosis!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-22 00:12 · Score: 0

Look, I too suffered from the same halitosis, foot odor, kronik badd speehlin, and social ineptitude as T.J. Hawkins.....then I read THIS!!! It changed my life, and for only $132/year it can change yours, too! How, you ask? None of your business, asshole, 'cause that's proprietary - just like all of the Really Big & Important Software projects. Read on.....

Look, I've been doing consulting work for nearly 15 years. About the site, I had to put up an old copy because after that thread several FreeBSD members broke into my network and nearly deleted everything. I'm 75% sure that it's the work of Dag-Erling and his friends, as most of the packets and exploit attempts (until they succeded) were coming from Norway and Denmark.

I've sold 2,000 copies and made money off *my* work. How many copies has the FreeBSD foundation sold? Oh, that's what I thought, becuase 5.3 is not usable in a production environment, not without my patches. And guess what, they won't be getting my patches unless I see public apology from DES and PHK.

Support my [hawkinsos.com] operating system!
Re:How? (oops) by hugo_pt · 2004-10-23 00:13 · Score: 2, Funny

renice -20 *setiathome pid* will kill pretty much any OS
Beta7's been working great. by Moloch666 · 2004-10-24 11:14 · Score: 1

I have had almost no problems. My system is almost always under load. Except randomly when compiling I get "cc:segfaults". I can restart the make process and it will skip on through. Some times it will segfault elsewhere depends on how long the compile is. Then sometimes it will go through a long compile without incident. Doing a "make -jX" doesn't seem to make a difference. My cflags are basic "-O2 -pipe" with the processor type set at "p2". I don't think it's hardware no other applications segfault or any strange problems. I'm upding to RC1 now, maybe that will stop it, but I've been hoping that for the past few Beta releases. Just curious if I'm the only one.

--
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
1. Re:Beta7's been working great. by molnarcs · 2004-10-25 06:16 · Score: 1
  
  I had the exact same problems (segfaults only during compiles at random points) until I realized it was my crappy sdram. I have an AthlonXP 2400+ and my mb can accept either sd or ddr rams. Wheny I had 256Mb sdram, I had to change the FSB of my processor and ram from 133 to 100 (proc was recognized as XP 1800+) in order to have everything build properly. Later, when I upgraded to 512DDR, all my problems went away.
2. Re:Beta7's been working great. by Moloch666 · 2004-10-25 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  Hey cool, thanks. Well I'm not too excited about running memtest on it. It's got 3 ram slots. With a 256, 128, 64. Found another 64, I just swaped them... maybe that will be the bad one. I can always hope.
  
  --
  Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Re:anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by molnarcs · 2004-10-26 10:40 · Score: 2, Informative

Sad news:
R.I.P. ULE. For now at least.
Re:anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by molnarcs · 2004-11-04 19:26 · Score: 1

pssst! it's out :))))
Updating collection src-all/cvs Edit src/UPDATING Add delta 1.342.2.13.2.2 2004.11.04.18.52.55 scottl Add delta 1.342.2.13.2.3 2004.11.04.19.12.41 scottl Edit src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree Add delta 1.82.4.2 2004.11.04.19.11.55 scottl Edit src/sys/conf/newvers.sh Add delta 1.62.2.15.2.5 2004.11.04.18.51.30 scottl