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FreeBSD 5.4 Review
gammelgul writes "Jem Matzan has written a review of the new FreeBSD 5.4 release on NewsForge. He writes about enhancements and the 64bit edition of the OS."
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The FreeBSD 5.4 Release is dedicated to the memory of Cameron Grant. Cameron was an active FreeBSD Developer and principal architect of the sound driver subsystem despite his physical handicap. His is a superb example of human spirit dominating over adversity. Cameron was an inspiration to those who met him; he will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.
l
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.htm
This is a rather shallow review and has been discussed over at OSNews. Just read the comments and you'll finde you don't need to read the actual review.
Someone mentioned a better review here. Enjoy!
It certainly is 0.1 more than FreeBSD 5.3
Parent, Dragonfly is pretty unusable in its current state.
Most of the entries in ports are broken and the team even insist it is only for development use.
If it can sustain its initial growth it could be a BSD contender in some time. But not just yet!
Here is the formula for the review of incemental updates to Unix-alike OSes.
1) Describe the OS, being sure to mention its Unix origins. If the OS is not Linux-based, mention Linux.
2) Comment on the weird piece of hardware by brand name in your box that made it crash
3) List the new and improved features in the kernel and the daemons. (Note: security patches are feautures too)
4) Base everything else on how easy it was to install.
Why not fork?
I'm quite satisfied with FreeBSD 5 (running 5.4R right now on two machines), I find it fast and stable, but I've heard many complaints from others. If you find FreeBSD 5 disappointing, you may want to wait for FreeBSD 6, which was code-frozen a few days ago and should be out by August. I am looking forward to it, especially to WPA support.
You know you're trailing when even windows has a port to a new architecture before you do.
I am trolling
..what about the rest of the Holograms?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
the box couldn't run Apache 2.0 (worker MPM) compiled with libpthread for a single day without a panic!
at some point apache child starts boimbarding kernel with syscalls (500k syscalls/second), soon, if left unattended, the box panics.
had to get back to i386 for stability.
this is all on common hardware - Intel (EM64T) Xeons, Pro/1000 (em) network. and mind you, we still use SCHED_4BSD.
conclusion? 5.x is by NO means -STABLE on amd64 yet.
Well, I wouldn't normally respond to this but there is one bit of truth here. I have witnessesed the 5.* series corrupt its own file system several times. Usually it tends to fail to write correctly to the master.passwd file thus corrupting it. But I have also seen times where the binaries have been corrupted as well.
That being said, FreeBSD is not all bad. The 4.* series clearly is a top notch OS. I have seen the 4.* take slashdot-type spikes of traffic as a server and not blink an eye when similiar linux based OS have crumbled.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Uhh, code frozen, or feature frozen?
One employee lost a whole project due to the OS corrupting the filesystem. ... A few days later I was looking for another job
So you were fired because you hadn't been making backups, right?
This is sad. I too remember fondly the 4.x days. FreeBSD hasn't made the transition to these "enterprise" features like the ULE scheduler, and getting out from under the "big lock" SMP.
The 4.x series is still alive and well, but the writing is on the wall. If the FreeBSD 5.x series doesn't start fixing some of those show-stoppers, it risks becoming irrelevant.
NetBSD and OpenBSD seem to have found their niche to a certain extent. I suspect that some network equipment vendor like HP will start putting OpenBSD in switches and routers. It seems like Cisco and IOS have the most to lose from OpenBSD gaining ground.
NetBSD seems to chug away at its own pace making solid incremental gains. They tend toward evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes. When they do make more revolutionary changes, they tend to include them in small numbers, and only after a long period of vetting in the current branch.
The laundry list of improvements to FreeBSD 5.x makes me wonder if that project didn't bite off more than it could chew. That the BSD faithful are starting to raise questions about the long road to stability with FreeBSD 5.x should be a warning to other Open Source projects to stick to regular release cycles with clearly defined and narrowly scoped improvements.
I suspect that FreeBSD development may have slowed somewhat due to the "fun factor" waning. Announcing Big Gigantic Changes can be good to generate enthusiasm in a user base, but it can be oppressive to the poor developers caught doing the work. Lots of small, discrete tasks can be fun for experienced developers, and a good way to snag novices.
Despite these problems, FreeBSD has very recently been a very vibrant project. They have traditionally had a level of coordination rarely seen in any other Open Source project. I think this can work, but FreeBSD 5.x may fall into the "lessons learned" category.
Or, as I mention in my blog, Darwin may see a surge in popularity following Apple's Intel announcement.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Real advice here: don't be a ding-dong and use a test-grade OS for a production-grade job. FreeBSD 4.x is production grade, and it has served me well for YEARS of uptime, no matter the tinkering I do to it.
Hope they fix the installer, though. I just installed FreeBSD 5.4 today for testing, and the installer would not recreate filesystems if there was an existing partition of same size before. Real annoying as the installation will bork due to filesystem filled up. Just deleting and then recreate the old partitons (from an earlier 5.2.1 installation) was not enough. I actually had to give / a different size than earlier to make the installation work.
Here's what you need to do:
options COMPAT_43 # Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!]
options COMPAT_IA32 # Compatible with i386 binaries
options COMPAT_FREEBSD4 # Compatible with FreeBSD4
options COMPAT_LINUX32 # Compatible with i386 linux binaries
# Linux 32-bit ABI support
options LINPROCFS # Cannot be a module yet.
linprocfs
to
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
Hmm, you don't mention what version of FreeBSD you're talking about, so it may have been a beta. You don't mention what filesystem, so could have been extfs2 support for all we know (which is specifically mentioned as unstable). Some developer lost an unknown amount of time because his project was on a local disk with no backup, and not in a central source control. (You mention FreeBSD on client machines only, so I don't believe you corrupted your central CVS repository).
As others have mentioned, you should have been fired for not having backups or source control for the projects that you run.
Or this is just a troll.
Although ULE may be 'more' fixed in FreeBSD 5.4, I still find it to be very unstable. I'm unable to have a system booted for more than a few minutes before it kernel panics. (I'm also ironically unable to recompile a GENERIC kernel all the way through).
I was very excited to try the ULE Scheduler for FreeBSD after having read the excellent article: ULE: A Modern Scheduler for FreeBSD.
I eagerly await the next version of FreeBSD, in hopes that ULE is mature enough to take advantage of the performances increases of this more modern Scheduler.
This may however prove to be a moot point in light of the recent P4 HTT insecurities that have been revealed.
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
Does anyone who actually has a service provider/network engineering job even care about these fbsd is dead/dying lines of thought anymore? FreeBSD has been quietly running a good chunk of the net for years. If your idea of a solid OS is something to run whatever the latest eye-candy is on your desktop then good for you, go compile Gentoo until you turn blue. For me, and a lot of folks like me, if I can run a web server that never fails, a DNS farm that never fails, mail servers that never fail, etc, etc then I could care less if my iPod doesn't automount or whatever other new technology isn't supported.
Is that really the best troll you could come up with? I mean it was completely obvious, the jokes weren't even funny, some of them didn't even make sense.
Maybe you should start working on your GED and give up the Slashdot posting for a while, it's obviously not your strong point.
This is very weird. Submit a PR.
Check out ULE in -current. Significant changes have been made very recently, greatly improving system responsiveness. -current in general is quite snappy -- much faster for me than 5.x.
I am very happy with 5.4, which I have running on 4 of my machines, which are all single processor pentium 4 or single processor xeon.
I am very unhappy with 5.4 on SMP systems...
I upgraded two xeon SMP systems to 5.4 a few days ago.
The 1st machine was a web server running FreeBSD 5.3. The 2nd machine was a database server running FreeBSD 4.11. The web server queries the database server over a gigabit cross-over link.
These machines handle a daily average of about 15k unique visitors, with the web server transferring anywhere from 15GB - 20GB of data per day.
I've had nothing but problems with the database server (running MySQL 4.0.24) running FreeBSD 5.x.
I've tried everything. MySQL with and without LinuxThreads, the 4BSD and ULE schedulers, kernel and network tuning (mbufs, max connections, etc.). but nothing made that box stable.
No matter what I did, scripts on the web server would, almost randomly, time out trying to connect to the database server.
I wound up reverting the database server back to FreeBSD 4.11 / MySQL 4.0.24 w/ LinuxThreads to make things stable again.
I'm really hoping that when 6.x stabilizes, all these SMP related issues have cleared up. Eventually FreeBSD 4.x will stop being maintained and if I still can't run MySQL reliably on a FreeBSD 5.x or 6.x system, I'll have to start using Linux for my MySQL database servers. =/
And before anyone mentions it, I'd _LOVE_ to migrate from MySQL to PostgreSQL, but these are a client's servers I maintain, and they don't want to ditch MySQL unless it's necessary.
Common sense is not so common.
Everyone pleae stop reading reviews done by this guy. They're uninformative, biased, and it's blatently obvious he's unwilling to actually learn FreeBSD beyond installing it two or three times each new release and writing a review catering to the already pre-established opinions of Linux users.
scott
The dfports system is not recommended any more, because it is very painful to add specific DragonFlyBSD tweaks.
DragonFlyBSD efforts are now focusing on pkgsrc. So, please use pkgsrc instead of FreeBSD ports.
Most ports are properly working. And the whole system is definitely ready for production (and documented as such) as long as you stick with the stable branch (even PREVIEW is usually rock solid).
The HEAD branch is a fast moving target, especially these days since huge work on the core infrastructure is being made. And of course, *this* branch is only for developpers, just like the current branch of any operating system.
{{.sig}}
The ones people pay for are running 4.11, the ones I'm using are running 5.4 and I've had no complaints, but my personal stuff doesn't get driven all that hard.
My biggest gripe was not being able to use 4.x ipf setup on 5.x
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
The author has managed to prove that FreeBSD is not suitable for beginning desktop users who have no interest in reading the documentation. I wasn't aware that they were a target market.
Me (Blog)
This is not a troll, I'm not an Unix guru and I just wonder.
NetBSD is about portability. Okay.
OpenBSD is about security. Okay.
What is FreeBSD about?
It looks like FreeBSD just tries to follow Linux, ie. make something that tries to do a bit everything without any focus.
So what is the point in running FreeBSD over Linux?
The software is the same. Running Gnome, KDE, Firefox or Emacs on FreeBSD or on Linux doesn't change anything, it's the same source code.
The common userland apps are the same. There are minor differences like "cp -a" that doesn't work on FreeBSD, but it doesn't really make any difference, the same things can be done the same way.
So what? Stability? Well... my vanilla Ubuntu workstation never crashed so far. Gnome sometimes did odd things, but it's Gnome, the same odd things would happen on any operating system, running it on FreeBSD won't magically fix these bugs. So what would it change to run a FreeBSD kernel instead of a Linux kernel? Looking at the FreeBSD mailing-lists, I see people who are experiencing kernel panics, hangs, corruption and other badness. Just like on Linux mailing-lists, or just like on any operating system mailing-list in fact.
Security? Looking at bugtraq, when a vulnerability is found in Unix software, it usually affects every operating system, FreeBSD is never an exception. Linux has some things to mitigate exploitation of these vulnerabilities like SELinux and grsecurity. I don't see anything similar in FreeBSD. Even the stack is still executable, while it is no more the case for all other operating systems (at least Linux+grsec, NetBSD, OpenBSD and even Windows). Linux has kernel vulnerabilities that allow root compromises. FreeBSD has the same weakness. Looking at bugtraq archives from 2003 to 2005, there have been even more kernel vulnerabilities (at least disclosed ones, and posted on bugtraq) in FreeBSD that in any other operating system and some were even remotely exploitable through the tcp/ip stack.
Another thing is that FreeBSD has almost no commercial support. Hardware vendors (like storage arrays) and closed-source software vendors usually support a few Linux distributions like RHES and Novell, but not much. And definitely not BSD. Well, sometimes, but it's rare compared to Linux.
So what? Performance? Everytime I've seen a FreeBSD vs Linux benchmark, Linux 2.6 was faster. Sometimes not a lot, but never slower. Except a special case of routing packets using a specific framework. But not in common cases like running Apache/MySQL/PHP or on a workstation.
Features? Once and again there is probably no real difference in running KDE, PHP, etc. on FreeBSD, on Linux or on something else. Maybe you will even get less features while running on something else than Linux, because most developpers are working on Linux and they are sometimes using specific Linux features. Also while talking about PHP. I tried PHP on Linux and on FreeBSD. Of course there was no change in the language, the same functions were available. Except that on FreeBSD, locale support didn't seem to work. My locale was set to fr_CA but the dates were always in english format which was very frustrating. On Linux the same code producted the right output. So I guess FreeBSD libc is not as complete as Linux glibc yet.
Some people say that FreeBSD is cool because there is a single "distribution" unlike Linux. I don't see the point. We could just see FreeBSD like a Linux distribution. Software packaged for Mandriva runs and installs well on Mandriva. Software packaged for Novell runs and installs well on Novell. Software packaged for FreeBSD runs and installs well on FreeBSD.
Of course there are specific things. Like Geom, Netgraph or PF. Linux has tools to do exactly the same things, but they work in a very different way, so you might prefer this OS or that OS because of those. But they are specific cases. What is needed 99.99% of the time is to run Apache/MySQL/PHP/Postfix (for servers) or KDE/Gnome/Firefox/OpenOffice.org/Mplayer (for workstations).
And I really fail to see why running these apps on FreeBSD instead of Linux would change anything.
So what is the point of FreeBSD? Except duplicating efforts made by people working on Linux?
Wow, this might be the time to say it is. I'm sure if you presented this to your clients, and then followed it up with the benefits of PostgreSQL (and how you don't need any funky compiling of linux threads to use it on FreeBSD), they would change. Honestly, if they still won't, they don't deserve to be your clients.
PostgreSQL is used by lots of people and has many a good thing going for it. They shouldn't hang onto a DB just because it's a buzzword.
It looks like FreeBSD just tries to follow Linux
Actually Linux followed FreeBSD. While older, FreeBSD is also free'er (as in speech). That is its fundamental difference. Which is better entirely depends on what you want to do.
gee. I thought there was only one Linux too ? DEBIAN.......................
OMG, dense. Please get hit with clue stick.
... and it should all be done with minimul downtime, because their 15k visitors/day don't care what database the data is stored it, they just want the sht to work.
It's not because MySQL is a buzzword. It's because MySQL works, that's what their data is currently sitting in, and their web site it programmed to talk to MySQL.
Switching to PostgreSQL, or any other database, entails a lot of work. Reprogramming anything database specific, and moving about 20GB from MySQL to PostgreSQL without losing *any* data.
Common sense is not so common.
take slashdot-type spikes of traffic as a server and not blink an eye when similiar linux based OS have crumbled
I'm sorry, there is not one bit of truth here. You sound like a frothing zealot. FreeBSD really can't do all that, so you are just hurting BSD adoption by spouting such nonsense.
netcraft confirms... bsd is alive!
Get your torrents...
Anyway, here are my humble reasons for choosing FreeBSD over any Linux distro.
The main one is definitely the wonderful ports system. The only thing that comes close to it in the Linux world is Gentoo portage: I didn't try it, but those who did didn't find it as good.
The following four links (the Handbook and three excellent tutorials) contain everything one needs to understand and use FreeBSD ports
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/ports.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/07/FreeBSD _Basics.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/28/FreeBSD _Basics.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/09/18/FreeBSD _Basics.html
Another not-so-secondary reason is security.
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
And to me, a very important reason is also the license. I have a very strong preference for the academic licenses (BSD, MIT) towards the copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL).
And it looks like I'm not the only one
Eric Raymond advocates BSD license over GPL (June 2005)
"Freedom and choice are pretty cool. But we should talk about many other things. GPL is based on the belief that open source software is weak and needs to be protected. With it, we continue injuring ourselves, cutting ourselves from the economic benefits of BSD license".
Btw, it seems that *somebody* is sharing my preference, since FreeBSD is used on web servers much more than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites, against 1.6 million of Red Hat). And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
/. BSD section, in the latest 20+ news items, only 2 (two) are about FreeBSD (the 5.4 release, and this piece of crap), notwithstanding its huge user base.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedor a_makes_rapid_progress.html
I know, facts like this one are little known on Slashdot - for a reason, I'm afraid. The same reason why lousy "reviews" like this one get produced by NewsForge and posted on Slashdot (they belong to the same company), and the same reason why in the
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.
Btw this is an observation, it's not a complaint. FreeBSD has already shown that it can thrive even without the hype.
--
Requiem for the FUD
I know, facts like this one are little known on Slashdot - for a reason, I'm afraid. The same reason why lousy "reviews" like this one get produced by NewsForge and posted on Slashdot (they belong to the same company), and the same reason why in the /. BSD section, in the latest 20+ news items, only 2 (two) are about FreeBSD (the 5.4 release, and this piece of crap), notwithstanding its huge user base.
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.
Nobody is "obscuring" FreeBSD. There isn't any news about it because nobody gives a damn. FreeBSD, for all intents and purposes, is DEAD.
Hello,
I have been a FreeBSD server operating system user for a very long time. Over the period of my usage of FreeBSD I had been very happy with it. Then after 5.0 it has gone down hill. I have to agree with some of the points that people note in the article. The main one. It does appear as though they are trying to optimise the code that doesnt work rather than make it work. For example why are they working on 6.x already when there are so many problems in the 5.x one? are they just trying to move past a dead weight?
Realistically they should have focused on getting 5.x to what FreeBSD uses have traditionally loved, a reliable fast, fully featured OS. I have moved many of my servers that require high performance systems to NetBSD and said goodbye to some of the problems. Of course NetBSD is not perfect but it handles what we need better than the previous installs of 5.x that we had. At the time we looked into going back to 4.x and Dragonfly but with tests on our hardware with 4.x failing it was a simple choice to go with NetBSD.
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.
You delusional FreeBSD zealots are amazing. Simply amazing. Your powers of deduction would make Sherlock Holmes turn in his grave if he was a factual person, and was dead.
Allow me to present you with an alternative possible explanation, with which you might expand your small mind:
FreeBSD is obscure because it is not a strong Linux contender.
Oh, it can handle high loads, and Linux 2.0 or something might have crashed :)
But admittedly recent (>2.4) has been no worse than FreeBSD in scalability, and 2.6 has often proven to be much better. There are some issues on both sides, but Linux seems to be doing a much better job now - large development team, simpler models for things, numerous corporations doing testing and reviews... hard to imagine any problem staying in for too long.
And yet, eth1394 is still a heap of shit. Somebody fix that. Please.
Sam ty sig.
And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
Netcraft confirms it- BSD is..... d'Oh!!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I think you should get your GED. "a while" should be "awhile" and you need a period or a conjunction in there as you've got a series of run-on sentences.
Someone you trust is one of us.
>Allow me to present you with an alternative possible explanation, with which you might expand your small mind:
>FreeBSD is obscure because it is not a strong Linux contender.
Allow me to refute your alternative possible explanation with *facts*.
So, you can wave bye bye to your alternative possible explanation.
But wait.. that's weird. The facts I reported, they were already written in the post you replied to.
OMG. What does that mean?
Maybe.. does it mean that, besides an Anonymous Coward, you're also a Clueless Idiot?..
Just wondering, of course. (..Oh, who am I kidding.)
--
Requiem for the FUD
Allow me to refute your alternative possible explanation with *facts*. :)
[snip netcraft]
Ha ha. Very funny. You know, it has been nearly a decade since you needed a really good OS to serve websites, right?
No, if you want to be a Linux contender, you have to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, etc.
I don't see the word FreeBSD anywhere, do you? Did you think maybe SGI is "obscuring" FreeBSD because it runs on their 512 CPU SSI Servers so much better than Linux? Or the alternative explanation is that FreeBSD (even the current 6 branch) barely scales to 4 CPUs.
Oh, and don't get me started on clueless idiots.
I wrote:l y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html r a_makes_rapid_progress.html
:'(
FreeBSD is used on web servers much more than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites, against 1.6 million of Red Hat). And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/near
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedo
CI replied:
Ha ha. Very funny. You know, it has been nearly a decade since you needed a really good OS to serve websites, right?
??
Even a kid from his parents' basement can "serve websites". Of course, Yahoo's requirements are *a bit* different..
Quoting from the Netcraft link:
"FreeBSD has been synonymous with large scale shared hosting since the genesis of the web, and continues a symbiotic relationship with the largest hosting companies today."
To sum it up, yes, they pretty much "need a really good OS". Quite obviously..
The only thing that makes me sad is that the cluelessness of that statement brings an end to the flamefest.
Goodbye, CI! It was wonderful while it lasted..
--
Requiem for the FUD
Err, yeah and google uses Linux, and there are plenty of high traffic sites using windows NT, what's the point?
In other words, you don't need anything special in an operating system to serve web traffic these days. That FreeBSD / Yahoo thing was something they used to wheel out 7 or 8 years ago, but it nothing but amusing if you try it now (especially because their backend databases run/ran Solaris). So HA HA HA, you really are a comedian!
If your operating system can't do it, then that's something to be embarrassed about - but there is nothing to boast about if it can.
Wow, I managed to shut up a BSD zealot. That's twice in as many years! That must be a record!