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."

Comments

5.4 Dedication

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.html

Boring

[debilo]

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!

Re:Boring

[Brandybuck]

Is there a way we can turn off reviews coming from OSNews in our preferences? Please?

I'm getting sick and tired of reviews that in no way reflect the experiences I have with the very same product. This guy has weird bleeding edge hardware, and then tells us it's not ready for me with my mainstream hardware. FreeBSD WORKS on with my CPU. FreeBSD WORKS with my NIC. FreeBSD WORKS with my harddrives.

I don't expect operating systems to be perfect and support every piece of hardware ever built, but I do expect reviewers to base their evaluations on hardware that ordinary people out in the real world are using.

Re:DragonFlyBSD

[random_culchie]

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!

5.4 amd64 is seriously broken thread-wise

[asserted]

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.

Re:About time

[Elf-friend]

That might be funny, but only if it were true: amd64 support isn't new in 5.4.

FreeBSD 5.4 64bit Support for Linux 32 Binaries

[LogicX]

I find the following comments from the article to be not accurate: I was disappointed to find that Linux binary compatibility was still 64-bit only for 64-bit FreeBSD. That means no 32-bit Linux binaries.
Here's what you need to do:

1. reference /usr/src/tools/lib32 which will tell you to:
   
   1. add "WITH_LIB32= yes #This makes buildworld compile lib32 linux code support" to /etc/make.conf
      
   2. buildworld/installworkd in /usr/src
      
2. be sure the following options are in your kernel config:
   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.
   
3. Recompile kernel, install kernel, reboot.
4. Certain programs may require you add:
   linprocfs /usr/compat/linux/proc linprocfs rw 0 0
   to /etc/fstab