FreeBSD 6.1 Released

nbritton writes "FreeBSD 6.1 has been released! This release is the next step in the development of the 6.X branch, delivering several performance improvements, many bugfixes, and a few new features. Of note are the major improvements to the filesystem and SATA code, possibly making FreeBSD the number one choice for SATA RAID implementations. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes, errata list, Bittorrent Downloads, Mirrors, Hardware Notes, and Installation Guide."

Comments

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this was probably intended as a trollish comment, yes, it does run Linux.

Re:Errata list?

[archen]

6.0 has been very stable for me, and I now run it in production. To tell you the truth I never had much luck with 4x and it was usually a bitch for me to get running for some reason. I really liked the way 5.x did a lot of things but of course there were the stability issues.

6x is a good branch (so far so good anyway) and MUCH better than 5. Performance is okay, not as good as Linux in some scenarios but not bad either. On my Sokris 4801 (233Mhz pentium class) it seems rather slow, but Freebsd 4x on my 133Mhz Pentium seems to be about the same - so I'd say not a big difference. If you need the most out of older hardware that is already running 4x I'd probably stick with it.

Hopefully I'll be able to figure this new bridging scheme out and be able to better evaluate performance.

Debian FreeBSD port

[Douglas Simmons]

What is very much alive is the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project. Get the best of both worlds baby.

FreeBSD 6 + pf

[afternoon_nap]

I use FreeBSD 6 because of the overload table option available when using pf:
## for SSHD from other hosts
pass in log on $ext_if inet proto tcp from any to $ext_if:network \
              port 22 flags S/SA keep state \
              (max 5, source-track rule, max-src-nodes 5, \
                max-src-states 10, tcp.established 60, tcp.closing 5, \
                max-src-conn-rate 3/30, overload flush global) \
              label "SSHD_IN_$if"

If some sshd scanner hits my host more than three times in 30 seconds his packets go to an overload table and his states flushed. Any address or net listed in the badhosts table is blocked outright. It works as advertised and I couldn't be happier.

pf+altq really does give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Re:BSD and clusters

[agent dero]

I'm not sure how this got modded up, just a quick Google search reveals that FreeBSd clustering is very doable.

Check out LAM/MPI or see pages by people who've done it

Something similar with iptables

[Rescate]

## throttles SSH connnection requests to 3/minute from same IP
## $RED_DEV is Internet-connected interface, CUSTOMFORWARD is the chain being processed

iptables -A CUSTOMFORWARD -i $RED_DEV -p tcp --destination-port 22 \
         -m state --state NEW -m recent --set

iptables -A CUSTOMFORWARD -i $RED_DEV -p tcp --destination-port 22 \
         -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 -j DROP

Re:Journaling Filesystem

[BasharTeg]

This is a troll. "Background FSCK" isn't BSD's answer to journaling. Soft updates is Dr. McKusick's implementation to maintain filesystem integrity in the event of a system failure. BSD doesn't need journaling, it has soft udpates. You need to read:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceed ings/usenix2000/general/seltzer.html

http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/

Re:Journaling Filesystem

[nbritton]

FreeBSD has journaling ufs2 in the works:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current /2005-December/059079.html

Scott Long also touches on the subject in a interview he did for the bsdtalk podcast show:
http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2006/02/bsdtalk017-int erview-with-freebsd.html

Re:Any reason to switch?

[The OPTiCIAN]

Interesting. I switched *to* freebsd a couple of weekends ago - 6.1RC1 and was stunned when it picked up my raid controller in the installation process. It's a piece of shit promise controller that the manufacturers claimed supported linux when I bought it but of course only supported 2.4 for people running long-obsolete versions redhat or suse. Yet freebsd just picked it up and everything has worked as expected. I can remove a disk and it complains, put it back and it syncs (RAID1).

I had some troubles getting X working properly as well but did in the end. It's a bit stupid the hoops you have to jump through to set up X in 2006 but there ya go. I did a quick writeup here: http://stable.cowoh.org/2006/05/05/linux-users-adj usting-to-in-freebsd-or-solaris/ If you think of any more commands I should mention in my list let me know.