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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."
I thought BSD was dead.
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
Until then, I'll stick to OS X.
...does it run Linux?
What are the cluster options for BSD? Do they have quickstart options like OSCAR?
seg fault
What's the point of an empty list of last minute changes? Anyway, could someone who knows please tell me if FreeBSD is still as stable as it was under the 4.x cycle? I've been thinking about running this on a server or two.
I use Gentoo at home, but I like to play around with other distros. Any notable reasons to try FreeBSD?
Yeah, but does it run solitaire?
I don't see it listed in the release notes, but does it finally support SATA NCQ?
today is spelling optional day.
According to whom?
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I'm still running 4.8. :-P
Now I'm gonna have to download and burn yet another version I won't get around to updating to. =)
Oh well, it aint broken, I'll update it some day.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
FreeBSD has always been great with RAID in my experience. I frequently load it up on servers and don't need additional drivers for my RAID cards (which is more then I can say for W2K3 on the same boxes). Since switching to FreeBSD on my desktop I haven't swapped OS's out (something I tend to do at least once every couple of months). It's been roughly a year now, so I think it's safe to call it "home." If you're into linux and want to try a BSD, now's the time. At least now that VMWare Server Beta is free you can install an instance of this and dust the file with no harm if you don't like it. Although a lot of my linux peeps are quick to criticize, not one of them has complained after actually trying BSD of some sort, and while they're not all converts they grow to understand why someone would choose BSD over linux. Yes there are differences, and no you probably won't notice them in a desktop environment.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
To see if you like it. Ports, the system's layout, etc. Won't know until you try for yourself.
What is very much alive is the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project. Get the best of both worlds baby.
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.
Yes! Its about time, been waiting for ages for this one. Signed,
Doctor Octavius
If you wanna try BSD, try PC-BSD. It's based on FreeBSD 6.0. It has an easy installation and gives you a GUI (KDE). It's easier to explore BSD when you have an interface you are familiar with then a blinking cursor which only says "Command not found"
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Well if you use Gentoo already then you're a prime candidate for using BSD, because like BSD, Gentoo is following BSD down the path to oblivion.
Oblivion, you say? Your opinion comes from a trustworthy source, I'm sure....
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
No, I wasn't being rude to you either.
The Jackass Project http://jackass.homelinux.org/ on Gentoo fixes a lot of the ebuild and portage problems.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
... cares?
## 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
As an OS X user I wonder if the new SATA options etc are coming from Apple or there were Apple coders involved in creating new code.
FreeBSD may be an excellent operating system, but it's lack of a good journaling file system is a major barrier to adoption. I don't think they can claim to be an excellent choice for SATA RAID arrays until this is addressed.
Although UFS2's background FSCK is a welcome improvement, it's not a solution.
It's good to see that there are projects to bring XFS and JFS support into FreeBSD, I suspect it will be a long time before they're production ready and you'll be able to boot FreeBSD on them.
I will concede that FreeBSD, in terms of implementing the latest bells and whistles, is behind Linux. Often, it's far behind linux. However, the strength of FreeBSD (and most of the BSDs) is not in how many of the latest features get crammed into the next release, it's the stability and correctness of how the operating system works. Furthermore, the FreeBSD developers and maintainers have worked very hard to create a sane way of getting things done. I love the fact that any operator-installed packages are never going to clash with the base system install. /usr/local/* is the appropriate place for non-base-system stuff to go, no matter what. I love the fact that threads are truly lightweight processes. I love the fact that the kernel, boot process, and base system install are all, together, what makes FreeBSD. You get no such guarantees from Linux. As so many people around here are in the habit of pointing out, Linux is just a kernel. Keeping the kernel tied with the appropriate binaries and scripts is what helps keep FreeBSD stable.
I wanted to migrate from Windows on my desktop to Linux, and I found linux, especially with the built-in package management features of a few distros, to be almost impossible to administer and still remain current. It took me days, DAYS, to get a linux distro up-and-running to be sufficiently ready to use as a desktop. It took me < 2 hours for FreeBSD. FreeBSD has remained stable, secure, and easy-to-use ever since. Heck, I can even run software built for Linux on my FreeBSD system through its robust Linux compatibility layer. Look at Netcraft's longest-uptime charts, and see how many of the top entries are BSD systems. You say FreeBSD is dying -- I say FreeBSD is growing.
Now, go on, eat up. The above is 100% Purina Troll Chow. Keep on trolling if you're still hungry.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I use FreeBSD 4.11 on my laptop, and I really wish I could run 6.1. My problem is this, I had to unplug the touchpad on my laptop b/c it is broken, once i unplug it..6.0 can't boot, so install never takes place. For some odd reason 4.11 is'nt effected by this. Once i replace my touchpad or find a work around, I will surely give BSD 6.1 a try. :)
(BTW if i plug it in, nothing can be installed at all, not even 4.11)
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD.]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals.
I was out on Freebsd.org last night looking at documentation and noticed that 6.1 was listed as the current release. I grabbed it and installed right away (probably not the best idea) but it works great so far. Very stable and all my hardware is detected and working perfectly.
If you haven't tried it, get an old box and give it a shot. More experience with Unix never hurt anyone!
Obviously you need journalling filesystems to use an OS right? Its not like softupdates are a superior solution to the same problem or anything.
Actually, this used to be an issue with the DRAC on Dell servers, which is essentially a USB keyboard.
Besure to check out http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/makeworld.html on how to rebuild world. No need to reinstall when you can rebuild the OS yourself.
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
Sure, if you can afford a top of the line raid card. For the rest of us, I upgraded to 6.1-RC2 last week, and it has somewhat improved SATA performance, but I still get write errors on my SI3112 card, whereas in 5.4 I had none. Hard drives being one of the central parts of a PC, you'd have thought FreeBSD would have embraced SATA controllers, instead it appears to be taking them years to catch up.
FreeBSD 6.1 is slashdotted
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
How'd this slip by me?
:(
The buglist no longer mentions the sysinstall/ide bug i've experienced since 5.1, perhaps it's fixed.
No more INVALID REALLOC OF SIZE 0: PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT in the middle of downloading base.
Haven't looked at the glib-20 thing yet tho.
Congrats for the Freebsd Team!
do() || do_not();