Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors
AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."
The release announcement will not be available for a couple of hours. Slashdot jumped the gun as usual.
Torrents are available.
A script for upgrading FreeBSD 6.1 systems is available.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I would argue that FreeBSD does, in fact, not run on x86 compatible CPUs in general, but rather i386 compatible CPUs. If I'm not vastly misled, x86 means 8086 and forward (16 bit, real mode, no MMU), while i386 basically means IA32.
Wasn't development supposed to be delayed or stalled because of license issues?
cvsup is a great thing.
But does it run on the iPhone or the Apple TV?
When it comes to these things. I guess that and Slashdot are opposites; distrowatch.com doesn't give a damn for BSD, and Slashdot doesn't give a damn for anything that anybody puts together and calls a distro. FreeBSD is actually a good OS. Mac users use it, Solaris is based around it, and most of Linux is a cheap ripoff of it. (But I still use Linux) So it's good that somebody cares for the forgotten OS. I'd call this a weak excused for a full story, but it's good that somebody cares at all.
Seems like there was some sort of a race to see who could post the most FUD the fastest. Almost like the /. story was placed to achieve just that.
Well my computer is working awefully well for one running on an OS that is dying. And I haven't even CVSUPd from the prerelease to the release yet.
I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for this release.
So last night I downloaded 6.1 and installed it.
Voila! 6.2 out today.
Wanna see it rain? I'm going to go wash my car.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
distrowatch covers *BSD developments all the time, including betas and testing-release candidates.
I run FreeBSD 4.11 on a number of machines, many of which I have no physical access to. Those who keep up with such things will know that 4.11 will be EOL'd for security purposes as of the end of this month (i.e. the RELENG_4_11 branch will no longer have guaranteed security updates). Does anyone have any experience with a remote, networked upgrade from 4.11 to 6.x? I dread that this is going to become necessary sooner rather than later, and I'm curious if anyone can give any pointers on the migration, or if it's even possible without physical access and burned media.
Thanks in advance..!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Linux is still at 2.6. What timezone are you in?
I just finished my embedded system based on 6.1. ding. ding. Serenity now!
Considering the announcement in the topic...
"I'm not dead yet!"
"I'm getting better!"
"I don't want to go on the cart!"
Luckily, FreeBSD has an excellent system for updating the operating system by source code. This guide teaches you how to update to the latest stable release of FreeBSD via source code. It's really nice and works well. Just remember to use FreeBSD-STABLE instead of FreeBSD-CURRENT, unless you are a FreeBSD developer or are interested in the absolute latest development version of FreeBSD, working or not.
FreeBSD 6.2 has now been announced.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
From: Ken Smith
....
l -- not yet working as I write this!
Date: Jan 15, 2007 12:29 AM
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 6.2 Released
To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org
So, wow, Slashdot was only an hour and eleven minutes ahead of the announcement.
If you're not on the announce mailing list, the full text should appear at this URL soon: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/announce.htm
Same here, man. I *just* finished installing a 6.1-RELEASE and patching it up to p12, and now I have to start all over again.
Oh well, I guess that's just the way Beastie likes to torture us sometimes.
I think hes thinking of Redhat 6.2
"FreeBSD is an advanced [we can argue] operating system [duh] for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon) [yeah, a Pentium is x86 compatible, who'd have thought?], amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, [says that in the name, doesn't it?] the version of UNIX [actually no, this is a trademark reserved for OSes that meet a standard which FreeBSD violates] developed at the University of California, Berkeley. [you no longer need to put that in your advertising] It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals."
So, as far as we can tell from this ad, nothing has changed other than the version number. I guess that is a sign of life though, kind of, sort of, maybe a bit.
..does it run linux?
*runs*
Sent from my desktop computer
One word: "Vista"
That's what I read at first.
I don't know what a child would have to do to deserve that.
now, did I mean that as a reward or as a punishment? Let the fanboys decide!
I do believe Linux was born before FreeBSD... hehe... Now now I didn't say Unix. I have used the BSD's in the past and I have to admit I am glad to see it still creeping forward.
I poked around a bit; csup's got no dependencies to build, which I like. Does it speed source and ports-tree updates substantially? How about versus portsnap in the latter case?
UNIX is a trademark. It's even a registered trademark. A trademark is not a copyright. (and not a patent either, nor a trade secret)
AT+T's lawsuit ran in to problems becuase they hadn't properly protected their code from unpublished disclosure. At the time, copyright law was very different, so this mattered. The judge indicated that AT+T might not have copyright to some things. AT+T was also caught violating Berkeley's copyright.
On the other hand, the trademark was being violated by BSDI and there may have been some minor problems in the BSD code base.
So the parties agreed to quit and keep things quiet.
If you want to use the trademark, you need a license. Licenses are easy to get, provided that you fully and correctly implement an OS that follows a standard called the Single UNIX Specification. FreeBSD violates this standard in many ways, and is thus inelligible for getting a license to use the trademark.
Linux isn't UNIX either, though it's now close enough that the Open Group can maintain a small list of deviations that need to be voted out of existance.
Then I guess M0n0wall is not far off from release either.
The next version of m0n0wall will be based on FreeBSD 6.2 release.
For the curious:
http://m0n0.ch/wall/beta-1.3.php
And it's in the base system. That's a really easy compile.
I downloaded the netboot version of 6.2RC2 some days back and was pleasantly surprised to find that almost all the hardware was correctly recognized. This is a 2 year old compaq laptop with an Ralink PCMCIA wireless card. Not even the latest Linux distros can detect this card but OpenBSD and FreeBSD have the excellent ral driver in the kernel. Moreover the configuration is so simple when compared to the mess in Linux (iwconfig,iwpriv,ifconfig??) not to mention the troubles I had with ndiswrapper
All the BSD's use X.org anyway nowadays, so the folks who are looking for a good GUI environment won't be disappointed. Again, the laptop display settings were correctly detected and I didn't have to touch xorg.conf at all
Give OpenBSD and FreeBSD a try - you won't regret it. Having said that, prepare to actually RTFM in case you run into problems. 99% of the time the answers are in the fine integrated documentation that comes along with your OS install.
But does it run li^H^H the burninating crusade?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However these days, x86 is taken to mean "Current CPUs based on the x86 ISA." If you mosey to nVidia's drive page you'll notice they talk about Vista x86 and Vista x64 drivers. What they mean are 32 and 64-bit drivers, of course, both x86 ISA. They don't mean that the x86 drivers will run on any platform, indeed Vista itself will run on nothing less than a Pentium 3 and thus it wouldn't be meaningful for the drivers to support less.
There's no point in breaking down support by specific chip level unless you just feel like being pedantic for no reason, thus people just say "x86" and use it to mean reasonably modern 32-bit x86 ISA chips.
If you really are concerned about compatibility with hardware that old, well, go get DOS and deal with the limitations.
Corpse, don't argue. Doctor said Morgue, then Morgue it is. ;-)
Recently I had the opportunity to look at some *bsd derivative systems, mainly firewalls and
small servers, and really liked how they were well designed, clean and stable. Therefore I'd like to take a better look at *bsd (*) and probably start using it among my other linux machines. My question is: what are the general caveats for someone coming from Linux, eg. that missing or different command/device/configuration file/installation procedure, etc. In other words those simple tasks that could be made difficult by thinking at them "the linux way"?
* I used *bsd because it's still not clear to me which bsd will suit my needs. I'll probably have to try them all.
...this is as good an opportunity as any to discover FreeBSD for yourself. As I wrote in my journal, it's a fantastic OS...very much worth obtaining a copy of and investigating.
I've also noticed how much the comments attached to this article are riddled with trolls, flamebait, and assorted rubbish. Richard Stallman was the first to slander the BSD license and attempt to discourage its' use, and it is obvious that there are Linux users who seek to continue their master's work in that regard, and shame themselves in the process. They tell people a lot more about their own character (or lack thereof) than about that of what they are attacking.
Noooo.!!!! I hate when people recommend STABLE. Use 6.2-RELEASE and then update with security patches. Have you read what STABLE is ?? It's not what you think.
I tried to install FreeBSD 6.0 on my HP Pavilion but it didn't recognise the network card (I forget what its called , driver is forcedeth under linux). Has laptop support been improved ? Does the team have laptops in mind for freebsd or is it more a desktop/server system still?
Interesting. Is it something like Gentoo Portage?
(Please don't hurt me... I know portage was inspired in some FreeBSD system).
I find the intricacies of the BSD system very confusing, and those of the Unix systems in general too. This is why linux from scratch has been of invaluable help for me. Is there some way to install a BSD system starting from kernel, libc, init, boot loader etcetc?
Don't fret. Go make use of Colin Percival's binary updates system to perform a binary upgrade. You'll be running 6.2-RELEASE in no time at all.
Sun Tzu, in his very insightful book, The Art of War, observed that victory is best obtained when division and rift is created within the enemy and thus, no organized attack can be made. I find Sun Tzu's observation to be so unfortunately true in the F/OSS world. In the "war" between proprietary and open source, the winning parties are the proprietary operating system makers. This is happening because the open source parties are criticizing each other and spreading fear, uncertaintly, and doubt about each others products. As long as the BSD and Linux camps continue to fight, as evidenced in much of the comments about this article, Microsoft will be able to plow ahead. I personally like both BSD and Linux and they play very nicely together. Both are excellent with strengths and weaknesses that seem to complement each other. If there would be greater cooperation, than I could see great things happening. Right now, Microsoft does not have too much to worry about as it is still dominant in the desktop OS market and the open source camps are as divided as ever. While I love a good flame war against an enemy, I see little good in a flame war from within.
Wow that was awesome, do you live in NJ, it's raining right now!
Wow...my personal truth is considered 'over rated' by slashdot moderators.
6 months of xen-devel - 36 messages mention freebsd
locate xen | grep \/usr\/src
Lots of xenix, alas no xen. (6.1 cvsup'ed a week ago or so)
Here I was hoping for xen by this time, due to a comment back at the start of 2006:
It is unclear how much sense it would make to post a sparse tree as this is all being done in -CURRENT (the development branch). However, as soon as dom0 support goes in, xen support will be pulled into RELENG_6, and in all likelihood full xen support will go out with the release of FreeBSD 6.1.
Good job slashdot - linking directly to the primary server instead of a list of mirrors. Surely it won't bother anyone!
Not that anyone here is concerned about the stability of other people's servers...
Thank you! I just found out about portsnap after reading your comment.
I remember reading about portsnap on the install docs, but for some reason
I ended up using cvsup instead...
OTOH I did not find about portupgrade until few weeks after I started
using FreeBSD (which I regret).
--
If you don't know what it is, please do yourself a favour and google it!
I have a server provided by a webhost with FreeBSD 4.9 on it. Is there going to be a point at which the 4.x series is no longer supported, and there are no security updates, etc.?
Find free books.
Yes, it's very nice
I would rather say it works like a charm!
Mac users use it,After toying with several Linux distros, it amazes me how every upgrade with FreeBSD is a non-surprise!
No they don't, they use Mach with a BSD api wrapper
Dead wrong! I use FreeBSD rather than some Linux distro.
It just feels more familiar with the BSD environment and similar rc-scripts.
I am a Mac user and a graphic designer, still everyone asks me for technical help.
WTF? What should I do to stop at least Windows users doing it? Become a BOFH?
There are countless reasons but two that come to mind.
s /Itemid,43/page,6
FreeBSD is used in Juniper (http://www.juniper.net) core internet routers preferred by carriers and service providers.
Sites run on FreeBSD less likely to be compromised and defaced.
http://www.zone-h.org/component/option,com_attack
Also falling into the "not necessarily better, but interesting" category, portmaster is a utility much like portupgrade, but it requires no dependencies to build or run. It's worth noting that you end up relying on FreeBSD's pkg_* utilities instead of portupgrade's port* suite. Of course, if you would have Ruby installed anyway, then portupgrade doesn't really cost you anything extra.
That was a very comprehensive response, and much appreciated.
Unless I am missing something in the release notes, still no support for this wireless chip. Hopefully in 6.3/7!
On the whole, the goal is to comply with the SUS. As with most operating systems, the difference is in the implementation and the corner cases.
The main difference I notice is 'ps'. The Unix spec wants 'ps -ef'. BSD wants 'ps auxww'.
Some information on current efforts:
With 6.2, csup is even better...
/usr/ports tree and src distribution of the OS in sync with the official repositories using it. It is very similar to rsync, but takes advantage of CVS source code repositories (FreeBSD is stored in CVS).
To elaborate
CVSup is *the* way to update the software and the OS on FreeBSD. You keep your
It is a great tool, and really the only downside to using it is that it was written in Modula-3. Building CVSup from sources required a *lot* of time and was unnecessarily complex. To remedy this, the author of CVSup released a language called ezm3, which is basically a stripped down version of the Modula-3 source base that "contains only those components which are required for building and running CVSup". So to build CVSup, you first built ezm3.
As you can imagine, getting Modula-3 compiled on your system (even if it is a stripped down version of Modula-3), just to run CVSup was seen as overkill. But what really prompted work on csup (according to the authors) was because "the Modula-3 runtime environment was not ported to all the architectures supported by the various *BSD projects, and it was becoming increasingly harder to find people for maintaining the code."
csup is a rewrite of the CVSup software in C. I It is pretty fast, but currently supports checkout mode only -- not that big a deal, since most people only us CVSup to keep their ports and OS src trees in sync with the upstream repositories. Furthermore, since it is written in C, this has allowed them to put it in the base FreeBSD distribution instead of shipping it as a separate package.
portmanager is great too. I have been using it for a long time and it's never failed on me (which is more than I can say for portupgrade).
Irina Romanov
I wanted to say thanks to all who replied to my question. I'm left with the impression that while a two-step networked upgrade (4.11 to 5.3, 5.3 to 6.x) is apparently possible, a ton of things can go wrong, especially if I don't do the upgrade during the proper phase of the moon :) I think I'll give it one shot on a low-priority machine. If it works, I'll replicate the process and document it for others; if not, perhaps having the colo folks do a fresh install to a new drive is the best course of action.
/.
Thanks again y'all, good to know there's still a nice BSD crowd on
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
FreeBSD will have a booth on the expo floor of the 2007 Southern Califrornia Linux Expo in Los Angeles, CA. Feb 9-11, 2007
Additionally FreeBSD developers will be presenting in the seminar tracks.
I'm curious, what do you think it is?
WINE Is Not an Emulator, but rather an "alternative implementation" of an API/ABI, just like "Linux emulation."
FreeBSD-STABLE is our development branch from which major releases are made. Changes go into this branch at a different pace, and with the general assumption that they have first gone into FreeBSD-CURRENT for testing. This is still a development branch, however, and this means that at any given time, the sources for FreeBSD-STABLE may or may not be suitable for any particular purpose. It is simply another engineering development track, not a resource for end-users.
"FreeBSD-STABLE is our development branch from which major releases are made."
As opposed to OpenBSD's -stable branch, which, as the name implies with both systems, really can be considered stable.