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."

Comments

But wait.....

[mlwmohawk]

Wasn't development supposed to be delayed or stalled because of license issues?

Re:Availability

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any cds, why can they not put up a dvd image with all three cds on it? :(

Upgrading from 4.x

[ShaunC]

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..!

Re:Upgrading from 4.x

[excelblue]

This is surely a tough upgrade. However, read the FreeBSD handbook section about updating the source tree, as well as the section on rebuilding world. It should give you a step-by-step guide on how to do a source upgrade (the easiest way to do a remote upgrade). Just ignore the stuff about single-user mode - it may be recommended, but it'll still work fine in multiuser if you are careful (eg. try not to have too much going on while doing the upgrade).

I suggest you go from 4.11 to 5.5 (RELENG_5_5) first, and then go from there to 6.2 (RELENG_6_2) just to be safe. It might be possible to go directly from 4.11 to 6.2, but doing such a big jump is an extremely risky process. In any case, I'd set up a test environment with something like vmplayer and experiment first before doing the actual update.

Re:Upgrading from 4.x

[MadAhab]

Yeah, I called up the datacenter dudes and asked for an upgrade from 5.3 to 6.0. From there, remote upgrades have been smooth.

I know 4.11 was probably the most stable operating system I've ever used, but I'd recommend a wipe and reinstall (and if you have your non-OS stuff in its own partition, of course, it's always easier).

Of course, it's not necessarily dangerous to stretch out your 4.11 installations for another year or two, if you'll commit to keeping your ported software upgraded, even if via hand installs. I haven't seen a FreeBSD base system remote exploit of any real active significance since some damn telnet thing from years and years ago.

Re:I noramlly check Distrowatch.com

[mdemonic]

FYI, distrowatch donated the money they made from ads to a handful of open source projects, among them FreeBSD. Someone has to be first, and this time it was slashdot. http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.s html

nope

[r00t]

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.

questions from a linux guy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:with an ad no less

[Anonymous Coward]

What about nfe(4)? Gave up on FreeBSD a while ago, but I always hated using the proprietary ethernet driver.

Portmaster

[dewarrn1]

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.