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FreeBSD 7.0 Release Now Available
cperciva writes "The first release from the new 7-STABLE branch of FreeBSD development, has been released. FreeBSD 7.0 brings with it many new features including support for ZFS, journaled filesystems, and SCTP, as well as dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability. In addition to being available from many FTP sites, ISO images can be downloaded via the BitTorrent tracker, or for users of earlier FreeBSD releases, FreeBSD Update can be used to perform a binary upgrade."
You don't need to set the disk geometry unless you have weird-ass old disk hardware. Just accept the defaults.
What level of ZFS support does this have? Is it well tested yet?
with the announcement of the features last night the following topics were beaten to death already:
Why use FreeBSD? (why not?)
FreeBSD is dead! (clearly its not)
FreeBSD is not dead!
yahoo use freeBSD (nobody cares)
FreeBSD vs Linux (ooh flame ware, but then everybody realized that it doesnt matter some people prefer FreeBSD for stability & the fact its all integrated, some people prefer linux because it has lots of flashy features & there are loads of projects to add extra features to it ( but they're not integrated and don't always play well together)!)
please go about your business there's nothing to spam about here!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
you have something configured incorrectly or non-equivalently.
Its been easy for the last several releases if you are willing to accept defaults.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pretty red section, I've never seen the BSD section before. Slashdot needs more sections with nice colors.
The summary says it has ZFS support but the website says experimental ZFS support. That seems like a pretty important distiction.
Actually, the usual answer is the pre release have extra stuff turned on to help enable debugging. That's why it's not a release where they turn that extra stuff off, or you can recompile the pre release kernels and such.
Hmm. The time I tried to install FreeBSD, the installer choked on my hardware. I tried two different dell desktops. Part of the problem was an inability to deal with a USB keyboard. I hope that has been fixed, and I plan to try FreeBSD again, some day. I'll stick with a more common OS, for now.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
And it's payday!
2.5 TB ZFS NFS, here I come!
|>
Here be Dragons
Slated for 7.1 is support for booting GPT partitioned disks. This will make the whole partitioning thing even easier, since it will make BSD labels and the MBR go away entirely, and partitioning will be done entirely using LBA addressing.
do not want!
Anyone know anything?
I got a laptop with a Broadcom 4318. Is this well supported, or something you have to try & pray?
And speaking of laptops, does FBSD have a straightforward/easy-to-use disk encryption mechanism (say, on the order of TrueCrypt)?
There is a good interview with many key FreeBSD contributers about new technologies and improvements in 7.0. It is quite technical.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2008/02/26/whats-new-in-freebsd-70.html?page=1
*I love how STABLE just sticks out, like BSD wasn't stable before. Ha!*
"7-STABLE" is FreeBSD-speak for "this implements the FreeBSD 7 API/ABI, and any program you write or compile for an earlier release will work just fine on a later release". In other words, the Application Programming/Binary Interfaces won't change in incompatible ways.
This is in contrast to Linux, where updating to a new kernel (belonging to the same "stable" kernel branch, or even applying security patches) can make programs break until you recompile them.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
er... how is that flamebait? moderation isn't supposed to be a way of saying "i don't agree with that"... read the mod guidelines sometime.
I have a dual-Opteron rackmount Dell with a ServerWorks HT1000 chipset, running 7.0-PRELEASE from January 15, that was having DMA-related fits. Does anyone know if they've got that problem under control yet? I had seen it discussed a lot on the mailing lists but lately haven't had the time to follow closely. Either way that server's staying on the 7-STABLE line because it's so much faster that I can live with running the drives in PIO4 (and with 4GB of RAM those drives don't get touched a lot).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've never needed to know any of those things to install FreeBSD. We run a number of FreeBSD virtual machines and physical servers. I installed them all myself. The most complicated part was entering network information, since all of these systems had static IPs and weren't using DHCP. Unless you're doing something out of the ordinary, you can just use all the defaults and have a fully working system in 15-20 minutes on an average machine.
I've been using FreeBSD since version 2.2.7. I've been using Linux and other OSs even longer. Operating systems that have been around as long as these weren't just created from the start to be a breeze to install. Linux used to require a lot more manual configuration than it does now... just because something like Ubuntu makes it easy doesn't mean it always was. Linux has progressed in this area, and so has FreeBSD, and so have most other mature operating systems.
Also, FreeBSD is not targeted at the same audience as something like Ubuntu. A better comparison would be PC-BSD and Ubuntu, as they are targeted at desktop users. I guess maybe FreeBSD could be compared to the server or alternate editions of Ubuntu, in which case the install process (using text screens) is fairly similar.
Yeah, but OTOH --
Linux has had journaling file systems for years. In fact, it has excellent support for multiple journalled file systems -- XFS, ReiserFS, ext3, and JFS. FreeBSD is just now getting around to supporting journalled file systems. ZFS support has been available in FUSE for quite a while now and I believe is more fully featured than what is found in FreeBSD 7. Linux has also had support for SCTP for quite a while as well. Linux has support for lots more hardware, too.
So, you take your tradeoffs -- do you want cutting edge desktop features or are you more concerned with stability? If stability is the name of the game, then of course you want something as stodgy as FreeBSD. Otherwise, if you're willing to live with the occasional odd program that needs to be recompiled with the new kernel or the occasional kernel bug that pops up, then use Linux.
It's also about your requirements. That's why we have freedom of choice.
My blog
I don't want to have to figure out disk geometry to install an OS...have they made it as easy as Ubuntu?
You don't need to figure out the disk geometry if you use the guided installer. I usually like to set that myself anyways, I find it funny you want it compared to Ubuntu, Ubuntu almost wants to hold me back from setting up my disk exactly how i want it. As far as how easy the installer is, if you can install a Slackware system its pretty similar, same solid color menus and package selection(if you don;t chose the install everything).
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
I'd gladly give it a go. Let me fix that for you. I don't want to have to figure out something worthwhile to say...it's not my favoritest Linux so I'll just discredit it.
I refuse to willingly evaluate it without preconceived prejudice.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
/usr/src7/src/secure/lib/libcrypto/../../../crypto/openssl/crypto/engine/eng_padlock.c: In function 'padlock_xcrypt_ecb': /usr/src7/src/secure/lib/libcrypto/../../../crypto/openssl/crypto/engine/eng_padlock.c:445: error: can't find a register in class 'GENERAL_REGS' while reloading 'asm' /usr/src7/src/secure/lib/libcrypto/../../../crypto/openssl/crypto/engine/eng_padlock.c:445: error: 'asm' operand has impossible constraints
/usr/src7/src/secure/lib/libcrypto.
/usr/src7/src.
*** Error code 1
Stop in
*** Error code 1
Stop in
*** Error code 1
Looks like I will have to wait.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
FreeBSD hasn't wanted journaling filesystems for years, since we've had softupdates which solve many of the same problems but with half the writes. The recent gjournal plugin to the GEOM system is a block-level journal. In other words, it handles all writes to a device, whether or not the overlying filesystem supports journaling. Journaled FAT anyone?
I just said journal a lot, didn't I?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Good tip, hadn't tripped over that utility. Thanks!
LBA adressing -- brought to you by the RAD Redundant Acronym Department.
Explain to me the advantages of journaling over soft updates, which UFS2 supports? I also want to know what the new gjournal FreeBSD utility actually does, especially when used with UFS2. Does it keep a log of changes, along with the metadata updates of the UFS2 soft updates?
Press "A" for auto partitioning and then "A" in the disk layout section for auto-defaults.
As it has been since at least FreeBSD 4.0.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I run debian on my main workstation (have for a long time).
These are my requirements before I switch:
fluxbox as wm.
various KDE apps, esp. Amarok.
NFS support
Nvidia binary video drivers. so that I can play: Never Winter nights & Enemy Territory.
Can/Will FreeBSD work for me?
(I run dual Opteron 270's with 2GB of ram so SMP is important but AMD64 is not).
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I haven't run FreeBSD since 6.0, but the problem with Dells, IIRC, is that the AT controller acts like there's a keyboard there even if there isn't one.
I had no problem using the clearly labeled "boot with USB keyboard" menu option.
It's a moot point -- with the at mux that came in I believe halfway through the 6-series, you can have as many keyboards as you feel like.
Is when FreeBSD and wine will start to care about each other.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
For people that are looking for the more typical mainstream Linux install experience, FreeBSD still isn't there. But it isn't that hard, and there's always DesktopBSD which is pretty much identical apart from the install program and desktop integration.
Whether FreeBSD is too hard to install or not comes down far more to tolerance for ncurses style programs. I personally grew up on them with dos and early windows versions.
Which reminds me that I've got to download a copy of DesktopBSD to try out.
From gjournal(8):
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Yes, or at least close to it PC-BSD.
Please look at PC-BSD or DesktopBSD; they would be the equivalent to Ubuntu.
http://www.pcbsd.org/
http://www.desktopbsd.net/
Disk Geometry trolling isn't funny or have you confused this with partitioning. So, are you trolling or are you stating that you don't like to partition drives. If it is partitioning then you may want to check out the above links; if you're trolling, then continue with what you're doing
Ubuntu easy to install? Perhaps. But does it meet the quality standards of FreeBSD and esp OpenBSD? I dumped Ubuntu and over wrote the partitition with OpenBSD because everytime I tried to manually enter in my network encryption parameters manually, the next time Ubuntu booted it just ignored it and locked onto the strongest unencrypted signal.
GREAT article - it is interesting for a non-programmer to read this type of technical detail, presented in an understandable way. For me, right at the edge of my theoretical-only knowledge. A detailed summary, I guess. (oxymoron)
Similar article on NetBSD: Waving the flag: NetBSD developers speak about version 4.0 (1/30/2008)
Linux focused links:
Current discussion:
LWN: Kernel
KernelTrap
KernelNewbies: Summary of Linux Changes
---
The Wonderful World of Linux series are excellent history - in-depth for outsiders:
WWOL 2.2
WWOL 2.4
WWOL 2.6
---
Towards Linux 2.6 - A look into the workings of the next new kernel(2003)
Kernel Comparison: Linux (2.6.22) versus Windows (Vista)(2007)
To quote from the article ...
I believe we are actually "first" to make it part of the shipping kernel. In Linux you can enable it as a module, but there are extra steps you must take. For FreeBSD its just there, like TCP.
There's extra steps you must take? What steps are these? I haven't had experience with SCTP on any OS, but I would have thought that once the Linux module is loaded, the protocol is "just there" as well.
Maybe he's talking about kernel defaults? It's a curious statement that he makes.
Reminds me of a
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
While I believe you quite rightly attained your +Insightful mod, I couldn't even start to tell you what my disk geometry is, and I'm running openSUSE, XP and (sorry) Vista on the same HDD, partitioned through Linux fdisk after XP had the whole disk, and Vista was the last thing on there. Messing around with partitions is not hard, but never have I been asked to delve into things that the BIOS presents and are ignored only to be faced with a utility querying the HDD itself and be asked if the returned information is true.
.ISO right now to give it a fair try, so I'm not baiting anyone. I have a shell account on a server that uses FreeBSD and I find the different layout and commands interesting. Can't wait to give it a try.
I'm not ignorant, stupid, unable to find out how to do things (except work out why this 2.6.22-17 kernel that I rolled myself with all the right things in refuses to accept my high quality 80 wire cables) when they need doing, but for serious, how is it that I have never been asked things like that under Linux?
Why is the BSD automatic detection routine so unsure of itself that it asks if you want to override it?
I'm downloading the
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
I've been reading about zfs for awhile and recently started implementing it on some Solaris servers and really getting into it. It's nice. Really nice. I am anxiously awaiting being able to run it on linux (not via FUSE) in production. Has anyone heard anything on the objections over license compatibility and stepping beyond traditional filesystem areas of the kernel?
Were you using nm-applet and the keyring? I've never had a problem doing it like that.
No, it's not required, but I sure do see a lot of it. What I find amusing is the Linux zealots ragging on BSD because it doesn't have a lickable install environment like most distros do nowadays. Face it: the overwhelming number of self-proclaimed linux users here on Slashdot are using Ubuntu or some other one-button install CD. They don't know how to install, the installer knows how to install. The old days of partitioning and setting IRQs and memory addresses are gone. So fine. FreeBSD's installer is easy. It's even easier if you know what you're doing, which a lot of people here don't. That's OK too; that's why there's Ubuntu or Mint or whatever. So cut the sanctimonious crap. Linux isn't going to change the world, no matter how cool the installer is. Got it?
Dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability shown by various database and other benchmarks, in some cases showing peak performance improvements as high as 350% over FreeBSD 6.X under normal loads and 1500% at high loads. When compared with the best performing Linux kernel (2.6.22 or 2.6.24) performance is 15% better.
http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/bind-pt.png
Summary:
* FreeBSD 7.0-R with 4BSD scheduler has close to ideal scaling on this test.
* The drop above 6 threads is due to limitations within BIND.
* Linux 2.6.24 has about 35% lower performance than FreeBSD, which is significantly at variance with the ISC results. It also doesn't scale above 3 CPUs.
* 7.0 with ULE has a bug on this workload (actually to do with workloads involving high interrupt rates). It is fixed in 8.0.
* Changes in progress to improve UDP performance do not help much with this particular workload (only about 5%), but with more scalable applications we see 30-40% improvement. e.g. NSD (ports/dns/nsd) is a much faster and more scalable DNS server than BIND (because it is better optimized for the smaller set of features it supports).
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
It has re spawned.
Sent from my desktop computer
And before anyone asks:
All the docs I've read on the subject tend to suggest that the Real Way to keep a FreeBSD system current is to download the kernel and userspace core every so often and recompile them. And that's fine, sorta, except that it doesn't address how to deal with the "leftovers", such as config files that have been moved or eliminated. (I mean, honestly, compiling the world is not a realistic way to keep current on X.org.)
Who has practical experience doing this? How do you keep your machines current, particularly with security patches?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I've come to think of journaled filesystems as pretty much ubiquitous at this point, is FreeBSD really only now getting them? Or do they mean something else?
(Not trolling, I know next to nothing about *BSD)
sic transit gloria mundi
You couldn't be more wrong.
FreeBSD hasn't wanted journaling filesystems for years, since we've had softupdates which solve many of the same problems
Softupdates don't solve the important unclean shutdown fsck problem very well. Background fsck is a nightmare for any production system with non-trivial amount of spinning rust.
but with half the writes.
Wrong. Half the writes as compared to the naive gjournal journalling. Real modern journalling filesystems usually have the option to journal just metadata. What's more, journalling is far more flexible than softupdates. You can journal to a small battery backed RAM device for example.
The recent gjournal plugin to the GEOM system is a block-level journal. In other words, it handles all writes to a device, whether or not the overlying filesystem supports journaling. Journaled FAT anyone?
Wrong. There has to be some filesystem support work done.
I just said journal a lot, didn't I?
No. You did not say it "journal" once.
The End of FreeBSD
[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 - ke
FreeBSD suffers from a couple of serious process flaws -- it is an operating system which is truly at home neither in the open-source nor the proprietary markets primarily because, although the source is open, the development team is not. Furthermore the license allows proprietary software to "steal" source code and use it. The combination of these problems leads to a somewhat inferior OS.
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
There's something about Dells, USB keyboards and any non-windows installer... Tried about 5 os boot disks on a vostro before I discovered you need the keyboard in just the right socket - and then it screwed up after you chose the kbd type in the installer, necessitating a different machine to install on. Once installed it's worked well.
I forgot to add - this was a mix of linux (debian, ubuntu, rhel, centos) and FreeBSD
What the parent post describes should be sufficient, but the current /usr/src/UPDATING is available online at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/UPDATING?rev=1.520;content-type=text%2Fplain; previous versions are at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/UPDATING. The mergemaster process can be a bit daunting when crossing major versions as so many files are likely to have changed, but apart from that upgrading is usually straightforward.
You underestimate my capacity for wrongness.
Softupdates don't solve the important unclean shutdown fsck problem very well. Background fsck is a nightmare for any production system with non-trivial amount of spinning rust.How's that? I mean, I'd rather not have to fsck my terabyte RAIDs, but if I have to, at least the system can be running live and undegraded while the loose ends get cleaned up.
Wrong. Half the writes as compared to the naive gjournal journalling. Real modern journalling filesystems usually have the option to journal just metadata. What's more, journalling is far more flexible than softupdates. You can journal to a small battery backed RAM device for example.If you're just journaling metadata, then you're not getting the full benefit of journaling (and definitely not anything more than softupdates offers, as it's basically an in-memory ordered journal of metadata transactions to be committed). As far as the battery-backed RAM: that's like saying cats are better than dogs because you can give them medicine if they get ringworm. BTW, with FreeBSD's GEOM system, you could journal to an encrypted RAID on a remote host if you wanted to. You might have already known that; others might not.
Wrong. There has to be some filesystem support work done.Wrong. gjournal is a generic journaling provider. You can use it to wrap any other GEOM component. From it's own man page:
Pretty neat, huh? You can wrap it around your RAID to make it crashproof. If you think background fscks are bad, then you've probably never watched a few terabytes of mirror resync itself. Anyway, what you misunderstood is that filesystems have to be altered to interact meaningfully with the underlying journal. UFS has been so modified. That doesn't mean that other filesystems won't work on top of it (which would be silly because a gjournal looks just like any other block device), but that they're not optimized for it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ya, good thing BSD doesn't use that wild crazy linux kernel.
Seriously, jump! I switched from Debian (2.something, I think) to FreeBSD 4.5 *years* ago. I haven't been happier.
:-)
I'm still running FreeBSD 6.3 on my server, and I will upgrade to 7 soon, but I found PC-BSD to be the better desktop system (DesktopBSD had strange quirks, and wasn't as polished).
PC-BSD uses the "stable" FreeBSD as it's base, so although it's currently FreeBSD 6.3 based, that'll no doubt change to 7.0 soon. PC-BSD also uses KDE as it's desktop environment, so you'll have no trouble with your apps.
Good luck!
I had to abandon FreeBSD a few years ago with performance
with MySQL got so abysmal -- apparently the MySQL folks
and the FreeBSD folks got into pissing match about
threads.
Anyone know how this turned out?
hmm. last time i tried to install debian (about two years ago), the installer choked on my hardware: it couldn't install on sata disks. this was of course fixed afterwards...
i have been using usb keyboards for years on my bsd...
anyway, what i'm trying to say: it all depends on your mindset: change is always difficult, if you aren't really interested. everyone is free to use whatever he wants. however don't criticize based on some reservations one might already have.
btw 'common' depends. to me bsd is common. to you linux (perhaps even only one distribution) is common. to others windows is common.
have fun!
Come on guys... This is not over OS superiority right?
"When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail."
bind?
ugh. is that piece of crap *still* not dead?
i thought everybody and their dog had switched to tinydns & co by now...
You sometimes wonder whether those people who post "I've only just finished installing 7.0 RC2" are posting for comedic effect.
However, as I installed RC2 last night, what I want to know is how did they know I'd just installed it, and to release 7.0-STABLE?
slashdot moderators are generally douchebags and take out their frustrations (shitty job, no sex life, etc) by downmodding on slashdot.
Kathleen Fent choked on my cock.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
No offence, but I found your answer somehow single sided. My experience is quite different (so is, probably, the way I'm using bsd)
I am using BSD in production environments for years; almost everything I'm installing IS bsd based. I was wanting journaled filesystem since forever, just because I'm sick of fsck, and yes, linux has been a lot better on this for many many years (I also work a lot with linux). Softupdates are truly great, but they don't cover the check part.
The block level journal with GEOM works fine and certainly has a lot of technical vertues, granted. However, it sucks, alot, in some case such as mine. It has tons of side effects I had to fight against, not mentioning the enormous amount of disk it takes which prevent journaled filesystems under ~4Gb (I'm working with embeded small sized systems). As someone who had to write automatic installers/cloner for bsd and linux, I spent an enormous amount of time to make it working reliably on journaled geom while it barely took a few mn to turn ext2 into ext3.
As for its usefulness, I'm not totally certain that journaled FAT is something I should care about, but it's just me.
Hasn't wanted? That's a lie, as anyone who has followed the freebsd-fs list knows. But that's always how the world looks to FreeBSD advocates. If it's not there, it's because it's not needed.
Also, it's funny to see that the 1:1 threading library has now become the default. Back when FreeBSD decided to go with a MxN implementation, Solaris and Linux had already realized that MxN just wasn't worth it and would only perform better in theory, and now FreeBSD has finally learned the same lesson.
Better yet, help make BSD more user-friendly so people don't need to know what a man page is. You know, like Microsoft let you set up wireless connections without messing with shell commands for half an hour.
Part of the problem, not the solution.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
UFS+SU is still much, much faster than any Linux filesystem in real world usage. Plus moving a huge amount of data does not lock other disk-accessing processes, doing "chmod -R .." on a huge tree IME is incomparably quicker on FreeBSD (like 5-10 seconds on FreeBSD whereas on the very similar tree it virtually died for 15+ minutes on RHEL/Ext3), etc.
That's why I use Microsoft. It just works. I find, in the end, FOSS is more expensive. To much productivity is lost because I have to spend so much time figuring out how to get something so stupid as a fucking keyboard to work on my computer. Then you have to set up your network hardware, configure programs (hopefully you can get 85% functionality out of them), and so on, and so on, and so on . . .
Calgon^H^H^H^H^H^H Microsoft . . . take me away!!
Beside the fact that when everything is working properly, and I'm not constantly trying to jury-rig some crippled functionality out of a program, it builds my employers confidence in me.
There are two ways you can look like a hero to your employer
1) Saving them a little bit of money
2) Keeping your system up and running smoothly, which has the added benefit of also keeping your customers happy.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of open source, but instead of FreeBSD/Linux/Unix/Solaris and all of the variants within, why don't we pool our resources and get one (1) fucking open source system that can actually compete with Microsoft? Only then will the Chinese be forced to recognize "The Year of Linux" on their calendar.
Oh yeah, this is Slashdot. I'm forgetting about that whole anit-Micros^H$oft sentiment thingy. In other words, I guess you can mod me a troll now.
Unless you actually want to install from CD and use any of the packages.
As of 6.2-R, it still required no fewer than four CD-swaps (between 2 cds) since the installer can't handle "dependencies coming in the future"[0]
[0] Package A(Disc 2) depends on Package B(Disc 1) which depends on Package C(disc 2). Instead of installing Package B on the first run through, knowing the other two will be coming, it will ask you to swap back and forth.
I love my freeBSD, but installing it has gotten really painful.
None taken! Yes, our usage is probably different. I use it almost exclusively our our multipurpose servers (like a machine loaded out with a bunch of jails, each running services that use different resources so that we can max out the hardware). These tend to stay up until I reboot them for upgrades, so I don't really deal with fscks too much. That said, I'm running 7-PRERELEASE on my ancient, flaky home server that hardware-crashes at least once or twice a month. With the background fsck, I'm never offline for more than a couple of minutes. Is it worse for you?
It has tons of side effects I had to fight against, not mentioning the enormous amount of disk it takes which prevent journaled filesystems under ~4Gb (I'm working with embeded small sized systems).I'm not a BSD dev, just a very happy user, so I might not have the breadth of experience to really appreciate this. What is it about background fscks that would be a problem on filesystems under 4GB? I'd think they would finish in record time.
As for its usefulness, I'm not totally certain that journaled FAT is something I should care about, but it's just me.That was meant more as an example of silly things you can do, not anything you'd actually want to do. :-)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
To be honest, i have never tried the package CDs. I either do it via the net if im in a hurry so i get the most current version, or via ports if im not in a rush ( ports are the preferred way anyway ).
The only exception is if im building a base server, i have my favorite set of packages that i keep on a separate cd and install them after a minimal install.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hmm, I have been installing FreeBSD for around 10 years and I don't think I have never had to know anything about the disk geometry of any of the installs. Are you sure you are not thinking about one of the other BSDs, they are different you know?
You can use the defaults or put in how many MB you want for each slice, simple. The installer works great, even from a serial console. I do wish they would add ZFS support to the installer... It is not as easy as Ubuntu, but then again, they are not targeting that group of users.
Some things I like to have from the get-go. bash, for example... I'm perfectly capable of using tcsh or even *shudder* /bin/sh, but it adds steps. Add non-root admin user -> install bash -> change user's shell
Kind of obnoxious. As I said, I still use it, I just really wish they'd consider this the problem that it is.
Wow, this is actually an original comment, instead of some copy+paste from somewhere else.
Well, let me be the first to say it: if MS-everything is actually cheaper for your bussiness in the long run, then by all means use their stuff like that. But bear in mind that they can always force an 'upgrade' upon you just by making their new stuff incompatible with your version, just like they make it incompatible with all other software.
And no, FOSS developers (and users!) will never join all to make a single product, as Open Source is about choice and freedom, it is inevitable that someone will make an alternative to some program simply because he or she doesn't like the way it works, or the way it is developed. And it is likely that many will agree with the 'dissident' and use and develop the program, thus 'wasting effort'.
And now I will shut up because this is way off-topic ;)
"FreeBSD hasn't wanted journaling filesystems for years, since we've had softupdates which solve many of the same problems but with half the writes."
It doesn't solve the "wait hours for fsck after unclean unmount", which has made it a dead-end for a number of years now. FreeBSD may not have wanted a solution to this problem, but lots of people have; it was a recurring topic on the FreeBSD mailing lists until ZFS support was added.
I have compared FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE with similar config Linux-based desktop (kernel 2.6.11), the FreeBSD is very obviously faster than Linux. I'm not sure with the latest Linux kernel. Please update if you compare with latest Linux kernel.
hasn't wanted journaling filesystems for years? Methinks you speak for a community you don't know as well as you think.
That's like saying they didn't wantsmp support for all that time they didn't have it...
I don't have much experience with the performance aspects of UFS on BSD, but, presumably UFS on Solaris or HP-UX is pretty much the same, and I have to say that IME, XFS is quicker.
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Hey mods: "Redundant", "Offtopic", or "Overrated" do not mean "-1, I don't agree with you." If you disagree with me, then POST and SAY SO. More importantly, state your reasons why. This is how ADULTS converse. Don't mod me down because it helps you deal with your miserable little existance in your mom's basement and your anger issues towards everyone who disagrees with you.
I'm more interested in posts that DISAGREE with me than I am in posts that agree with me. Sometimes a different viewpoint will offer fresh insights.
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Debian still won't play nice with my RAIDs unless I'm ready to play contortionist. Same goes for Ubuntu. Fedora FTW! :)
I don't think you're allowed to admit that on the slashdot internets.
Are you sure you didn't mean Windows?
It may not be YOUR idea of open source, but it's still open source none the less. And providing it retains relevance on new hardware, it will never die.
Personally I've never used it, but after reading this thread I think I'll fire up VMware and give it a try. I come from an Ultrix & Tru64 background which were/are heavily influenced by BSD, so many of the concepts are familiar to me.
It should be fun. And isn't that what much of Open Source is all about.
I've never had a USB Keyboard problem with FreeBSD
From 5.4 to 7.0, K6-III + Tyan/VIA mobo -> Athlon + Abit/nForce -> Athlon64 + ASUS/nForce -> Core Solo + Toshiba/Intel.
I've used USB keyboards on all of them. The only time I don't use an PS2 Keyboard is with the Athlon, and then only when I need to edit the bios settings (no USB support for the BIOS menus? WTF?)
*shrug* milage and varying and all that.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinstall
Let me fix your fix for you.
...the first 5-10 comments on any BSD related post always consist of trolls, FUD, and other rubbish.
Fuck you, Linux "community."
The main thing is that the packages on the ISO are frozen at -RELEASE. They're almost always out of date by the time you install them, which means that you need to go upgrade them, which makes one wonder what the point of installing it in the first place was. Unless it's a machine with limited or no network capabilities, installing the packages from the CD itself is going to be wasted time.
/usr/local/bin/zsh sancho
/usr/ports/sysutils/screen && make install clean
Besides, once the package is installed, it's easy enough to change the shell
When I install a new system, I just run the following as a matter of course:
pkg_add -r zsh && pkg_add -r vim-lite && pkg_add -r mutt && pkg_add -r sudo && chsh -s
Of course, adding screen is harder, allegedly due to a bug in screen. Gotta go to the ports for that:
portsnap fetch extract && cd
> ReiserFS or XFS are much, much quicker.
XFS is pretty decent (but only recommendable for 64 bit systems). ReiserFS is nice until it actually does need a fsck (it happens). If by some chance your partition actually survives its awesomely broken fsck process, it may still be faster to simply copy back all the data on the drive from backups. By hand. With tiny magnets.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
By using the following command:
# portupgrade -faP
HAHAHA, FAP. Oh man, right now I'm laughing so hard and I think I'm getting a boner.
You have to use a third-party patch to get domU support for FreeBSD. Unfortunately, there is no dom0 support, and while there are people supposedly working on it, there aren't many status reports.
The Xen information is available here: http://www.fsmware.com/xenofreebsd/7.0/ linked from http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/Xen.
That said, VMWare seems to run FreeBSD just fine. VirtualBox, sadly, doesn't play nicely with newer versions of FreeBSD.
Touché
I'm not ignorant, stupid, unable to find out how to do things (except work out why this 2.6.22-17 kernel that I rolled myself with all the right things in refuses to accept my high quality 80 wire cables) when they need doing, but for serious, how is it that I have never been asked things like that under Linux?
Why is the BSD automatic detection routine so unsure of itself that it asks if you want to override it? Read this: http://myfreebsd.homeunix.net/freebsd/disk_geometry.html
It may hold the answers that you seek.
I don't know the current state of this issue, but I suspect it has been resolved. Suffice it to say that my FreeBSD 6.3-STABLE system is happily chugging along on a 160G disk and has never complained about geometry.
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100%
linprocfs 4.0K 4.0K 0B 100%
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
My feedback as an user of "current" Linux distros.
.0 release of distros.
- I found the same sysinstall that I saw 4+years ago when I last tried installing Freebsd.
- I found that the official way to configure is to generate the config file template using 'Xorg -configure' and then hand editing the xorg.conf config file!!!!
- I found that the standard install still installs TWM and doesn't even ask for KDE/GNOME (I know you need to install the packages *after* the install, and yes I know I can use sysinstall) and you are dropped to a text login after install.
- I found that my amd64 cpu with the nvidia integrated card doesn't have an nvidia driver. And the default nv driver can't make use out of DDC to configure my brand new widescreen LCD monitor.
- I found that my mouse pointer is invisible in X.
Now, before other start, please understand why I am saying this - I know Freebsd has a different approach to building a distro. I also know that reasons like prop. drivers are not its fault. I also accept that I probably am facing some system specific issue inherent in any
My point here is simply to let how a typical user who thought of migrating to Freebsd thinks. I for one, value using my relatively new hardware to the fullest, so I am going back to Ubuntu.
I still have tremendous regards for Freebsd as a server. I have found them to be much more stable than any current Linux distro, and capable of much more punishment too.
Hah! I have you beat! I have been using FreeBSD since 2.2.2!
I would say that ever since FreeBSD 2.2.5 the install for me has gotten easier. Why? Because it supported my ATAPI CDROM. I have to say that sysinstall is a breeze. It's simple and to the point.
Those cry babies that complain that it's too hard to install have probably never had to install it from a DOS partition. Now that was a bitch! It also took forever.
I think I'll keep my 6-STABLE for awhile. I'll play around with 7.0 until 7.1 comes out, then I'll make the switch on my production boxes. I'm interested in giving ZFS a try. I have heard much about it, but I haven't had enough time to try it out.
Well, it's not that I don't have the time, it's just that all this shit doesn't seem to excite me as much as it used to. I'm getting tired of I.T. *sigh*
FreeBSDag.
Yes, it did. UFS2 added background fsck, so you boot-up immediately (faster than with journaled filesystems), and can use the system indefinitely. Meanwhile, fsck runs at a low priority, in the background, to do the basic cleanup needed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
God-damn privoxy... Let's try that again... background fsck...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sounds cool.
The rule of thumb is to give each OS its own primary partition, and each can divide that up as they please. FreeBSD chose to use the BSD scheme (duh) while Linux used the Microsoft scheme of extended/virtual partitions. This definitely made it easier for Linux to coexist with DOS/Windows. But it does make it frustrating trying to squeeze in room for FreeBSD (or Solaris).
Just remember, save a primary partition for FreeBSD when you format your new harddrive. You can always use it as a backup partition in the meantime.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
et me be blunt: The reason journaling is so popular under Linux, is because it is so damned necessary! Waiting for fsck isn't a huge problem if you never have to fsck. But I have found with Linux 2.6.x, regardless of distro, that I get kernel panics and hangs at least once a week. Maybe it's just my laptop, and maybe it's the fault of third party drivers and not Linux itself. But no matter, without journaling I would have long ago thrown my laptop through the window.
But with the high popularity of journaling, I suspect that I'm not the only one who would otherwise have to sit through frequent fscks.
p.s. FreeBSD has background fsck, do you don't have to "wait hours". Your system is usable in just a few minutes, albeit at a temporary performance penalty.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
:D
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..